Chapter Four #2
“One of those stuffy philosophy tomes, probably,” Isaiah said, basing his answer on the last three books Landon had managed to get their hands on.
They’d been asking for the juicy young adult fantasies they’d loved during their early teenage years, before their turning, but their mother always shot that down, sending them textbooks and stiff nonfiction instead.
They’d retaliated by requesting the most bizarre and pretentious works they could find in their mother’s printed library database in order to make fun of them.
“Oh, or a slightly conspiratorial exploration of some weird under-appreciated event in ancient history. Please let it be one of those, actually. I miss those.”
“Neither,” Landon replied in a mockingly haughty voice. “It’s a bound copy of scientific papers on the sexual intercourse of either people from Sicily or an odd species of worm-like salamanders. I’m hoping for the Sicilians, but do expect worm porn.”
Isaiah snorted, and the sound turned into a laugh, which turned into a guffaw. Worm porn—he wondered if Hilker was into it. Maybe this day had just been too long and too confusing because this was all so much funnier than it should have been.
Landon was laughing too, though, and the sound made everything worth it.
Smiling as he pulled himself back together, Isaiah leaned his head on the wall and tapped gently.
Landon tapped back at him. “I miss you, Izzy.”
“I’m right here,” Isaiah grumbled, even as his heart swelled at the statement.
“I know. But I still miss you.”
As the love and wonder in Isaiah’s chest settled, though, a terrible ache replaced it.
Landon would probably never have him. If Hilker’s experiments were successful, Landon would get to move out of here, fangless, while their mother buried Isaiah’s body with the rest of the evidence, and Landon would have to miss Isaiah for as long as it took for their love to fade.
From what Isaiah knew about losing people, that could take a very, very long time—far longer than Isaiah was bound to live, anyway. “Hey, princess?”
“Hm?” Landon shifted against the wall, sending a thrum through it.
“Is it terrible that I wouldn’t rather be here with anyone else?”
Landon seemed to hesitate, then softly, they replied, “Only if it’s terrible that I wouldn’t want anyone else here either.”
“Good.”
“Sap.”
“Oh, shut up.” Isaiah grinned. “If you can’t have your cheesy teen romances with ghost hunks and boobied nagas then you can have my sap in their place.”
“Well, that’s just gross. Keep it in your pants, Iz.” But he could hear the laughter in their voice, fading slowly into contemplation. “Is sex really as great as it’s made out to be?”
“No,” Isaiah said. “Sometimes it’s even better, sometimes it’s way worse. Usually, it’s just kind of nice.”
There was a pause, which Isaiah assumed would end in Landon redirecting the conversation, like they normally did soon after broaching a topic like this, but instead came a quiet question.
“Will it be weird that I’m— That I haven’t had sex and I’m twenty-six?
I’m twenty-six and I haven’t done anything but read text books with no teacher to explain them and make up cuss words, and that’s gonna fuck me up, isn’t it?
If we ever get out of here, that is.” They snorted.
“Maybe I’ll be sixty-six by then, anyways, and I won’t care anymore. ”
If we ever get out of here, they said, like they didn’t know who their own mother was or how she treated her other lab rats after their use was up.
Isaiah thought they had to know, thought they had to be talking like this out of desperation or hope, but he wasn’t sure. And he was too much of a coward to ask.
He leaned back, pulling his ragged locs between his fingers and watching them spring back after each tug.
He missed getting to curl them. Maybe he could ask Hilker for pipe-cleaners.
“I won’t lie, some people get weird about twenty-six, or thirty-six, or any age adults being that nebulous thing we’ve labeled a virgin—but those people can suck my ass because their opinions are shit.
There’s lots of parts of this that will probably fuck you up, but it won’t be a lack of sex.
You can get to that when you want to, if you want to, and anyone who looks down on you for your inexperience should have to face Varsity’s fists. ”
“Damn right,” Landon replied, but beneath the bravado, Isaiah could hear the emotion in their voice. It made him want to wrap himself around them and bury his face in their hair and tell them they were loved, and they would always, always be so.
Before the courage deserted him, Isaiah forced himself to speak that desire into the void between himself and Landon. “You know, whatever anyone else may think, if I could take your hand and walk you out of here, I wouldn’t let you go.”
The quiet from Landon’s cell was incomplete, a soft, static-bound thing that felt like it contained a thousand sounds just below Isaiah’s hearing, but as he listened, it coalesced into words. “I wouldn’t let you let go, either, so we’re even.”
It was all Isaiah had ever wanted to hear, and maybe Landon wasn’t the one he’d once been dying to hear it from, but it was still something wonderful.
Wonderful, and less complicated. With the exception of the cell walls that kept them apart and the fact that they’d never seen each other’s faces, and that if either of them was going to make it out of here alive, it wouldn’t be Isaiah.
A little bump echoed through the wall. “Where’s your head, Izzy?”
Isaiah tapped beside his nose. “Here.”
A slight shuffling followed. “And your hand?”
Isaiah pressed his palm to the wall. He tapped with his finger joints, listening to the sound echo. “Here.”
He swore he could almost—almost—feel as Landon’s hand aligned with his on the other side. He curled his fingers slightly, imagining them interlocking, his dark skin against Landon’s pallor. In his mind, it was beautiful.
“Hold me?” He whispered through the endless barricade separating them, worried it was too low even for Landon’s keen vampire hearing.
“I already am,” Landon whispered back.
Isaiah had told Hilker that abandonment hadn’t stopped him from loving Justin, but he was deciding right here and now that death wouldn’t stop him from loving Landon.
Out in the lab, something shifted—Hilker resuming his work, perhaps. A little tremble ran down Isaiah’s spine.
It didn’t matter what his body wanted. His heart knew who it belonged to.