Chapter Six
Isaiah woke to three paperback novels inside his door’s transfer box—two cozy mystery romances, one which took a magical twist with the possibly-paranormal love interest, and a thriller that seemed to be at least fifty percent sexual scenes between the mafia-style main character and an artifact-hunting private detective.
He sat against the door, just holding them, and wishing, strangely, that they weren’t here.
That they didn’t make things more complicated.
Did they make things more complicated?
Fuck.
He cradled the books, propping his chin against their worn pages, and he swore they smelled like Hilker, like the blanket Isaiah now spent most of his free time wrapped in, like the inside of his mouth had reeked of since he’d had the man’s flesh against his fangs a few days prior.
Isaiah hated it, but he couldn’t get away from it either. He breathed in.
Then out.
A knock came at the door behind Isaiah. He managed to roll himself away from it in time for it to open.
The way Hilker lifted his brow made it feel like he’d caught Isaiah with his own dick in his hand, not a stack of damn books he hadn’t even been reading.
Isaiah set them to the side and stood, his shoulders back and his chin up. He crossed his arms.
“Already?”
“Same time every day,” Hilker replied.
When Isaiah stopped beside the table, Hilker stepped up behind him like he belonged there. Isaiah almost stopped him, but damn, it was nice—wasn’t it nice? The soft touches along his back, the care Hilker took with each tie, outlining Isaiah’s spine as he went.
Isaiah wasn’t supposed to be letting himself like this, he knew. But it was just one minute, one small series of brushes, and then it was over, like nothing had happened.
Hilker offered him a hand onto the table, and Isaiah took it.
He was agonizingly aware of every time Hilker’s fingers touched him—usually gloved—throughout the sample collection, as though his body had begun highlighting them in new and unusual ways.
Shivers down his spine, tiny inhales, an extra beat to his heart: all the same signs of anxiety and disgust he’d always experienced.
But now they came with an ache, a wondering, not of whether Hilker would cause him pain, but whether a slip of his hands might bring pleasure instead.
Isaiah hated himself for thinking it, but he couldn’t seem to stop, either.
At the end of their session, Hilker moved to the glass-enclosed benchtop and began working on something amidst a complex series of glass tubing.
Isaiah simply sat there.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been left alone while Hilker worked, but prior to the last few weeks, he’d always had the manacles to keep him in place and Varsity’s glare snapping toward him whenever he so much as shifted to keep his ass from falling asleep, and since the transition to their new unholy gold routine, Hilker had always escorted Isaiah back to his cell at the end of their session. Now he could just… step off. Walk away.
Well, not away-away, but still. Relative freedom was better than nothing at all.
Isaiah slid slowly off the table, glancing toward Hilker’s bench to ensure he wouldn’t be scolded for it. Hilker seemed just as preoccupied by his samples as ever. So, Isaiah stood up. And lingered.
He couldn’t leave, but he could move, across the lab, down the three feet of hall… to the little window in Landon’s cell door.
Every nerve in Isaiah’s body came alive at the thought, all fighting for the right to scream something different at him. He felt nauseous. And as soon as he realized that, it made everything all the worse.
He should have been yearning to see Landon after all these months, to talk to them face-to-face, to witness the way their eyes lit up when they laughed and count every mole on their pale skin. And he did. He wanted that.
He just… wanted it to already have happened: to be five years into their first house together—the size no vampire could ever actually afford—with their feet in the pool, cracking jokes about the people they were sleeping with and agreeing that their friendship was the most perfect thing that could ever exist. But that was a reality that could never come to pass.
And even if it had been a viable thing, there would be so many steps in the process, so many places their perfect friendship could fall apart.
Starting with this.
One first sight that could shatter everything.
Isaiah turned and walked the other way.
He paused behind Hilker, crossing his arms and watching as the scientist worked.
Isaiah hadn’t gotten far enough through high school, much less the years of college likely required to have any idea what Hilker was actually doing, but every movement of his gloved hands was entrancing, his tight brow and concerned expression unwavering.
“If you’re waiting for my permission, you have it,” Hilker said, not bothering to look up at him.
It felt like bait. Permission for what? To suck his dick, probably. Instead, Isaiah drew the nearest rolling stool over, settling awkwardly onto it as he pulled his gown back up over his chest.
“I don’t particularly want to talk to you about this, but you’re the only person here, so I suppose you’ll have to do,” he said, keeping his voice soft despite how far they were from Landon’s cell in this side of the lab.
Hilker did glance at him then, pausing from his work. “Yes?”
“I’ve never… seen Landon.”
“That’s an accurate statement, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
Isaiah snorted. “You and I have both been in relationships where someone wanted something physical that the other wasn’t invested in.
” It was a kind way of phrasing things, but he didn’t feel like being particularly mean to himself at that moment, even if it let him be mean to Hilker in the process.
“What if…” Isaiah inhaled, preparing himself.
“What if Landon and I see each other, and that changes things?”
“You mean one of you wants to get into the other’s pants, so you can’t be friends anymore,” Hilker said.
“I was thinking about it a bit more elegantly than that, but yes.” Why had he even started this conversation? Whatever Hilker’s advice was going to be—
“What do you think the chances of that actually are?”
Oh. Huh. That was not a terrible question. Isaiah felt a little embarrassed as he answered. “Pretty low.”
“Well then, it seems to me you have two questions to weigh: is the ‘pretty low’ potential for that negative outcome worth avoiding seeing your princess in this moment, and is the potential for that negative outcome worth avoiding seeing them forever?” Hilker said, matter of fact.
And maybe it was just that simple. Yes or no. Now or forever. Except there wouldn’t be a forever for their friendship, so really, what he had to care about was the now. And now…
“Now,” Hilker interrupted Isaiah’s thought, “if you’d fix my hair for me, I’d like to get back to my work.”
“Your hair is fine,” Isaiah grumbled. Hilker’s messy bun still looked reasonably tight, and he’d finally trimmed back his undercut so it no longer stuck out from the sides of his face. Perhaps there were a couple small hairs drifting across one of his cheeks.
“It’s not, and if I touch it while wearing my gloves, both my gloves and my hair will be contaminated,” Hilker insisted.
Isaiah had no fucking clue whether that would actually happen or not, and he supposed it didn’t matter. The real question here was: would Hilker leave him alone if he didn’t do it? It was a simple favor. And it put the power in Isaiah’s hands—literally. So, what was the cost?
Pretty low, he figured.
And Isaiah had to take a risk somewhere. “Only if you really do stop bothering me and get back to work after.”
“Who came and sat down next to which genius scientist in the midst of a breakthrough?”
“Genius my ass.”
“Easy there, whipping boy.”
Isaiah did not approve of the sensation that ran through his spine as Hilker used Landon’s pet name for him. “That’s not yours to call me.”
“Oh, then what shall I use? Sacrificial lamb? Victim? Prey?” Hilker’s mouth twisted into a grin. “Pretty little cu—”
“Bastard,” Isaiah growled, cutting Hilker off, but the silken, hungry tone of his words had already wormed their way into Isaiah’s chest. He couldn’t help himself.
He grabbed Hilker’s hair and began sloppily letting it down, twisting his fingers in and through and ahhh, why did it have to be this soft?
This was surely where the coconut in his scent was coming from too, because it flooded over Isaiah with each pull of his hands through Hilker’s long hair.
He indulged in it—in the way that it felt to have someone’s, anyone’s hair between his fingers, as though he could send the sensation back through all his weeks of nothing but a cold, hard cell and the occasional yank or shove from Varsity.
As he brushed, he pressed his nails gently against Hilker’s scalp, swirling and rubbing.
If only it was Landon below him.
It could have been Landon, possibly… he didn’t know if Hilker had the key. If there was something he’d accept in exchange for an hour in Landon’s cell. There probably was, should Isaiah be willing to go far enough for it.
And if he was brave enough to step up to Landon’s door in the first place. Which, it seemed, he wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.
Because instead, Isaiah was here, his eyes half-closed as he played with Hilker’s hair, brushing it back and twirling it around before shifting it the other way instead.
“Whatever else you may be, love,” Hilker said, clearly referencing his earlier name choices, “at least it seems you know your place.”
Isaiah would have been tempted to slam Hilker’s head into the glass shield of the bench in front of him if not for the teasing in his voice and the fact that Isaiah hadn’t been forced into this—not really.
This was nice.