Chapter 16 #2
“Sylvia,” she mumbled quietly, kindly, as she sat on the stool. “What’s wrong?”
It took Sylvia several seconds before she lifted her head from her hands.
And when she did, the fury had been wiped from her expression. What was left was quieter—more tired, exhausted. Her lip bitten under her mouth, she sighed again.
“God, I’m really not good at this,” Sylvia groaned. “Worse than I expected, actually. Which is saying something.”
Aster’s eyebrows furrowed. “Good at what?”
Sylvia grinded her teeth together. She picked up her phone again, and picked at it mindlessly, to Aster’s annoyance.
“Maybe we can Suggest the Airbnb owners into letting us stay longer once they get here,” she mumbled, still looking down. “It’d be easier than finding a new place to sleep. And I don’t want you to have to haul my DVDs overnight. I’d hate it if anything were to happen to them.”
Aster stared at Sylvia, her nostrils flaring with frustration.
“Sylvia,” she said, clasping her hand over the phone. “Good at what?”
Sylvia ignored the fact that Aster’s hand was covering half her screen and continued to scroll through—was that Twitter?—She was fully looking at memes right now. Aster was trying to have a serious discussion with her, and she was looking at—
Aster popped the phone out of Sylvia’s hand and squinted. “ADHD memes for… neurodivergent queens?” She huffed in complete disbelief. “Sylvia, what the fuck does that even mean?”
Aster was deeply behind when it came to twenty-first century vernacular.
Sylvia grimaced, and didn’t respond. “Give that back.”
“Talk to me, and then you can have it back.”
“You sure? This didn’t go well the first time you did it.”
They stared at each other petulantly, and Sylvia’s words sent Aster in a tailspin toward that very memory—the first time Sylvia bit her.
No matter how many times she revisited it, she still didn’t understand why it had happened.
What had spurred Sylvia to do that. Her explanation looked more and more unconvincing as time went on, held up to the harsh mirror of hindsight.
Aster didn’t want a repeat of that. She didn’t want them to fight, or bite, or even kiss, until she understood what was happening.
She was so exhausted by the ambiguity, by the largeness of her own emotions, by the utter opaqueness of Sylvia’s.
She cared about the other woman too much, as a friend—as more than a friend, it didn’t matter—to understand her so little.
She set down the phone on Sylvia’s lap, and Sylvia’s eyebrows rose.
“You win. You can have it back.”
“That easy?” Sylvia pouted, as if she had been excited about the potential of a fight.
Aster sucked in a breath. She was starting to get overwhelmed. All the worst scenarios spun like yarn around her brain. All the creeping thoughts she’d shoved down and buried.
“Sylvia.” Aster put a hand on Sylvia’s leg, and looked up at her imploringly. “If you regret sleeping with me, you can just tell me. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
Not really, Aster thought when she felt her chest constrict at the thought. But I’ll survive it if it means keeping you.
Sylvia’s head snapped up at that. She gave her a look of disbelief.
“Regret? Sleeping — what?” Sylvia breathed.
Aster’s frown deepened. Something had obviously struck a chord.
“Look, we were drunk, and high, and this whole biting thing—it’s been a lot for both our systems. Physically, emotionally.
But we’ve been friends for so long, almost six mortal lifetimes, and I— I don’t want to jeopardize that.
I mean, I don’t think I could ever find a person who tolerates me the way you do, frankly.
Who doesn’t get scared away when they see the—” Aster gestured vaguely toward Tommy’s limb dismemberment.
“—who doesn’t find it annoying when I get all stupid and superstitious about stepping on a crack in the pavement, or killing in uneven numbers.
” She breathed in shakily. “You are the only person who makes me feel… sane, Sylvia.”
When Sylvia said nothing, she continued, “So if the price I have to pay for keeping that is that I have to sit around with my newly discovered libido, well. That’s fine. I’ll finally have to learn how a vibrator works, probably. But I’ve conquered larger problems in my life.”
But Sylvia just stared, and stared, mouth hanging open. Her cheeks tinted lightly pink.
Feeling more self-conscious by the second, Aster tried to rescind her hand, but Sylvia held it in a vice grip. Unyielding.
Aster gave her a confused look, but Sylvia just clenched her jaw harder, teeth grinding down on each other. As if she was pressurizing a sentence so it wouldn’t pop out of her throat unprovoked. Then—stranger yet—Sylvia’s eyes flared red, then back to green.
What are you fighting so hard? Aster wanted desperately to ask. But she didn’t.
Eventually, Sylvia opened her mouth, and said quietly, “I don’t just tolerate you. I can’t believe you’d ever think that.”
Aster’s heart swooped in her chest.
But it stung, too, because she was once again ignoring the point.
“Sylvia—”
“Be quiet. I mean it. Or I’m not going to be able to get this out.”
Aster swallowed, shutting her mouth in an instant when she saw the intensity in Sylvia’s gaze. Her grip on Aster’s hand only grew tighter, and she inhaled and closed her eyes.
“I know I’m beyond shitty at talking about my emotions,” Sylvia said, then laughed coldly.
“Okay. Even that is an un understatement. I’m catastrophic at it.
But when you grow up the way I did—something that’s sole purpose is to make small talk with politicians, and hand out blood-sausage sandwiches, and then go sit in the corner when it’s no longer needed—it becomes really easy to dissociate from your own body.
And god, I have so much fucking trouble deciphering between what is actually a feeling, a real one, and something that I think I’m supposed to feel. ”
Sylvia’s nails were pressing so hard into Aster’s hand that they were drawing blood. But Aster didn’t even notice. She was hanging off of Sylvia’s every word. She was ready to go back in time and kill Catrina twice more. Hang her from the cliffs of Salzburg.
“I know I’ve never told you this. Because I’m me.
” Sylvia sighed, and Aster felt like her entire life paused for a moment, like the wheels of time screeched to a halt.
“But it’s something I should have, a long time ago.
You mean the—” She inhaled shakily, and groaned.
“God. This sounds so stupidly cheesy. I’m really not made for this.
But you mean the fucking world to me, you idiot.
You saved me. You saved me. You don’t understand how ungrateful I feel everyday knowing that.
Like I’ll never be able to repay that kind of debt. I almost hate you for it.”
Sylvia brought Aster’s hand up to her mouth, and kissed it gently, soft tears pressing into Aster’s skin. Sylvia gave her a look that was so deep, so meaningful, so raw, that it speared Aster right through the chest, her lungs constricting.
“I don’t tolerate you,” Sylvia said, when her lips left Aster’s hand. “Fuck. I cherish you.”
She dropped the hand gently in her lap.
“And I very much enjoyed having sex with you.”
The swift topic change nearly knocked the wind out of Aster’s chest.
“But if we’re going to do this,” Sylvia said, in the same blase tone as if they were going into business together.
Opening up a cafe, a coffee shop. “I realized earlier—when I was being a bitch, yes, guilty—that I can’t be as laissez faire as I am with…
mortals. We’re going to have to set some ground rules.
Because with two vampires, things can get frisky with Eternity really quick. ”
Aster’s mouth opened, then closed. She was still reeling from Sylvia’s confession. From the joy and the anguish of hearing just how much she cared. “...Ground rules?”
“Yes,” Sylvia said, then laughed. “God, I can’t believe myself.
I’m the one doing this. Setting boundaries.
This is actually disgusting. I want this to end as soon as possible.
But yes. I’ll make it quick. One, we can’t drink from each other at the same time.
That’ll activate that whole—” She waved her hands around, and Aster got the message.
Eternal Vampire Marriage. “—so that’s a no go, unfortunately. Sexy as it would be.”
Aster let her chest unwind. So this whole thing was just Sylvia being typical Sylvia, then. Her annoyance earlier had been about the fact that she was going to actually abide by some sort of rule. Like a child having a tantrum during a board game. And here Aster thought—
“And two, I think we should avoid kissing each other outside of sex.”
Aster’s heart dropped a hundred floors. Splattered in the basement.
“Oh.”
Sylvia shrugged, studying her nails again, mouth in a straight, disciplined line. She didn’t seem to notice the way Aster’s entire soul had just crumpled into a little paper ball.
“It just keeps the lines clearer that way.”
Aster said nothing for a long time, and when Sylvia looked up at her in confusion, Aster slowly nodded, like a zombie.
“Right. The lines. Yeah.”
Sylvia gave her a half-smile. It didn’t seem to reach her eyes.
“Any other… rules?” Aster asked breathlessly.
Just breathe. Just breathe.
She still wants you. In some way, she wants you.
She loves you, in some way. She loves you.
Maybe not the same way. It doesn’t have to be the same way.
Sylvia bit her lip down in thought. “Fuck it, I don’t think so.
Oh, maybe tell me if you’re going to sleep with someone else, so I can kill them in advance to clear your schedule for me instead.
” She looked down at herself then, as if she’d just realized she was still in a towel.
“Oh. Gross. My poor skin. I’m going to be as wrinkled as Catrina’s rotting corpse. ”
Sylvia stood then, then gave Aster an expectation expression. They’d seen each other naked hundreds of times before, but somehow, it felt strange now.
Like something free had become forbidden.
“Oh. Oh,” Aster sputtered, rising to her feet slowly. “Sure, yeah. I’ll uh—see you in the living room.”
Sylvia gave her a grand grin, fangs exposed.
“Make us some coffee, and I’ll grab my Gilmore Girls DVD?”
And for all the horrible turmoil in Aster’s chest, for all the ways she wanted to leave the apartment and stalk the streets of New York City like an injured, limping animal, she could feel nothing else but an aching softness when Sylvia looked at her like that.
Like there was nothing else she’d rather do than curl up on the couch with her.
So, instead of running away, Aster joked, “Coffee? It’s three AM.”
“And we’re a thousand years old and still haven’t figured out a proper sleep schedule.” Sylvia disappeared behind her closet. “Which season do you want to watch?”
“Anything but season five.”
“Of course. We hate when they fight.”
“We do. They’re not meant to.”
“No. No, they’re not.”
With that, the door shut softly behind Aster.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the television screen. She looked… normal, to her surprise. Much more normal than she felt inside.
Maybe this can work.
She let herself feel a flicker of hope.
Maybe this was enough.
Forcing herself to believe that, because she had no other choice—
She went to make coffee.