Chapter Twenty Three
In the living room after dinner, Julien took his seat and beckoned Luis over. “Did you enjoy dinner?” He asked.
They’d had a chicken stir fry. Luis nodded as he sat. “It’s always delicious.”
Julien placed a hand on Luis’s knee. “And did you enjoy helping Karim?”
“Yeah, it was nice to do something,” he said, which was the truth.
Karim clearly had a lot of experience taking charge in a kitchen, and he’d been exacting in ordering Luis around.
Once upon a time that would’ve annoyed Luis, but now, getting to turn off his brain for an hour and just follow directions?
Bliss.
“You did a good job,” Julien said, and Luis felt sparks go down his spine at the praise. “I think you should help Karim with dinners from now on.”
Luis was already bobbing his head in agreement, “Okay.”
“Alright I’m here,” Karim said as he strode in. He took the other couch, pulling out his phone.
“Luis is going to help you with dinner from now on. At least while he’s here,” Julien said.
“Alright. Should I also put him on dish duty?” He asked with a grin.
“Whatever you see fit,” Julien said. Then eyed Luis, “Any protest?”
Luis didn’t love washing dishes, usually put it off at his own place, but under Karim’s direction, and with a desire to being helpful, he found there was no objection in him. “Nope.”
“Great. Now,” Julien’s hand moved to his shoulder, encouraging him to tilt his head. “Karim, please time.”
It was happening fast this time, without the checking and double-checking. Luis didn’t understand how that one conversation had shifted so much, but he wasn’t mad about it. This was so much better, just to… follow Julien’s lead.
Julien’s fangs, when they pushed in, had just that one sharp initial burst of pain. Luis tensed, and then the pain slipped away. Pleasure pooled quickly in his belly, sweet and thick like honey as Julien began to suck.
Luis sank into it.
When Karim called time, Luis barely heard it. He felt only the fangs pull away, and then a hot tongue swipe over the mark on his throat to seal it closed.
Luis made some dreamy sound between satisfaction and disappointment.
“Do you need–? Okay, great. My turn,” Karim said greedily. There was shuffling and then arms around him, pulling him close.
Luis sighed, tilting his head further to offer his neck. The bite haze had him, and he didn’t fight it. It felt so good. He missed it.
“Do you want to wait for Jules to come back?” Karim asked, breath ticklish on his neck.
Luis’s eyes flickered open just long enough to grab at Karim’s shirt and drag him in. No, he didn’t want to wait. He wanted more.
“Fuck, you smell like him,” Karim mumbled before his fangs found the spot Julien had bitten.
They sank in.
The haze deepened, the pleasure pouring through his body, making him burn between his legs. He moaned and Karim clutched him tighter.
And then it was over. Karim was breathing hard as he pulled his teeth out, licking at the mark. Luis whimpered and almost asked him for more.
“Give me your hand,” Karim said. Luis did without thinking. He had just a simple bandage over the cuts on his hand now to keep it protected, and Karim pulled it off carefully. A second later he brought it up to his mouth, licking over the scabbed wound.
Luis flinched to pull away before he realized what Karim was doing.
“Oh.”
“It’s stupid to leave it healing so slowly,” Karim said. “Won’t be as good as if I’d done it fresh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking about it.”
“It’s okay,” Luis’s words came slow, his head cottony. “Thank you.”
Karim hummed. He still had Luis’s hand, and curled their fingers together.
It was quiet then. Luis’s body was buzzing from the bites. He tried to subtly shift to adjust his pants.
He felt Karim’s gaze, then Karim’s other hand rubbed against his own thigh in a sort of irritated fashion. “How’re you feeling?”
Luis swallowed. “Fine.”
“Good. Good.” Karim’s hand squeezed in his.
Another silence. Not awkward, but like a pause waiting for something.
“You know, my mother never wanted me to meet a vampire,” Luis said all of a sudden. The words tumbled out of his mouth. “I think she knew this would happen. That I’d like being bitten more than the needle.”
“Oh?” Karim prompted.
“Mom took me to church every week growing up,” Luis said.
“But I always asked too many questions. I didn’t understand why God hated vampires if God created everything.
How God could hate them, when he was supposed to love everything.
” He’d embarrassed her several times by asking these questions too loudly, with the naive confidence of a child.
“We used to go to vampire protests, and I would always be looking around, trying to spot one. I thought a protest was like a public discussion, and vampires would show up to debate us.”
“Pity they didn’t,” Karim said with amusement.
Luis huffed a laugh. “My mom would have lost her shit if a vampire ever showed up. She worked so hard to make sure I never even saw one until I was an adult.”
Julien came back into the room. He looked softened from the blood, but okay.
“All good?” Karim asked.
“Yes,” Julien retook his seat on the other side of Luis. “How’re you both?”
“We’re good. Luis was just telling me about his mom,” Karim said.
“Just that she would hate it, me being here,” Luis said. “If that wasn’t obvious from the whole kidnapping-mind-washing-cult thing.”
“And how do you feel, being here?” Julien asked.
Luis gave it a moment of thought. “I feel more like myself here,” Luis’s eyes drifted over the antique art and expensive wallpaper of the room.
Nothing in their house was like him, but it still felt true.
“Like I’m not trying to be someone else.
Like maybe life doesn’t have to be as hard as it’s been? I don’t know.”
“I think that makes perfect sense,” Julien said. “From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like your mother approved of most of your life choices.”
Luis snorted. That was the understatement of the century. “No, she definitely didn’t.”
“I had to leave home before I was an adult,” Karim said. The words were stilted like it was costing him something to say it. “Because it wasn’t safe for me there.”
“Before you were an adult?” Luis asked.
Karim nodded. “Before the Change. I was never interested in women, and I never had the temperament to fake it. I had to leave to exist, so I did.”
Luis mulled that over a moment. “I wish I would’ve moved out earlier,” he confessed. “I wish I would’ve understood sooner that she wasn’t going to change.”
“You can’t know what you don’t know,” Karim said. “Especially growing up. Those people are supposed to love you, take care of you. When they don’t–well, it’s a unique kind of betrayal.”
Luis sighed. “I just wish I hadn’t wasted so many years trying to be the person she wanted me to be. Even before I realized I was gay, I liked music, which is such an innocent thing, and Mom hated even that. A pathway to sin, she called it.”
“Is that why she took your guitar?” Julien asked.
“Yeah,” Luis said. “Remember how I said a neighbor kid let me mess with their guitar?”
Julien nodded.
“Well, he actually gave it to me when he lost interest because I liked it so much. But Mom, I mean she’d already banned me from hanging out with him, and she would’ve flipped if she saw the guitar, so I had to hide it at Cassie’s house, play it when I was there.
I eventually saved up and bought a nicer one when I got a job, kept it too at Cassie’s.
The one in my apartment, that was actually a splurge for finally moving into my own place.
Something I could finally keep in my own room. ”
“You said it was a Fender?” Karim asked.
“Yeah. Fender Acoustasonic, yellow. I’d wanted the black, but the yellow was what they had in store.” Luis missed it badly. He’d have to save up again to buy it again after all the new apartment and moving bills were paid.
“I’m sorry she took that from you,” Karim said.
Luis opened his mouth to reply, but the words stuck. Then Karim was pulling him in closer and Julien was crossing over, fitting himself on the other side. Their steady presence surrounded him.
“You didn’t deserve any of that,” Julien said into his hair, “but I’m glad you’re here and safe with us now.”
Luis shut his eyes shut against the wave of emotion. Arms around him squeezed him tighter, and a wound inside him that had been bleeding for days without him realizing it, began to ebb.
##
“You’re in our room tonight,” Julien said as dawn approached. They were heading up the stairs, Karim following as he turned off the last of the downstairs lights.
“I am?” Luis almost stumbled over a step.
“You need to sleep, so let’s try something different,” Julien said. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed, then come to our room.” Julien paused at Luis’s door and turned to look at him.
“Um, okay,” Luis said.
Julien nodded and turned to continue toward his room.
“Don’t take too long,” Karim said as he passed, a smirk edging his lips.
Luis flushed and hurried into his own room.
He quickly changed into pajamas and brushed his teeth and washed his face. In the bathroom mirror he looked tired. He tilted his head and could see the already healing marks from the bites. He touched them, but they were barely sensitive.
“Okay,” he said to himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He was just going to sleep. Nothing else was going on.
Still, he dawdled a few more seconds fussing with the unruly curls. He needed a haircut soon.
Finally, Luis forced himself to his bedroom door and then took slow, uncertain steps down to the other bedroom.
The overhead light of Julien and Karim’s bedroom was off, the room lit just by the far bathroom. Julien was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in a silky matching pajama set, applying some cream to his face. Karim was seated on the edge of the bed in the dark, idly watching him.