5. Aven #3
Then I see the dust motes moving in the air. I see my clothes on the floor. I see the nightstand with the locked drawer, and I remember exactly what's inside it.
The cross. My mother's journals. The version of myself that still thinks suffering might become holiness if I can make it look disciplined enough.
My stomach turns slowly, sickly. I'm naked in bed with a vampire. I didn't just break a rule. I brought the thing I was trained to fear into my home, begged him to touch me, and slept better beside him than I ever slept under a crucifix.
Cain's still asleep, his dark hair messy against my pillow, his face peaceful in a way that makes him look less like a monster and more like someone who was also allowed to stop surviving for a few hours. That's worse. A monster'd be easier. A monster'd let me hate myself cleanly.
The static returns at the edges of my hearing, faint at first, a soft buzzing like insects behind glass. The silence is fading. The world's coming back, and it's bringing judgment with it.
I slide out from under his arm, my skin prickling as the cold air hits me. I fumble for my boxers and jeans, pulling them on with shaking hands. Every movement feels too loud. Every breath feels like evidence. The apartment that held the quiet a few hours ago now looks small, dirty, and fully mine.
"Aven?"
Cain's sitting up, his hair falling around his face, his eyes still blurred with sleep. He looks vulnerable for one unguarded second, and panic rises so fast it burns the back of my throat.
"You have to go," I say. I'm not looking at him. I can't. I'm looking at the whiskey glass on the counter through the open bedroom door, at the crooked line of books on the floor, at anything that isn't the man in my bed. "Now. You need to leave."
The mattress shifts as he moves. "What happened?"
"Morning happened."
"Aven."
He reaches for me, and I flinch before he touches my skin. The reaction lands between us like a slap. His hand stops midair, then lowers slowly.
"Don't," I say. My voice is harsher than I mean it to be, which means I make it worse because cruelty's easier to hold than shame. "Don't touch me."
Cain goes still, his eyes sharpening as he looks at me, and I see the moment he understands enough to be hurt by it.
"This was a mistake," I say, and the words come out too fast, too ugly, because if I slow down, I might start begging him to fix the noise again. "I was drunk. I was tired. You made everything quiet, and I lost my mind for a night. That's all this was."
His expression closes. The warmth from last night doesn't vanish all at once. It folds inward, careful and cold, like something wounded retreating behind a door.
"A mistake," he repeats.
I hate the flatness in his voice. I hate that I put it there. "I'm supposed to be a priest, Cain. I'm supposed to be something other than this."
"Other than what?"
I gesture helplessly at the bed, at myself, at him, at the whole wrecked room. "Other than someone who invites a vampire home because the silence feels better than salvation."
He doesn't answer immediately. When he does, his voice is quiet enough that I almost wish he'd yell. "Do you want me gone because I frightened you, or because I didn't?"
That question finds the softest part of me and presses hard. I turn away from it. "Please just go before I say something I can't take back."
For a long moment, he doesn't move. Then he gets out of bed and dresses with efficient, silent movements.
Ruined shirt. Boots. Jacket. He doesn't look at me while he does it, and I deserve that.
I stand near the wall with my arms wrapped around myself, listening to the static grow louder as the distance between us becomes more than physical.
At the door, Cain pauses. His hand rests on the knob for a second before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small scrap of paper. He sets it on the counter beside the whiskey glass.
"My number," he says. "In case you decide the silence wasn't the only thing you wanted."
Then he's gone.
The door clicks shut behind him, and the world shatters open.
The voices come back like a physical blow.
They're louder than before, more demanding, a cacophony of grief, anger, unfinished prayers, and names no one alive remembers how to answer.
I collapse onto the floor with my hands over my ears, but it doesn't help.
It never helps. The dead press in from the walls, the pipes, the corners of the room, and my own breathing turns ragged beneath them.
I crawl toward the nightstand and yank the drawer open. The cross is still wrapped in cloth. My mother's journals are still there, waiting with all the things I've been too afraid to know. Cain's number's folded in my fist, already warm from my hand.
For a second, I consider tearing it up. I consider throwing it away, burning it in the sink, pretending the night was only another hallucination with better cheekbones and worse theology.
Instead, I shove it into the drawer beside the silver cross.
Two things I can't wear and can't throw away.