The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 12 - Pain is Natural and Constant

Sometimes I wake up at night and my hands search the sheets for Laurent, for his hair or his back. It is because I wake up feeling the same way I did then, so bitter and confused that I can taste it in my mouth, like iron, like blood. I wake up wild and desperate, afraid and uncertain why or for whom, a nameless fear that makes me shake and tickles the back of my throat. Yuki had taken to sleeping in Javie's bed in his seventeenth year, cursing and swearing that he would protect our baby from the same treatment I had gotten at that age. Finding my bed empty, Laurent began to sleep beside me whenever he came to Leechtin's, hushing me. 

I thought myself much changed from childhood, but Laurent didn't, talking to me in just the same way and kissing my temples. If he found me sleeping, at whatever hour, he would sleep as well. I woke one night, gasping and shaking, and he sat up with me by the window. "I woke you," I gasped.

"Chut, it is the cold that woke me. There is a cold creature in this house, who stalks me. You are far the warmer and the better. Chut," he said, cooing to me in French, and holding me around the waist from behind.

I pushed open the window for a breeze, and he pushed me against the window frame, so that my cheek pressed against the wood. "Suffering," I said quietly, from the pain.

"You are suffering. I don't know what is to be done about it."

"Nothing. Let me up. Let me lie down."

"You lay before and yet you dream badly."

"Let me alone, fairy," I said. 

I felt that he wanted to say something significant that would alter my point of view, but he only said, "Talk to me," and "will you kiss me a little? It will not mean anything at all but my comfort. Sit astride me and play the lover a little. Will you do it to me? A little?" Allez-vous me faire cela? Un peu?

"No."

"If you do it I will blow upon your skin very gently, and I know that you like it."

"You may blow on my skin but I'm not going to depress your body."

"Oh be a friend," he said, blowing on my neck quietly. 

It thrilled him to feel me shiver against him involuntarily. I liked it enough that when he kissed my neck I didn't protest, and when he began to suck on my skin I let my eyes roll back in my head. His was a gentle pleasure when he was of the mood. With Yuki it had been always passion, but in those years only begging and quiet crying, which so crushed us both. He was so often down and feeling numb that a single touch brought him to tears, and our intimacy for him felt a rediscovery that he was alive, when all that I wanted was to be touched. It is such a simple thing, and Laurent knew that, and he drew upon that needfulness. All he wanted in return was for me to love him, and I did.

"Talk to me," he whispered, kissing me and sucking on me, pressing me all the harder against the windowframe.

"It hurts," I said, in ecstatic monotone, to which he moved on to my ear, making my fingers twitch open and closed involuntarily on nothing. "Leis, sent me a gold cross for my throat, but I gave it to Yuki. Perhaps I should be wearing it, to fend you off, vampire."

"But I love God. Do I sin against him?" Laurent whispered.

"Devil," I said, wavering.

"Tell me why you are so distressed," he said, head pressed against my neck.

He let me down and I told him vaguely that I worried about Javie, to which he jokingly said "Who? Do you mean Miou-Miou?" and to a fierce look, "But do you think it will improve?"

"You look like a fox. Do they not call you Le malin?" 

"They do, unkindly." He lay beside me, head propped on his hand. I reached out and fussed with his hair, an unbrushed tangle of curls.