Heart's Redemption (MxM)

Chapter 6 ~ Sam

"One room, two beds," Ian says to the motel clerk, handing over some cash. The clerk's hooded gaze flicks between me and Ian a few times.

"How long you need it for? You want the nightly or the hourly rate?" he asks, leering.

"One night," Ian says, glaring fire, and I wonder if he's about to discover he has the power to cause spontaneous human combustion.

The clerk shrugs and hands him the key to a room.

"105," he says. "At the corner by the pool. No neighbors," he adds, showing a row of stained teeth.

Ian snatches the key from him and stomps from the office, looking like he's barely resisting the urge to squash the little man's head like a melon.

His truck is down the street at a small garage, where he'd left it to have the back window replaced. The mechanic had eyed the bullet holes in the door and roof with a quizzical look but said nothing, merely swiping a grease-stained hand across her brow and naming a surprisingly reasonable price for the window.

The problem was that it had been late in the afternoon when Ian decided that Toni's Auto Repair was the right kind of place for his truck—a decision based entirely on the vintage Chevy pickup parked out front—and it would take a day to get the parts.

Hence, the Craptown Motel.

Now, Ian tosses his duffel bag on one of the two beds, pulls out his wallet and counts the bills.

"Alright, I don't have a lot to spare, but it should be enough to get you a few things."

"What kinds of things?" I ask, curious.

He looks at me. "Clothes, for a start. I travel light but even I have more than one pair of underwear."

"Oh, yeah." I'd left Karin's with nothing, after all.

He'd bought me plenty of stuff over the years, but the clothes I wore now were the same clothes I'd been wearing the day he took me, when I was still just Sam Asato. I'd been barely seventeen then, but they still fit me.

Which is depressing. It seems like I stopped growing after merging with Samasa.

"And you'll need some warmer stuff too," Ian goes on. "Spring can be nice up north, but it still gets cold. Also, toothbrushes are not meant to be shared. Not that it matters after how well-acquainted our mouths got last night," he adds, frowning.

"Maybe they'll meet up again," I say, sitting on the edge of the other bed and leaning back on my hands. "Seemed like they got along pretty well, after all."

Ian stops unpacking his things and stands completely still, keeping his face turned away from me.

"Sam, look. I'll take your word for it if you say you're 'almost twenty-one,' but you look like jail-bait. You're cute, make no mistake, but uh...I like my meat a little more 'well-seasoned,' if you know what I mean."

I make a retching noise.

"Gross. Also, you're forgetting I have the memories of an ancient sex-demon. I'm pretty well-seasoned. I just look fresh."

"Yeah well...you also said you weren't the demon or the human anymore. If you're something new that was created when the possession went wrong, then how old are you?"

I frown at him. "This consciousness is almost four," I say. "But what's age except for memory and experience? I have that in spades. I can show you if you want."

He turns at that, but the expression on his face isn't interest. It's uncomfortably close to pity, in fact.

"You... You were with that guy for four years?" he asks softly.

I sit up, feeling suddenly angry. I'm not angry at Ian, though—it's more like I'm angry at myself for letting what he said be the truth. I lash out at him anyway because he's the more bearable target.

"Yeah, and before that Samasa was imprisoned in a Hell realm for a century. Getting summoned by Karin was the best thing to happen to me in a hundred years. Merging with that whiny shit, Asato, sucked, but at least we're corporeal and alive."

His eyes widen at me in something like mild alarm.

I try not to talk about myself in the first person plural. It freaks people out. Sometimes I can't help it though, because that's how it feels. I'm Sam, but I remember being Samasa and Asato. We're literally in this together.

"So yeah," I continue, glaring up at him, "I spent the last four years as Karin's slave, but I've been through worse. At least he never wanted to sleep with me," I laugh bitterly. "It's funny, but the one bright point of my existence was that Karin's straighter than a laser line."

Ian's face crinkles as some new thought troubles his brain. "So wait..." he asks. "Had Asato ever...uh, 'done it'?"

I shake my head. "No. I mean, I—he—was good friends with his right hand, but that's about all. Kinda hard to get a lot of action when you're locked in your mom's basement, after all," I add.

All kinds of things are going on with Ian's expression, and if I wasn't the cause I might have found it funny to watch him struggle through the pageant of unfamiliar emotions.

Finally, when he seems to be caught in a kind of limbo between concern and outrage, I sigh and stand up.

"Relax—I'm fine," I say, giving him a smile. "Actually, I think I'm pretty well-adjusted, considering. And I'll stop coming on to you, I promise. It's just...that was Samasa's nature, you know? So it's mine too, I guess. But I don't need it like I did when I was him. Now I just..." I shrug.

Actually, the thing I crave the most is the kind of touch Ian showed me when he rubbed my back, or let me lean against him as he drove. That was something I'd never experienced as either Samasa or Asato.

It was new, and it was all mine.

More than anything, I want to feel it again. But for that to happen, it seems like I'll have to modify my behavior a little bit.

I exhale, brush the hair out of my eyes and smile up at him.

"So...you ready for some fun?"

"Uh..." Ian's expression shifts towards confusion, and I keep mine innocently blank.

"You were gonna take me shopping, remember?"