"Some things never change, do they?"
"Gone too far, have I? Okay, okay, I'll behave. Wouldn't want to make you feel uncomfortable in your own home. So you admit you're gay and you have female friends. Is she a fag hag?"
"Adam."
"Just asking. I'm not as bad as you like to think. Just a bit cheeky. I mean, did you honestly think I'd use humans against their will? For blood or sex?"
"When I chased after you outside the club. You said---you flat-out told me---that after we, you know..."
"After I thought I'd killed you?"
"Yes. That. You told me that for some time afterwards, you used people, took what you wanted."
"There are ways of taking without forcing the other person into it. You persuade, they agree, you take what you want--- with their permission---then in the morning, or rather, before morning comes?
You leave. It's cold, it's clinical, but it's consensual. Despite what you seem to think, I didn't develop a taste for murder. But let me ask you straight; is that what you think? Do you believe I'd fuck anyone who didn't want it? Do you think I'm so animalistic that I don't care for their enjoyment too? Think back to the hotel room, Nathan. It wasn't that long ago." He's pointing at me with that forefinger again, jabbing at mid-air.
"You can't have forgotten. Did I act like a man who didn't give a fuck about your pleasure?"
Involuntarily, I shudder at the memory and let that be my answer.
"No; I didn't think so either." And his voice is colder than I've ever heard it before.
"I'm a special case, though," I blurt out, finding my voice at last.
His eyes lift in what looks like surprise. Or maybe it's incredulity that I'd push the issue after he's already defended himself several times. "Oh? Meaning?"
"Of course you'd be careful with me. To make up for..."
"Ah. I see. You think I was trying to atone for what I'd done before. Well." Adam shrugs.
"Maybe I was. With words. You know, when I actually said I was sorry? The fucking? That was all physical. I don't use my cock for atonement."
"Technically, it was---"
" Ye s , thank you, Sergeant Stephenson. I know it was yours that got all the action. And to think, you're accusing the bottom of being selfish."
He tuts three times, each tongue-click a quiet reproach. How the hell did this happen? Adam doing me wrong and me feeling bad about it? "Of course," he continues, "that could all be a ruse. Me, selflessly bottoming to prove to you that I'm not a psychopath." He bursts out laughing. "That is some fucked-up reasoning, you know? Why can't you just accept it for what it is? Seventy years have passed, I apologised, you don't believe it, end of story. Right?"
Truthfully? I'm not sure whether or not I do believe he's changed. I'm the exception---the one who drove him to distraction. The one whose possible loss or death meant he had to keep me, somehow. Anyhow. Maybe what he did gave him a taste for it. Maybe not. I don't know enough about his activities since to judge. Which probably also means I don't know enough about his activities since to fuck him in a hotel room, but that didn't stop me doing it.
Yet, here he is. In my home. The place to which I brought him out of some misguided sense of hope. The longing for it to be true, that he had changed, that we could both accept the other's existence and move on, without fighting, or perhaps even fraternising in the future. I'm hoping he can know where I am and still choose not to smother me. A test, and a risky one at that.
"Your silence tells me everything I need to know, Soldier Boy. Thanks a bundle. Anyway!"
This last word artificially bright, an uncomfortable attempt to move the conversation on. "I had people I called on to relieve certain urges. You can't tell me you didn't either."
His use of the past tense isn't lost on me, and I can't help but wonder if he sees his other lovers as in the past because we're going to make a future to ge the r. Oh please, Adam, don't make assumptions. Don't take it as read that we're going to jump straight back into what we were.
"I haven't been celibate, put it that way."
"No." Adam closes his eyes and appears to be denying what I've just confessed. Not wanting to see it. But it's just a blink, nothing more. "I wouldn't expect so." He startles, no doubt because of the car pulling up outside. "A visitor for you," he says, either stating the obvious or voicing his jealousy in a churlish way. He has no reason to be jealous of Alyssa---not sexually. Even if Adam and I weren't in a sexual relationship, Alyssa just isn't my type, by virtue of the fact that her sexual organs are on the inside of her body, and I'm really not a boob man.
So now it's too late to devise a way to get Adam out of the house; not that he would go for it anyway. If he sensed my desperation, he'd play with me and stay. I wonder if there's any way for me to head her off at the pass, or just ignore her.
Maybe I could---
The doorbell rings out, two chimes, and Adam stares at me. "Well? Aren't you going to answer it? Really, I'm surprised you don't hand out keys to your human pets so they can let themselves in."
"Oh, do shut up."
"It'd be much more convenient."
"Are you kidding?" I throw over my shoulder as I head for the door. "She wouldn't know who the hell I've got with me."
"Nathan!" Alyssa's all bright eyes and glowing skin; either she's made a remarkable recovery from her previous illness---ah, the resilience of
