chapter 9 (aurelian)
Nov. 20th, 2002 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieAurelian was momentarily tempted to walk home, because he so infrequently got to go outside during the day, but he was afraid the sky was going to clear - it had stopped raining sometime very early that morning - and the last thing he wanted to see was a ray of sunshine. So he hailed a cab.
He thought about Sam all the way home and tried not to hope too much. But Sam had all but said he was interested in Aurelian. Hadn't he said he always say no to things right away, but almost always changed his mind? He'd given Aurelian hope. Aurelian just prayed it wasn't a false hope. Waking up that morning with Sam in his arms had solidified things for him, and he alternated between mentally beating himself up for putting himself in this position, and mentally applauding himself for loosening up enough to love a mortal.
Because no question, he was in love with a mortal boy.
He probably over-tipped the cabbie because he was wrapped in his own thoughts. (And the cabbie, unsurprisingly, said not a word.) He hung up his coat in the closet in the hallway, made sure the curtains were drawn in the dining room, the music room, and the kitchen (they were), heated himself a mug of blood, and checked to see if he had any messages. One, from Clare. She'd called last night while he was at Sam's apartment. She wanted to know how his date went on Sunday, and had he told Sam about being a vampire, and what was Sam's reaction?
Aurelian could hear the unspoken question in her words: Has he broken your heart yet? He wondered if Clare had so little faith in Sam, or so little faith in mortals in general, or if she was just concerned about him. He had been known to get quite attached to his lovers, and to fall very hard very fast. She was only trying to protect him from his own rashness. She was too late.
He went into the den and peered out the sliding glass doors. Still cloudy. But it was morning, late morning, and even if Alex had woken up at six to check the European markets, which he did sometimes, and even if he'd asked Clare to sit with him while he worked, she would have gone back to bed by now. Aurelian would call her later, after it was dark.
He pulled the shades closed over the sliding doors and went upstairs. He got undressed, ran the shower, and stood under the hot spray for fully twenty minutes, thinking about Sam. Remembering the flush on his face last night, remembering the way he gasped and moaned as Aurelian moved inside him, remembering the way he cried out when he came. Remembering what it felt like to be with a mortal man, to feel his heartbeat and smell his blood and taste his mouth. Remembering Sam's tears and Sam's sighs and the slight rise and fall of his chest as he slept.
Remembering, and comparing all those things to his vampire lovers, and finding the vampires wanting. Humans were warm and living and because their lives were so short they lived more in them. They didn't have centuries to see the things they wanted to see and do the things they wanted to do and plan the plots they wanted to execute. Their time was too short for elaborate, extended mind games.
Aurelian had always thought mortals were beautiful because of their transience. Now he thought Sam was beautiful in spite of it. The boy's beauty - and make no mistake, he was beautiful - was a living, growing thing. His life was. Aurelian and his kind were like leaves in amber, preserved at a certain point and stuck there forever. He would never grow, not physically. (Sometimes he wasn't sure if he'd grow mentally either. He had long held the theory that vampires remained in the specific time period they inhabited when they were turned. He would always be an old world boy. Dante, his Italian lover who adored Ella Fitzgerald, had been turned in the early 50's and would always be a little stuck there, at least in his conception of what the 50's were like in America. Fast cars, pompadours, rock and roll. Comic books. Leather coats.)
Aurelian's thoughts turned in these circles as he stood in his glass-walled shower and let the water beat down on his head and almost unconsciously began stroking his cock. Oh, he ached, he ached for a blond boy with a saxophone and a turntable and an odd experimental jazz album sitting on his couch. He wanted Sam so much, not just his body but his soul, his life, his love. He put one hand against the shower wall for balance while his other hand pumped his cock harder and faster, while he groaned at the sensations, the spreading heat and the prickling at the base of his spine, and he stroked faster, harder, picturing Sam's face, his body, his cock at half-mast this morning when he jumped out of bed, and Aurelian's hips snapped into his hand and he choked out a word and came spasmodically in his shower.
If he had been human, he knew, he would have been panting heavily, would need a few minutes to calm down and get his heart back to a normal speed. But he wasn't human, and all he needed to do was take the showerhead off the hook and aim it at the wall to wash the spunk off the tiles.
When he was clean and more or less relaxed, he got out of the shower, dried off, rubbed his head vigorously to try and dry his hair some, and then he climbed into bed, and went to sleep. He didn't dream.
Later, when the sun had set, his body instinctively knew when to wake him up, and it did. He stretched, rolled over, looked at the clock. Six-thirty. The sun should be down. He got out of bed, pushed back one of the curtains, and yes, it was dark. He watched the back yard and the alleyway behind it for a while, realizing eventually that he was naked and not caring, until he remembered he had to call Clare.
Aurelian got dressed more out of habit than anything else, and because it was civilized. He lived alone and all the curtains in his house were drawn, and he could certainly go downstairs and make himself some breakfast and drink it naked. No one would know, and no one would care. But he liked to think he was a civilized man, so he pulled on a pair of dark gray pants and a wine-colored shirt and went downstairs and into the kitchen. He peered into the fridge, decided he wasn't hungry after all, and went into the den to make his phone call.
He'd had a vampire friend named Magda who'd kept a mortal lover for well over a decade. Aurelian had argued with her about it once, trying to make her understand that her boy would age and die on her, and trying to understand why she didn't mind. Now he thought he saw her point of view. He wished he knew where she was - she would be easier to talk to about Sam than Clare.
Not that he expected Clare to be difficult, but she was Clare, and she was protective of her friends, and she'd never seen the point in taking a long-term mortal lover. But then, she had Alex, and they had been together three hundred years and counting, so her perceptions and her experiences were different.
Aurelian sat at his desk, took a deep internal breath (because he didn't need to take a real breath), and dialed the number. He got Alex.
"Aurelian!" Alex said delightedly. "Bonjour! Ça va?"
"Ça va bien," Aurelian said. "How was the market today?"
"What market? Do not ask. The Nikkei is... I do not understand the Japanese. I never have. Europeans, yes. Orientals? No. I would tear out my hair but Clare would leave me if I were to go bald."
Aurelian grinned into the phone. It was nice to know that someone somewhere was in a playful mood. Alex must have had a good morning, or at the very least a good hour recently, to be in such a good joking mood. Perhaps he'd gotten laid.
And that was such an incongruous thought that Aurelian almost laughed out loud. He knew Alex and Clare had a very... robust sex life, but he'd always had a hard time picturing Alex in the throes of climax. Aurelian wasn't a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but the thought of Alex stretched out or tied up or any one of a number of things was a little disturbing, and not in a good way.
"Clare has been telling me about your amour. Your musician. Have you told him what you are?"
"Yes. Last night. Clare called, I assume to ask me that same question, and I was with him."
"Do you want to talk to her?"
Alex wasn't being rude, really. It wasn't as if he didn't want to talk to Aurelian or didn't care about Sam. He just had a hard time talking to people about these kinds of things over the phone. He was a little better in person.
(As if to support Aurelian's theory about vampires being stuck in time, Alex was turned in 1690. He was even more old world than Aurelian. He'd never been on a plane, and it had taken years to even get him in a railroad car. Trolleys, for some reason, were never a problem. Sometimes he still used an abacus to calculate sums.)
"Is she there?" Aurelian asked.
"One minute. Let me find her." Clare and Alex had an immense house. It was possible to lose someone in it. But this was Clare and Alex, and if they were in the same building, they were always very close to each other.
"Aurelian, dear," Clare said on another extension. He knew it was another extension because she said "Merci, Alex, you can go back to your crossword," and there was a click as Alex hung up his phone.
"I told him," Aurelian said.
"When? What did he say?"
"Last night. No, this morning. I went to his apartment - I had found a record album for him, a jazz band his father was in - I had to give it to him right away, I couldn't wait. It was pouring rain, I was drenched. I stayed the night. We listened to the album, both sides, and I kissed him, and we slept together. And this morning I told him."
"Oh."
"'Oh'? What part is 'oh'?"
"That you slept together. That you stayed with him before he knew what you were. How did he take it?"
"At least you did not ask me how he was."
"No, dear, that is Daniel's question." He could practically hear her grinning on the other end.
"I will assuage your curiosity. He was amazing. He is stunning, Clare, his face and his voice and his body, and he took me in easily, hungrily.... He wanted me, almost as much as I wanted him. I know he did."
"How? How did you know?"
"He told me." Hadn't he? In those words? Last night, in bed? Want you, Sam had murmured into his throat. Want you.
"Does he love you?"
"I think he does. I think he wants to. He had never been with a man before - " Why was he telling her this? This was Sam's business. "Clare, this is personal. Please do not repeat this to anyone. Not even Alex."
"Of course. I keep every secret I am told. But if you are involved with this boy, if you do become lovers, a couple, people will find out about him." He couldn't tell if she was teasing him or not.
"I know. I want you to meet him. Someday soon. He didn't take the news as badly as I expected. He didn't run. He panicked a little, which I did expect, and he thought it over, and he wanted proof, which I gave him - "
"Did you bite him?" That was definitely a note of warning, of caution.
"Of course not. I put his hand against my chest so he could feel my heart not beating, and he pulled me into the bathroom so he could see my lack of reflection. That is all it took. He wanted some time and space to think about it, which I am giving him."
"How much time and space? Will he see you again?"
"Tonight at eleven-thirty, at a diner near the club where he plays. We will have coffee, I imagine, and talk this over. I think he will be fine with it. With me. I hope."
"Do you know what you are doing, Aurelian?"
"You don't trust me? I am an adult, Clare. I have done this before."
"You have wooed a lover, yes. When was the last time you wooed a mortal lover? I just do not want you to be hurt."
"You keep saying that. I won't be hurt. He is so close to accepting it, I can tell. It isn't wishful thinking, it's honest perception."
"I believe you. I do. I adore you, Aurelian - you are kind and intelligent and passionate and adventurous and gorgeous, and you deserve someone who will make you happy. I do not want you to make a mistake with this boy. I do not want you to lose your heart to him and have him reject it."
"He hasn't. He won't. Clare, please, believe me. You called and asked if we had talked, and we have. You asked if I told Sam what I am, and I did. You asked what he did, and he panicked a little, and thought a lot, and did not tell me to go to hell. You want to know if he's broken my heart yet? No. He hasn't. I do not expect he will."
"You have a lot of faith in this mortal boy," Clare murmured. "I hope for your sake it is well-founded. I would like to meet him."
"Come with me to the Bluebird tonight. They play every Wednesday. You can hear him and after the set I can introduce you."
"Oh no," she laughed. "I will wait until he comes to you. One day we will all go out for a drink. You can bring him to the Fledermaus, or to Lamia's." Now she was teasing him. He took that as a good sign. Clare only teased out of love. "No, I am teasing you. Let him adjust to dating a vampire before you introduce him to your vampire friends and our underground vampire haunts."
"That was the plan. You do trust me, don't you? You trust me to take care of myself?"
"I love you, Aurelian. Trust has nothing to do with it. I said I only want you to be happy, and I meant it. Will you make him happy?"
"Yes."
"And you insist he will make you happy, and so I will not worry. Well, I will not worry where you can hear me. I meant what I said on Friday, though. I will hurt him if he hurts you. You may even tell him that."
"I don't know if he would be afraid of you, Clare. He is not afraid of me."
"Ah, but I am older and more cunning." Now she was definitely grinning.
"You are smaller and prettier."
"That is true. And I am a girl. But I can take you down, boy." She burst out laughing and Aurelian grinned.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. "But neither do I care. I know what I want, and I am so close to having it. I want him, Clare, all of him. As much as he will give me. Shall I call you tomorrow night and tell you what he decided? Whether or not he will have me?"
"If he does not want you he is a fool.
"Yes, he is. And such a talented fool at that. May I change the subject?" Aurelian was pretty sure they'd covered all the important points. He knew Clare just wanted him to be careful of his heart, and she probably knew it was useless advice, because it came too late.
"Of course."
So he did, and they talked about other things for a while, people they knew and things that were going on and had Aurelian heard from Margalit (he hadn't, but he and Margalit had never been as close as Clare and Margalit), and they talked about Daniel and Alex and Alex's business partner who was leaving his wife for another woman, and they made a plan to meet for drinks on Saturday, and they said goodbye, and they hung up.
Aurelian sat at his desk for another few minutes. He looked at the clock. He had some time before he had to leave to meet Sam. He wasn't sure what to do with himself, so he got his coat and his keys and went out.
words: 2,890
total words: 47,724
He thought about Sam all the way home and tried not to hope too much. But Sam had all but said he was interested in Aurelian. Hadn't he said he always say no to things right away, but almost always changed his mind? He'd given Aurelian hope. Aurelian just prayed it wasn't a false hope. Waking up that morning with Sam in his arms had solidified things for him, and he alternated between mentally beating himself up for putting himself in this position, and mentally applauding himself for loosening up enough to love a mortal.
Because no question, he was in love with a mortal boy.
He probably over-tipped the cabbie because he was wrapped in his own thoughts. (And the cabbie, unsurprisingly, said not a word.) He hung up his coat in the closet in the hallway, made sure the curtains were drawn in the dining room, the music room, and the kitchen (they were), heated himself a mug of blood, and checked to see if he had any messages. One, from Clare. She'd called last night while he was at Sam's apartment. She wanted to know how his date went on Sunday, and had he told Sam about being a vampire, and what was Sam's reaction?
Aurelian could hear the unspoken question in her words: Has he broken your heart yet? He wondered if Clare had so little faith in Sam, or so little faith in mortals in general, or if she was just concerned about him. He had been known to get quite attached to his lovers, and to fall very hard very fast. She was only trying to protect him from his own rashness. She was too late.
He went into the den and peered out the sliding glass doors. Still cloudy. But it was morning, late morning, and even if Alex had woken up at six to check the European markets, which he did sometimes, and even if he'd asked Clare to sit with him while he worked, she would have gone back to bed by now. Aurelian would call her later, after it was dark.
He pulled the shades closed over the sliding doors and went upstairs. He got undressed, ran the shower, and stood under the hot spray for fully twenty minutes, thinking about Sam. Remembering the flush on his face last night, remembering the way he gasped and moaned as Aurelian moved inside him, remembering the way he cried out when he came. Remembering what it felt like to be with a mortal man, to feel his heartbeat and smell his blood and taste his mouth. Remembering Sam's tears and Sam's sighs and the slight rise and fall of his chest as he slept.
Remembering, and comparing all those things to his vampire lovers, and finding the vampires wanting. Humans were warm and living and because their lives were so short they lived more in them. They didn't have centuries to see the things they wanted to see and do the things they wanted to do and plan the plots they wanted to execute. Their time was too short for elaborate, extended mind games.
Aurelian had always thought mortals were beautiful because of their transience. Now he thought Sam was beautiful in spite of it. The boy's beauty - and make no mistake, he was beautiful - was a living, growing thing. His life was. Aurelian and his kind were like leaves in amber, preserved at a certain point and stuck there forever. He would never grow, not physically. (Sometimes he wasn't sure if he'd grow mentally either. He had long held the theory that vampires remained in the specific time period they inhabited when they were turned. He would always be an old world boy. Dante, his Italian lover who adored Ella Fitzgerald, had been turned in the early 50's and would always be a little stuck there, at least in his conception of what the 50's were like in America. Fast cars, pompadours, rock and roll. Comic books. Leather coats.)
Aurelian's thoughts turned in these circles as he stood in his glass-walled shower and let the water beat down on his head and almost unconsciously began stroking his cock. Oh, he ached, he ached for a blond boy with a saxophone and a turntable and an odd experimental jazz album sitting on his couch. He wanted Sam so much, not just his body but his soul, his life, his love. He put one hand against the shower wall for balance while his other hand pumped his cock harder and faster, while he groaned at the sensations, the spreading heat and the prickling at the base of his spine, and he stroked faster, harder, picturing Sam's face, his body, his cock at half-mast this morning when he jumped out of bed, and Aurelian's hips snapped into his hand and he choked out a word and came spasmodically in his shower.
If he had been human, he knew, he would have been panting heavily, would need a few minutes to calm down and get his heart back to a normal speed. But he wasn't human, and all he needed to do was take the showerhead off the hook and aim it at the wall to wash the spunk off the tiles.
When he was clean and more or less relaxed, he got out of the shower, dried off, rubbed his head vigorously to try and dry his hair some, and then he climbed into bed, and went to sleep. He didn't dream.
Later, when the sun had set, his body instinctively knew when to wake him up, and it did. He stretched, rolled over, looked at the clock. Six-thirty. The sun should be down. He got out of bed, pushed back one of the curtains, and yes, it was dark. He watched the back yard and the alleyway behind it for a while, realizing eventually that he was naked and not caring, until he remembered he had to call Clare.
Aurelian got dressed more out of habit than anything else, and because it was civilized. He lived alone and all the curtains in his house were drawn, and he could certainly go downstairs and make himself some breakfast and drink it naked. No one would know, and no one would care. But he liked to think he was a civilized man, so he pulled on a pair of dark gray pants and a wine-colored shirt and went downstairs and into the kitchen. He peered into the fridge, decided he wasn't hungry after all, and went into the den to make his phone call.
He'd had a vampire friend named Magda who'd kept a mortal lover for well over a decade. Aurelian had argued with her about it once, trying to make her understand that her boy would age and die on her, and trying to understand why she didn't mind. Now he thought he saw her point of view. He wished he knew where she was - she would be easier to talk to about Sam than Clare.
Not that he expected Clare to be difficult, but she was Clare, and she was protective of her friends, and she'd never seen the point in taking a long-term mortal lover. But then, she had Alex, and they had been together three hundred years and counting, so her perceptions and her experiences were different.
Aurelian sat at his desk, took a deep internal breath (because he didn't need to take a real breath), and dialed the number. He got Alex.
"Aurelian!" Alex said delightedly. "Bonjour! Ça va?"
"Ça va bien," Aurelian said. "How was the market today?"
"What market? Do not ask. The Nikkei is... I do not understand the Japanese. I never have. Europeans, yes. Orientals? No. I would tear out my hair but Clare would leave me if I were to go bald."
Aurelian grinned into the phone. It was nice to know that someone somewhere was in a playful mood. Alex must have had a good morning, or at the very least a good hour recently, to be in such a good joking mood. Perhaps he'd gotten laid.
And that was such an incongruous thought that Aurelian almost laughed out loud. He knew Alex and Clare had a very... robust sex life, but he'd always had a hard time picturing Alex in the throes of climax. Aurelian wasn't a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but the thought of Alex stretched out or tied up or any one of a number of things was a little disturbing, and not in a good way.
"Clare has been telling me about your amour. Your musician. Have you told him what you are?"
"Yes. Last night. Clare called, I assume to ask me that same question, and I was with him."
"Do you want to talk to her?"
Alex wasn't being rude, really. It wasn't as if he didn't want to talk to Aurelian or didn't care about Sam. He just had a hard time talking to people about these kinds of things over the phone. He was a little better in person.
(As if to support Aurelian's theory about vampires being stuck in time, Alex was turned in 1690. He was even more old world than Aurelian. He'd never been on a plane, and it had taken years to even get him in a railroad car. Trolleys, for some reason, were never a problem. Sometimes he still used an abacus to calculate sums.)
"Is she there?" Aurelian asked.
"One minute. Let me find her." Clare and Alex had an immense house. It was possible to lose someone in it. But this was Clare and Alex, and if they were in the same building, they were always very close to each other.
"Aurelian, dear," Clare said on another extension. He knew it was another extension because she said "Merci, Alex, you can go back to your crossword," and there was a click as Alex hung up his phone.
"I told him," Aurelian said.
"When? What did he say?"
"Last night. No, this morning. I went to his apartment - I had found a record album for him, a jazz band his father was in - I had to give it to him right away, I couldn't wait. It was pouring rain, I was drenched. I stayed the night. We listened to the album, both sides, and I kissed him, and we slept together. And this morning I told him."
"Oh."
"'Oh'? What part is 'oh'?"
"That you slept together. That you stayed with him before he knew what you were. How did he take it?"
"At least you did not ask me how he was."
"No, dear, that is Daniel's question." He could practically hear her grinning on the other end.
"I will assuage your curiosity. He was amazing. He is stunning, Clare, his face and his voice and his body, and he took me in easily, hungrily.... He wanted me, almost as much as I wanted him. I know he did."
"How? How did you know?"
"He told me." Hadn't he? In those words? Last night, in bed? Want you, Sam had murmured into his throat. Want you.
"Does he love you?"
"I think he does. I think he wants to. He had never been with a man before - " Why was he telling her this? This was Sam's business. "Clare, this is personal. Please do not repeat this to anyone. Not even Alex."
"Of course. I keep every secret I am told. But if you are involved with this boy, if you do become lovers, a couple, people will find out about him." He couldn't tell if she was teasing him or not.
"I know. I want you to meet him. Someday soon. He didn't take the news as badly as I expected. He didn't run. He panicked a little, which I did expect, and he thought it over, and he wanted proof, which I gave him - "
"Did you bite him?" That was definitely a note of warning, of caution.
"Of course not. I put his hand against my chest so he could feel my heart not beating, and he pulled me into the bathroom so he could see my lack of reflection. That is all it took. He wanted some time and space to think about it, which I am giving him."
"How much time and space? Will he see you again?"
"Tonight at eleven-thirty, at a diner near the club where he plays. We will have coffee, I imagine, and talk this over. I think he will be fine with it. With me. I hope."
"Do you know what you are doing, Aurelian?"
"You don't trust me? I am an adult, Clare. I have done this before."
"You have wooed a lover, yes. When was the last time you wooed a mortal lover? I just do not want you to be hurt."
"You keep saying that. I won't be hurt. He is so close to accepting it, I can tell. It isn't wishful thinking, it's honest perception."
"I believe you. I do. I adore you, Aurelian - you are kind and intelligent and passionate and adventurous and gorgeous, and you deserve someone who will make you happy. I do not want you to make a mistake with this boy. I do not want you to lose your heart to him and have him reject it."
"He hasn't. He won't. Clare, please, believe me. You called and asked if we had talked, and we have. You asked if I told Sam what I am, and I did. You asked what he did, and he panicked a little, and thought a lot, and did not tell me to go to hell. You want to know if he's broken my heart yet? No. He hasn't. I do not expect he will."
"You have a lot of faith in this mortal boy," Clare murmured. "I hope for your sake it is well-founded. I would like to meet him."
"Come with me to the Bluebird tonight. They play every Wednesday. You can hear him and after the set I can introduce you."
"Oh no," she laughed. "I will wait until he comes to you. One day we will all go out for a drink. You can bring him to the Fledermaus, or to Lamia's." Now she was teasing him. He took that as a good sign. Clare only teased out of love. "No, I am teasing you. Let him adjust to dating a vampire before you introduce him to your vampire friends and our underground vampire haunts."
"That was the plan. You do trust me, don't you? You trust me to take care of myself?"
"I love you, Aurelian. Trust has nothing to do with it. I said I only want you to be happy, and I meant it. Will you make him happy?"
"Yes."
"And you insist he will make you happy, and so I will not worry. Well, I will not worry where you can hear me. I meant what I said on Friday, though. I will hurt him if he hurts you. You may even tell him that."
"I don't know if he would be afraid of you, Clare. He is not afraid of me."
"Ah, but I am older and more cunning." Now she was definitely grinning.
"You are smaller and prettier."
"That is true. And I am a girl. But I can take you down, boy." She burst out laughing and Aurelian grinned.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. "But neither do I care. I know what I want, and I am so close to having it. I want him, Clare, all of him. As much as he will give me. Shall I call you tomorrow night and tell you what he decided? Whether or not he will have me?"
"If he does not want you he is a fool.
"Yes, he is. And such a talented fool at that. May I change the subject?" Aurelian was pretty sure they'd covered all the important points. He knew Clare just wanted him to be careful of his heart, and she probably knew it was useless advice, because it came too late.
"Of course."
So he did, and they talked about other things for a while, people they knew and things that were going on and had Aurelian heard from Margalit (he hadn't, but he and Margalit had never been as close as Clare and Margalit), and they talked about Daniel and Alex and Alex's business partner who was leaving his wife for another woman, and they made a plan to meet for drinks on Saturday, and they said goodbye, and they hung up.
Aurelian sat at his desk for another few minutes. He looked at the clock. He had some time before he had to leave to meet Sam. He wasn't sure what to do with himself, so he got his coat and his keys and went out.
words: 2,890
total words: 47,724
