AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Throughout his early life, Lauren?iu had a lot of nightmares. His parents would run to his bedroom and find him thrashing around and screaming,“Oh God, Oh God.”No one ever figured out what he was dreaming about.
Paimon lightly snores. Always needing to keep the place from being too quiet, even in sleep.
They sleep in the same bed, but often with their backs to each other. Economical, that’s how Paimon chipperly described it. Lauren?iu didn’t mind; he was never one to enjoy sharing a bed overnight, but he feels as if his mind is more at ease. Though, at first, Paimon would look at him with a crinkle of concern around his eyes and ask how he slept.
Lauren?iu sits up, the sheets shifting.
“Hm?” Paimon stirs, rolling on his back and cracking open one eye. When his attention falls on Lauren?iu, he mumbles without preamble, “Do you want me to go this time?”
The vampire is already getting out of bed, dressed in a white shirt and loose gray sweatpants. “No, it’s all right.”
“Hm.” A lazy smile. “They like you better anyway.”
Lauren?iu rests a hand on the door frame. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Paimon yawns and shuffles into a reclined position on the pillows, stretching his arms. “It’s okay. Birds of a feather and all that. Last I checked, vampires need their sires. And if that sire isn’t around, or, well.” He cuts a finger across his throat. “It’s hard.”
“It is,” Laurent says softly, and he relishes the flicker of anger in Paimon’s expression. Not at him, but for him.
I needed a sire, a teacher, a protector and he left me.
That’s not me. I won’t just leave them.He may be a monster, but not that kind.
“All right,” Paimon shutters his eyes, as if he won’t be eavesdropping in the next minute, “if you need me, you know where to find me.”
Lauren?iu nods. “Thanks.”
When he goes into Adrian’s bedroom, it’s dark. The window was cracked, and there’s an extra heavy blanket folded up and nailed to it, its shutters permanently locked.
On the queen-sized bed, Adrian rests on their back in checkered red boxers, a black shirt, and their binder. Lauren?iu has always wondered why they sleep with their binder on, though he has a feeling from his early transition days; he could comment that it must be uncomfortable, but it’s not like it’s unsafe. It’s not as if they have to breathe.
He was glad, at least, that they stopped using ace bandages.
“You shouldn’t bind with these,” he’d told them, holding up the roll.
Adrian scowled. “I’m already dead. What will they do, restrict my breathing?”
“They must be uncomfortable.”
“Father would say that discomfort is a part of life.”
“That may be true, but if life has its problems, we don’t need to make ourselves suffer more.”
They shift, their brow is a knot of fraught lines. “Father, no, please, no, don’t...” A grimace. Their head moves side to side. “Let me out, let me out...”
He has the urge to rub Adrian’s back; he always liked when someone did that, but he never said as much. He has the faint recollection of someone rubbing his back as he was in the morass of semi-aware sleep, but he can’t tell if he imagined it.
Anyway, Adrian flinched and scowled the first time he tried. Now, he knows what they need. He must do what they want and not push them.
“Let me out, out...out...”
Silently, Lauren?iu sits on the bed beside them.
Despite his claims that Adrian is more like Lauren?iu, It reminds him of Paimon a little. Contrary to what some might think, fallen angels have virtues, but patience isn’t one of Paimon’s. He doesn’t like to be idle, doesn’t like long silences. When they lounge in the living room and Lauren?iu tries to prepare himself for the looming end of his journey, they play the radio, which somehow hasn’t mildewed.
Unsure of what to do, not having any episodes like this that he knows of in a long time, he can only settle a steady hand on their shoulder.
Adrian’s eyes snap open, and they bolt up. Lauren?iu removes his hand.
