"There was a little boy here," I said to Dasius, whose head rested against the crook of my arm. 

While he was away, his hair had grown longer. It curled on its own very slightly, to frame his face. I thought that it made him look very different, perhaps more charming though not softer. His severe quality is what makes him seem older. He always has that unless grimacing in pleasure or confused. 

When he'd come in through the door, I'd been sitting in a chair thinking about watching television, and I'd seen a look on his face like he wanted to kiss me, but he hadn't. I wished he had, as if we were more than lovers. I had wanted to welcome him home, but he had gone to do work without more than "Hello", hiding the awkwardness I now know he must have felt with stiff coolness. I know now that he wanted more, too, but didn't know how to get it. After that long week of myself left alone, of not knowing if he was OK or if I should feel safe, he had quieted me after "Hello" with a sideways look.Now in bed, the conversation remained stiff.

"Was there a little boy?" he asked, without alarm.

"Yes. I recognized him. He slapped me when I was a baby."

"Did he slap you again?"

"He didn't say a word to me. He spent a day cleaning the house."

"Did you help him?" he asked, tipping my chin up and kissing my earlobe. 

"No. I don't think he wanted any help."

"Did you let him in or was he there when you woke up?" kissing my philtrum.

"He knocked and I let him in because I recognized him."

"When he left did he say good bye?" kissing my lips.

"Yes he did. I saw him make ready to go, and he waved at me, and I waved at him."

"Did he watch television?" 

"No."

If it had been now, he might have said something like, "Now see here, Marcellus," and told me what to think about it. "We will not be holding grudges. We will not be judging a man by his passions, for they are brief and his character is far the longer," or something like that. Things I've heard.

But Dasius is terrible at being manipulative. His method is to let you know what he thinks and expect you to conform. If you do not, there is little punishment. He relies upon a fear in me he does not command.  A time or twelve, he has given me a good slap, but that's it, in thirty-three years. I've delivered him mighty slaps myself, and I think that he quite respects me for it.

In bed he said, "You have grown leaner these two months together. You are not so muscular."

"You like it better the other way?"

"Contrarily, I prefer you this way. A little softer. I like you this way very much," he said, and touched me. 

I moved his hand away and turned my body against his instead. "I just want to sleep now."

"That's unlike you. Wouldn't you like to be petted?"

"It's not really unlike me at all, if you really think about who initiates most of it."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"I've been away. Will you be so harsh to me?" he asked.

"If you want," I said, which made him chuckle in that surprised way. "You think I belong to you, don't you? You think I should do whatever you want."

To that he didn't say anything, which made me sigh and put my nose in the space between his collarbones. He's never once asked me, "Do you love me?" It would leave him too vulnerable. He never asks for anything that would hurt him too deeply were it denied. I try not to give him what he wants if he won't ask. I don't know why. I think back then it was because I thought it put me in control, and that control was important. Of course that's stupid. It's still stupid. I'm so stupid.

Even then, I didn't think of him as another person. It is strange to think of Dasius to me as a human person. He is very dense, for one thing, heavier than he looks, and his skin, though as elastic as mine, seems firmer to the gentle touch. Little things like that sometimes instinctively creeped me out, even as lovers. He has a lower natural temperature than people do, and though not startlingly cold it never escaped notice. In chilly weather, his hands often felt as if they had been resting in ice water. His flesh could be warmed near heat or from an extended stay underneath a blanket, but the heat fled him as soon as it could. The same instincts that told me he wasn't a person kept me from reacting to those things, though. I think he appreciated that. 

"Did you see the child leave?" Dasius asked me, quietly. His finger traced the curve of my lowest rib, which tickled me. "Lie on your back," he said, more softly.

"What are you saying, that he might still be here? Why would he pretend to leave and not go?"

I'm thinking a lot these days of how I was then. I suppose I've calmed down a little now. I was angry when you arrived. I don't know. It's hard. He and I, it always seems like there's some struggle going on between us, of power and control, but it keeps us apart. I don't know if Dasius ever really wanted to be in a relationship. I mean, look at you, Mini. He gave you my coat to wear? I bought him that coat. Do you think I'm being too sensitive? I don't know. I would never have asked a question like that then. Even when I asked him questions in that time, I wasn't really interested in the answers. I wonder what it says about me that I never really thought about what I was getting myself into, or who he was, or that there might be danger. Even after the violent struggle between them in the apartment, and as frightened as I was of that violence, I didn't really believe I could be hurt, or that there were people who would want to hurt other people for any reason.

Not "a misunderstanding" or "an incident", what had happened with Laurent the previous week. My thought process about it didn't even get that far. I only ever really thought of myself and other people were only ever important to me in terms of that. I've never really been good at thinking of myself as a victim, so what disturbed me, the attack, the assumption that a "parent" was desperately trying to kill me, I tried not to think of at all. It would have shattered my mind. I waited to be told what to think. I didn't want to admit I was afraid to myself or to anyone.

I said to Dasius in bed, for the first time, his face near mine and smiling, "I love you."

"I'm touched but no you do not," he said, showing me his teeth in a false expression of amusement. "Give in. I see that you want it." He had me on my back the way that he wanted me, and I sulked beneath him, my hand pressed against the elastic of my shorts. He gave up when he saw me obstinate and he rolled away, messing with his hair.

"Why are you so obsessed with it?" I demanded, unmoving. "What are you super repressed or what?"

"Be careful you do not offend me," he murmured, standing, his entire body under control. He rolled his sleeves up with a quick twitch of his fingers and moved away. "What I've been dealing with."

"Where are you going?"

"He's here and I know it. I only don't know where."

"I'm telling you that I love you."

"And I am telling you that you are mistaken."

By then I was too mad to speak to him further, my ego wounded, and of course he was right, because in that anger my "love" for him snatched right out of my head, and love is not that way. Isn't love what tortures us in anger? I had some other disease, and I think that it was pride. 

Completely absorbed with myself, I rolled over in my bed to push my back against the wall but couldn't sleep. Revenge-minded, I did for myself what I wouldn't let him do though unable not to think of him in the end, and lay there for twenty or thirty minutes without moving, still incapable of sleep. Then suddenly felt something hit my mattress from below, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I found myself flushed and slow-minded from the heat of the moment, and couldn't react when a shadow extracted itself from under my bed, looked back at me briefly, and left through the cracked open door. I lay there breathing hard, full of adrenaline, until I heard a little shout from my lover, which made me sit up. 

"D?" I said, thinly, unable to keep down my fear when it had grown so much larger in just a blink of an eye. It all flooding over me in an instant, and I couldn't breathe, struggling for oxygen. "D? D?" I begged, frightened to death of the little cry of pain I had heard.

But he came rushing into the room and turned on the light. His eyes widened at the smell of both sex and of fear, and his voice swam in my ears, "You're not all right," he said, not a question, getting into bed with me, "Now sit up straight and close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Don't be afraid of him. Don't look at him like that. Now be gentle," he whispered, hushing me softly. 

The child was at the edge of the bed peering over, the mattress of a height with his nose. My instincts knew this gaze as older than the face it hid behind and rebelled just as they had when I had been a child myself. 

"He is weak nerved, this one is," I heard him say, with a nasal and serpentine rasp. "Won't bear up, I promise you."

"He is only thinking that he might have died several times very recently," Dasius scolded. "Have a little mercy in your heart, Nicky."

"A little mercy," Nicky said quietly. "That's unlike you. You of all people know that what must be done needs doing, and quickly. What must be done about a weak will, I do not know, but do not let affection cloud you."

"If I were always doing what needed to be done, think on yourself. If it is my good judgment affection too often clouds, think on yourself. If it is affection that clouds judgment, think on yourself," Dasius snapped.

"I do think rather hard," the other murmured. "I have said that I am for your love affair. When will you let it lie?"

I felt a warm wetness on my face and my neck, and touched my hand to it instinctively, my fingers already clutching at my collarbones to breathe, and when I saw that it was blood on my hand a scream welled up in me that my closed throat could not let through, and I heard Dasius panic and say, "Oh God, don't let that get into your mouth, Marcellus, stay awake, don't touch it, Marcellus," but I was already seeing stars in a blackness coming over me, my head swimming in terror and unable to breathe around the stuck scream.

I had been with him less than three months. For me it did not feel like very long, but I did not know that there are terminalities in the life of the undead where time runs slow. In a life where weeks may pass unnoticed, days suddenly lived by the minutes are interminable, absolutely eons. Time is frustratingly relative. For Dasius, those few weeks felt as long as many of the past several years. Though he had a sense that not much time had passed, these moments had been filled for him with much thought and much longing, which is the sort of thing he tells me only on special occasions like Christmas and Valentine's Day. To see me sucked down by mortal fear touched him. I guess he could relate to it.

I woke to a conversation I don't think I was supposed to hear. 

"He says keep my own peace and the boy beneath notice. He says that by my own honor do I take the responsibility, and he will not interfere or lay hands."

"Do not trust him not to interfere. He has ways," Nicky's voice, in his untraceable accent.

"But that is a matter for another time. For now it is all right."

"You are startlingly naive, Dasius. I really cannot believe it. He is as changeable as the face of the moon. Bleeding Christ! He will be here tomorrow if he can find the strength, Circe making love to your ears with his magic lips. I am not saying he has no respect for you, but he consistently prioritizes love the higher. If he thinks he's losing you to your young man, he'll quarter him."

"You may be right but what can I do? I fear for my heart if they fight over it."

"Is the boy such the expert courtier of Aphrodite's affection?"

"Good God. I have never been so well pleased. He heats and chills the blood both. I am wholly miserable."

"And you think that's heaven. Stars for eyes and summery hair and burning without a word. This is why Laurent won't take you for his lover, you understand? There is a reason that the lovers of poetic fictions are doomed to die young. It is the only way such love can possibly be preserved."

"So it may be. So what can I possibly do to save myself? No matter what I do, L is always on my mind."

"It is normal to keep in mind the man you love. But if you want him to depart, encourage him to play court to his own man. He has Bellamy stashed in Europe even as we speak," Nicky said, and I heard the television switch on at low volume.

"He's never had issue holding two lovers in the same hand."

"Are you made that deaf by your pursuit? He's pledged absolute fidelity to the boy. He's told Bell he won't chase any other harts."

"That's madness."

"And so it is not my place to say! But I agree with you of course. Have we not been down this road before? Am I so wrong to think that if he forgets such painful lessons, he may forget all injuries in the same way?"

"Nicky."

"Love's arrow, love's knife! And just yesterday I hear he has found a hart to chase who will not have him, but he is so desperate! How quickly he recovers. Unbutton your cuff and I will bite you again, not to be interrupted."

"You are getting me in trouble. What is the name of this new lover, spy?"

"And that is why you keep me around and so what? Alois."

"Jewish? That's unlike him."

"No, and isn't that curious? Certainly, it is a false name. He's one of us and working very hard for good grace. Very hard. Laurent is not used to being so chased after and he's desperate to feel a worthy treasure, so he is preening. I know that he wants to be true to his word, but he is feeling so insecure because of you, you devil. Oh he's a prince, here is wet blood for my dry lips."

And that little cry again, though I did not care to feel anything at all that time, because as I listened to their gossip I slowly realized that I had been drugged, probably with a muscle relaxant. I have thought of this conversation many times, especially as it gave me so many different kinds of knowledge over the course of that year no one knew that I had.