#redstrng

"Pass."

"I don't want to talk about him. He's gone, and that's all there is to it. He doesn't get to leave and still expect me to answer questions like this about him. So pass. And I'd appreciate it if we moved on."

THAT VOICE STOPS ME COLD.

With its drawl and that faint French lilt curling around the consonants. It's been over two decades, but I'd know it anywhere. In my dreams. In my nightmares.

In the darkest corner of Bronx General Hospital at one in the morning, when I should be home sleeping.

I freeze with my hand on the doorframe as my chest tightens. As all air leaves the room. My back is to where he could be, to the corner where the voice came from, and I don't turn around. I can't. If I turn around and there's nothing there, I'll lose what's left of my mind.

If I turn around and he’s there, I'll lose it twice as fast.

How many nights did I wake up screaming for him? How many times did Carol have to talk me down from the ledge as withdrawal wracked my body and I begged for an end to it all?

But it's been a long time since then. Long enough that I should be past this. Long enough that on most days I am. I built a whole life out of the space he left behind. A career. A name on a door. Shifts and patients and ferns on the windowsill. The kind of routine that holds a person together.

And this is but a hallucination, right? It has to be. I haven't slept properly in days, and my brain is doing what all brains do when you starve them: filling in the gaps with whatever's lying around. In my case, the voice I've been holding onto for twenty four years.

I close my eyes. Count to five.

Nothing changes when I open them. I’m still not turned around. I’m still listening for him. All because some sick, traitorous part of me needs to. The young man I used to be. The one who waited by the phone for weeks, who would've done anything for him, is wide awake under my skin now, rattling at the bars. And he needs to know if this is real.

"Lestat?"

It comes out a rasp, so used to avoiding that name. I peer slightly over my shoulder, but quickly flinch back, afraid to look. Afraid I'll see him. Afraid I won't.

"If you're here, say something else. Please. If you're not..."

THE QUESTION SOUNDS NAIVE EVEN TO MY OWN EARS.

Of course he has. I know that. The rational part of my brain is well aware of what he is, what he's capable of. But the rest of me is swimming in thoughts too slippery and hard to hold. It might be the blood loss, or his pale, amused eyes, watching me like I'm a curiosity. Like I'm a toy.

I laugh a little, or try to. It comes out soft and slightly lopsided, my head too heavy to hold up properly as the room goes pleasantly blurred at the edges. Something I should be concerned about, but I'm not.

And I should be afraid, too. I should tell him to stop. To let me go. The words rise in my throat... but they never make it past my lips. I simply can't find the fear I know I should feel. Instead, there's a strange peace settling over me. A heavy calm, like sinking into warm water. If this is how it ends, maybe that's okay. Maybe I can just let go. Let him do what he wants. What he needs.

So I don't beg. I don't plead. I just let my eyes slip closed, let my head fall back against his shoulder and wonder out loud about things I've never experienced.

"What does it feel like?"

I turn it over in my head as I ask, trying to find the shape of what I actually want to know. Not whether it hurts. Not whether he feels guilty.

THE ROOM IS SPINNING A LITTLE, WHICH COULD BE FROM BLOOD LOSS OR JUST FROM HIM.

The more time that passes, the harder I've found it to distinguish between the two. I've become unsure of so many things since he walked into my life. What day it is, what I'm supposed to be doing instead of this. Whether the version of me that existed before him is still in here, somewhere, or if he's hollowing me out and filling the space with himself.

I don't mind either way. Of that I'm sure.

His fingertip rests at my neck, cool where the wound was. I close my eyes for a second because looking directly at him sometimes feels like too much. Like looking at the sun. Or an eclipse. When I open them again, he's there, waiting for an answer to a question that shouldn't have any variables. I know it. I can feel it in the way he said it, soft as silk. There's no trickery here: he already knows the answer.

"No."

It's immediate and sincere, and I should be scared by how quickly it comes, but I'm not. I tilt my head, baring more of my neck without meaning to. Grown used to the offering.

He doesn’t have to tell me twice, pet name alone having me moving before he’s finished the sentence, crossing the small distance between us and settling myself in his lap.

The halls of Four Winds are unlike most psychiatric facilities I've walked through, which is to say they don't make my stomach churn the deeper I go. It's an upscale lodge and it shows in the details, like the nice chairs in the common areas and real art on the walls. It's not beige walls and soft-close gray doors and lights that hum loudly, and none of the patients here is my father, and I'm no longer an eight-year-old with a mother who simply couldn't explain to me why he couldn't come home.

The memory creeps in and I squash it down, trying to focus on the case at hand.

Security is tight here. At the checkpoint near the residential wing, a guard checks my ID against a list. Had that not been enough, I also had the letter from the psychiatrist who had summoned me. Dr. Reeves, an acquaintance of Carol's.

But there's no need.

"Dr. Wolf, yes. Room 312, straight down. There's private security at the door."

And there is. Younger, dressed in all black. Someone I assume is a bodyguard. He nods at me and lets me through without a fuss.

"Oliver. Good timing."

I hear as I walk in. Dr. Reeves, I assume.

The room is clean and somewhat homey, but you can still tell what kind of place this is.

"This is Thomas J. Hammond. Thomas, this is Dr. Oliver Wolf. He's the neurologist I mentioned."

I step closer to the bed with as soft a smile as I can muster, the kind I reserve exclusively for patients, and look at Thomas. What I can see, anyway. He seems to be in his late twenties, maybe, or early thirties. Dark hair, lean. And there's something about him that I can't place but I recognize, just barely.

It's probably just my brain trying to match him with his intake photo. I always do my homework.

"It's a pleasure to meet you."

I say, extending my hand.

I fail to hear the creaking of the hotel's bathroom door as Lestat makes his way in, hot water splashing against my face and body, scrubbing away the sweat and blood and cum dried on me from the hours we spent in bed together. A real bed, not a coffin, after much nagging on my part, because as wonderful as it is to share something that intimate with him, the enclosed space makes my human muscles ache.

It isn't until the glass pane opens and the cold breeze comes in that I realize I've got company, and even though I know it could be no one else, I still jump.

"Lestat?! What are you...?"

I trail off as I look at him standing bare before me, water barely catching that divine physique, carved like marble and just as cold. My lower lip catches between my teeth, and I pull him by the forearm until we're both under the spray, chest to chest.

"Are you looking to save water?"