he’s still trembling,  even as the younger boy shuts the door to the bedroom and ushers cameron to sit at the bed.  he disappears again and returns a moment later,  locking his door and setting a plate of food on the nightstand.  cameron’s wide eyes shift to the food momentarily and then back to his  savior  standing before him.  he pulls his knees to his chest,  wraps his arms around himself,  curling in and making himself small.  

       jamie listens,  quietly and intently  ------  hayden is one of few capable of receiving such silent  respect  from the eternal teen.

     ‘ don’t feel like watching a documentary, ’  he states.  hayden is avoiding his problems by suggesting it.  he wants this addressed,  doesn’t want hayden to keep pushing these feelings down.  even if this is going to be a hard talk to have.

    ‘ i don’t  . . .  think we ever  really  lose our last piece of humanity.  even the  worst  of us,  even those  awful  vampires you hear about in history books,  genocidal freaks,  coven leaders who own people like slaves  ----  i think even they still have  some  small degree of their human selves tucked away inside. ’  suffocated and bound and gagged,  maybe,  but still present.

     he nestles against hayden comfortably,  pursing his lips to one side.  ‘ but you?  hayden,  you’re one of the  better  ones.  you helped make  me  better. ’  a pause.  ‘ yeah,  sure,  we  . . .  we lost a lot. ’  a topic jamie would prefer avoid.  they both already know.  there’s no need to go into detail.  ‘ but that doesn’t  . . .  it doesn’t mean you  aren’t  good.  because you  are.  you made it out of that and you’re still . . .  you’re still kind,  and polite.  you still care about people.  you could just turn your back on everything and say  fuck it,  if this is the world i live in,  why not just embrace all the awful?  but you  didn’t. ’

     a sigh.  hayden’s stronger than him.  younger,  in technical respects and in respect to their vampirism,  but stronger.  jamie couldn’t have done that in his first year of the curse.  after he lost theo -- only six years later -- he went off the deep end for a solid year.

I’m not sorry in the slightest