Southern Congeniality

[Saccharin]

"What happens, happens," he said in explanation. "And I think it happens for a reason."

  His belief, Samuel would find as he peered into the recesses of his mind, came from years spent in church pews, hearing sermons that told of how God would never put anyone through anything they couldn\'t handle. He\'d test you, sure, but only enough that you would bend, not break. It gave Gene an inner strength he might not have otherwise.

"Like how when I first came to the city and I was lost, but I ran into Orias. I would\'ve been in a heap of trouble if I hadn\'t, but I did." He would never dare admit out loud that he thought God had put Orias in his path, but the sentiment was still there for Samuel to find if he looked.
 
And just behind that thought, waiting to spring forward to cripple his capacity to talk should it be triggered, was a compulsion that had been woven by expert hands. If Gene tried to speak of his knowledge of supernatural beings with someone who he wasn\'t absolutely sure shared his awareness, he would suddenly find himself at a loss for words. Quite literally.
 
"Just like if he hadn\'t been there when that one attacked me, I probably... Well. I probably wouldn\'t be here talking to you right now," he said, glancing at his cast.

He might\'ve looked at it another way: if he hadn\'t met Orias, then he wouldn\'t have been out that night and he wouldn\'t have been attacked by a vampire, so he wouldn\'t have required saving, but that would be a dreadfully pessimistic way of looking at things and totally unlike Gene.

[Existentially Odd]

Samuel blinked at the cast, then looked back at Gene in confusion.  "That was done by a vampire?" he demanded incredulously.

[Saccharin]

"I think so?" he responded, unsure if he was giving the right response. Sam seemed to surprised by the fact, so maybe he was wrong. "I mean, I don\'t know anything else that would\'ve been trying to drain me at the same time."

He paused.

"There\'s not anything else that would\'ve done that, right?"

[Existentially Odd]

Samuel was pulling a face, staring at the cast still and looking unconvinced.  "Oh, there\'s plenty of things other than vampires that\'d do that," he argued heartily, not thinking he needed to reassure Gene in any way.  "In fact, it seems like anything but a vampire would break an arm while trying to drain you - it hardly seems conducive to feeding," he explained, still pulling that disbelieving face as he tried to talk himself into believing that a vampire could be so gauche.

"There are different... types of vampire though... less, uh, refined ones, I guess you\'d say.  Could\'ve been done by one of them... I s\'pose."  Still, he looked dubious as he glanced from the cast up to Gene\'s face and back again.  That delicious little weaving/mind block he\'d discovered in the other man\'s mind was momentarily forgotten in the face of these unusual circumstances - he would get back to that when the shock of fearing a rabid vampire was attacking mortals had worn off.

He broke his sudden silence by leaning forward onto the tall table once more, his right hand hovering in front of his mouth.  "But listen," he said quietly, his voice husky as he punctuated his words by piercing the pad of his thumb with a fang, squeezing it with his other fingers so that a fat, thick droplet of blood gathered on the surface.  It drifted towards Gene\'s face, hovering a foot or so away as Samuel finished speaking.  "I c\'n fix that for you.  Taste this, wash it down with your beer and your arm\'ll be good enough for us to play a game with."

The vampire\'s smile was encouraging and kind.

[Saccharin]

What the hell? Why was everyone trying to get him to drink vampire blood? First it\'d been Orias, then Mario, and now Sam. He shrunk back from the offering, shaking his head. "No. No thank you. I might be doing it a bit slower than you would, but I am healing up." He lifted his casted arm and gave it a little wave. "Should only be another month before I get this off."

His uninjured hand had latched itself to the table as he leaned back, so he could retain his balance, and he would remain like that until Sam and his bloody finger backed the fuck up. "So ah... Right. I appreciate the offer. I really do. But no."

[Existentially Odd]

Samuel felt a little silly that he\'d made the offer once it was refused so earnestly, realising that of course the mortal would have had such from his significant other.  He pressed his thumb to his tongue, the hole that had been made already sealed up and the job of taking back what he\'d offered the only thing to be done.

"Why won\'t you take it?" he enquired, uncertain why the way Gene had leaned back away from him so dramatically had ruffled his feathers so... but it had.  His tone was (unintentionally) almost as injured as the mortal was.  "Don\'t like the taste...?"

[Saccharin]

He felt a momentary surge of guilt for having hurt Sam\'s feelings, but even if he had been comfortable with the idea of having vampire blood with a chaser of beer, he definitely wouldn\'t have leaned leaned over to suck on the man\'s finger.

"What happens when a human drinks your blood?" he asked, thinking it the best way to approach his answer.

[Existentially Odd]

Samuel frowned, giving it some serious thought before he answered.  "Well, in small doses, it just heals - wouldn\'t do anything except go straight to where you\'re injured, like normal antibodies in your own blood.  In large doses, it can affect your mind - like, large doses drunk frequently, it\'ll damage you... and I\'m talking, say, drinking two big gulps every day for a month, that\'ll mess you up," he lectured Gene, for he\'d seen it happen many years ago - weird, hybrid ghoulish demi-vampires created by a very odd vampire he\'d run into in Spain, once.

"Of course, there needs to be a complete exchange to sire you but... we\'re not talking about that," he assured Gene with a soft chuckle, looking at the pretty mortal with twinkling blue eyes.  "It wouldn\'t hurt you, if you drank the blood... are you worried you\'d be turned?"  He wondered if Gene and his partner had discussed such things; it wouldn\'t be the first time two such creatures had found one another and decided, in a rainbow burst of \'true love\' to make it last forever.

[Saccharin]

Gene listened quietly, finishing off his beer as he did so. "It\'s not natural," he said, his voice subdued. "Even if it\'s not gonna hurt me, it would be making my body do something it wasn\'t meant to." As he said it, he realized how hypocritical it was. There were many other aspects of his life that others considered unnatural (the lesser of evils he\'d just finished drinking), yet he persisted anyway. Still, something about the idea of taking a substance that would alter the way his body functioned - increasing the rate at which he healed - bothered him.

"If I\'d known what it took to be one of y\'all, I would\'ve been scared of it for that reason, but it\'s just that I\'m not comfortable with it," he admitted.

He hadn\'t asked and Orias hadn\'t offered the information he\'d just obtained from Samuel. Gene couldn\'t picture himself as a vampire, always fearing the sun\'s wrath and living forever. The latter, in particular, troubled him. They were meant to live out their lives the best they could and then step aside for future generations to make of the world what they would. Sticking around... Well, that would just disrupt everything. Plus, he had a few faces he wanted to see again after he passed. If he became like Orias and Samuel, then he wasn\'t sure he\'d be allowed to.

"Don\'t you miss your family?" He wondered if Samuel thought immortality on Earth better than what could be found in Heaven, given that he\'d never be able to see them again. If, of course, he even believed in that - Gene didn\'t even know if he was a Christian, and felt like the biggest idiot ever for having said it after the fact.

[Existentially Odd]

All lighteheartedness left Samuel at the question, his playful nature fading in the face of serious topics being discussed.  He didn\'t even have to give the subject much thought, but felt that Gene was asking about more than just superficial \'miss-your-daddy\' type stuff; he wanted to know what being alive beyond his allotted time was like, and that was not something to be answered hastily.
 
"The easy answer is no," he told the mortal honestly, leaning towards him once more.  Funny, but he never gave time to thinking about such things and it made him wonder... was he still trying to escape the domineering hold of his mortal nest, all these years on?
 
"I spent twenty years with them, and they weren\'t pleasant - not Hell, mind, but definitely no fun.  My parents didn\'t understand me, I was not the shining light my brother was, I could barely get two words out without stammering and every time I tried to express my opinion, it was taken badly and I was dismissed as an imbecile.  I had no abiding love for my parents, nor they for me - I had a nursemaid that I still miss, but my family?  Never."
 
There was a great deal of confusion and hurt, thinking about these things, knowing he\'d come from a \'proud southern family\' didn\'t fill him with pride.  That made him feel guilty, really, but couldn\'t be altered now.  He smiled at Gene, and it was bittersweet.
 
"I was never a part of my family for very normal reasons, too.  I wasn\'t interested in the ugly plantation daughters they shoved at me - though I have nothing against women - and I didn\'t run with the young bucks like my brother did.  I wanted some of them, sure, but my family just saw me as strange all round.  My sire accepted me like none of them ever did, and I fell for her quickly - too quickly, but I have a habit of doing that," he drawled coyly, and his head dipped to a degree that made it obvious he would have been blushing if he\'d fed recently.
 
"You\'re asking about that though, aren\'t you?  About what it\'s like to let go of the mortal coil, of people that ground you, of ties that bind and relationships that seem more important than your own life?" he asked, not waiting for Gene to answer before he had a prompt of his own.  "Well, then I ask you what it was like for you to leave your home and come to the city?  It\'s a lesser degree of what I did.  You move on - we all move on, in life - and there\'s just a difference of degrees, in my opinion.  It\'s always about what you\'re going to keep with you and what you\'ll leave behind in every relationship, even undeath.  I mean, I\'m only two hundred years into this life, but the opportunities it presents... well, it\'s more than just a simple death can give you - although you seem to have ideas that there might be better for you, in slowly degenerating until you break, and releasing an aged spirit into a beyond that you can\'t be sure of?"
 
He knew Gene was religious and he understood it - his own faith encompassed numerous Gods, including the Biblical version - but his ideology was also shaped by the wondrous experiences he\'d been afforded because he was a vampire, and he wasn\'t sure Gene was ready to hear that side of things without having his say first.

[Saccharin]

"I am sure of it, though," he said with conviction. As a young boy, he\'d marched to the front of the church and asked that Jesus come into his heart, and he was  baptized shortly after. He had been raised to believe that sin was inherent in every man and unless they asked for forgiveness (which Jesus had won for them by dying upon the cross all those years ago), they would burn in the fiery pits of hell.

  Where he diverged from the countless sermons he\'d heard over the years was the part where he was damned because he couldn\'t bear to be with a woman. He\'d tried, because that was what he was supposed to want, but neither party had ever left satisfied.

What excited him, what felt right, was another man, and there was all sorts of talk in the Old Testament about how he should be stoned for it, condemned and cast aside, but when Jesus shared God\'s word, it was of understanding and forgiveness. After all, God had created them all as they were - how could he be condemned as God\'s own creation? It just didn\'t make sense. There were churches in the city that thought the same way, and he made a point of going to them.

  "Isn\'t there something to be gained in living and dying? Of growing old? You won\'t experience it, but I will. I\'ll slowly... degenerate. I\'ll get wrinkled and I won\'t be able to walk without help, but I\'ll look back at my life and I\'ll know I lived it the best I could, and I\'ll hold it dear, because I only had one." He smiled crookedly, one cheek dimpling. "When I finally break, I\'ll look back and I\'ll be satisfied."

[Existentially Odd]

Despite the urge to mirror that lovely smile, Samuel couldn\'t stop frowning at Gene.  He honestly didn\'t know where to start arguing with someone who claimed to covet things he only got once and celebrate the degree of brokenness with which he would surrender it - and arguing really wasn\'t the vampire\'s style, for he was very much a believer of living and letting live, but he felt it would be... well, a shame for Gene to be here and gone when he had the rare opportunity of knowing and being more.

"I\'m trying real hard not to be insulted here, Gene," Sam told him honestly, the troubled look still on his face in order to get the other\'s attention more swiftly, "but you ain\'t makin\' it easy.  Firstly; it seems you\'re sayin\' that just because I will have more than one lifetime, I won\'t appreciate it - well, I say that\'s unkind and a limited point of view.  The longer you live, the more you\'ll appreciate what you have and had - that\'s exactly why you think you\'ll be so damn satisfied on y\'all\'s deathbed.  Not because you lived one life, but because of how you lived it!  And why on earth would a man as beautiful as you look forward to wearing wrinkles and beat-down bones like a medal!  You\'re gorgeous, you deserve to stay that way!"

The vampire paused momentarily, wondering if his companion would have something to say to that; he looked like he was taking Sam\'s challenging statements seriously but then, once he got that he was being complimented, he just looked bashful and a little questioning.  Like he was embarrassed by being told he was good looking and didn\'t quite seem to believe it.

Sam shook his head and reached forward to gently brush the backs of the fingers of his left hand against the colour rising in the other\'s cheek before his hand dropped to Gene\'s thigh, fingertips resting lightly on it beneath the table.  "This is beautiful, your soft skin, the blood colouring it and I know you think it\'s all God\'s doing, that it\'s His plan you should make the most of your one go-round on this planet - Hell, I\'m from the south, I know what it\'s like! - but if that\'s true then you must also accept that the supernatural is also part of His order as well.  And you\'re amongst them.  Smack-dab in the middle of it all, letting one hold you every night, touch you every day, kiss you any time he can - hopefully tell you how handsome you actually are - so how does that sit for His plan for you?  You\'re resistant, because you\'re fresh out of your home and those claws dig deep, but they taint you.  Don\'t they?"

Sam\'s deep blue eyes were insistent as they bored into Gene\'s hazel ones, demanding he be told the truth.  Life in the south was never easy for anyone that didn\'t fit in - there was a clique mentality that pervaded the whole region, the need to classify people by what parts they were from overriding - and there was no way a gay man as easy with the undead as he was at changing his oil or riding a horse had fit in.  The south coddled what it approved of, the homes were gathered around that which had been sanctified as \'good\' and \'proper\'... but they were sanctimonious and vindictive whenever something didn\'t fit within their strict moral, ethical and presentable guidelines.

Samuel never had and he was beginning to realise that the taint of which he spoke was a poison that had leaked deep into his soul so long ago he\'d forgotten the ichor was even there.  Until he met Gene and saw facets of himself.

[Saccharin]

He shook his head mutely, not wanting to traverse the rocky path Samuel was attempting to lead him down. Coping mechanisms didn\'t work very well when you bypassed them to inspect the very things you\'d buried away. If he dug for them, he\'d uncover so much shit on the way that he\'d end up being the one buried. He dropped his eyes to stare at the table, his face filled with grim lines.  

  "I... I need another drink," he said, brushing aside Sam\'s hand so he could make his way to the bar. He stood there, his forearms on the edge of the counter and his head hung low until the bartender came over to ask what he wanted to drink. Whiskey. The bartender took one good long look at his expression and made it a double. On the house.

  He\'d hoped that by the time he returned to the table he was sharing with Samuel he would\'ve figured out how to respond to the vampire, but after he got back into his seat and took a small sip of the liquid that burned a path down his throat, he was no more sure of his words than he\'d been when he\'d left. He remained silent for several minutes, and Samuel thankfully allowed him that.

  "What do you want me to say? That I doubt where I\'ll end up when I die, that I fear getting old and dying? I don\'t." He knocked back the rest of his shot and winced. It\'d been a while since he\'d had anything other than beer. "Maybe you think it\'s stupid because who would want to get old and feeble when there\'s an alternative, but there\'s an end the route I\'m going. How can you keep going when there\'s no end in sight?"

[Existentially Odd]

Samuel looked at him in perplexion, his expression vaguely disapproving because it seemed that Gene still didn\'t understand everything there was to know about vampires - how was that possible, when he slept with one?

"Honey, immortal doesn\'t mean invincible," he said quietly.  "An end is easy, the only difference is that you\'re more likely to decide on when it happens than you are when it happens naturally.  As soon as you wanna\' get off the ride, you can.  It\'s not hard to face the sun."

It made him uncomfortable to talk about it, for he loved his existence as it was and wasn\'t interested in ending it, but he was also aware of how fragile it was.  To Gene, the \'super\' in supernatural was unconquerable; to a vampire, it was just another word.

He watched Gene for a moment, noting the effects the alcohol was having on him, finding the subtle transitions of colour and focus alluring despite himself.  He still couldn\'t quite fathom why he was unrelentingly promoting the undead lifestyle to Gene... though he suspected that wasn\'t what he was doing at all.  He was actually slaying old demons.  And that was maybe why their conversation was as difficult for Gene to navigate as it was; because he was far too young to face his yet.

"You let it go, you know.  Eventually.  Everything that\'s held you back."  He was still watching the mortal quietly, hinting at what was beneath their argument about undeath but wanting Gene to come to it and say it in his own time.  Eternal life was not appealing because of all the superficial reasons he\'d listed... it was all about that revealing final comment, for the mortal; he couldn\'t contemplate a life where there wasn\'t going to be the natural relief of death to put a cap on all the turmoil he\'d likely experienced.  At the mercy of the claws of the South.

[Saccharin]

Samuel saw the effect his drinking had on him before he felt it, but when he detected that familiar tingle and his entire body relaxing, he knew the combination of two beers and a couple shots of whiskey had had the desired result on him. He looked forlornly into the empty shot glass, wishing there was more, but the tiny amount of amber liquor still remaining wasn\'t enough to justify lifting his hand again.

"I thought I had," he said softly, and then blinked, surprised the words had made their way past his lips before he\'d even had a chance to register their presence. He took a deep breath that expanded his chest fully and then he let it out in an noisy sigh.

  And then Gene started talking. At first, he spoke haltingly because he was touching on memories and feelings he\'d ignored for so many years, but as he went on, the story flowed with the ease of whiskey into a glass.
 
His father had been a big man, prone to fits of anger, but he\'d never been violent, not until Gene had developed a habit of talking back after he entered his teens. It\'d had its desired effect, because Gene had quickly been cured of any desire to disobey his dad, finding it easier to keep his mouth shut than to pick himself up off the ground.

  Around that same time, he began to suspect what he knew to be true beyond a doubt now. He kept those suspicions to himself, though, knowing without it having to be said that no good could come of bringing attention to something that might not be more than a silly fantasy. He didn\'t go into detail about how he\'d figured out it was more than a fantasy, ducking his head and looking very self-conscious. The point was, he had admitted to himself that he was gay, but he was painfully aware what might happen if he admitted the same to his folks - especially his dad. There\'d been a lot of sneaking around, a lot of misery when he couldn\'t sneak around, and that\'d gone on for years. Then, abruptly, the story shifted.

"My dad died," he said. "And I was relieved. Everyone was crying at the funeral but me. They thought I was being strong for mom." He shook his head, smiling faintly. "They had no clue."

He laughed dryly then, remembering how they\'d responded when he\'d first brought up leaving the farm. "They thought I was being irresponsible, leaving mom like that after dad died, but do you know she actually encouraged me to go? Said if I didn\'t leave then, I\'d die there. She knew. That whole time, she knew."

It still floored him just thinking about it.

"Hey, you wanna hear more? I\'ll just go get another whiskey and then I can keep spilling my guts, if you\'re interested." He glanced past his right shoulder at Samuel, grinning unabashedly.