The Old

“Should I be getting home?”

Lewis had awaken in a bed warm with the heat of a body other than his own, where the pillowcase still had the smell of Chris’s cologne, but Chris was standing at the window, the very early morning light limning his shoulders and his hair, leaving his back and the round hills of buttocks shadowed as he stood there.

“You can’t be serious.”

Chris Ashby came to him slowly. The room wasn’t that large, and the light through the blinds made stripes over his long, white body, shy expression, soft lips, high nipples, flat stomach, over long thighs and calves, his thick penis swinging from a nest of blond hair.

“I don’t want to be one of those people who doesn’t know how to go away.”

Lewis started to say something like, “I’ll let you know when your welcome is worn out,” but silly things like that didn’t make any sense, and he opened the blankets for Chris who climbed back in. Like vines they twined their bodies, curling back together, and Chris smiled a little, looking surprisingly soft.

“I can’t remember the last time I felt right with someone,” he kissed Lewis. “Welcome, you know?

As they wrapped their arms about each other, and Lewis treasured the warmth and the strength in Chris’s limbs, Chrisadded, “Safe.”

“You feel safe here?”

“I feel safe with you.”

“Well, I can see how a six foot three strong man would need to feel safe.”

“Everyone needs to feel safe, Lewis,” Chris chided him.

“Well…” Lewis acknowledged.

“I bet you think I’m talking crazy now. You’re probably not looking for safety from anyone. I was going to tell you I’d keep you safe but I have the feeling nothing really scares you.”

“Well, now you are talking crazy. Just as silly as I was a minute ago,” Lewis said.

“Today it’s Sunday. Not much to do unless you’re going to church, and I know I’m not, so howabout I make us some coffee? We can get back in bed with it.” Lewis slipped out, and he was going to reach for his shorts when Chris lightly smacked his ass and said, “Don’t get dressed. Let me look at you.”

“You can look, but I don’t know at what.”

“All that brown skin, all that… ass,” Chrislaughed. He sighed and lay back.

“Those arms. No, don’t put clothes on, go to that kitchen naked and make coffee.”

“And you’re going to watch me.”

“We can watch each other,” Chris said, unfolding himself and following Lewis. As they crossed into the kitchen, suddenly Chris hugged him from behind, and then he said, “Or not watch. I’m strangely used to you.”

“Huh?”

“It’s like we’ve known each other for a thousand years and there’s nothing to hide.”

Lewis agreed. As he moved to the cupboard and took out the coffee, and then began to empty the old coffee basket and its wet grains into the trash can, he noted, “It’s sort of interesting how we haven’t said all sorts of things to each other.”

“Like?”

“Like, what do you do for a living?”

“Do you want to know what I do for a living?”

“Not particularly,” Lewis said. “But that’s just the thing. People always ask it like it matters. You didn’t. Neither of us did. And then none of the… should we be doing this? Oh, but we just met. Or the… ‘I usually don’t do this, but’… None of that.”

“Well,” Chris said, unfolding his arms from in front of him, “I usually don’t stand naked in someone’s kitchen the morning after lovemaking. In fact, there usually isn’t much of a morning after lovemaking. So that much is new. But… I don’t know why people don’t get tired of pretending it’s 1950 and we’re not adults? I saw you and you saw me, and there wasn’t really much of a thought about not doing whatever we wanted.”

The coffee began to brew, the machine rumbling and water burbling. On the stove, Lewis’s phone buzzed and he looked at it.

“My message to Erika that said I am home safe,” Lewis said. “Sent at about one.”

Chris frowned, crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Weren’t we on the beach at one?”

“Yes, I’m sure we were.”

“Then you do trust me,” he seemed touched by this, and Lewis added, “And then she writes Good and then I write that you’re staying over.”

“You told her that.”

“Well, yeah. And so she just wrote to ask if you were still here.”

“And?” Chris said.

“Well, you are.”

Lewis typed:

Yes. Talk later.

As the coffee began to sputter, Lewis said, “I think it’s done.”

He opened the cupboard that was a mess of disorderly mugs and glasses and old butter dishes not to mention a few old spice bottles and candy boxes, and took out two white cups.

“Creamer is in the refrigerator, and you can see the sugar’s right on the stove.”

As they made coffee, Chris looked to the little oval table between the stove and the sofa.

“I’ve never known someone with a sofa in their kitchen,” he said while he looked at the candlesticks and the portraits on the table.

“Well, it comes from living in a studio.”

“Like, this is a real artist studio. You did all of this artwork, didn’t you? It looks like nothing I’ve ever seen, and it all sort of has… your hand on it. If that makes sense.”

He observed the images on the table, the masked blue man with the horns coming from his head, the masked woman sitting with the moon on her lap and a crown of white branches.

“Well, now,” Chrissaid, taking his cup off coffee, “I will ask a question, the only one I really care about because a lot of the other stuff is incidental.”

“Shoot.”

As Chris looked over the candles on the table, and the incense, as his eyes moved over the sculpture of a long dragon headed serpent, and then of another, their mouths touching so that their bodies formed a sort of triangular border over the whole table, he said, “How long have you been a witch?”

“Ah,” Lewis nodded. He did not answer immediately, and Chris almost looked away. It was the looking away that changed everything, the feeling that there was no triumph in the detection, simply that Chris really wanted to know, and then Lewis said, “Well, there’s no covering it up, not that I need to, but then that means I have to ask my question.”

Chris turned back to him, and right now he wished he was dressed, wished he wasn’t standing naked in this kitchen in Lewis’s apartment, wished for wrap around shades and a shirt and slacks from Banana Republic.

“Fair,” Chrissaid.

“How long have you been a vampire?”

Chris blinked, but didn’t look really surprised. He only very briefly thought of lying, but realized it was no use, and that once he had asked Lewis what he did, he’d had no right to return the truth with a lie, so Chris simply said:

“A while.”

“A while?”

“Uh,” Chris looked embarrassed, rubbed the back of his neck.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Lewis breathed.

“Well,” Chrissaid.

Suddenly Lewis began to laugh, and Chris looked at him strangely, though he felt relieved.

“I think this requires a cigarette,” Lewis said.

Chris added, “And possibly clothes.”