by Aimer Boyz
“Name one straight guy who doesn’t like sports, one.”
Silence. Heads cocked; eyes focused inward…
“There was a guy in my dorm freshman year. Never watched the games with us,” Michael said, pulling the memory out of storage. “He was into music, not guys.”
“My cousin’s husband,” Casey added. “Not a sports fan. Big time movie geek.”
“Nothing.” Dani shook his head. “I got nothing. Every straight guy I know likes sports. Even the gay guys,” he said, jabbing a finger in Michael’s direction. “You play hockey.”
“You play hockey?” Symon said. He knew exactly two things about hockey. One, Andrew liked it and two, Etienne complained that Andrew liked it.
“Played hockey. In high school. I haven’t picked up a stick in years.”
The way Michael said it, as if high school had been forever ago, had Symon working out the maths. With his newly minted undergraduate degree, his prey couldn’t have been out of high school for more than four, maybe five, years. Five years was nothing. Five years was a lunch break, for Symon. For Michael obviously, five years was a lifetime.
Reality was just kicking the shit out of Symon tonight.
***
“Too bad you can’t do the warp speed thing,” Michael said, dropping grapes into the crate at his feet. “Dani’s still one crate ahead of us.”
“Us?” Symon said, peeling back the protective netting, and reaching for the topmost cluster of grapes. He’d become quite the adept harvester if he said so himself.
“Okay, me,” Michael said, stripping his vine with the ease of someone who’d been doing this for years.
“Thought you didn’t care about the dozen bottles of wine?”
“Like finding wine is a problem for me. No. It’s not about that. When we were kids, Dani and I worked as a team, but that got boring. We turned it into a game, competed against each other. Still do.”
They worked through the night and into the early morning hours. By 4 a.m., the orchard was grape free, the loaded truck on its way to the winery building behind the main house, and Dani was doing a victory dance. Casey and Stavros Santos mingled with friends and neighbours, handing out slices of honey cake and cups of coffee. Michael did his own fair share of socializing, introducing Symon to people he had absolutely no interest in meeting. Cold and tired, the volunteers didn’t linger, but not one person left without a handshake or a hug, usually both. The Santos family thanked everyone.
If Symon had thought the next part in the ice wine process would be warmer, he was wrong. Pressing took place outdoors or as near as made no difference. All the windows and the barn-style doors of the winery building were thrown open. The grapes not only had to be picked when frozen, they had to be pressed while frozen. Ice wine was a frigid business.
Michael at his side, Symon watched as the crates were emptied onto a conveyor belt, the grapes dropping into the pressing machine.
“It’s a slow process,” Stavros said. “Anywhere from half a day to two weeks. Depends on the weather. Cold is good, but too cold. A few years back one of the wineries tried to press grapes at -19C. Broke the pressing machine. You have to keep an eye on the temperature, and everything else,” he said, walking around the pressing machine, checking and poking, eager for that first drop of nectar. It was obvious why he didn’t want to sell the place, Symon thought. He loved it.
“Seen enough?” Michael asked. Symon took his eyes off the clear juice the pressing machine squeezed out, drop by agonizingly slow drop, and turned to Michael. To grey eyes that smiled at him from under a hat so ugly the designer should be torched. “Yeah, I’m good. According to your father, this is it. Nothing else happens tonight.”
“Nothing happens, here,” Michael said, letting his eyes drift down Symon’s body. He flashed that dimple and Symon decided it was time to go.
“You guys leaving?” Stavros said, smiling, and offering his hand to Symon. “Thanks for helping out tonight. We appreciate it.”
“It was a good night,” Symon said, shaking Michael’s father’s hand. “Cold, but good.”
As first dates went, not that Symon knew how first dates went, this had been good. Better than good. And it wasn’t over yet. They left the winery building, Symon lagging a step behind Michael. Two steps, three, he snatched the hat off Michael’s head.
“Hey.” Michael whirled to find Symon dangling the hat by its braids. “How old are you again?” he asked, reaching for—Symon opened his hand. They both watched the hat drop, watched it sink into the snow.
“You could have just said you didn’t like it.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“No shit.” Michael picked his hat out of the snow, smacked it against his thigh, and shoved it into his pocket. “Happy?”
Symon pushed a hand through Michael’s hair, loosened the curls the hat had crushed. “Better,” he said, leaning in. A winter kiss, cold lips on cold lips.
They passed the main house on the way to Michael's truck, saw that command central had been dismantled. The plates and mugs collected, the coffee urns and folding table put away. The old farmhouse was painted in shades of welcome and warmth, its front door lit against the pre-dawn dark.
“You grew up here?” Symon asked. “In this house?”
“Yeah. My parents bought the winery when I was five. It was a whole new world for us kids, no fenced-in backyard, no cars to watch out for. We spent most of our time outdoors. One summer, my brother and I built a tree fort. It was supposed to be a girl-free zone, but my sister bribed us with Popsicles and Smarties. Place hasn’t changed much. My room’s still the same. Like I never left. You have time for a tour?” Michael asked, shooting a glance at the still dark sky.
Symon should say no. Sunrise was less than two hours away and Michael was tired. Plus, they still had the drive back into town. He should say no. “It’s late. Your mother’s probably asleep.”
“We’ll be quiet,” Michael said, pulling a key out of his pocket.
“You still live here?” Symon asked, following Michael up the walkway to the front door.
“Starving student, saving for a trek through Europe, remember? Didn’t make any sense to waste money on rent when I had a room waiting for me here,” Michael said, turning his key in the lock.
The house was quiet, the foyer cluttered with boots. They walked past a living room dwarfed by a massive stone fireplace and an old-style kitchen with white painted cabinets and a round wood table that looked practical, sturdy. The kind of table that didn’t worry about nicks and scrapes. Michael wasn’t much of a tour guide. He didn’t say anything as he led Symon down a hallway, opening the last door on the right.
“Sneaking a guy past my parents’ bedroom,” Michael said, closing his bedroom door and switching on the light. “Haven’t done that in a while.” He broke out the dimple, stalked towards Symon.
“You brought guys here?” Symon asked, unzipping his jacket as he took in the room. A bed, a desk, a small flat screen in the corner, nothing unusual. The furniture didn’t say Michael, but the posters did. Various incarnations of Adam Lambert circa 2010 practically papered one wall. Over his bed, a framed picture of a guy in a black and gold uniform, number eighty-seven on his sleeve. “Who’s the guy with the duck on his shirt?”
“Sidney Crosby, captain and centre stick for Pittsburgh. And that’s a penguin, you cretin.” Michael dropped his parka on the floor, walked Symon backwards.
Symon shrugged his jacket off, reached for Michael. They fell onto the bed attached at lips and hips, licking and biting and grinding against each other. Symon wasn’t cold now. He didn’t even remember what cold was, not with Michael’s body pressing him into the mattress. Michael’s knee shoving Symon’s legs open, his mouth—
“Shit. Wait.” Michael pried himself off Symon, kicked his boots off, and tore at his clothes. He was fast, but Symon was faster. His boots on the floor by the bed, his clothes in a pile beside them, Symon lay back against the pillows.
One arm behind his head, the other hand wrapped around his cock, he watched Michael strip. Watched him climb back on the bed, all naked skin and tousled hair, kissed-bruised lips and a dick that needed attention. Watched Michael watch him.
“You look good on my bed,” Michael said, kneeling between Symon’s legs. He nudged Symon’s hand aside, replaced it with his own. “You feel good,” he said, painting his cheek with Symon’s dick. “And you taste…” He suckled at Symon’s crown and pulled off. “Not bad,” he said, smirk on his lips, and laughter in his eyes.
“I’m an acquired taste,” Symon said, wrapping a hand around his cock and offering it to Michael. “Acquire it.”
Michael grinned and sucked him in. Symon lost himself in the feel of Michael’s mouth, in the sight of that mouth stretched around him, and in the sounds…God, the sounds Michael made. He clenched his fingers in Michael’s hair and spilled down his throat.
Like the tide going out, the pleasure receded, and Symon rolled onto his side. He ran a hand down Michael’s chest, threaded his fingers through the hair at his groin. “What do you think of delayed gratification?”
“I think it’s another word for torture.”
“And?” Symon ghosted a finger along the underside of Michael’s dick.
“And.” Michael’s fingers curled into the comforter. “Fuck you.”
Symon laughed, circled Michael’s crown with a fingertip. “And?”
Michael pumped his hips, a request Symon ignored grazing a finger over Michael’s hole instead. Once, twice…
“Symon,” Michael said, turning Symon’s name into a prayer. “Please.”
Chapter 21
WHAT HAD BEEN a friendly fall of flakes before they took a side trip to naked in Michael’s room, was now a full-on storm. Wind beat against the truck, swept sheets of snow across the road. Icy pellets smacked against the windshield. Mother Nature was pissed.
“We got lucky. A few hours earlier,” Michael said, keeping his eyes on the ribbon of roadway disappearing under the encroaching snow drifts. “And we would have lost the whole harvest. Winds this strong can rip the grapes right off the vine.”
There it was, the flaw Symon knew had to be there. Michael was a glass half full kind of guy. The kind who believed there was a bright side to life. The kind who woke up happy, all chipper and chatty over breakfast. Thank God he’d never get to see that Michael because how fucking annoying would that be? Michael in the daylight…
“Was it luck?” Symon asked, tuning back into the conversation.
Michael took his eyes off the snow-blurred road to glance over at Symon. “What do you mean?”
“Did your mother predict this? Tell your father to get the harvest in before the storm?”
“Nah, she’s a touch sensitive not a prognosticator. She can’t predict the future, or the weather,” Michael said, laughter edging his voice.
Yeah, funny, like he had any fucking idea what Michael’s freaky family could or couldn’t do. He missed the old days. Humans huddled together in the dark, garlic strung at windows and doors. No laughing at the clueless vampire then. No laughing with him either, Symon thought, looking at the man behind the steering wheel. The man who had known what Symon was and walked into his arms anyway, who had offered up his body and his blood, who had held Symon’s hand as they walked the winter streets together.
That last one might not sound like much to anyone else, but it meant a lot to Symon. In pursuit of a meal, he’d wrapped an arm around a set of shoulders, a waist, fisted many a cock, but holding hands? That he’d never done, never thought to do. Too human, he’d told himself when what he’d meant was too painful. Too much like the life he’d had before his world had exploded in a wash of blood. Michael had given him this too, given him back some of what he’d lost. Made him feel—
“I should have warned you about my mother,” Michael said.
Yes, Symon would have kept the fucking mittens on if he’d known Casey Santos could read his soul.
“She can’t read your mind or anything, she just knows who you are, on the inside.
“Yeah, got that. Thanks.”
Michael took it slow through the roundabout on Niagara Stone Road, but the truck still danced about a bit before the tires grabbed onto something that wasn’t ice. Fortunately, this early in the morning, there weren’t a lot of cars on the road.
“I wanted you to know us,” Michael said. “It’s not something we put out there, the psychic shit, but I wanted you to know who we are. Who I am. Sad, right? You’re not staying and even if you were…”
True, Symon wasn’t staying, but then neither was Michael. “This summer, when you get to Italy.” Symon pushed the words out before he could change his mind. “Text me. I can meet you, or you could stay at the winery.”
“Yeah?” Michael asked, his smile starting small and growing ever bigger, brighter.
“Yeah,” Symon said, watching the sun rise in Michael’s smile.
“Okay.”
Michael turned onto East West Line; the blue-grey clapboard exterior of Picard’s Country Store barely visible through the swirling swaths of snow. Symon watched the wind whip whitecaps across the snow-covered fields, his mind skipping ahead to summer. To warm nights and crowded sidewalks, to the sound of water spilling out of Roman fountains, to showing Michael—
“Fuck.” Michael stomped on the brakes. Through the lace curtain of falling snow, Symon saw them. Two deer, heads raised, caught in the glare of the headlights. Two deer, there and gone.
“Oh, shit.” Michael spun the steering wheel like a child’s toy, but the truck had a mind of its own. It skidded across the icy blacktop, into the opposite lane of traffic, and off the road. A burst of noise and Symon was slammed against the back of his seat, his face full of airbag. White nylon filled his vision. For a few endless seconds, it was all he could see. The bag deflated, and Symon scrambled for his seat belt. “Michael?”
Sentient silence settled over the cab, seeped through Symon’s pores, and stopped his heart. “No,” he breathed, his mind struggling to interpret what his eyes were seeing. A fucking fence post, barbed wire still attached to it, crushed Michael’s chest, pinned him to his seat. Not that Michael was aware of the heavy weight of the post, or the biting cold blowing through the broken driver’s side window, or the deployed airbag hanging out of the steering wheel. Crumpled against the truck’s door, his head resting against what was left of his window, Michael was unconscious.
“Christ’s blood,” Symon cursed, ripping the hunk of wood off Michael, and shoving it back through the window it had smashed through. He punched Michael’s seat belt open, dragged him over the gear shift. He smelled it before he saw it. Blood.
Obscene. Wine red and thick with the scent of his human, Michael’s blood poured down his neck, pooled in the hood of his parka. Symon yanked the zipper open, pushed the parka off Michael’s shoulder. He didn’t have to search for the wound, blood bubbled out of it like a fucking fountain. He clamped his hand over the hole in Michael’s neck, pinched his fingers together to seal the jagged edges. The fountain cut off, but blood continued to ooze through Symon’s fingers.
He knew.
Even as he dripped saliva onto the wound, Symon knew.
He couldn’t fix this.
The waxen colour of Michael’s skin, the ever-weakening beat of his heart, told Symon everything he didn’t want to believe. Michael was dying and there wasn’t a damn thing Symon could do about it, except the one thing he’d sworn to never do.
In all his centuries, Symon had only sired two vampires. He’d made Etienne wait years before he agreed to turn him. There was no way back to the sunlight once you walked the night. Symon had needed Etienne to be sure. He hadn’t known Andrew well enough to care if the redhead knew what he was asking for or not. He’d turned Andrew for Etienne. He hadn’t expected Andrew to fucking adopt him as his father, to try to forge a family out of three nightwalkers.
But Michael? Michael hadn’t asked to
be turned.
Michael with his dimple, and his teasing, and his belief that Symon wasn’t a monster. Only a monster would rip Michael out of the sunlight. Tear him away from his family, his friends. His plans for grad school. Michael hadn’t asked to have his chest crushed by a random fence post either, though. To have his neck cut open by broken glass. He hadn’t asked to have his life end on an icy stretch of road in the middle of a fucking blizzard. Symon wasn’t the monster here.
Michael’s heart stuttered, his body shutting down.
Dead or undead?
Symon brushed a wayward wave of dark hair off Michael’s forehead, trailed a finger down the side of his face. Impossibly gentle, he touched his mouth to Michael’s. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, cradling his human in his arms. He tucked Michael’s head against his shoulder, sealed his mouth over the gaping wound in his neck, and drank what was left of his human’s life. With each breath, each swallow, Symon sent a command to the man who couldn’t hear him.
Don’t die.
Don’t die.
Don’t die.
He drank until there was nothing left. Until Michael was bone dry and Symon was scared shitless. He’d never tried to turn a human who was bleeding out in his arms. Had he waited too long? Had Michael lost too much blood? Desperate, Symon grabbed the hood of Michael’s parka, sucked down the blood that had collected there. Cool now, the blood no longer carried the taste of his human, but it was Michael’s and Symon prayed it was enough.
He dropped his fangs, bit into his own wrist, and pried Michael’s mouth open. Not that Michael could swallow, he was dead.
The vampire fantasies and romances that humans churned out? They never got that part right. The dead part. Hollywood had it wrong. Transformations weren’t sensual. They weren’t romantic. They were messy and painful, terrifying and awe inspiring. That’s what birth was; any birth, every birth.
Symon tipped Michael’s head back, fed him one drop at a time. He watched his blood stain the back of Michael’s throat, dissipate into his skin. The entire universe was this, he and Michael locked in a battle with death. Symon lost count of how many drops Michael’s parched body soaked up. The wound in Symon’s wrist closed, and he cut it open again, held his wrist over Michael’s mouth. “Drink, Prey.”
