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It was late enough that it had begun to be early, and they were sitting facing each other on Gerry’s bed. Michael was tired, his hair spilling out of the bun it had been tied in, eyelids heavy with the weight of the night. Gerry looked the same as ever. Sharp-eyed, sharper-toothed, quietly beautiful.
“Are you certain?” he asked, and Michael was too lost in his voice even after all this time to answer at once. “It isn’t quick. It takes … a long time for the changes to set in. And you lose —”
“A lot of things,” Michael recited. “None of which are you.” It was simple, and he kept his voice soft but firm. “I’m ready when you are, love.”
Gerry cradled his cheek in one hand and regarded him for a long moment, as though he were searching for hidden misgivings or a last-minute change of mind. He found nothing — Michael was certain, and he looked back at Gerry unwavering, let his eyes wander for a moment to his fangs. He was hungry. Michael was with him and wished to stay so.
“Alright. Now?”
He was already moving to a better angle and leaning in, but Michael answered anyway — “Now, please” — because he knew the reassurance was necessary, that Gerry might still back out if he were greeted with silence. His lips brushed Michael’s jaw, settled at the pulse point just below it, and lingered for a moment: a kiss, not a bite. Michael sighed, relaxed into the familiar touch.
Another kiss — to his throat, and another to his shoulder at the base of his neck. “I love you,” Gerry murmured. Kissed his shoulder. “Michael.” Trailing kisses down his arm, mumbling quiet words that Michael could barely distinguish — affection or praise or just his name, again and again, like a prayer. His hands caught at Michaels, played gently with his fingers as he raised it to his lips. “I love you.” A last reverent whisper, and then he was skimming Michael’s wrist much more deliberately, searching until he found what he was looking for and his lips parted against Michael’s skin, and Michael was so taken by the moment he almost forgot to feel the bite.
Gerry’s face was still, focused, and Michael could feel himself losing blood, which was strange, but Gerry’s cheeks were flooding with color and it was mesmerizing, beautiful — he’d seen him come home after feeding, flush-faced and revitalized, but he’d never watched it happen as he could now. Gerry was exquisite. He never ceased to be.
And then he was done, and he pulled away just enough to kiss the wound, catch a stray drop of blood that had tried to escape. “How do you feel?” he asked, eyes still closed.
“Fine.” He was breathless, but Gerry had heard him breathless before and he trusted he would not think it a bad thing. “You?”
Gerry laughed quietly. “Full. Too much of a good thing.”
Michael smiled through his dizziness, high on bloodloss and affection. He reached weakly for Gerry’s hand, felt him take it in a stronger grip and hold on tight. Michael watched him — his lips still stained red with blood, and idly he wondered what it would be like to kiss him now.
Gerry was gently tracing the back of Michael’s hand with his thumb when Michael felt the dizziness become genuinely overwhelming. “Gerry, I think —” Gerry looked up, realization dawning on him all at once, and he reached for Michael, caught him close in his arms and helped him lie down.
“It’s common, after a turning. Don’t worry. Hush now—” and Gerry’s hand was combing through his hair, and dark spots clouded his vision until he saw nothing more.
Gerry watched him slip out of consciousness, registered the moment his eyes fluttered closed and his body went limp. He was pale. His wrist, lying on the sheets beside him, was still bloody.
Gorgeous, in the low light, curls tangled beneath his head, face calm in a way Gerry rarely saw it.
He moved aside to give Michael space while he slept, watching him occasionally from across the bed. Breathing, but already not quite the way he used to — there was an irregular quality to it, as though his lungs had started to forget how. Gerry supposed they had.
He had a book. A book, and a full meal, and Michael resting off the first part of the turn beside him. It felt strangely mundane for what it was — he had been so certain for so long that nobody would find him and he would find nobody, drifting alone in the twilights and 3 a.m.s of a world that wasn’t made for him.
Michael. Livewire laugh, late June smile, almond blossoms in his cheeks and summer in his hair. A heart bleeding affection more easily than blood, and hands he had offered to Gerry even seeing what he was.
Peculiar, Michael Shelley. And sweet. Literally, as it turned out; Gerry smiled and turned a page.
To be reading a book, slow and relaxed, on the morning of Michael’s turning — the taste of his blood still lingering on Gerry’s tongue — was unthinkable, absurd, but the story was good and this thing that had seemed so monumental, so dangerous and enticing all at once, had been easy. Michael made things easy; talking and loving and trusting him more than Gerry had ever had cause to believe possible, let alone attainable. And with Michael beside him — even Michael, collapsed bloodless in a swoon — Gerry felt cradled in familiarity, and the night was as comfortable as any other.
After a while he stirred, and Gerry set down his book to move to Michael’s side. “How are you doing?” Michael rubbed sleep out of his eyes, blinked up at Gerry and smiled, wide and genuine.
“Good,” he said. “A bit frail, I guess? But good.”
Gerry helped him sit, worked the scrunchie out of his tangled hair. “Rest. You’ll be weak for a while. Are you hungry?”
Michael looked at him blankly. “What, for blood?”
“No, God — it’ll be a while until then, you’ve not even got fangs yet. Are you hungry for food?”
Michael considered this for a moment. Nodded. Tried to stand, and Gerry placed his hands on his shoulders and held him in place. “Not yet. You’ve lost a lot of blood. All of it, actually.” A faint laugh. “Let me care for you.”
He knew Michael wasn’t used to being looked after, and he knew he would worry — so constantly afraid of burdening anyone, even when he was lying there with empty veins, his heart still and silent. Gerry tried to put the reassurance into his voice that he wanted to do this, that caring for Michael was an honor, and kissed his forehead, lingered for a moment before leaving him for the kitchen.
When he came back, balancing a bowl of soup in one hand, Michael was examining the wound on his wrist, running his thumb over the remnants of dried blood.
“All well?” Michael looked up as though he hadn’t heard Gerry approach, and his pensive expression fell away, relaxed into a smile.
“I’m fine,” he said — and he sounded fine, the same soft lilting voice as ever, the same quiet sigh at the edges of his words. “Thank you,” he added, taking the soup from Gerry’s hands. “I’m sure I’ll be up and about soon enough and you won’t have to trouble yourself … shh, I know , but it’ll make me feel better to be just a bit competent.”
Gerry had indeed opened his mouth to protest, but he heard the laugh at the end of the sentence and decided not to press the point. Michael wasn’t trying to fend for himself yet, and they could take things one step at a time. Gerry lay back down next to him and stared at the ceiling, wondering how many hours had passed since the evening prior. It might well be past noon at this point — the curtains did a good job of blocking out the sun, and he’d forgotten to check any of the clocks.
“You’ll want to be in the sun again, yes?” he asked after a minute, glancing up at Michael.
“Can I?”
Gerry nodded. “For a while. Less and less as you finish turning. And then after that — you know how it is, you’ve seen me. Rarely. Never letting it touch your skin. Really, you probably shouldn’t at all, but we all make sacrifices.” He hoped the bitterness wasn’t too evident in his tone; the worry that Michael, who he’d bled dry, had made too great a sacrifice this time and wouldn’t see it — or worse, that he would, and hate Gerry for it.
“Is it out right now?” Michael asked.
Gerry shrugged. “Either way, you still shouldn’t be getting up yet. You have time.” Again, the fear that he was asking too much — Michael did have time, but not much, not in comparison to the years that stretched now endlessly through his empty veins. “You have time,” he repeated, more to himself than to Michael.
A few days passed in bed — Gerry would not let Michael rise at first, but brought him food and water and changes of clothes with the greatest care. Though he protested, Michael could feel that he was weak still and knew it was for the best. And Gerry made it hard to feel bored or apathetic. He sat beside Michael, let him rest his head on his shoulder, and read to him; or he told stories of all the places he had seen, stories Michael had heard a thousand times but which felt greater, more immediate, now that he knew he had time to collect such stories for himself. Sometimes he kissed Michael, taking his time in a way he never had before, soft and lingering and Michael, bloodless, heartless, was undone and deeply in love.
On the third day he helped Michael stand, steadied him in the dark room and held him there while he got his bearings. He was dizzy, and his body still felt strange — a little hollow, somehow light and heavy at the same time. His mouth had also started to pinch slightly — a faint sensation in his gums. He thought he knew what it meant, but hadn’t mentioned it yet.
Gerry stayed close by him — gave him the space to walk about once he’d oriented himself, but kept an eye on him the whole time. Michael could tell he didn’t trust him not to lose balance or faint, and part of him thought he should be annoyed but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but a faint sense of endearment. He hated being waited on, but he knew Gerry understood, and some part of him just felt warm to know he was cared for.
His wrist was almost entirely healed — only a faint scar remained, and even that might fade in time, Gerry said. “Unless we make it a habit, of course.” Low light dancing against his eyes. “Sharing meals.”
Michael hadn’t thought too hard on what feeding might be like — wasn’t sure he wanted to — but the way Gerry was looking at him, playful but without demand, made the prospect seem noticeably less frightening. He shrugged and smiled back and Gerry kissed the fading scar.
He wanted to feel the sun again. Gerry nodded when he asked if he could check for it, and retreated to a shadowed corner of the room while Michael opened the curtains just enough for a ribbon of sunlight to spill across his face, stain his arm and chest gold, illuminate every floating dust mote in a long column spanning the room. He heard Gerry catch his breath in the corner and turned to him, worried, but the look on his face was far from fear or pain.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and Michael knew he’d be blushing if he had any blood left. “The sun…”
Michael shook his head vaguely, a half-attempt to deflect the compliment, and returned to the window. It was a little past noon, and he blinked in the brightness lighting up the world outside. It was warm against his skin and he wanted to be closer, unseparated from the world by glass and the weight of the curtain he was holding aside.
Gerry evidently knew what he was thinking, because he slipped through the shadows to Michael’s side and held up an abnormally large umbrella with several feet of black fabric sewed to the rim.
“It’s … more or less a portable tent. I don’t use it often. For obvious reasons.” It looked ridiculous, but Michael stifled his laughter because it was a serious thing Gerry was offering. To follow him into the sun with little more than a single layer of fabric just so that Michael could enjoy it again, soak in the last hours before he would need the same frail cumbersome precautions.
“Are you sure?”
Gerry reached out, hesitated, and Michael closed the curtains so he could place a hand on his arm. “Certain.” He smiled, and Michael gathered him close, knocking the disastrous umbrella to the floor. “You’re warm,” Gerry mumbled into his shoulder. He sounded a little wistful, but mostly content.
Gerry stayed close by the edge of the house, keeping close to the shadows even with the tent-umbrella held carefully around him. He walked under it with Michael’s guidance to the confines of the derelict garden shed — no longer well-maintained, but dark and safe from the sun. Michael took one of the rusting metal chairs in the garden, and Gerry watched him from the shade — the way he tilted his head back and let the sunlight fall across his face in full, blissful.
He was radiant. Comfortable. Smiling slightly with his eyes closed, and Gerry realized for the second time that day that he’d never seen Michael in the sun, and it was a pity because he was exquisite, every curling hair on his head lit bright gold, his freckles clearer than ever, and when he looked over at Gerry his eyes were flooded with light and Gerry was breathless; Michael was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Alright?” asked Michael, voice like lily petals. Gerry nodded, gave him a reassuring smile from the shadow of the shed.
“Enjoy yourself. You look comfortable.”
Michael laughed, turned his face back to the sun and shut his eyes again. He looked nearly ready to fall asleep, and Gerry was content to let him — cicadas buzzed in the trees and small white butterflies fluttered up from the grass at random, traced wobbly circles in the air and alighted again on the ground, or a flower, and once on Michael’s hair. Gerry had missed being outside by day; he rarely bothered anymore, with all the necessary precautions, but even separate from the direct touch of the sun it was lovely to watch the way it lit the world green-gold, to breathe in the scent of warm soil and a garden long overgrown and swollen with weeds.
In the middle of it all, Michael, who would soon be confined like Gerry to the shadows. He didn’t look worried — he seemed content to bask in the sun while it lasted, and it made Gerry feel warm to watch him, soothed some of the guilt that had been eating at his heart.
He did sleep, eventually, and Gerry let himself drowse in the shade, listening to the barely-audible rise and fall of Michael’s breathing tangle with the plants brushing together in the breeze, the rush of birds taking off from the branches, the hum of insects.
A couple of hours later he blinked himself conscious to the sound of Michael’s voice calling his name quietly, insistently from the door of the shed. “Gerry! Hi. Hey.” Catching Gerry’s eyes, he crossed the threshold, took Gerry’s face in his hands. His skin was warm with the heat of the sun, and Gerry sighed before he could help himself, leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering closed. Michael giggled. “Can I kiss you?”
Gerry nodded, too lost in the bliss that was the warmth of sunlight in the palms of Michael’s hands to speak, and then Michael’s lips were pressed to his and it was like kissing Summer, sweet and radiant and so all-consuming. They broke apart in laughter, too aware of the intensity of the moment. Light stuck to Michael, got caught in his hair and eyes and tore off from the sky. Holding him right now felt like being given a bit of that light, and Gerry had missed it, craved it more than he had allowed himself to realize.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and Michael grinned and nodded.
“I’m going to go get a book from the house. I’ll read to you if you like.”
“Take turns?” asked Gerry, and watched Michael’s smile grow, if possible, wider. He nodded and walked off toward the house, lingering among the plants, dragging a hand idly over their leaves. Gerry ached a little at the sight, but then a high window of the house was thrown wide and Michael appeared in it, blazing in light and a flurry of dust, waving madly at him for a minute before the window closed and he vanished again. Gerry laughed; that would be Michael, and his melancholy was gone as quickly as it came.
They traded the book back and forth every few pages when Michael returned with it, and Gerry was almost too distracted by running his fingers over the sun-warmed pages to tell the story well. But he managed, and when he looked up Michael was watching him with such an expression of endearment that he froze for a moment, overwhelmed as always. Michael loved him when he wasn’t even looking, and it shook him every time to think that that was something he might be worthy of.
And finally it was too dim to read, and Gerry watched the last of the sun bleed out of their surroundings, leave Michael pale and shadowed but no less gorgeous in the garden, and left the shed at last to take and kiss his hand and walk with him into the house.
For a while, nothing felt particularly different. Michael took advantage of his lingering sun-tolerance to banish Gerry to shaded rooms while he threw other windows wide and cleaned and dusted, let light fall for the last time across rooms that had long been shut away from the outside. He had worried for a while now about Gerry living in a place that had been gathering dust for so many years, but he’d never been able to persuade him to let him clean until he could argue that he would be living here as well when his turning was complete. Really, he had already moved in, but his belongings were still at his apartment in town. He’d have to pick them up soon before travelling by day was too great a risk.
So the house was clean and Michael had replaced every low, flickering bulb, and every afternoon and evening they sat in the garden until the crickets hummed and the stars sunk glittering into sight out from the black sky. More often than not Michael found he had drifted off in the heat of the day and woke cradled in strong arms, safe in the uneven rhythm of Gerry carrying him home across the lawn.
Inside the lights were warm and comforting and there was music as often as they wanted it, and every night they danced, and Michael’s humanity was dropping away in the sweetest moments possible, his heartbeat slowing against an equally silent chest, his breath forgetting to return when Gerry held him close and kissed it away as the music died.
He was happy. Gerry, he knew, was nervous, but happy too. When high noon began to sting against Michael’s skin, he left Gerry to his books for a day and made the journey into town, gathered his possessions into boxes and made trip after trip to bring them home.
He shared Gerry’s bed each night for a few more days while they cleared out one of the old guest rooms — the one Michael was accustomed to sleep in since before they knew each other well, and on the nights when one of them needed space. And when the boxes were unpacked, Michael watched Gerry’s face light up at the sight of the room made so unmistakably Michael’s — old half-dead fairy lights around the windows, flowers on the bedspread, novels stacked on the floor because the bookshelf was too small.
Michael loved it. Gerry’s house had been home for a long time now, but it felt good to have this space, a room that was distinctly his — a safety and retreat no more wonderful but no less important than Gerry’s arms.
He flopped backward onto his bed and knew Gerry was smiling at him from the doorway, raised a hand to beckon him over for a kiss. Gerry bent to press their lips together but pulled away after only a moment with a gasp.
“Michael. Smile for me,” he said, and Michael gave him a bemused sort of grin. Gerry laughed, sounding a bit surprised and more than a bit endeared. “Your teeth!”
“What about them?” Michael raised a hand to his mouth and felt his eyes widen as his finger brushed against a sharpened point. “ Oh. ”
Gerry grinned at him, and Michael’s eyes caught on his fangs, duller now than they were before feeding but still definitely sharper than normal teeth should be. “They’re adorable,” he said, still looking at Michael’s mouth, and Michael giggled because he couldn’t blush. “Small.”
Michael raised an eyebrow and Gerry held out a hand, led him down the hall to a room full of old mismatched furniture. With a grand flourish he swept the sheet from a standing mirror and positioned Michael in front of it.
It was disconcerting not to see Gerry behind him, and more disconcerting to realize that his own reflection had started to waver — insubstantial, a mirage or an image projected onto the surface of an unquiet pond. He smiled anyway and saw the points of his teeth, not grown in like Gerry’s but inhuman and, if Gerry was to be believed, cute.
Gerry had loosely wrapped his arms around Michael from behind and leaned forward now to kiss his cheek. “Prettyboy,” he mumbled, and Michael couldn’t see him from this angle but there was a smile in his voice. A moment later: “This might be the last time you’ll see yourself in a mirror. I’d miss the sight, if I were you.”
Michael shrugged, lighthearted, and Gerry laughed. “I know. But you’re radiant. Appreciate it.” He pressed another kiss to the base of Michael’s neck. Michael let him ramble, quiet compliments and affection unfolding in the little room — his hair a soft tangle of starlight, his eyes rain-grey, safe, his smile soft as spring, his bony fingers exquisite and his freckles kissable — and he watched his own reflection steadily, trying to see it the way Gerry was describing.
He wasn’t certain he could. But it felt good to be adored, and if his last sight of his own face would be draped in such gentle words he could have no regret. Gerry’s fingers brushed his cheek and he laughed and leaned into the touch, and they must have missed the sun because faintly, from outside, crickets began to sing, and Michael’s reflection wavered in the mirror and it went blank.
They turned to each other, and Gerry was smiling at Michael like he was the absent daylight, and Michael hoped his face was a reflection because he had never felt more bright.
It had been a week and a half when Michael started to feel his veins pinch again, and a hunger settled somewhere in him that was never entirely sated by meals. Gerry tried to hide his concern when Michael described it to him, and knew he wasn’t entirely successful — but this was the most difficult hurdle. The dropping off of ordinary hunger, the means required to satisfy the thing that took its place. Michael was good. And while Gerry had his means of acquiring blood — some less cause for worry, maybe, than others — none of them were strictly legal, and he knew Michael knew what their feeding would entail and worried that when it came time it would hurt him anyway.
Then again, if it came to it, Michael would never have to drink from anyone but Gerry if he didn’t want to. He calmed himself with that knowledge, that he was more than willing to share if that was what Michael preferred, as long as he needed.
So when he returned home after feeding that night he smiled at Michael and beckoned him closer, pushed back his hair and tilted his head in invitation. Michael’s eyes widened, and he traced a finger along the curve of Gerry’s neck, hesitating. Gerry shivered at the touch but stayed still otherwise, let Michael take his time.
“Are you sure?” asked Michael.
“Of course. Consider it a return favor, if you like.”
Michael nodded, smiled back at him hesitantly, and his fangs were a little sharper with hunger, but still small. It was an unbearably cute look on him and Gerry didn’t fight the blush that rose to his cheeks — a rare chance, with enough blood in him to feed two, to let Michael see his flusteredness. He hoped he would understand it for love.
Michael was clumsy. Unused to drinking, though better than Gerry had been in the early days. He copied Gerry’s mannerisms, trailing kisses down his throat before settling at the base of his neck, opening his mouth and biting down — too slowly, but Gerry wasn’t bothered, and the feeling of Michael’s lips was enough to distract him from the sting.
Michael pulled away looking a little disoriented and his eyes grew wide when he saw the bite, but Gerry only took his hand in reassurance and reached up to kiss the blood smudged at the corner of his mouth. “You did well,” he said, and Michael blushed now, very faintly, and Gerry cherished the soft color in his cheeks. He’d missed it.
“Thank you,” said Michael. Gerry nodded. “Let me get something for your neck,” he added, and before Gerry could assure him that the wound would be healed by morning he had hurried off to the bathroom, returned with a damp cloth and a bandage, and Gerry laughed but let Michael tend to him.
And that was the way of things for a while. Gerry drank enough for both of them when he went out to feed and returned in the dark hours of morning to Michael, and they fell asleep at dawn usually tangled together, neither of them particularly wanting to be alone on those occasions.
Otherwise, life went on surprisingly normally. Michael took his hours of sunlight while he could get them — fewer and fewer every day, but Gerry followed him and treasured the chances to watch the light play across his features whenever he could. Gerry sat at his easel and painted — what he remembered from outside, or the town by night, or Michael sitting and sewing in a sunbeam across the room. Sometimes they retreated to their bedrooms and Gerry would hear the faint sound of Michael’s music through the door, or occasionally — and he counted himself lucky — Michael’s singing, strange and lilting and a little off — to Gerry’s ears perfect.
But the days grew shorter and Michael’s fangs grew longer and his hunger waned to nothing just after his heart stopped beating entirely. Even remaining for more than an hour in the sun had begun to burn. Gerry took his face in his hands that last evening and regarded him in silence for a while, taking in the slight scorching on his cheeks, pink not from blushing but from too much of a good thing.
Gerry looked miserable, and Michael raised a hand to cover his and tried for a comforting smile, though it didn’t seem to do much good. “It’s okay, Ger. It’s more than worth it.”
Gerry swallowed hard and nodded. “Last ten minutes?” he asked, and Michael took his hand, a silent agreement.
He watched Gerry unfurl his umbrella and walked with him, hand in hand, through the garden. The setting sun was at the perfect angle for Gerry to take his customary seat in the shed and Michael to drag his garden chair closer, settle it in the well-trodden dirt just outside the open doorway and reach into the shadows for Gerry’s hand.
The sun sank, pink and golden-orange, and the clouds were layered just right to catch the colors so that they dripped down the dome of the sky and pooled like melted jewels behind the trees. It was exquisite, and Michael ached bitterly at the sight of it, at the last feeble fragments of warmth brushing sunflower-yellow against his face.
Nothing hurt more than the knowledge that this would be the last time he’d feel the sun. It stung in the back of his throat, the corners of his eyes, and he knew he’d miss it bitterly. And yet.
And yet — Gerry’s hand was in his, cool and bloodless but gentle, calloused but somehow still soft, wrapped around his Michael’s with such certain reassurance. That ached too, in a better way: he could reach for Gerry’s hand and find it there, sure as sunrise, whenever he needed it. He’d traded one familiarity, one all-consuming warmth for another, which started in his fingertips and ended in his silent heart.
Gerry watched his face. He knew Michael wouldn’t cry openly where he could see him, but he did not miss the slight glittering at the corners of his eyes, the places where the fading light caught liquid in his eyelashes. The quietest hitch in his breath when the sun disappeared to a mere flicker between the trees.
The light on his face was soft now, still clear, but dusklight, the last lingering dregs of warm sun mingling with the cool of evening, softening all of his features in rose-blue-gold. He wasn’t looking at Gerry. His eyes were fixed on the treeline, drinking in the last of the day.
Selfishly, he regretted that he would never see this again. Michael draped in natural light, looking so alive and at home, so bright. It was his doing, of course, and Michael would be no less beautiful in lamplight, in the shadows of home, in the flickering halo of a candle.
Less selfishly, he worried for Michael. Despite the tears in his eyes, he looked happy — content, at peace with the sun’s dying rays falling across his face, warming his skin. His hand in Gerry’s did not shake, and his thumb was rubbing tiny circles against Gerry’s wrist, the motion small and ordinary and comforting.
But that was now. Now, with that warmth not yet a memory, with Gerry’s hand in his still a relatively new experience in comparison to all the ages that would fall next, one after another, like rotten silk dropping from a ceiling in cascades. Michael would live forever, and he had said he would be glad to with Gerry at his side, but sunlight would never touch him again, and for all the gentleness Gerry put into his kisses and caresses he would never be the sun.
The price might be too high. That was what he was ultimately most afraid of. That Michael had agreed to something he could not understand, and when time had passed and the novelty had worn off he would regret it.
And then again, part of him knew he was being irrational. Guilt was not a logical thing, and with that rising like bile in his throat it was hard to remember the rest. He forced himself to focus, desperate not to entirely spoil these last minutes of light with worry.
Gerry had not even wanted to be turned. Entirely against his will, he’d gone into eternity blind and bloodless and feared every minute of it. And then it had been okay. The panic had calmed, his heartbeat had settled into nothing, and most days the years ahead looked less like a nightmare and more like a promise.
He would travel. He’d study. He’d paint until he was good and then better. He’d love Michael and love him with everything he had, which in a life without end would be rather a lot. He would make sure that Michael went into their future fearless, that he could cast off and forget the standard trappings of humanity softly and without trouble.
The sun set. Evening settled like a grey beast over the garden. The night was quiet and smelled of summer, and Gerry and Michael stood at once and pulled each other close, the shuffling of fabric and hands buried in sun-heated hair blending into the night’s sighs.
A kiss. The last cheerful song of a daybird up too late.
Their shadows walked back across the lawn, waist-deep in the garden grown wild with sun.