A Strange Kind of Hunger | FIRST DRAFT

Invasion

Eventually, Robert surrenders and pulls away, burying his head in Jonathan's shoulder and rocking with gentle sobs. They catch him off guard, sending a twisting pang of guilt and worry jolting through his chest.

"Robert?" He hardly knows what to ask, when his lips still taste of blood from two separate kisses. When his heart still dances against his lungs. "Robert, are you alright?"

The eyes that greet him are red from crying, but brimming with happiness and relief.

"I thought I'd lost you." Robert's voice is quiet, but breath-stealingly intense. "I thought I'd lost you, when you were right here all the fucking time."

Jonathan laughs, and finds it comes out more like Jesse's laugh: a scraping of hesitant breath from the back of a raw throat.

"I'm right here." The words are something of a reassurance to himself, a reminder that after every incomprehensible thing he has seen, he is still sat there on Robert's bony, too-thin lap — and partly a bittersweet observation. He will always be right there; Robert will not.

"Anyway, I believe you owe me an explanation as to what the hell you and Jesse were doing out there," says Robert, blinking away the last of his tears and leaning back in his chair. His smile is of the variety Jonathan used to know: gentle and fond, with just the slightest hint of biting curiosity.

That smile always makes Jonathan spill whatever secrets are eating at his heart, even at the expense of a few sliced veins — so he lays his story bare. Every moment of apprehension, of dizzying excitement; every word the creature whispered into his ear. All his messy, conflicting feelings laid out in such an orderly manner they hardly seem real. He stumbles slightly over a few details, but he feels the voice of the creature pick up in his mind, filling in the blanks until his entire statement has fallen from his tongue like ink from a pen. His shoulders feel inexplicably lighter.

"Well," says Robert, not quite smiling, "Shit."

"It's— a lot to take in, I know." He does, really; Jonathan's mind still aches from the strangeness of it all, the impossibility. Somehow Robert is able to take it all in his stride.

"Don't expect that poor girl to get justice." Robert voices a thought Jonathan has already resigned himself to. He doubts the nameless girl will get anything more than a nameless grave — and a bouquet of violets every month, of course. He'll make sure of that.

The two of them lapse into comfortable silence, snuggled so closely together they seem more like one body, one stuttering heart. Tucked against Robert's sternum, Jonathan can feel his breath rasping in his chest, but somehow it's a comfort. Somehow it makes him hopeful that, if the wounds of the past can be so gently salved, perhaps the wounds of the present can be too.

"I love you, Jonathan," murmurs Robert, face buried in Jonathan's hair.

"Love you too."

In that moment of softness, Jonathan feels completely and utterly content — until the scream cuts through it. Raw and desperate. Accompanied by a sudden writhing from the creature that sends a shaft of pain so forceful, it feels like his chest is splitting apart.

Sister-mine. Sister-mine. Help her, please! The creature is screaming too, so forlorn that Jonathan knows exactly what's happening. Jesse is in danger.

He and Robert stand that the same time, exchanging a single, worried look. Dashing down the hall, past the skeleton, to the bedroom door. Once the scream subsides Jonathan can hear nothing the other side of it other than silence — and somehow that alarms him even more. Somehow it sets his heart pounding with deadly anticipation, fingers shaking as they reach for the doorknob. Taking a quick, steadying breath, he turns the knob.