Vampirism | ✓

12 | Boyfriend Material

His answer shocked me. No? I wondered, squinting at the fragment of a memory of his that was just by my feet. Haruto was getting slapped around by a person I assumed had been his foster parent. Was Haruto... lying?

"When I was a child, up until I was thirteen years old, I lived in a brothel," Haruto started saying. His voice was clear, but you could hear the underlying hesitation and shakiness it held. "You know, men would come in on drugs and would want to hit the woman, but battered sex workers are hard to sell after, you know?"

No, I didn't know, but I nodded anyway.

"So, when men like that came in looking for someone to hit, the brothel owner would give me to them. They were too high to figure out if it was a man or a woman—" He paused, taking a deep breath. "An adult or a child..." he trailed off, licking his lips as he adjusted the position of his head on my shoulder.

"Despite all that, I have happy memories in that place, Wern," he said. "The women were nice to me. They would clean me off afterward, feed me, and call me their ototo." He said the last bit in a contrasting Japanese accent, and I made a mental note to google what that meant later.

"It was the same with my coming out," Haruto said. "Of course, my foster parents didn't take it well, but I remember coming out of that thinking, 'this wasn't so bad', I had expected the reaction to be much worse, but it was marginally better, so it was okay."

My heart was breaking, but I held it together, not wanting to let the hot angry tears held behind my lids to spill over. It wasn't fair. Haruto was so desensitized to suffering that what I was seeing in his memory—clear violent abuse—wasn't so 'bad' and wasn't an issue.

"Wern."

I blinked, turning to Haruto who had raised his head from my shoulder.

The man was giving me a concerned look. "Are you crying?"

"No," I said, blinking back the tears that had won the struggle with my life. "I'm just a bit shaken about what you said," I sniffed, forcing myself to smile.

Haruto didn't look convinced. "I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't bring things like that up—"

"No, I'm happy you're telling me all this," I said, cutting him off. "I like learning more about you."

Haruto smiled, reaching out to tuck a few stray strands of my hair behind my eyes. "And I like opening up to you." Haruto was so close now, that our lips almost touched. "That's why one day I hope you'll open up to me," he said in a low voice holding on to my face with both his hands so that I didn't have any option but to look at him. A part of me was panicking, but a part of me felt loved and cared for.

"I like you," he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine. "I like you so much."

My stomach felt warm as my face burned up as he began to press his lips against my cheeks. My mouth waters, partly from the smell and hissing of his memories, and partly from the feeling of his lips leaving butterfly kisses all over my face.

I let out a sigh, reaching out to pull him closer, to guide him to lips that he had been frustrating me by intentionally avoiding. We kissed for a bit, clumsily trying to figure out the right pace as we sighed and groaned into each other's mouths. My heart stopped when I felt his hands move under my shirt to feel the skin of my back.

"Wern, I like you."

I don't know if Haruto was trying to give me a cardiac arrest with his words, but it was working.

"I like you," I found the voice to whisper back. "I love you," I said in an even lower voice, hoping that Haruto hadn't heard it, but he had.

He broke our kiss immediately, pulling away from me to stare at me with wide eyes and parted lips. "Really?"

Part of me wanted to deny it—wanted to claim that it had just popped out of my mouth because of the mood, but the pressure of monitoring and gating what feelings I could express around him was weighing down on my shoulders. I hated it. There was nothing wrong with him knowing. It was embarrassing to me, but Haruto wouldn't put me down because of it.

"Y-yes," I found the voice to say, watching as Haruto leaned in again to take my face in his hands before pushing me down gently until I was lying down on the sofa.

"I love you," he mused, smothering me with kisses as he let his hands travel up and down my sides. "Will you go out with me?"

"Y-yes," I said, despite everything in me that said it was a bad idea. Haruto still didn't know who I was. I wasn't boyfriend material, and I was bound to hurt him someday, but God, I wanted to be selfish. I wanted Haruto so deeply that I ignored all the backlash my conscience was throwing my way.

Haruto let out a relieved laugh before pushing hair out of my face and pressing our lips together again. I let myself touch him—something that I had been afraid to do all this time because of fear of losing my mind and consuming him, but today was special.

The man I wanted, was mine.

All the paranoia and anxiety I usually felt could wait until tomorrow morning.