Towards Acceptance
The last time you saw him, you told him that you were sorry for the hundredth time and he said it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore, not apologies, not condolences, not even this thing between you two.
You watch him slip out of bed and put on his clothes. You see his scars, not as many as yours. You see where he was shot, a cut here and there, where his throat was cut. Looking back, you remember the feel of them under your touch, your fingers tracing over them, your mouth over them. You kiss them, these little apparitions of pain hoping to take the big one away, the one sitting in the next room, the one who looks like Fred.
You remember his hands pawing at you, his breath, ragged and shallow beneath you, him putting his mouth over your shoulder and biting into you. For a second, you understand what makes vampirism, though you'd never say it out loud, sexy. You want him to drink of you; you haven't spilled enough to make up for what was lost. What he lost. Who he lost.
When he's fucking you, and that's what he calls it, though somewhere deep inside, you know he's making love, he calls out her name. And you know that it's all a lie, he's not thinking of her, it's all you in his mind, it's all you in his grind. You don't make love to her like this. You've never made love to her like this. Her fragile body, luminous in the dark, would never feel violence the way the both of you have.
But that's a lie, too. Your lie, the one you tell yourself to make it easier to talk to him at the office. The one you shed when he comes over for the night, sometimes alone, sometimes with her, with it. The thing that killed her, the thing using her body for a shell. The thing that sits at the foot of your bed and watches you two.
You wonder how long he'll come over. You wonder how long before he turns to her, to it, the one who can turn into her. You wonder if she's soft as her, soft the way you remember her to be soft. Sometimes in bed, next to him, you reach out and touch him and you feel her softness in him, buried under that shell of hardness he's put up to survive. You wonder if he feels the same about you.
Sometimes you wonder if he's just using you. That he's not there for comfort, that he's there to see what he's capable of doing. Sleeping with the man, who killed her, is one step closer towards accepting, loving the thing that she's become, the thing that can become her.
The last time you saw him you told him you were sorry, he said it didn't matter anymore. Then you told him that you loved him, and he said it didn't matter anymore.