Page 70 of Surface Scratch
Caleb: I went to my place to get some clothes and my toothbrush. You were snoring so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you up.
He stuck his phone in his mouth as he fiddled with the lock on the door. It always stuck in the winter for some reason, no matter how many times Mr. Johnston sent someone out to tinker with it. The phone buzzed against his teeth as he wiggled the handle until the key slid into place and he could step inside.
Marcus: I do not snore.
Caleb: I could hear you from the kitchen.
Caleb looked around his apartment, the living room he spent so much time in suddenly feeling very foreign to him. The old couch was in the same state he had left it in almost a week prior, messily stacked with blankets and pillows like his own little depression nest. The pile of unopened mail still sat on the hutch by the door. His empty TV stand was barely visible beneath a mountain of laundry he never seemed to get to.
Damn. Ophelia was right. This place is depressing.
He grabbed his messenger bag from the ground and pulled out most of its contents. It was still filled with help wanted flyers and paper applications he’d started but never finished. God, that seemed like a million years ago.
He made his way into the hallway, zeroing in on the laundry basket that had sat in front of the dryer so long he feared it may have grown roots. He still wasn’t sure if the clothes in it were clean or dirty.
His phone buzzed again.
Marcus: I refuse to believe that. You’re going to need to show some proof.
Caleb: Tonight, when you fall asleep, I’m going to record it.
Caleb set his phone down on the dryer and sifted through the clothing, trying to pick the least wrinkled T-shirts and pants he could find to stuff into his bag. He wasn’t sure how long Marcus was going to insist on Caleb staying at his apartment, but he didn’t want to give the impression he was trying to unofficially move in after Marcus paid his rent for the year. And it was way too early in the relationship for that.
It was a weird thing for him to consider after the night he’d just had with Marcus. By any other standard, breaking out those kinds ofactsduring someone’s first time seemed like a surefire way to guarantee there would never be a second encounter. But every time Caleb thought about Marcus biting him and licking at him, the front of his pants became uncomfortably tight and he had to force himself to think of literally anything else.
Maybe these past few weeks have permanently broken your brain.Caleb shrugged at the thought, a shudder running through him as he imagined Marcus’s hands all over him, squeezing and probing and rubbing.
“I’m so fucked,” he said aloud to himself. His cheeks ached from the smile on his face that refused to go away. He’d never smiled this much. Not even as a child. He’d walked into Club Euphoria that day just wanting a job and to keep a roof over his head. How the hell did he end up with a boyfriend who wasn’t exactly human, being welcomed by a ton of people he never would have known otherwise?
Even the thought of Vincent made him feel a little spark of hope. After everything he had been through, his weeks-long fear and apprehension around Vincent and the Jovanovskas seemed so embarrassing and misguided. Vincent was apparently sensitive and kind when he wanted to be, even if did act like a complete maniac around Caleb just to get a rise out of him.
The situation with Matteo back in V’s bathroom was another thing. He had meant to mention it to Marcus, but after last night… he had a feeling the reaction wouldn’t be a good one. He wasn’t sure how the other vampires saw consuming blood from someone in a relationship, but he got the impression that it was something a little more intimate than sharing french fries with friends. Even Vincent got somber when Marcus suggested “playing” with Adam, which he could only imagine involved biting him.
Caleb did feel like he finally understood the chaotic state his former classmate always appeared to be in. It was definitely a sex thing. He wasn’t sure he could handle the same level of pain Adam did, but he wasn’t too worried about Marcus taking it far enough to break his nose or cover every inch of him in bites and bruises. Even with his beast, it didn’t seem like that was something he would try to do, let alone enjoy.
Caleb moved into his small bathroom, grabbing what few toiletries he might need. He paused with his hand over the electric razor, realizing there hadn’t been a single time he’d used it because his ability to grow facial hair was non-existent. It was Nick’s. He sighed.
“We’ll find a way,” he said softly to himself in the mirror. Despite how great he felt, he looked like hell. He had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was a matted-down mess on one side of his head, and his neck was still a rainbow of bruises from his confrontation with V, though last night had probably made them worse. He could see the scabbed over teeth marks on his collarbone and neck, and the graze marks from before were still pinkish.
If he didn’t know any better, if he saw someone walking around looking like him, he would assume they were either on drugs or worked with feral cats. Maybe he could cover it up with makeup?
His phone buzzed again and he glanced down at the message preview.
Marcus: Bold of you to assume I’m going to let you sleep tonight.
There was a winking emoji at the end, making Caleb shake his head as he laughed. Leave it to a two-hundred-year-old vampire to include an emoji in a vaguely dirty text. Though with the way his stomach knotted, he couldn’t say he wasn’t enticed.
It was times like this he wished he had someone he could talk to about his love life, just to see if he was a secret pervert or something. Then again, even if he’d had good friends before meeting Marcus, how would he even broach the subject without having to explain that he was generally surrounded by vampires? And how would he know if that person could be trusted with that secret?
The Society was still out there.
Maybe he could talk to Tariq about it. Marcus did say Tariq was the “baby” of the group, and Tariq said he’d known about vampires a full year before he became one, so maybe he could at least tell Caleb if his reactions were normal.
Why am I worrying about this? Last night was fucking incredible! I got laid. Who cares if there were a few more bodily fluids involved than there usually would be?
He jumped at the sound of a knock on his front door. Had Marcus followed him over? Probably not. There was a bit of daylight left and he hadn’t seen Marcus in the same comic book bank robber outfit he’d seen the other vampires use to walk around during the day. There was only a brief silence before there was another knock, a little faster and more urgent than the last.
No one ever came to his apartment, short of the occasional unlicensed handyman with a roll of duct tape and a prayer when the water heater broke. Caleb doubted that was the case. A strange feeling of dread fell over him. He approached his front door slowly, wishing he had a peephole to at least give him a heads up of who might be there.
