Page 28 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)

LAT H AN

Kylo’s coming home.

It’s been so long, every day a battle to survive, but he’s coming home to Lathan. Home to Obscura. Home to their apartment for the first time.

Lathan waits anxiously at the bus stop. His plan was always to meet Kylo at the airport, ready for him right after his flight, but something held him back today. He had classes—of which he hasn’t been doing well in already, succumbed to his own mind—and used that as an excuse to meet Kylo at the bus loop instead.

Truthfully, he’s terrified to see him after their time apart. And he knows that’s insane, knows that’s gross and unhealthy, but the last time he saw Kylo he was in the hospital, just hours after Lathan had to perform CPR. Hours after he felt his heart stop.

He fidgets with the apartment keys in his hands—Kylo’s set, that he’s attached a small keychain of The Dahlias to. As he looks at it, his guilt swirls; the only thing he’s really unpacked since moving into the apartment is Kylo’s band poster. He hasn’t decorated, hasn’t purchased furniture, only using the mattress and desk the Academy equips the apartments with. He hasn’t wanted to without Kylo.

Hasn’t wanted to get comfortable, if he doesn’t know how long he’s going to be here.

The bus comes rumbling onto the campus road just in time to interrupt that thought. Lathan steps away from the bus shack as he sees the vehicle approach, his chest as tight as his throat; saliva pools in his cheeks from not swallowing. He scans the windows for Kylo, and almost feels dizzy when he recognizes those dark curls near the front of the bus. It rolls up to the stop and exhales, lowers, doors opening, and Lathan lingers a few feet back to give space—he picks at a sore spot on the pad of his thumb where he sunk a fang into a few days ago.

Backpack slung over his shoulder, and his rolling suitcase at his feet, Kylo skips down off the step of the bus. His cheeks are rosy, his frame is fuller—not as gaunt from not eating while using—and the muscles of his bare arms are toned.

“Baby!” he chimes with a toothy grin, one that reaches sparkling eyes. He drops his bags and wraps his arms around Lathan with a sigh of delight and longing. “Gods, I missed you.”

“Hi,” Lathan husks, a near laugh, his hardened edges cracking just mildly for the first time in over a month. He lifts Kylo off his feet and holds him tighter. He wants him close, closer, as close as he can be. His body trembles lightly with his embrace, like he wasn’t fully aware of how deep he had fallen in his absence. But he does know—and Kylo doesn’t .

He doesn’t get to.

Lathan only pulls his head back to be able to look at his mate, to see him. Warm eyes are bright, softly browned skin is clear and smooth. His fanged grin—his trademark—plastered on his face. He even feels good, feels solid, stronger. It all makes Lathan’s heart thrum with mixed emotions.

“You look good,” he says. He didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know if he’d be gangly. Pale. Starved. Still using. But he’s none of those things, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it—outside of relief.

“You always look good.” Kylo’s eyes trail over Lathan. He cups his mate’s face, feeling his skin, grazing gentle fingers around each feature. His cheeks, his nose, his brows, his lips, his jaw, his ears, his hair.

Before he knows it, Kylo’s lifted onto his toes to press his lips against Lathan’s skin. Then he sinks lower, burying his nose into Lathan’s neck. “I forgot how much I missed your scent.”

A soft smile touches Lathan’s lips—but his chest warps with guilt. He doesn’t deserve Kylo’s love, but he so selfishly adores it.

He leans in and kisses his lips, long and delicate, and then takes the handle of Kylo’s rolling luggage. Between two fingers, he raises the set of apartment keys up in front of Kylo’s face. “I told you home wasn’t going anywhere.”

Kylo takes his new set of keys with a small, excited shimmy, and Lathan’s empty hand takes Kylo’s as they start walking toward the apartment complex across campus. He turns his head to look at him as they stroll, taking in how glowy and perfect he looks.

During Kylo’s stay, his cell phone was confiscated. Only visitation weekends would allow contact with the outside world, to isolate his recovery. Lathan knows he’s missing lots of information about what he went through there, and he doesn’t really know what’s okay to ask—and what he wants to know.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m doing good.” He smiles warmly, then looks around campus—bustling with students. “The first two weeks were the hardest—especially being away from you—but after that, things took a turn. My case worker, Danny, helped a lot. He’s been through it before.”

Lathan’s heart clenches. His thoughts begin to stir. Kylo struggled, and that hurts to hear. And now he’s doing well, made personal connections, bettered himself, and that hurts even more.

Because he’s done it without Lathan.

He’s better because Lathan wasn’t there.

Kylo glances down at the keychain and the engraved metal tag, lifting it up to his eyes. “The Dahlia’s?! You got this for me?” He’s giddy like a middle schooler who’s just received a first gift from their boyfriend, squeezing Lathan’s hand.

Lathan swallows and feigns a smile. “Thought it was fitting.”

He should be excited. Happy. Warm. But seeing Kylo like this—healthier, better—is hard . He wants nothing but for him to be, but to know it was succeeded in his absence, and that he got to a lowness of overdosing while with him , weighs so heavily in his chest and throat it’s hard to swallow. His breaths are shallow—it hurts to intake too much. But he continues to hold his mate’s hand and share soft glances with him as they make their way to their apartment building, and he listens to Kylo hum and haw about how much he missed being here.

The elevator takes them to the seventh floor—a height tall enough to just about guarantee a swift end, as Lathan has contemplated several times already, if he were to jump. He’s been staying away from the balcony because of it, but sometimes finds himself looking down, down, down again, again, and again.

He steps aside to let Kylo use his fresh set of keys for the first time. Inside, the walls are colourless, the kitchen is immediately to their left, and forward is the open, empty living room. It doesn’t feel like a home. It doesn’t feel like anyone lives here, actually. And suddenly Lathan is very aware of how hollow their space is.

“Woah,” Kylo exhales, taking in the crisp, pristine apartment as he walks in. He turns slowly, taking in the kitchen, the living room, the big windows. “Well, this is certainly an upgrade from our old room,” he chuckles. He looks at Lathan a certain way, though, as if he wants to ask why it’s so barren, why it’s so different from their old dorm together, which at least had touches of their personality. But he doesn’t, and Lathan doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

“Oh! That reminds me—” He swings his backpack off and plops it onto the kitchen peninsula. With a swift unzip, he pulls the main pouch open to a bundle of papers shoved inside, all folded and sealed with different holographic stickers. “I wrote to you, when I was at ARC. Some of them might be hard to read…so you don’t have to read them now—or ever, if you don’t want to. It just helped to write out what I was going through, y’know?”

Lathan blinks, and his chest swells anxiously. “You wrote?” he finds himself mumbling. He knows Kylo doesn’t show his poetry to others, and all Lathan has ever wanted is to know what’s going on in his head.

He wants the bad. Almost as if it’ll confirm everything he’s been dwelling the past month, and beyond. He’s terrified, but he wants those letters to tell him how well Kylo was faring without him. It’ll make the end much easier.

He shakes his head—those dark conclusions won’t leave him. No matter where he is, what he’s doing, somehow his mind reminds him how sweet death would be. Will be.

He glances at Kylo, full of thoughts. Are you still haunted by Trevor? Do you still crave a high? Do you blame me? For any of it? Because you should. But he doesn’t ask. Because asking could trigger him, again, and this time he may not live. This time he could die, and stay dead. And Kylo’s not the one who should die.

Lathan puts a numb hand on the stack of folded papers and slides them toward himself. “I’m glad you were writing,” he says. It’s one of your favourite things. The fact you wrote anything at all means you really are better.

Especially when the last known things he wrote were scattered around his unconscious body.

◆◆◆

That evening feels foreign to Lathan. Curled up in their empty bedroom together once again. Kylo against his body, his woodsy scent in the air between them, his canine warmth heating Lathan’s side. He hasn’t slept in weeks without him, only an hour here and there, and he’s constantly exhausted. And now that Kylo’s back, back and doing so much better, the guilt still keeps him awake.

He only stomachs a few hours of feigning rest before his body itches—for punishment, for release—and he carefully snakes out of Kylo’s sleepy hold. Silently, he dips into the bathroom and closes the door without so much of a click. He stares at himself in the mirror, gripping the lip of the sink’s countertop, and doesn’t recognize who stares back. He hasn’t for a while, like those old myths that vampires don’t show up in a mirror’s reflection or photographs.

It’s become routine. Every other day or so, once the aftershock of the venom has fully dissipated from his body. It’s like he can’t move through the world without feeling the effects of what he’s put into it.

He blows out a long-held breath into the sink basin, and then brings the back of his wrist to his lips. He’s doing well. He’s doing so well without me. I did this. I ruined him. I killed him. I felt him die, and it’s my fault. He’s better off without me. He knows he is. Everyone is.

He sinks his fangs into his flesh and sucks in sharply as the burn disperses. He holds his bite as long as he can before ripping off his arm with a soft grunt. “Fuck,” he breathes shakily, his hand beginning to cramp, blood trickling from the punctures. “Fuck everything.”

He doesn’t hear Kylo get out of bed or walk to the door—before his hearing loss, he would have. “Lathan?” he calls, knocking on the bathroom door gently. “You okay?”

He startles, jerking his arm, and blood from his bite drips into the sink, stark against the white porcelain. His heart vibrates and he twists the tap to run the water onto the wound, still gritting his teeth against the flames climbing his arm. “Mhm,” he forces out. “F-fine.” The water trickles off his skin, tinged pink as it’s sipped down the drain.

“What’s going on?” Kylo’s voice is soft and calm as the door carefully yawns open.

Lathan snatches a hand towel from off the rack beside him and presses it to the top of his wrist, the remaining blood in the sink dissolving under the running water. I didn’t lock the fucking doo r, he realizes in a hurried panic, used to not having to in this apartment, as he’s been alone for almost four weeks. But his thoughts rupture at the pressure of the cloth, and he sucks in past his teeth against the fire.

“Just,” he gravels, “an accident.” It’s difficult to manage words through the pulse of his venom, attacking from within his veins. Difficult to not just yell out and flail—especially as the nausea begins to curl and his head starts to spin. It’s not a feeling you ever get used to.

“Oh, gods, baby.” Kylo’s face peeking into the bathroom saddens, and he moves to Lathan’s side, caressing his bicep lovingly as he guides him out toward the living room couch. “Here, come sit down.”

Like this, Lathan doesn’t have the energy to fight him and his guidance, even if he wants to stay locked in the bathroom and suffer alone. But his jaw is locked to keep his voice low and he groans with pain, so he can’t speak, or he’ll yell—the inferno is only building up his limb, into his chest, making it harder to breath, harder to walk. Kylo’s never seen him deal with the effects of a vampire’s venom before; he wasn’t home when his mother came by the Garcias’ and bit him.

Maria was, though. She took care of Lathan, and to his complete surprise, he let her. He let her be a mom, be the mom he never had. And now that’s gone. He fucked it up. He fucked it all up from the start, and this is the only thing he can do for himself anymore. Feel it.

Once Lathan’s laying on the couch, Kylo kneels on the cold vinyl floor and takes his arm—wrist still covered by the towel. “Can I take a look?”

Lathan shakes his head and then sits back up; lying down exacerbates his pain. He doesn’t want Kylo to see, mostly because he doesn’t want to be asked questions he can’t even answer. He wants to deal with this alone. None of this should be on Kylo. He’s put too much on him already since they met.

His arm is starting to quake, the veins in his hand and wrist swollen, bolded, like something out of a horror movie. He doubles over, his hair cascading over his knees like a black waterfall, and lets out a harsh breath he struggles to suck back in. “F-fuck.”

“Just hang on, I’m gonna phone the clinic, I’ll be right back.”

“ No ,” Lathan barks after him, a bit too roughly. He grounds himself with his feet flat on the floor, and takes a few ragged breaths before being able to say, “Won’t help,” as the blood is beginning to seep through the towel.

Kylo stops in his tracks and whips around to look back at him. He hesitates, clearly torn—Lathan can see the flex of his toes, deciding where to go, what to do. But then he returns to Lathan’s side and squats to find his eyes, hidden by his long black hair. “H-how can I help you?”

“Go back to bed,” he breathes during a lull in the pain, shifting from pure fire to heavy throbbing as it settles within him, his heart pumping it to new zones that begin to ignite.

“Don’t give me that,” Kylo says, like a plea. “What can I do?”

He knows that sometimes ice can help, if nothing but for its numbing qualities, distracting from the burn with frost. Lathan slowly looks up at him through his brows, through his hair .

“Ice,” he says gruffly, though he doesn’t know if he’s refilled the ice tray since moving day.

“Ice. Okay.” Kylo bounces to his feet and he’s in the kitchen within three bounds. He comes back with two cubes in his bare hands—must be all that’s left from the tray that holds a dozen.

“Brace yourself, I’m just gonna lift this, okay?”

His lips unstick to protest—he was hoping the ice would be cold enough through the towel’s fabric—but it’s too late by the time his pain-laden mind registers Kylo’s action. The double puncture is inflamed, open, budding with crimson; he didn’t seal it. Usually he does, to keep the venom in longer, but Kylo surprised him and he acted fast to just cover it instead.

Kylo sucks in a gasp and cradles Lathan’s hand in his own. “Damn, did you bite yourself in your sleep or something?”

After a pause, Lathan finds Kylo’s innocent stare down on his arm. He expected more prying, more demanding of what happened; relief consumes him in this moment. He’s not worried about me like I expected him to be . It helps his case, and he doesn’t have to try the excuse of ‘I was brushing my teeth and slipped.’ But then it starts to sting, because he’s not worried about me like he used to be.

Lathan tries to clear his throat of building phlegm and nods smally, dropping his gaze to the towel, to the ice. “Must’ve.” He’s not worried about me, and he’s doing better. The flames pulse through his body, reaching as far into his anatomy as this bout of venom will stretch, and he tries to ball his fingers, but they’re tensed out taut and straight.

As Lathan groans, fingers shuddering with effort, Kylo rests his unoccupied hand against Lathan’s leg, rubbing soft circles, back and forth, soothing him. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Lathan closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the man nurturing him. The man he’s hurt over and over again. And behind his lids he meets his younger self, sat in the modern bathroom of his parents’ Vancouver condo, wrapping his arm with wads of toilet paper like a makeshift cast. He’s crying, with tears and snot and that rare redness to his vampiric cheeks, still soft and round with youth. And he looks up as the toilet paper soaks red, and sobs. ‘Why is this all we are?’

Lathan blacks out. He isn’t aware of time passing as Kylo soothes him, as the venom throbs, as the little boy trapped inside him hides and cries. He dissociates far away, to a place with no answers.

All he hears is his inner voice replying to the young memory: I’ll make it stop. I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anymore. And I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anyone else ever again.

I’ll turn it off.