The next morning I wake up to the enticing aromas of breakfast cooking on my little stove and the delicious sight of my boyfriend wearing my only pair of PJ bottoms (the ones with the chibi superheroes, which are just a little too small for him) standing in front of said stove cooking said breakfast. I can’t help but admire the view for a moment. Something must have given me away, though, as Rashid turns around, grins at me and says:

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

I poke my tongue out at him and pretend to go back to sleep.

“Oh, if you’re still tired, I’ll have to eat all of this delicious French toast, cooked to perfection after Mari’s world-famous vegan recipe, all by myself.”

“Don’t you dare!” I growl and jump out of bed. I don’t care that I’m not wearing a thread of clothes on my body, and judging by Rashid’s look, he doesn’t either. I sidestep him and steal some of the toast out of the pan and put it in my mouth. It’s fucking hot and scorches my gums, but I chew it slowly, savouring every bit of it, like I’m about to award a Michelin star to Chef Gabriel. It is really good. I make a show out of it and smack my lips.

“Hmmm… it’s quite edible.” I give my final judgement and am rewarded with a playful smack on my bum with the spatula.

“Ow!” I mock-protest while grinning at Rashid, who gently rubs the offended piece of flesh. I put my arms around him and pull him close, so my front is pressed tightly to his back, and I watch over his shoulder as he flips the golden-brown toast in the pan.

“Do you think this will still be edible when it’s cold?” I ask in a pretend-innocent tone.

He nudges one of the slices cautiously. “Hmm… I don’t know… maybe?” He glances at me sideways. “I’m really hungry, though, so I’d need a damn good reason to abandon my breakfast.”

While he is talking, I let my hand glide into his pants, and with his last word, my fingers close around his cock, and he gasps. I watch his face as he leans his head back against my shoulder, his eyes closed, apparently enjoying my touch.

“You make a very strong case, Dupree,” he murmurs. He still has the presence of mind to switch the stove off and push the pan to the side before he turns around to kiss me, and I drag him back to bed.

As it turns out, French toast is still perfectly edible when cold, as we find out some time later. We eat it outside on my terrace, feeding each other slices of fresh fruit and French toast in between more making out sessions. I’m sorry if this sounds super cheesy (it probably is), but keeping our hands off each other has suddenly become very difficult.

I discover a whole new side of Rashid. My usually very serious and reserved boyfriend is quite the softie. I already know he has a very special sense of humour, one that’s a perfect match to mine, but now I also learn he’s passionate and silly. He laughs and smiles freely when he’s with me. He’s vulnerable and has a big heart, and I’m here for all of it.

I’m sorry about our fight last night, our very first (but not nearly our last) fight, but it feels like it unlocked a whole new world for us. The sex and intimacy that come with it are only two aspects. I feel like there is also a different level of trust and openness between us now we’ve reached the same page of our story.

We feed the last crumbs of toast to a sparrow that hops around my terrace and make ourselves comfortable in my deckchair. Well, as comfortable as two grown men can get in one deckchair. It’s more a tangled mess of limbs and bodies. My head is resting on his chest, and his heartbeat is a steady thump underneath me. His arm is around my shoulders, and his fingers are drawing circles on my biceps. We just lie there, the outside world completely forgotten, basking in the presence of each other, feeling completely at peace.

A thought occurs to me, something that he said last night, and I try to make a joke out of it.

“So what stopped you from jumping my bones the first time you saw me? I thought I looked pretty damn sexy that night.”

His hand immediately halts. Did I say something wrong? I look up at his face to check, and there’s something like a shocked expression on it.

“Wendell, …” His voice sounds pained. I don’t understand what’s going on.

“Spit it out, Oxford. I’m not a damn mind reader…” I try to smile to lessen the blow of my words, but Rashid closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, all playfulness is gone.

“When do you think was the first time that I saw you?” He asks softly.

“At Lestat’s concert… last year in summer…” My voice trails off as I realise that this is probably not the right answer.

Rashid looks at me, his eyes dark. I can see the muscles in his jaw working until it sets.

“23rd of September.”

The date… It’s like my insides instantly turn into ice, and I plummet. The date is forever etched into my mind, even though some details are still hazy to me. The night I was almost killed. Not by a vampire (he came close, but I know he didn’t mean to). Almost killed by four men, human men, although calling them human is almost too good for them. It’s night; I’m back in that alley, behind the dumpster. I can smell them, feel their fists and feet raining down on me while I try to protect myself. While I prepare myself to die.

“Wendell…” Rashid’s pleading voice brings me back to the now and here. It’s daytime, a sunny November afternoon, and I’m on my terrace, sitting next to my boyfriend on my deckchair. I can’t remember when we changed positions, but we’re both sitting upright now, no longer touching.

“You were… there…? You saw…?” My voice sounds hoarse and raw, as if I hadn’t used it for so long.

“Not the attack, no.” He takes one look at me and quickly adds, “I didn’t! Do you think I would have stood idly by while these… thugs almost killed you?”

“Isn’t that what the Talamasca does? Watch but never interfere?”

Rashid snorts angrily. “It’s maybe what they do, but it’s not what I do.”

I believe him. He’s not that kind of person. I don’t think I could love him if he were.

“Then what?” I say, my voice sounding hollow and void.

He sets his shoulders and sits up a little straighter, bracing himself for what’s to come. Apparently it’s not something he wants to share, and I have a feeling it’s not something I want to hear, but that needs to be out. I wait for him to continue, and when he does, his voice is distant, like he’s giving a report, factually, almost clinically.

“I was stateside at the time, three years ago. I received a phone call around midnight. It was the motherhouse informing me about an incident in New Orleans. A vampire attack, four or five casualties. There were conflicting reports. Vampire attacks happen all the time. Not even the number of casualties was that unusual. Nothing the New Orleans division couldn’t handle themselves. The shocking part wasn’t even the viciousness of the attack but that it was done by two vampires that were deemed “low risk”. Old enough to handle their condition, avoid killings or at least be discreet about it. Vampires who had, for a while, kept a low profile suddenly and apparently for no reason erupted into violence.”

He interrupts his recount to take my hand and gently squeeze it. “It wasn’t unprovoked, and you know that.”

I shake my head and nod at the same time, still unsure how to feel about what happened that night. Then I squeeze Rashid’s hand back to encourage him to go on.

“They called me in because of my history with Louis…”

My head snaps around to him. History… with Louis…?

Rashid’s eyes widen in shock: “No! Not like that! I used to work for him, spying on him and his former lover, the vampire Armand, for the Talamasca in Dubai.”

I guess it could have been worse. So we both worked for Louis. Huh, small world. I wonder why Louis never mentioned this to me. I told him about Rashid…

“They called me,” Rashid continues. “Asked me to get on the first flight to New Orleans to assess the situation. I went straight from the airport to the vampires’ townhouse and waited. It was around midday when you emerged. The suspected fifth casualty. Apparently unharmed, alive and unturned. I decided to follow you.”

An icy shiver runs down my back. I was so out of it that day that probably a whole army could have stalked me, and I wouldn’t have noticed, but to think that Rashid was there and so close to me… watching me…

“I followed you to the park. I could see you were in distress, but there was nothing I could do about it.”

I close my eyes and ask the question I need an answer to: “How long did you watch me?”

He hesitates, and it’s answer enough. His voice is low when he confirms it: “Until you got on the bus.”

But I need to hear it: “You saw me with that guy?”

I watch his face, intent on any reaction, but the mask is in place. Only his eyes are full of emotions, and I understand this is as difficult for him as it is for me. After what seems like an eternity, he nods.

“I saw you leave with him, and I saw him come back after a while. He was…” He hesitates again. “He was zipping up his trousers, so…”

“It was only a handjob.” The words spill out of me before I can stop myself. Probably not the kind of information you want to hear from your boyfriend. I bury my face in my hands. What a romantic story to tell our grandkids one day…

“And I was worried that, when we met, you’d find out about my past and run for the hills. And you knew all along. You saw it.”

I can feel him move, and then his arms are around me, and he pulls me close.

“I knew, and I never thought about running. Who I saw that day turned out to be one of the strongest people I’ve met in my life.”

I snort in disbelief, but he carries on: “I’ve witnessed people faced with less severe situations than yours and completely crumble underneath them. But you didn’t. You persevered. I watched you for a few more days. When you picked up your niece from daycare or when you brought some groceries to your elderly neighbour and played cards with her. You just went through one hell of an experience, but you just pushed through. When I flew back to the motherhouse to give my statement in person, I realised that I was starting to have feelings for you.”

He pulls me even closer and presses his lips against my temple.

“I’ve seen you at your worst, and I still wanted to be with you. Wanted all of you, Wendell Dupree.”

I turn around to give him a questioning look: “That is so fucked up, Oxford, you know that?”

He laughs, and it eases his tension as much as my own.

“It probably is.” He observes my face, still the ghost of a smile on his features. “So, are you okay with dating a fucked-up person like me?”

I tilt my head as I examine him before I answer him slowly.

“Yeah… I guess I’ll risk it. The sex is pretty good – for an old man. So that’s a plus.”

“Pretty good, eh? I take this as a compliment, coming from you.” He gives me a side glance, afraid he might have gone too far, too soon, but I just shake my head and laugh.

Sometimes if you have the choice between laughing and crying, laughing is the better option. Rashid and I share a very strange, dark kind of humour. Most of the time it irritates others, but it forms a bond between us. Even if no one else can laugh about it, we can. We have our ups and downs, but it is this bond that keeps us together, that creates this bubble around us, and that protects our love.

At this point in our relationship, it’s still a soap bubble in danger of popping any minute. But it was moments like this one, moments of truth and reconciliation, that made the bubble stronger.

It would be ridiculously romantic to think that all it took was one (mind-blowingly) good blowjob from my boyfriend to end years of trauma. He does have a talented mouth, but that would give him a bit too much credit. It’s not what happened. My nightmares continued to torment me, more so if Rashid was gone for a longer time, but sometimes they came when he was with me. It was his understanding and patience, and the mutual trust that grew between us, that started my journey toward healing. I still have my scars, but as a very dear friend told me later, “Bearing scars means you survived. And surviving – that’s the first fucking step.”

That day Rashid and I realised that we needed to start communicating, not just assuming we knew what the other one was thinking or feeling. It wasn’t something that worked instantly or effortlessly. I still couldn’t tell him about the exact nature of my dreams, but I was no longer afraid he’d find out about my past. He knew, and it made no difference to him. It pained him, but only because he saw that it had hurt – was still hurting – me. To have that out in the open was a huge game changer.

We sat down that night and set boundaries. What we were comfortable doing sexually at this point and what we’d maybe hold off a little longer. Kissing and touching was generally okay, unless one of us expressed their discomfort, of course. Full sex, meaning penetration, would need to wait for a while. I wouldn’t have brought it up. Coming from me it would have been a bit rich, I thought, wouldn’t it? Rashid asked, and I couldn’t even look him in the eye when I answered. It’s something that I definitely wanted to do, one day, but maybe not yet. Rashid took my chin and turned my face around. Of course, it could wait.

We’re definitely not a normal couple with a cute story of how we met, and the idea that Rashid watched me go off with a stranger, who paid me for sex, was something that definitely came up in a future session with Eli (my therapist). But at this point I wanted to focus on the part where he said he saw it and still wanted me. All of me.