Page 14 of The Stars and the Stage
Diego smiled and let the bike fly. They shifted quickly through Juliet’s gears, tearing down the empty early morning streets, basking in the rush of the wind and the freedom of the bike and the comfort of Maddox pressed so close, his life in their hands and their body in his. From the backstreets to the main streets, to the freeway and back again, they tore through the city until they were whizzing into a layer of sea-fog thick enough to turn the lights to distant stars in the gloom. They could smell the salt by the time they pulled onto an old dirt lot overlooking a grey expanse of nothing.
It was one of the few sequestered beaches left in a city that was quickly growing overridden, houses and shops pressed up to the sand and tourists thronging the waterline—not that even the most crowded tourist trap would have been particularly busy at this hour.
Diego shut off the bike, and together they dismounted. Maddox set his helmet on the handlebars and stared out into the gloom. The rush of the waves echoed through the mist.
He bumped his hip teasingly into Diego’s side. His whole being was so close, so in their space, that his warmth was like a fire against the chilly ocean breeze. “Ah, is your plan merely to get me to strip again, or are you going to go all the way this time and drown me for my impertinence?” As he asked it, he trailed his thumb down the side of their back and found their ass with a squeeze.
“Only if you keepbeingimpertinent.” Diego shoved him off, just hard enough to make him stumble. They set off purposefully toward the sand. “Walk with me.”
Maddox laughed and caught up, scooping their hand into his, large fingers wrapped firmly around theirs. Diego grunted, but inside their heart fluttered. The sand shuffled beneath their boots, trying to pull them back down with every step, until they neared the water enough for the dampness to turn it into a compact layer. Diego still couldn’t make out the waves despite their enhanced vampiric senses, and they wondered if Maddox’s human vision was seeing anything at all.
He seemed not to mind, striding confidently through the darkness with his hand in Diego’s.
“This is not what most people think of when they say a romantic walk on the beach,” he teased.
“Since when have we been most people?” Diego shot back. They had adored that about their teenage relationship—still adored it in whatever this new spark between them was—but the words settled like a weight in their chest as they recalled the gnarled mess Maddox had made of his wrist just to prove his willingness to someone unwilling to budge for him in turn. Softer, they asked, “Have I been cruel to you, Maddy?”
“Perhaps. But I let you.” He shrugged. “And I was a manipulative, stubborn ass. I just—Ineverwant to stop fighting for you again. I don’t fully know this new you yet, but the more I learn, the more I’m finding the thought of losing you absolutely unbearable. What has my life been without you, Diego?”
Diego snorted. “Healthy, probably.”
“Healthy is for normal people.” Maddox grabbed them by the shoulder, his grip shifting to the back of their neck as he pulled them towards him and he pressed their palm to his heart.
Diego shoved him away, a little harder this time, but that couldn’t seem to wipe the smile from Maddox’s face. Or their own. They shook their head and kept moving, fingers casually flexed for Maddox to take.
He reclaimed them eagerly.
As they walked, a cliff rose up on one side, rocks cutting shadowy figures in the fog. Through Diego’s monochrome dark vision, the plants that draped down the sides looked grey and ominous. “I bet this place is beautiful during the day…”
“It’s beautiful right now,” Maddox replied, though Diego was fairly certain he could see nothing beyond the outline of their head and the scope of their shoulders. “We’ve always been creatures of the night.”
“Yeah, but I still miss the sun. And the ability to go places that are only open during the day. To not have to plan every damn thing that isn’t work around whether it’ll fit into a human schedule and a human society, whether I can pass among them long enough not to get kicked out or called the cops on.” They eyed him as they said it, trying to gauge how familiar he was with the actual life of a vampire. Finding pleasure from a pair of fangs was not the same as actually understanding the trials their bearer faced after the act was over.
Maddox nodded solemnly. “Sometimes a lord of the darkness just wants to stop by Blockbuster on their way home from work, but their way home from work is three-am.”
“It’s the little things,” Diego agreed, pleasantly surprised.
“And the big ones.” Maddox hesitated, before asking, “Has Serina replaced her window yet?”
“No. I don’t think she’ll dare until…” They almost said,until the threat is dealt with, but when would that be? Never, unless they did it themselves, and that was too dangerous a task to ask of the poor actors of the club. “One of our humans found a dead bat when she came to open this morning, but she couldn’t tell if it was left there on purpose.”
Maddox flinched.
They didn’t blame him. “If we had someone who could intervene for us. Vampire police? Well, maybe notpoliceexactly. After Rodney King…” They could still feel the bubble of righteous anger that had overtaken the city, turned violently inward when it became clear that no one who deserved it was going to suffer. A lot of other people had suffered instead, but Diego still wasn’t sure that was any worse than if they’d let King’s pain go like it was merely an ordinary consequence and not also a devastating travesty. Perhaps there were no good options when there were only bad people in control. “We need help, though. There has to be someone who can stand against anti-vamp organizations and won’t immediately get murdered by them with no hope of justice, or else end up arrested themselves.”
“Everything might still work out,” Maddox replied softly, but his gaze dropped, and he seemed rather focused on the sound of the sand compressing under their weight. The shift made Diego curious; there was still so much about him that they didn’t know. So much they still wanted to learn.
“What are you thinking?”
Maddox chuckled. “That I haven’t been walking like this in ages. You know I never come to the beaches here? They just remind me of home, I think.”
The sudden cheeriness to his tone surprised Diego almost as much as the wistful melancholy. “I thought those were good memories for you?”
“Oh, they are. But they have you in them.” He bounced his arm against theirs, as though to lighten the impact.
It lodged in Diego’s chest all the same, thick and aching. He truly had centered his past around them, down to the very sentiments he felt for his birthplace. They understood; San Salud had stopped being home the moment the person they loved most there had betrayed them. Now that he was here again, the light seemed to return to those memories, bringing with it an unexpected ache for the place where their love had first blossomed. “Do you go back to San Salud much?”
“On and off,” he added, “but it hasn’t been the same.”
