| And I caught you | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 17 2017, 01:00 PM (12 Views) | |
| Graham Carter | Nov 17 2017, 01:00 PM Post #1 |
|
Graham had always had a very...full life, he always told people. It made people question him; what the heck did a full life mean? Was he doing too many things at once? Sometimes he waffled, saying that maybe full wasn't the right thing. He had always felt close to happy and content and he had never really...wanted for anything. People always liked to talk about how the great people in the world – the leaders, the writers, the artists, the philosophers – all suffered. That was what you had to do in your life to get anywhere – suffer. If you had it easy or if you were happy, either you were an idiot who didn't know what the world was really like or you somehow were rich and had never had a hardship in their lives. Graham wasn't about to say that he <i>hadn't</i> had hardships. His mom suffered from depression real bad; there had been days where she would just lie in bed or she would just close herself in the bathroom and <i>cry</i> her heart out. His dad had lost his job through no fault of his own and hadn't had any back up; he had been unemployed for months and then he had had a crummy job that hadn't paid enough for a family before he found an even better job. Graham himself had been kind of the butt end of a lot of bullying in his age; he had been smaller than the others, he had been more interested in reading and he had read weird stuff. His life was by no means easy or stress free, but he was happy. He figured that was the important thing, right? No life was easy, not even for someone who seemed to have it all, but the important thing was to just carry on, right? He had parents who loved him, who despite any other issue they may have had, they made sure he knew they loved him. Sometimes when his mom cried, she told him that she didn't mean to make him think he had done wrong, that was just how she was but she loved him. Sometimes, during the moments when his dad had been unemployed, he had told Graham that he really needed to just go out and have a boy's night with him, just forget about applications for a couple of hours and go run around a park or go fishing because he wanted to keep sight of things. <p> Then when Graham was about seven, his parents had decided to foster a kid, because they wanted to give back. The kid had been a year younger than him, a kid that had been taken from a neglectful family who had a problem with hoarding food even after it went bad and watching everyone with eyes of a smacked dog. It had taken them months to earn that kid's trust...and by then, his parents had realized they couldn't foster him anymore because they had fallen in love. They adopted the kid and Graham had himself a kid brother. They tried to foster another kid, but it was much of the same. That was how Graham had wound up with six little brothers and sisters; his parents had way too much love to give. Most of the kids at school had hemmed and hawed and said how they could <i>never</i> have so many siblings. How could they handle their parents loving other kids? How could they handle sharing all their toys? Birthdays had to be so <i>small</i>, Christmas had to be so <i>miniscule</i> because of how many kids there were. Graham was pretty sure they had been trying to jab at him a few times, trying to get under his skin the same way they did when they had mentioned how <i>weird</i> it was that the Catholic family had so many kids. Graham had always shrugged it off, honestly, and just gave the same answers. Graham knew his parents loved him, just because there were more kids didn't mean they loved him less; love wasn't something that ran empty, not the love of a parent. Sharing had never been a big deal either because it was, well, <i>sharing</i>; he had helped teach his kid brothers and sisters that if you let someone play with your stuff, they'd be more willing to let you play with theirs, but then if you kept it to yourself...It had been a moment of pride to see them all so happy with each other. And holidays? Sure there was a little less, but that, he had found when he was older, meant they were aware of the real meaning about things. It always sounded so stupid to see movies and cartoons about how someone discovered the true meaning of stuff, but...it was true for them. All in all, being in a big family just meant there had been so much more love to go around. <p> Despite that, though, Graham had always felt like he was...missing something. It was a stupid little thing that he never really noticed during the day light hours. He really only thought of it when he got older, when he was thirteen and he started having those funny feelings for guys and girls and trying to figure out what it meant for him. It was then the loss appeared. It wasn't a big loss, it wasn't like he had lost a bunch of money he was going to use for something important or some cherished gift that had been in his possession for years and years. During the day, he didn't even notice it, to be honest. But then the night came and he would just be lying there. He'd lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to one of his brother's snore away and he just felt...something missing. Again, it wasn't big, but it was this faint sadness. He always tried to put his finger on what the hell it was, but he couldn't think of it. Maybe it was a bit like knowing you had something in your possession and you had been really fond of it – a well loved stuff toy, a book you had read a hundred times over, the lucky pen you always used but never quite remembered what it looked like – but you didn't have it. You knew it was out there, but you didn't know where, you couldn't even be sure that you were remembering correctly. For all you knew, you were just making it up. It was one of those things he was glad he only thought about it at night, because during the day his focus had to be elsewhere. Like going to school, like getting into college. College was an iffy thing for Graham Carter; one of seven children, even with a mixed bag, you were looking at a hefty bill. He had wanted to go, though, he felt he needed to go. He had gotten the scholarships, he had gotten the loans, and he had felt like a real proper adult when he had said he was moving into the dorms. That was what college life was about, right? Getting to do your own thing and discovering who you were. Graham sure hoped whoever he was he was in the middle of discovering, it was someone who was majoring in Religious Studies with a primary focus on the Great Old Ones and the sociology that came with it. If he wasn't, boy was he going to be going into the wrong classes. <p> It had all been perfect...and then he had met his roommate. Apparently most people didn't get single rooms unless they had the right name or the right words. Personally, if Graham had known he had a vampire student coming into his halls, he might have decided that said vampire should get a single room; after all, most of the students on campus were those that needed or liked sunlight and who ran on a daytime cycle. How cruel would it be to put a vampire with a human? But they had done it. Graham's dormmate was Reese Rhymer, a vampire for a few odd years now, who had seemed a little bit confused at being roomed with a human too...but neither of them had complaints with each other. In the moment of meeting Reese, Graham had felt like there was something inherently <i>right</i> with the world, like everything had just slotted into place. He had honestly just assumed that he had picked up on Reese's good nature and good personality and that was that. He hadn't even noticed that the faint feeling of loss never plagued him; if he did, he figured that maybe that was just because he didn't really focus on that stuff at night another. He was too busy listening to Reese putter about the room or sitting up and talking with Reese. They caught on like a house on fire, so to speak. They had just...been a perfect match. It seemed right that Reese was studying stuff about ghosts and Reese had said it seemed right that he was studying the Great Old Ones. Things just...developed between them and it all felt so natural. Graham could say nothing had felt as natural as loving Reese. Nothing. Reese made him feel warm and happy and content and Reese was just...perfect. They had shared some of their deepest secrets – Graham's fear of the dark, of deep water and Reese's fear of fire, more so then a normal vampire or even a human. It made him...happy. Graham loved it. He couldn't ask for better. Maybe that was why he was sleeping better at night? He didn't know. He just pressed his face into his pillow, snuggling under the covers even as he listened to Reese moving around again. He didn't think he'd be able to sleep any other way now. |
![]() |
|
| Reese Rhymer | Nov 17 2017, 01:01 PM Post #2 |
![]()
|
Reese had never been able to say that he didn't have a decent enough life. His family was well off enough, maybe not rich but they could afford all of their basic needs and some extras. His parents loved him. His parents were always home after work, always spending time with each of their children, making sure that they knew that they were loved and appreciated and had two people always in their corner. There were plenty of homecooked meals and family movies and family outings. His two older sisters loved him. They had just about doted on him since he was born and always had things to teach him about their own hobbies, classes and interests. They squabbled sometimes, but it was always blown over easily and they were right back to love. School had always come relatively easy to him. He never really seemed to struggle with the so-called "teen angst" that most people claimed that kids around his age went through when he was in high school. Honestly, he might have called his whole life perfect, like some kind of idealistic television show about the typical family in some kind of fifties sitcom if not for one thing. It was a small, subtle thing, and it was something that he never talked about... because how could he? His life was good, wonderful even, so how could he explain to someone this painful feeling of something missing? Some days he forgot about it entirely, but there were plenty of times that he felt it. It was always lurking, always nagging, and he wished he could forget it more than he already did. As he grew older, he graduated from high school and he took a year to "find himself" as his parents put it. Reese had been confused, because he knew himself, didn't he? They insisted it would be good for him, good for him to think about college, career, about the path that he wanted. Reese already knew what he wanted to do, though. He was going to go to college to research ghosts, to study everything he could about them, and he was going to minor in something to do with past lives and reincarnations. The topics of ghosts and past lives had always fascinated him ever since he was little. His mother always said they had to keep him away from horror movies when he was too young to watch them just because he had heard they were about ghosts and thought they were something actually educational about ghosts. It had been something of a running joke in the family, light-hearted ribbing around family dinners as he got older. Reese knew what he was going to do with his life. He was going to get his major and his minor degrees and then he would become a scientist. In bigger dreams, he was the top scientist in his field, of course, but just to do that would be good, he felt. It was somewhere during that second year - a second, his parents had said, to save up some money - that he had started feeling that pang of loss even more. It started almost hurting him when he thought of it and he would feel strange things, like someone was tugging on his arm and yet was doing it inside of his chest. It made him stop what he was doing multiple times, made him stop and turn down streets he had no reason to go down, made him stop in mid-sentence or pause in his walks to look around almost desperately for something. It was one of those feelings that pulled him one night, pulled him hard until he was almost running, stumbling down back alleys and side streets, heart slamming into his chest because it was close, he could feel it! He was going to find it! What he had found, however, was not what he was looking for. A part of Reese supposed he had blocked things out, because he barely remembered what had happened. There had been a handsome man in one of those shortcuts he had taken, but that hadn't been what the pulling was for. The tugging was insistent, telling him to keep going, but then this man had suddenly caught him in his gaze. Reese didn't remember much past that except waking up, so to speak, feeling cold and strange and not at all himself. It had only taken a little of research to realize it had been a vampire that he had run into and that now he was one as well. That had sent him on another year of trying to reconcile the fact that his life was now different. He could be awake during the day, he could even go out once in awhile, but the daylight hours were never going to be truly his again. With the right tech, the right pills, he could eat most regular food, he could keep most of his human habits, but that only stretched so far. He was never going to be the human Reese Rhymer ever again. He was always going to be something different now, a vampire. The tugging in his chest had faded some and he wondered if he would ever feel it again. After all, his heart didn't beat anymore, right? He had tried to ignore the strange feeling of loss that came from not feeling that feeling of loss and instead focused on pouring himself into earning money and scholarships. There was nothing that said a vampire couldn't be a scientist, a researcher into past lives and ghosts. Hell, if the night was his time now wasn't that going to be better for him? And now he was going to live forever so he would have plenty of time for his research. He tried to keep positive. After all, being a vampire wasn't terrible, especially with the pills that helped make him still seem more human than he was. To give his parents, and him, some space and independence, he had moved into the dorms. He had tried to point out a vampire should have a single room so as to not bother a roommate, but there had been nothing to be done. The single rooms were all taken and so he had resigned himself to his fate. On that first day, he had been sitting cross-legged on his bed that he didn't really need, awake in a time of day he didn't really need to be awake anymore, and was typing a message out to one of his sisters. The door had opened and in had walked Graham Carter. He was shorter than Reese, but broader, with a jaw that looked like it could cut through solid rock and a grin a mile wide. In that moment, he was pretty sure his heart actually did beat as he stared at the man. They introduced themselves and that was it. Reese was officially caught. It felt totally natural to be around Graham, to let things evolve into a relationship. He had never felt happier, never felt more content, than when he was with Graham. It was amusing, he had said, the way that their degrees had lined up with one another. It was perfect, the way that they complimented each other. It was perfect, the way they just slotted together like two well worn pieces. Reese had talked to him for hours about ghosts, about reincarnation, about old gods, about fears and hopes and dreams. The two of them had shared so much about themselves. He had been getting a little niggling feeling lately when they talked, the feeling of having done this before, the feeling of knowing, and he had tried to shrug it off, tried to shrug off dreams that had come when he actually let himself sleep, tried to shrug off dreams and fears that Graham had, but the more he worked on his paper and his research, the more he had begun to have an inkling. It had begun to grow even more when he started to feel weird about letting Graham out of his sight, when Graham had woken up sobbing out another name but still saying 'you're alive' directly to Reese. He had poured himself into his research even more. It had been a long process and he had kept his thoughts to himself but tonight he had made some sort of break through, he supposed. He had been linking evidence, been researching vague things from dreams that he'd had. Somewhere, skimming through some article, his gut had been slammed so hard he thought he might throw up - an accomplishment since vampires didn't do that. He knew he should just let Graham sleep, but he reached out to start shaking him. "Graham. Graham, wake up. Graham." He knew he sounded more than a little panicked and frantic but he couldn't stop himself. |
![]() |
|
| Graham Carter | Nov 17 2017, 01:01 PM Post #3 |
|
He was drifting, that was what it always felt like in dreams. Drifting and floating and he remembered people talking a whole lot about weird dreams, things like running away from something or a weird little teaparty. Things that made sense in the dream but hardly ever did once someone woke up. Graham? He didn't really...dream, he felt. There was the floating sensation, but he never called it dreaming. It was more like he was lying and waiting for himself to be awake. Before he met Reese, sometimes he dreamed of a man who was sweet and tall and kind and who made him feel whole. Now that he had met him, what little dreams he had were filled with...shapes, he told himself. They were shapes that started to form into things – a giant tree that Graham knew would be hot to touch, a giant bit of darkness that he knew to be an open mouth, a toad that wasn't a toad any longer – sometimes they whispered to him...but mostly he just woke up. He didn't like those dreams, but it seemed like the more he tried to push them away, the more stuff came. He dreamed a lot about water and darkness and that sweet, tall man that he had thought of before Reese was always there. He tried to play the nightmares off, he tried to act like they were nothing, but Reese had continually given him these looks that said he fooled no one. He was just grateful that Reese didn't confront him about it. Needless to say, he vastly preferred the empty dreams, the floating dreams. If he wasn't going to have nice dreams, he'd take nothing. He was content to float – and then he was being sharply shaken awake, Reese's voice piercing him. "<b>Huhwha???</b>" He bolted up, staring around the room groggily and telling himself he would be ready to leap into action. He was saved from being proven utterly wrong by the fact that there was nothing there. The way Reese had sounded, he had thought that either the place was on fire or maybe someone was breaking in or...god, he didn't know, some strangers decided to come in and have a party and Reese didn't know how to get them out of here. Instead he was met with a room that was quiet, peaceful even. Nothing was out of place, nothing seemed off. There was just the soft glow of Reese's computer. <p> With a small groan, he flopped back onto the bed. "<b>Peanut buttercup, I'm <i>tired</i>.</b>" Reese was usually fairly good about letting Graham sleep. He had always likened it to the fact that Reese hadn't been a vampire as long as some of the others out there. The older they got, apparently, the less human they were; they forgot things, which was pretty common with age. Everyone liked to romanticize them, writing brooding novels or screenplays of a vampire who remembered the love of his life from over a hundred years ago but they could remember the color of their eyes, the up turn of their nose, the dimple in a cheek because it was all there before them. The reality was that vampires were still technically human; the human brain couldn't remember things so long term. Hell, most people couldn't remember someone's birthday without writing it down, how would they be expected to remember a long lost love? Vampires were human, but the longer they lived, the less they remembered being human. Graham could understand that, he supposed. They were human but they stopped needing a lot of human things. Sleep, food, sunlight, some big things they stopped needing. Maybe a lot of them were like Reese in that they had kept doing the normal things as long as they could. Then one day, they skipped it, then they skipped it again. Slowly but surely, the natural flow of things was ruined, suddenly they weren't doing any of the stuff they had once done and they forgot that it wasn't normal to not be doing those things. Reese had always been very understanding because he knew what it was to be human. He knew that a human body needed to sleep, even if a vampire one didn't need it (as much; there had been a few times that Reese had "crashed" next to Graham, sleeping the way vampires did that looked dead). It wasn't like him to go waking Graham up mostly because Graham usually tried to match his schedule. He had tried to get as many night classes as he could and he pushed and pushed skipping sleep until he finally had to admit defeat. Sometimes it was by Reese telling him to go to bed, but mostly it was just Graham's body shutting down. <p> But Reese kept pushing and pulling until Graham was finally sat up again, pillow clutched in front of him. "<b>I'm tired,</b>" he said again sulkily, "<b>what's so important that it couldn't wait?</b>" He gave a wide yawn, resisting the urge to burrow his face in his pillow. If he did that, he was going to fall asleep again and this had just proven that whatever Reese had found was important by Reese standards. Which made it important to Graham, too, but he felt like he hadn't been sleeping enough and his body said that sleep was kind of a good thing. Without thinking, he moved closer to Reese, shuffling in so he could settle into the curve of Reese's body. He had always loved that, honestly, being able to fit against him. It was like the two of them were made for each other. IT was one of those things he had entertained once or twice, the idea that they had been crafted from something that was meant to be used together. Reese's height had always been something that Graham had liked. Maybe once upon a time when he was younger, he would have been annoyed, frustrated. He would have reared back and stalked away because that was saying he was <i>short</i>, wasn't it? He wasn't short, even thought the whole wide world seemed hell bent on telling him different. He was a perfectly average size, there were guys out there shorter than him, and he had always been just a little bit spiteful of those that stood over him. Then Reese. It wasn't like Reese was a towering building or anything but he had inches on him; when Graham stepped into his space, he was the perfect height to get a chin on his head. Maybe that was why he had started accepting the difference. He had never really thought in terms of what he could get, what that meant for him. Apparently it meant warm arms wrapped around him and a firm body to be his cushion. <p> Except his cushion wasn't content to be a cushion and he was forced again to try and pay attention. And a part of him was glad he did. The words Reese spoke hit around inside Graham's brain like an empty tennis court; the words were connecting but they didn't necessarily make sense, they didn't seem to fit into what he was trying to understand. They had known each other in a past life, that was what Reese had said. The words felt like they made no sense...but at the same time they made perfect sense. They sounded right, they sounded like something he had known for years all ready. "<b>We....knew each other?</b>" he asked hesitantly. It wasn't right, he knew. Knowing each other in a past life wasn't exactly the same as "knowing each other". What did that mean? He knew he had always felt something of a kinship with Reese. Reese had always been so easy to talk to, like Graham had known everything about him and this was just a reminder. Was it good or bad that they had known each other? Was it going to change anything? |
![]() |
|
| Reese Rhymer | Nov 17 2017, 01:01 PM Post #4 |
![]()
|
A part of Reese wondered if he was being silly. There was no proof, right? It was all circumstantial evidence and they were being taught in their classes to not go off of circumstantial evidence. The problem was that it all felt right and there were so many signs. Little things that had seemed normal on the whole - things like nightmares, being worried when the other was gone, things like phobias about water and fire. Those were things that normal people would experience. The problem was, when he had started doing research on these things, there were so many things that started to add up. When he had found that article it had been like a punch to the stomach. If he had still needed to breathe like a normal human, he probably would have stopped breathing at the feeling that reading that article gave him. It brought about uncomfortable memories of dreams that he'd had, of things he had heard Graham say in his sleep. It had made him feel like he felt whenever he thought about fire. And if what he thought was true was true, this article explained an awful lot about Graham's fear of the dark, his fear of water, and Reese's fear of fire. He felt like it had to be true, but didn't lots of people think those things? Maybe he was being ridiculous. Maybe he was waking Graham up for nothing. The thought ate away at him as he watched Graham struggle back to wakefulness, trying to shed the blankets that he was tangled up in as he reacted as if there was a threat to be battled. Reese supposed that was all his fault. He had just about sounded like someone was breaking into their home rather than waking him up to tell him something important. He watched as Graham just stared at him in dazed sleepiness for a long moment before he gave a groan and flopped back onto the bed. His chest warmed some as Graham used that nickname that he had started calling him almost from day one. "I know, cookie," he said, trying to fight off the guilt that came with Graham's words. The fact of the matter was that Graham was putting an awful lot into trying to match Reese's schedule and it just didn't always work out. Reese could be awake during the day, could even go outside once in awhile, but it wasn't a guaranteed thing. Ever since he had been turned, he had become essentially a night person. The daytime hours drained him and it wasn't guaranteed he could go outside. It was just easier and smarter for him to be more active at night, especially since he got the majority of his energy at night and was more awake then. The problem was that wasn't always feasible for a human being. Sure, Graham changed his sleeping pattern and his schedules, he took night and online classes, he slept during the day... but it wasn't always perfect. Sometimes classes couldn't be scheduled at night. Sometimes things like grocery shopping or doctor's visits or any number of things that only really happened during the day had to be done. Sometimes Graham had to stay up longer hours than he should have in order to do those things. It made his heart hurt a little to know that he was sometimes the instrument of Graham's suffering. That Graham had wanted to shift his schedule to match with Reese's and that Reese couldn't do the same for him. Not without considerable potential risk. Despite the guilt he felt, though, he continued to shake and tug at Graham so that he wouldn't go back to sleep. He knew his lover well enough by now to know that if he left him alone for even a second Graham would be right back asleep. Eventually, his poking and prodding and insistence meant that Graham was sitting up - whining at him, still half asleep, but sitting up and at least paying attention to him somewhat. It was too easy to want to let Graham just snuggle up to his side, let him get comfortable and let him doze again but Reese couldn't do that. Not right now. Not about this because this was about them. "I was doing research and I found something. Something I think is very important." He paused for a moment, wondering if Graham was going to believe him, if he was just putting too much stock into one thing. It was very possible and then he would look like a fool and have woken Graham up for nothing at all. "I'm going to read it out loud to you," he said, because he knew Graham would just complain that he was tired and it was hard to focus. So he scrolled through the article, beginning to read the words aloud. It still made his stomach drop, still made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up, as he read the accounts of a mysterious cult and two young men that had been wrapped up in one another in a village controlled by that cult. When he got to the death of the first man he had to stop for a moment, his mouth feeling tangy, almost acidic, in a reminder of how it felt to be physically ill from his human days. Then he finished the rest of the story, ending in the death of the second. Death by fire. "We... baby, we're reincarnated. We've had a past life, maybe more." He didn't want to get excited, because he felt weird about it all, but a part of him was because this was what he was researching, this was part of what his career would be, and this was proof of something more. He watched Graham carefully, waiting for the laugh, waiting for the other man to ask him if it was a joke. There was nothing, though. Graham was just staring and the way he was staring was the way he stared when he was watching some documentary or some lecture, the stare of a man taking in information and being shocked by it. When he spoke, hesitantly, Reese paused and wondered if he should be totally firm in his conviction or not. He didn't want things to get out of hand but he felt like it was right, like it was fact. "We don't know for sure but... I think we did. I think... I think we were soulmates. Are soulmates." It only made sense to his mind. He had always felt like he was missing something in his life until he had met Graham. There had always been this weird pull when he went to random places, as if something was trying to drag him towards someone else. He had dreams and nightmares about places from the past with someone in those dreams who looked rather a lot like Graham. Coincidental, people could say, but it felt right. It felt like it all added up. "We might have known each other in more than one life even. I'll have to do some research." The words were neutral but his excitement vibrated beneath them. They were reincarnated lovers. They were soulmates. They were meant to be together and that was exciting! It was amazing and it was one more thing to share with the manhe loved. |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Brooklyn · Next Topic » |








8:37 AM Jul 11