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Abe—senseless?
    “ I
don’t think there’s that much difference, really.” Steve shrugs and
angles his head up at Abe. “Most things a girl likes, I reckon, a
guy is probably going to like well enough, at least to start with.
Skin’s skin.”
    It seems, to
Abe, to be a sure sign of the cruelty of the universe that this man
is apparently heterosexual, for all that he doesn’t sound it. What
is Abe supposed to do, then? Does he lean in and touch Steve? Is
that too much for him? How is Abe to know when Steve refuses to act
like any ordinary straight man? What is Abe supposed to do other
than sit there and desperately want someone he can’t
have?
    Steve doesn’t
wait for an answer. He leans up and in, sliding his other hand
around the back of Abe’s neck, guiding his head just a little until
their lips meet in a soft, slightly-chaste kiss.
    He can feel,
even not quite touching him, the blood pulsing through Steve’s neck
and throat, and just the thought is so heady and even frightening
Abe pulls his head back, afraid he’ll too-easily grab Steve, haul
him onto his lap and never let him go. Steve lets him move, but
leaves his hand on Abe’s thigh, and Abe wonders if there is
anything in the world ever so good as kissing somebody living and
breathing and warm. No, there can’t be. Can’t be. “I … I thought I
… how do you, I mean…”
    Steve runs the
very tip of his tongue over his lips. If the chill of Abe’s skin
bothers him, it doesn’t seem to show, although gestures that leave
Abe wondering just what Steve would look like on his knees with
that hot tongue running over Abe’s cock have to be illegal.
Or, at the very least, unfair. He’s straight. Steve is straight. He
and Abe are kissing for the sake of the two fishermen in the corner
by the steps and no other reason. Steve isn’t attracted to Abe even
if Abe is half jumping out of his own skin.
    “ No
offense, Abe, but I think I know a little bit more about seduction
than you do.”
    He would have
said none taken , but Steve’s lips brush against his own and
somehow Abe finds himself with one hand resting on top of Steve’s,
kissing him back as if devouring him is a distinct possibility,
only keeping the distance between them through sheer force of will.
For a moment, as he lets his tongue trail over Steve’s and glories
in the now-strange warmth of his mouth, he wonders what Steve might
taste like, before and after sex. Will he mind if Abe makes a
little cut and sips that warm, salty blood? No biting, no fangs,
none of the horrible wounds made by the human-shaped mouth that in
no way resemble the puncture marks in stories: biting is for the
release of venom that turns a breather into a fellow walking,
blood-devouring corpse. Not that. Just a sip from a cut, a taste of
blood not tainted by plastic and anticoagulants and a day or two in
the fridge. A taste of blood cut with serotonin, dopamine and
oxytocin, the difference between the water one gulps to stay
hydrated and the fine wine one tastes of an evening.
    Will he mind
that kind of sex?
    “ The
fuck?” Steve jerks back onto his chair, his eyes wide, his tongue
running over his lips. “Abe, what was that?”
    Shit. Shit,
shit, shit! What the hell made Abe think it is okay to kiss a
straight breather guy like that? Steve isn’t a leech who knows what
he’s getting into! “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—I
forgot. I’ll stop. Steve, I’m so sorry. I won’t do that again.
I—”
    “ Abe? Chill, right?” Steve grins and jerks his elbow in the
direction of his friends by the door, both of whom have jaws
hanging wide enough to catch a swarm of flies. Whatever saw them to
dare Steve to fuck a gay vampire, they don’t seem to have expected
Steve to go about the kissing with quite that much enthusiasm. The
white blond rolls his eyes and slips the other a twenty-dollar
note; the black man in the flanno shirt grins and tucks it in his
pocket. “We’re cool on that. I don’t