Death is Only a Theoretical Concept (10 page)

They’re the
words he’s been so desperately wanting to hear—and the words that
don’t have quite the same meaning ever since Abe found Steve,
slumped on the footpath, struggling to breathe.

“
It
was pretty damn obvious,” Abe says.

Steve grins.
“And the parentals think you’re normal. That’s the best thing
they’ve ever said about one of my dates.”

The very
idea—that a gay vampire who is the possible trigger of serious
anaphylaxis-causing allergies is in any way normal—has Abe leaning
forwards, bursting into laughter. “Normal! If I’m normal...” He
sits up and shakes his head, glancing around at a room that is some
kind of unofficial homage to, or at least a storage space of,
extreme sports equipment. “Well, maybe. This abseiling and rock
climbing. I’ve never done anything like that. I
hate
heights. I’m scared I’ll fall off a horse. As for base jumping? No
fucking way.” He reaches over and picks up one of the metal clips
from the bedside table, something that looks like an oval-shaped
dog clip without the sliding part; he fiddles with a round clasp
that seems to hold the whole thing shut but can’t get it to work.
“I don’t even know what this is or what it does.”

“
It’s a carabiner. You use it to connect a harness to your
ropes, among other things. I haven’t actually been base jumping
yet, although I still want to. And, just for the record, I used to
be fuck scared of heights and open spaces, but therapy can be
effective.” Steve rests his eyes on Abe’s face in an oddly serious
expression before he breaks into a smile. “You’re off work
tomorrow, right—weekend and all? There’s this place a couple of
clicks south-east of Darrensford where there’s an easy, short
cliff-face. It’s great for first-time abseiling. Want to go? I
mean, if you’re that scared you can’t, that’s fine, but if you want
to try it—we can. We’ll get up early so you’re not out at noon or
anything—how photosensitive are you?”

What is it about
Steve that leaves him unable to do anything but stare? And why is
that not such a bad thing?

He shouldn’t,
shouldn’t say yes.

“
You
... you want to go abseiling? Tomorrow? You nearly died last
night...!”

Steve shrugs.
“Okay, so tomorrow you come around and we play Trivial Pursuit.
What about next Saturday?”

He doesn’t have
anything planned for Saturday. Abe seldom does, besides sitting at
the bar at Feeders and striking out with the tourists. There’s no
reason in the world not to go, when viewed rationally. It’s not as
though there is any risk of fatal injury to Abe; hell, he’d
probably hurt himself worse in the run down the street last night
than he would while carefully, secured with ropes and harnesses,
scaling a cliff-face. He’s not so photosensitive that he can’t go
out in daylight, as long as he brings enough blood to heal the
sunburn. The only thing holding him back is fear, of course: fear
of heights, fear of injury, fear of getting close to Steve, fear of
hurting Steve, fear of the monstrous, blood-lustful side Abe would
rather keep buried.

How can he be
around Steve and not hurt him?

He must have
paused for far too long, because Steve shakes his head and hits Abe
with his sharp, piercing, lively brown eyes. “You amaze me.” The
oddest thing about the statement is that his words are completely
devoid of sarcasm. “I’m gasping like a fish on the footpath—I don’t
know what the fuck is happening, seriously. But you know what to
do, you know what to tell the person that answers an emergency call
even though it’s fucking Aggie Skipton—and if I hadn’t been gasping
I’d have been laughing so fucking hard, man—you even know enough to
look at my symptoms and make a few accurate guesses on what’s going
on. You and Johanna helped me, and that’s huge, and you didn’t bat
an eyelid throughout any of it—well, much. Something small like
backwards-walking down a cliff face? How can you not believe that
you can do anything?”

Abe wonders if
he’s ever heard anyone say anything quite like those
words.

He’s scared of
climbing cliffs, true, but he doesn’t want to see the
disappointment in Steve’s eyes when Abe confesses the real reason
for his hesitation.

He just has to
not kiss Steve. He can do that, surely?

“
I
... um.” He would have blushed, if he could. “How does she even
work there? Anyway, I just watch a lot of, well, real life medical
TV. Like
What’s Good For You
.
RPA
. I don’t know what
it is, that stuff just became interesting, after I
died.”

Steve sits up,
and Abe gets to watch the transition from a bright, startled smirk
to shoulder-shaking laughter. He laughs, even his hair shaking with
the force of it, but Abe doesn’t feel like he’s being mocked, and
that too feels strange, so that even while it takes a long time for
Steve to stop laughing, he doesn’t mind: he just gives Steve a
tenuous grin.

“
They sometimes show the ‘what you should do in said
emergency’ bits. Aren’t you glad I have this addiction to bad
TV?”

Of course, if
Abe had warned him, none of this would even matter…

“
Sorry.” Steve gasps and bites down on his lower lip as if he
can stop laughing through sheer force of will. “It’s just ... Mike
Johnson, my neighbour? He’s a zombie, and he and his missus are
fascinated by shows featuring children. Don’t get me wrong, not in
any sick way, but just in an ‘Oh, they’re so young and alive, isn’t
that beautiful?’ sort of way.” He smirks and slumps back against
his pillow. “They’re awesome babysitters, once the kids get used to
Mike doing weird-arse tricks with his dismembered arm. But now I’m
wondering if I’m going to be stuck watching
ACA
or something
after I’m dead ... oh, I fucking
hope
not. I’d rather
someone dismember and burn me.” He swallows and hits Abe with a
stare of his own. “But yes, mate, I’m grateful!”

Just how is he
so cool with everything? He should have been scared, but every time
Abe turns around Steve seems to be reacting in ways that are
opposite to what any sane person should expect. He should have been
the vampire: Steve would have done something with it, something
wild and crazy. Base jumping. Climbing to the caldera of an active
volcano. Parachuting from space. Abe just goes to work, sits at
home, watches TV, works his way through the Western literary canon,
looks after his cat and, sometimes, tries to find a
boyfriend—meanwhile Steve has no guarantee he will ever get those
extended years in which to live without fearing death, has a body
he can and does injure, and goes about dating trapeze artists and
climbing cliff faces.

Can he just be
Steve’s friend, despite the pain that might bring?

Or will he be
another Great-Aunty Lizzie, sitting back at home and doing nothing
but control her family, so afraid of the world he invents lists and
rules to keep from being hurt by it—something, quite clearly, Steve
would never do?

What would it be
like to be around him?

What would it
like to be a breather who lives?

“
All
right,” Abe says with a nod, even as he thinks he can almost hear
Great-Aunty Lizzie shrieking, even as he can almost see himself
lean over and drive his fangs into Steve’s tracksuit-clad thigh.
“I’ll go. Uh. Trivial Pursuit? That’s ... I mean, it’s not very ...
um.” He swallows, trying to thrust the image out of his head. No.
He is not a monster. He is never going to kiss Steve again; he is
just going to be Steve’s friend. “I thought video games or
something?”

Steve breaks
into yet another smirking, adorable grin, but he doesn’t seem too
offended. “
Eigo wa nan desu ka
? I hide my hentai collection
and my Hello Kitty sex-bot in my wardrobe if you think Trivial
Pursuit isn’t Japanese enough.”

Abe looked down
at the floor and regrets the fact that he can no longer wish
himself dead.

He doesn’t
mention that he doesn’t have a clue what “hentai” means.

“
Our
game board is from the seventies or something like that,” Steve
says, bypassing the awkwardness, “which means no one knows the
answers about sports stars, films ... well, anything but geography,
really. It’ll skullfuck you. If you provide the blood, I’ll provide
the popcorn, and we can spend the afternoon learning what it feels
like to know fuck all about anything, and dropping crazy,
outrageous hints to try and get someone to answer a question. It’s
a fucking riot.”

Oddly enough,
that sounds like a great deal of fun. “Can I bring
Cluedo?”

“
Abe
Browning, in the gay club, with his fangs?”

He forces a
smile. “Exactly.”

Steve’s
near-constant grin is warm and broad and like nothing else Abe has
seen directed at him for a long time. Not before his death and
rebirth. Not before cancer. Not before the life he thought he’d
have fell out of his fingers and spun out of control—but Steve
might know something of how to live that life and how to thrive in
it. Steve, it seems, doesn’t feel any need at all to control
anything. “I won’t let you fall down a cliff face, Abe.
Promise.”

“
I
can’t promise the same,” Abe says. It would be easier to run.
Easier.

Steve raises one
eyebrow, but the smile doesn’t leave his face. “It seems to me,
man, like you already did.”

Abe grips
Steve’s hand in return and prays to something that this, abseiling
and allergies and the most interesting not-straight man in Port
Carmila all works out—somehow.

Whatever he
does, whatever happens, he has to make sure that Abe’s company
never again leads to Steve’s death.

6: Friendship

“
So,
what happened? Was it ugly?” Next-door-Greg leans over the fence,
clad in a pair of cut-offs, a faded cap over his curling hair and a
singlet, watching as Steve secures his gear, plus a picnic cooler,
in the tray of his Toyota ute.

Morning brought
a gorgeous, mild summer’s day, slightly overcast, one just perfect
for heading out to the middle of nowhere and their first attempt at
rock climbing. Driving out with Abe, at the very least, gives him
something to listen to other than talkback radio, and if he looks
forward to it more than he should admit given the problems involved
in dating a vampire ... well. Is it really something he has to
worry about, yet? What will happen will happen, and they’ll find a
way to make it work. Kissing isn’t a relationship prerequisite. In
the meantime, why can’t he just enjoy the thought of Abe—who, last
week, surprised himself but not Steve when he managed to survive
abseiling down the baby slope—climbing up a cliff?

“
Swelled up this big.” Steve gestures with his fingers; Greg,
who at least is an educated audience, winces. “In a way, it was
kind of funny. All the usual things—pollen, food allergens,
insects, whatever—did absolutely nothing. Which is good: I’d really
hate to stop eating processed food because everything contains
nuts. Vampire venom? Yep. And zombie saliva. There’s some kind of
protein or something the undead develop.” Steve shrugs, tugs the
last rope tight, braces his arms over the back of the tray. It’s
not exactly a surprise—more like the welcome-and-unwelcome
confirmation of something everyone suspected—but it’s a relief to
know that his anaphylaxis has a cause, which means he can now,
theoretically, try and avoid kissing vampires or being bitten by
zombies. “Apparently it’s not uncommon, but most breathers still
don’t kiss vampires, either. So it’s not like they have a huge
amount of data on the subject.”

Feral zombies,
of course, don’t do the courteous thing and avoid nibbling on the
allergic. Both his immunologist and his GP like the idea of
desensitisation, and so does Steve, but he hopes they can work
something out that doesn’t involve his driving up to the city every
week. He doesn’t think it that big a deal, though—truly, what’s the
difference between bleeding to death and gasping to death from a
zombie bite? So he packs a little extra heat and makes sure that
everybody understands the action plan. He rolls his eyes when Abe
insists on photocopying the action plan. He tells Johanna and Izzy
that Izzy shouldn’t spit on him. Johanna kisses Izzy and chases
Steve around her flat pretending to kiss him. Life goes
on.

Not so long ago
he’d have been glad of the most perfect excuse to turn his back on
Port Carmila for good. Sydney has to be safer for a man allergic to
the undead, right?

It would sound
like a story to say that Abe changed everything, and in fact that’s
not even true. Adam Swanston changed everything. Pathetic,
ridiculous Adam Swanston, a boy so fucking afraid of his own
sexuality that he spent a year harassing Steve just because he’s
comfortable with hair gel, but a man who nevertheless manages to
live as an out gay man in a tourist town and survive what everyone
knows and thinks, changed everything. If he can do that, if Johanna
and Izzy can do that, then Steve can live here as his
whatever-sexual virus-carrier anaphylactic self. Besides, Abe isn’t
going to be happy in Sydney, and all his friends are here. Crazy,
absurd, amazing friends who scheme and pull handguns on vampires
and try their hardest to keep him alive. Friends who give him hell
over his hair but don’t waste a second on the things that
matter.