"I wonder if it's you," he said, "I wonder if it's you who is going to ruin me and everything I have; you only, who have come to me now when I am more vulnerable to you than would have been possible in my youth. You have wasted yours, and now you become my leech, sucking my blood and growing fat off my body, my life. You have no life of your own."

"I only seek you where I must."

"But you must always. I do not know how it is that you cannot see it, Julian."

Julian turned down his face, lowering his chin in thought. Yaksha, feeling sorry, clasped his hands together in front of himself, face lowered as well.

"It was for my own protection," Yaksha whispered, "To be alone. I was never lonesome until now," his brow knitted, "You cannot know how long I have not been lonesome."

Julian also could not know that this was the closest Yaksha would ever come to saying that he was falling in love, or in like, or something else foreign. It wasn't a feeling like love, it was abiding. "I am becoming used to you," he could have said.

It was not something Julian would have sought in the beginning, but being a leech was in his nature, and he didn't really know Yaksha as well as he thought. He had no idea that Yaksha was not Yaksha's name, for example.

"Anyway my hands smell funny," said Yaksha, dolefully, "Let's go home."

"Okay."

"Okay he says. Like he doesn't know how to say 'Thank you'."
+++

It's kind of a jump to accept that you're becoming something you don't even believe in, and Julian made that jump many millennia after Yaksha had done it, and become a lot more quiet because of that. Julian hadn't really even wanted to live for the 23 years he had done so, much less be half alive forever, which is how he saw the process. Creativity that had helped him wile away the hours as a child now aided him in trying to kill himself off as something only approaching human.

Yaksha, however, used to Julian's presence, and getting more used to him all the time (because, unlike the one other person who had threatened his independence before, Julian refused to leave even when asked, even when threatened) was not of a mood to allow Julian to snuff himself.

Julian sat in the one room apartment, familiar now, but in a different way than when he had been Yaksha’s full time stalker. There is no pretty word for stalking, and Julian hadn’t started following Yaksha for any pretty reason. He had been afraid, shy, but mainly, being obsessive was a large part of his character. Always it had been. He had followed Yaksha for a day, the old, fine tempered eccentric immortal with a taste for duck blood and slender ear lobes, and then had followed him the next day and the next day and the next day.

Yaksha, of course, could not ignore that kind of behavior, because Yaksha, in his the longest of lives, had only ever even been friends with one other immortal. However, since Julian had not been causing him any disturbance for the most part, in the beginning he had dismissed the stalking as a harmless obsession and had kept on with his normal life. Then the staring had begun.

It did not annoy him but certainly it had been queer. He would turn around on the train and Julian would be there, three seats behind, all green eyes and no expression. It had raised uncomfortable questions concerning what the kid wanted.

Yaksha had been quite happy, alone and swinging around by himself like that, and then this constant companion had arrived. And then, a year or so into it, Yaksha, frustrated with the whole thing, had gestured to Julian to get into his car, to get into the passenger seat, and Julian had done it, dripping water onto the carpet.

They did not speak, but Julian stopped the staring behavior when he found a bed for himself in Yaksha’s house. The talking to each other had begun slowly, and mostly without urgency, but now it was past time for Julian to go, and he wouldn’t, and Yaksha sensed the danger to himself of that. You don’t live for longer than a lot the Western world believes the Creation has been around without knowing exactly how you are doing it. Yaksha’s secret was that he never really had to consider things, especially when it came to other people, and he certainly had never loved anybody.

These were things particular to him. There are plenty of immortals who get pretty old by loving everybody, but Yaksha knew it about himself that that road was a dangerous one. You lose too much when the s**t comes down that way, and it eventually does, especially when it has all the time in the known universe to do so. There’s no deadline for things like s**t coming down when you can’t really die.
+++

“My mother had some kind of plague. Yes she did. It made her very jaundiced and sick all the time. Her skin was loose, and when she hugged you there was this particular smell. My father used to ride out and fight whoever we were fighting. I wanted to be like that.”

Julian nodded.

“Now get out of my house.”

“Never. Tell me more about your family.”

“I became more like my father, but I never loved my mother. She disgusted me. I was powerful in my own circle, and it did not go unnoticed, and when I was an old man a witch killed me and that is the end of the story.”

“Was she really a witch?”

“No obviously she was a bloodsucker like you or me. Make me some tea.”

“Make it yourself.”

“I told you a good goddamned story now make me some tea.”

“I’m not your servant.”
+++

The phone rang halfway around the world and a monster picked up in San Francisco.

“What.”

Yaksha stared at the receiver and then put it back to his ear, “Do you always answer the phone like that?”

“What? No. It’s the middle of the night, Yaksha,” said the voice sleepily.

“I have to see you.”

“Your advance is unacceptable. I am not available.”

But Yaksha’s friend came two days later anyway.
+++

He looked the same really, and Julian was neither pleased nor displeased that Yaksha let Leechtin into bed. He only really cared to hear what they were saying, and he couldn’t.

Julian had thought that Leechtin looked the same because he had seen Leechtin twenty years previous, and Leechtin was still an immortal of advanced age who operated in the polar opposite way than Yaksha did; Julian had lived in Leechtin’s house for awhile. Many of Leechtin’s descenders lived that way for more than awhile. He made the mistake however of thinking that Yaksha and Leechtin were related by blood and the assumption was false.

Yaksha, of course, knew that even though a person looks the same it doesn’t mean they are. Leechtin to Yaksha was always supposed to look younger, more sure of himself, less tired. Leechtin thought Yaksha looked the same, because mostly he was. Yaksha hadn’t really changed at all for 6000 years, and Leechtin had known him 1000 years into that.

They stared at each other over folded arms. The warm round table had been a friend to Yaksha for decades, and he leaned on it, resting his cheek on his left arm. Leechtin mimicked him. Their black hair gleamed in the low light, the streaks of gold catching glimmers in the older vampire’s. It was not always black, often Yaksha’s hair was gray, but it was always hung in a long braid down his back.

Nery and Faya had never really had to talk much to understand each other. They had come to know each other in a time when both had still been known by their real names, and though Leechtin had become altogether different from the Faya Yaksha had known, they remained friends. Leechtin as he was no longer posed a danger to Yaksha’s autonomy, but it hadn’t always been that way. There had been a time when Faya was asked to leave, and he did, and it did not break Yaksha’s heart. Faya had known that it was time to move on.

But now Yaksha’s friend had so many things to pay attention to; a large family, a lover, a house, mortal enemies, pets. Maybe it helped Leechtin to keep his mind off things to have it on so many others, but Yaksha wondered what it was like when Leechtin was alone, and he felt the hurt in his friend, because Leechtin had been doing a lot of losing.

“I’m sorry. I heard about your son.”

Leechtin sniffed and turned his face down into his arms, hiding his eyes.

“You hide your face from me.”

“Where is your pet?”

“My pet? Where are your pets? I don’t have any pets.”

“I saw your pet,” said Leechtin, “he appears to be a lovely dog.”

“Oh. Julian. He’s not my dog.”
+++

It had become a normal, mundane life over time, being immortal. They floated under willows, on the long boat, on the shallow canal. Yaksha’s arms were behind his head. Julian, sleepy, feeling bland, dragged a hand behind the boat lazily, watching the V that it made as they went along.

“It’s like a bad romance story. At the end I fall in love with you,” said Yaksha.

“I bet you don’t. Maybe I kill myself at the end.”

“That would be the easy solution. It’s too episodic.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Julian, thinking about poets who fall into lakes and die trying to embrace the moon, trailing just one finger now.

“You die, everything goes back to normal, onto the next episode. It’s too simple. It is predictable.”

“Where’s Leechtin?”

“Back at the flat.”

“Alright.”