AN: This has long been in the works, and I'm just now finishing it! :o The chapter, that is! It was getting kinda long without climax, so I ended it on a point I thought was acceptable. But I did manage...around 6,000 words with this one! Thank you to those who review my story! If you know me, you know it's like the only thing that keeps me going! ;)

Happy reading!

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"I wonder what he meant by a plan..." Ethan mumbled to himself, and stirred his coffee around in his cup by swirling it in a circle. His head spun a bit from the champagne he drank earlier, but other than that, he felt fine. Mostly, he was worried about the computer he'd abandoned not long after Jesse had logged him onto his social media account.

What was wrong with him? Was Jesse testing him? He didn't know about his parents, but...if he hadn't taken extra precautions in order for his activity to not be traced, then...then Benny, or even Rory could've easily hacked whatever person or server he needed to and followed it back to him. Thank god he didn't actually send anything.

"I hate vampires..." Ethan grumbled, and sat back in his seat on the uncomfortable bench he was sat at. Night had fallen about fifteen minutes ago, but Ethan wasn't afraid or anything...in a worse case scenario, Ethan was sure he could either outrun or pay off anyone who tried to attack him.

Easy? Only mildly frightening? Yes.

Manly? Heroic or admirable in any way? No.

Grimacing at the current direction his thoughts were heading in, Ethan cursed himself for being so helpless. He was well aware of exactly how un-masculine and geeky he was. He had no muscles to speak of, and could hardly lift a stack of hefty textbooks when he had to. Literally all he had was his brains, and although that alone could get him places...it felt so useless. It unsettled him. He'd never been at such a loss in his life than he had been the last few months.

Pathetic.

He stared down at the notepad he'd been fiddling with ever since that morning. He'd never once in his nearly sixteen years of life thought that he'd be writing a letter such as this one...and in reality, he'd never completed a complete thought during his previous attempts. It was like there was some kind of mind block in his brain, preventing him from truly saying goodbye to his old life. It made his chest hurt horribly, and turned his usually sharp brain to panicked mush.

'Mom and Dad...' He'd began writing, and hesitated. His hand tripped over the page and made little skid marks from the near violent trembling of his fingers. Shakily, his hand passed over the paper, sliding it away and beginning two other names on two separate pieces of yellow paper.

'Jane...little sister...'

'Benny...'

He felt as though he should be writing these letters in something like fancy parchment or at the very least, some kind of bordered, nicely designed paper. Or in Benny's case, maybe green-lantern green...Ethan smiled at that thought. But the fact of the matter was, you just didn't do it like that when you were kidnapped. Still...it felt awful to be writing these words on ugly, yellow notepad paper.

Placing a rough hand over his mouth, and squeezing his eyes shut tightly, he didn't know whether he wanted to sob or throw up. He'd promised himself he wouldn't cry anymore! No more crying. Crying wasn't going to get him out of this screwed up situation. Only doing something would...no more mourning without taking action. This would be the last time.

Staring at the pages in front of him, he crumpled them up and threw them in a nearby waste basket before setting off in some random direction. He'd already lost track of the little cafe Jesse had followed him into. Right then, he just wanted to get lost.

And, well, he succeeded pretty admirably for how little effort he put into it.

Ethan walked around the block again, looking for some kind of taxi or transit. He was sure he'd long stumbled upon a part of town where there were no hotels- only seedy pubs and convenience stores with dusty merchandise. Even those were few and far between...mostly, it seemed to be old apartment buildings and closed businesses.

Ethan's minimal French had gotten him by so far, but it had been hours since he'd last seen Jesse, and he was tired. Every time he went around a corner, it seemed that a taxi had just been there. Sighing, Ethan rounded another crumbling corner, and froze when he saw a group of people up ahead.

There were at least five of them, and as far as Ethan could tell, they were all male. As he watched, backing away slowly, one of them threw a glass bottle at a wall, which shattered to the sidewalk.

Yep.

Nope.

Hurrying the other way, Ethan decided to just pick a direction away from that group and speed walk that way ntil he either reached a hotel, or somewhere he could safely catch his breath. No, he would not be a helpless victim tonight. Not to nameless street thugs, in any case. It was bad enough that he was already technically kidnapped, he didn't need to be getting into any more trouble.

Why had he ventured so far away from the nice part of town?

Oh yeah...to get away from his crazy vampire kidnapper, if only for a moment. He just wished he'd had gone in another direction- any other direction.

Stumbling slightly on a rough patch of concrete, Ethan decided to turn around and edge over to the corner he'd just rounded...surely, he must have put some distance between himself and the group of drunk men. Ethan carefully peeked around the brick wall, ready to run if need be...and to his relief, he found that the group of men were no where to be found.

Ethan let out a sigh and turned back to the route he was walking, seeing some light frantic in the distance. It was around ten thirty, and the seer hadn't the slightest clue why his idiot mind hadn't reminded him to take off earlier. At this point, he just wanted to head back to the cafe he'd hid out in all day. But that was blocks and blocks behind him now...or, in front of him? The town (which, really was more of a city) was actually quite large.

Deciding to rest at a corner, Ethan slumped against a wall and looked across the street to where he could see his reflection in a big glass window, showcasing bare mannequins. He grimaced. If that wasn't the creepiest thing in France, then he didn't know what was.

Looking either way down the well-trodden sidewalks, he debated whether to find some bench and wait it out until daylight (a matter of about five or six hours) or try and hike to a better lit part of town and find a hotel. His mind was telling him to choose the latter, or he'd be sorry but his legs had gotten tired of walking a long time ago. He was really out of shape.

"Ugh." Ethan groaned, and slumped into a more comfortable position, adjusting his backpack so that nothing painful dug into him from behind. Then, he gazed up at the stars and after some time...his eyes, the pride and power of his seer status, slowly drifted closed.

'I remember stargazing with Benny not too long ago,' the seer thought wistfully, and opened his eyes once more to gaze at the Cassiopeian constellation. 'I wonder what time it is in Whitechapel...however much I love my parents and Jane, I find that most things, especially things I like, remind me more of Benny...'.

Longingly, Ethan raised a hand as though to stroke the stars with his fingertips. For a second, he was glad he was in a part of town where there were hardly any lights. He could see the stars so well.

"I promise."Ethan whispered, closing his fist gently, and then tightly as though to hold on to the promise for all he was worth. "I promise...one day I'll make it back to you guys. And whenever I get the chance to look up at the stars...I'll remind myself that one day, I'm coming home."

As though glistening with the tears of his family, and shining with the brightness of Benny's smile, the stars looked to be in absolute agreement. Then, Ethan let his eyes slipped closed, for once not caring what came next.

When he came to, with his chin against his chest...he was vaguely aware of a tingling in the back of his mind. It was something he hadn't felt in well over two weeks, since he'd last done his seer training with the rude groundskeeper and his mentor, Luc.

It felt like someone was staring at him.

Opening his eyes, ad glancing upward, he was relieved to not see anyone within his immediate line of sight. Sighing in relief, he rubbed his eyes and noted that it was even darker than before. How long had he been asleep?

He had been about to glance up and check the position of the constellations to guess at a time, when his eye caught something in the glass window across the street. The mannequins...were there more of them than before? Ever so slowly, his first sight adjusted to the darkness, and he could see himself sitting on the cold pavement. And on either side of him...

Those...weren't mannequins.

"Hah!" Ethan propelled himself forward and into the street, only slightly registering the sudden sting and warmth on his knee as he speed-crawled to the road and stood up. Spinning around and nearly giving himself vertigo, he was met with the sight of several dark, hooded figures.

Five men, varying from thin to stocky; creepy, to mildly attractive. Needless to say...these must have been the men Ethan had been eyeing wearily earlier.

"Oh...hey guys." Ethan chuckled awkwardly and more than a little freakin' scared. Then he realized he was speaking English, and quickly changed his dialect to his rough understanding of French. "Lovely n-night, isn't it?"

"I can understand you just fine, punk." One of the men chuckled, eyeing Ethan maliciously. "Just my luck to run into another foreigner. How's it going?"

"Uh...fine." Ethan laughed, trying not to sound nervous, switching from English to French with relative ease. "I was just..."

"Falling asleep in the streets." A deep voice droned out on French. "Especially at this hour, can be very dangerous. You're lucky we found you before someone else did."

"Jailbait." One of the other men muttered and then laughed. A couple others, including the British man, joined in. Ethan quickly deduced that only one of them must have been a foreigner, like himself. Or, if they weren't they hadn't spoken up yet, and they all seemed to understand him.

"Look, I was just...relaxing." Ethan winced at his own terrible lie. It sounded worse somehow, in another language. "On the way to my aunt's house. Thanks for waking me up, you're right...it is dangerous."

"So how about we walk you back?" One of the men offered, and then grinned as a couple of his friends chuckled lowly. He raised an arm in a direction down the street. "I'm sure it won't take long."

"Actually I was headed the other way." Ethan began to slide his foot backward and to the side, getting ready to make a run for it. He tried to make sure his feet, cloaked in heavy shadow, didn't make any noise on the pebble-covered street.

"Are you sure?" The British man said in English. "I think we could take you wherever we want, mate. Why don't you just come along?"

"Hey! There's my aunt now!" Ethan exclaimed excitedly, and waved as he seen something, probably headlights, flash around the corner, and all five men turned to look. At the same time, Ethan turned and booked it down the street, as quickly as his sneakers could carry him.

"Hey!"

"Get back here!"

"We're not done with you, fairy boy!"

Ethan balked internally at the name calling, and rushed onto the next street, not pausing for anything he might have seen, in terms of lights in apartments. Who knew what those people would be like? Or if they'd even open their doors if they heard him knock. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep on the cold sidewalk, but he was already sniffling like he had a cold, and that wasn't making it any easier to run.

He'd been on the track team about four years ago, for a semester, but nothing could've prepared him for the fear and adrenaline, which should have been pushing him forward more than it was. It felt like he was running in slow motion.

Turning a corner, he wanted to confuse the group of men, and ran all the way across the street, past parked cars, hoping that none of the men seen his detour. Rushing down an alley, Ethan just kept running...until at the end of one horribly narrow alley, he finally ran out of space to run.

"Why?!" Ethan slammed his hands against the brick wall, groaning and panting in frustration. "I thought dead ends were only in movies!"

He thought he could hear the distant sounds of low voices, and instinctively in the dark alley felt a familiar tingling rush up through his optical nerves. In moments, he could see that the men would split up...it was very likely that one would come looking this way.

He had only a moment to spring into action.

"Damn it...all!" Ethan grated as he placed a hand and foot respectively on either side of the alley, on the rough brick walls. Slowly, he propelled himself up, in between the two buildings. Legs holding strong for now, he went up and up until he heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

Holding perfectly still, he waited until the searching man had gone all the way down the alley, cursing all the while. When the man finally retreated, Ethan's legs had begun to shake a bit. Cursing himself now, Ethan began to descend, until he slipped a little and had a close call- involving a rough hit to his head from a burned-out light on the side of one building.

"I'm too physically unfit for this." Ethan grunted, and, looking up, saw an old and rusted fire escape. He managed to cling to the creaky bars and hoist himself up, to collapse against the criss-crossed barring with a shaky breath. He could only pray that the escape could hold his weight for an extended period of time, because as it looked now, he wasn't going anywhere for a while.

Still gasping, Ethan lied down on the creaky bars and stared at the opposite wall, a mere five feet away. Relieved that he was out of trouble for now, and that he likely wouldn't be bothered by street thugs again, he allowed his eyes to close for a second time that night.

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There was some kind of soft noise coming from his far left, the seer noted sleepily. He snuggled further into the pillow beneath his head, letting out a relaxed breath. In the back of his mind, he could hear something being uttered lowly, but chose not to focus on it, instead listening with an open mind but sparsely little concentration.

"...when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it..."

"Hnn..." Ethan hummed, turning over a bit and letting his face rest against something warm. Not minding in the least, and internally pleased at the lightly droning voice, Ethan listened as there came a small pause- and then it continued softly.

"-and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you..."

France. That's where he was, wasn't he? Somewhere, on some French countryside, with his supernatural captors. The thought should've brought dread and anger with it (and it did, to some extent) but with it came also a sense of familiarity. It wasn't as though the mansion was terrible. In all its glory, it probably held more knowledge and mystery than anything Ethan had been exposed to previously.

"-weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother, who is dead..."

Listening, now in a very conscious but dreamy state, Ethan felt a deep sadness well up inside him as his tired mind began remembering just as he was coming to wakefulness. At the same time, that voice spoke to his soul, soothing his mind and lulling him into a strange sense of comfort. His mother wasn't dead...she was alive, halfway across the world. Ethan may never see her again.

"-you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for never having for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it...weep for it!"

"I...can't." Ethan murmured, opening his eyes finally, slowly and being greeted with the sight of a fluffy white pillow. Mind clearing of the fog that came with sleep, he spotted as well a navy blue button-up, tucked under a simple silver belt buckle.

"...don't worry about it." A hand was on his head suddenly, and Ethan's face pinched in distaste. Not because of the unwanted contact, but because...it was slowly but surely becoming...not entirely unwanted. "It's just a story."

Sitting up a little, Ethan found himself to be only half lying on a pillow. Actually, the crown of his head and cheek had been flush against Jesse's neck, warm despite its lack of natural body heat.

"You're awake." Jesse commented, and Ethan heard the sound of a page being turned, or perhaps marked, before he heard it being softly set down on a bedside table.

"...yeah..." What else was there to say?

Pulling up the comforter draped over his lower half, Ethan pulled his legs up lightly and stared at the swirling blue fabric, not over thinking, but instead...simply being. Strangely his mind was pretty blank. He didn't even know what was happening until the hand that had been stroking his hair and neck moved away, and he could feel Jesse sitting up.

"You slept all night and halfway through the afternoon." Jesse murmured, sounding amused. "A shame too, it's beautiful outside. We could've went for a walk."

"..." Ethan remained in his position on the bed, not saying anything and hardly processing any of Jesse's words either. Contrast to how intently he'd been listening to the soothing tones of the dark vampire's voice just moments earlier, he now found himself feeling a bit numb.

That, and he was desperately trying to push back...certain feelings. It wasn't as though he actually, logically wanted Jesse to remain on the bed with him, if only for a moment longer.

"Hungry?"

A trick question? Ethan couldn't help but give the tiniest huff of equal amusement and bitterness. Every morning he had been in Jesse's company, the vampire had asked him the same question, and each time Ethan had answered with a negative, never asking for anything. It had been as though, by asking for it, it would've meant that Ethan had accepted his situation, in some way. It wasn't like it had mattered- Jesse had always had food brought to him anyway.

From the beginning, hi mind and heart had always told him, 'No' and 'Fight' and 'Reject him!'. Those same voices were now quiet, and Ethan thought numbly of what his intentions had been when he'd ran away from the castle- and thought of how splendidly that had turned out.

Bottom line...he'd promised himself that running away for a brief time would be his last act of rebellion. He'd do whatever it took after this, to complete whatever Jesse expected of him, so that one day, maybe he would be free again. So, with that in mind, did it really make any sense to lie anymore?

"Ethan?" Jesse asked suddenly, and before he could take any steps nearer to where he sat on the bed, Ethan uttered a single word softly, aware of any implications behind it.

"...Yeah..."

Jesse wasn't stupid in the least. Perhaps the vampire would recognize an olive branch when it was held out. Ethan jumped when a hand suddenly slid into his own, and he allowed himself to be tugged up and off the sizeable bed gently, onto slightly stiff legs.

Curious onyx eyes gazed at him curiously, and then the taller male gave him a smirk that had Ethan bristling like a worn paintbrush on reflex. The older (much older) male then flicked the seer's nose before giving him a light push in the direction of a grand door.

"Go stretch out and get washed up. We're making breakfast."

"Breakfast at...two in the afternoon?" Ethan scowled irritably, rubbing his nose and glancing at a big clock on a far wall. The hotel room they were in (assuming that's what it was) was huge, and posh with its fancy decor and excessive utilities. "Can't we just go out and hit up a Starbucks or something?"

"Geek, please." Jesse sighed, remaking the king-sized bed in a few quick movements, and Ethan marveled reluctantly at the grace in which the actions were performed. "You know what they say, 'When in Rome' though technically it's Caen." That must've been the city they were in. "Besides, learning to work well together is a necessary step in the progression of our professional relationship."

"Oh, save it." Ethan grumped, grabbing a fluffy towel off a rack just outside of the bathroom doors. He grabbed some shampoo as well, and a bar of soap. While he was in there, he may as well get thoroughly washed up. He felt like hell, and probably looked worse. "Professional relationship, my left foot. I don't feel like cooking.

"Actually, it's more personal, if I'm being honest. Selfish, in fact." Jesse spoke from across the room where he'd been fixing the bed, but his next words were breathe onto the side of Ethan's neck, making him go rigid.

"I plan on thoroughly culturing you, my little prince." Ethan flushed down to the roots of his hair at the whispered nickname, and despite his best efforts, shivered as the next words washed against his ears and tingled down to his fingertips.

"In all areas."

"Hhgh..." Ethan made a strangled noise deep in his throat and shot away from the vampire, opening and closing the bathroom doors with impressive quickness- and an unnecessary amount of force.

'Screw him!' Ethan raged, clenching his fist and throwing his toiletries onto the sink across the large bathroom, ignoring when his soaps fell and bounced across the shining tiles. He hurriedly locked the doors as an afterthought, and then unlocked them, because what would be the use? As much as he meant his thoughts, he just couldn't manage to make himself rage against Jesse like he used to.

He locked the doors again. Damn that manipulative vampire! Who did he think he was, messing with Ethan's feelings like that?!

In all actuality, all the vampire had done was pull Ethan to sleep against him, read to him, and whisper in his ear. But Ethan was going to ignore those little facts, and pin all his confusing feelings on the vampires outlandish behavior. It may not have been much (in fact, Jesse had done much more in the past) but it felt like a lot. Ethan didn't know how much more he could take

Before what? Even he didn't know. Still angry, Ethan began tearing off his clothes, and realized sometime in between shedding his pants and pulling off his soft pajama shirt that these weren't the clothes that he'd fell asleep in. Also...his hands, previously dirty with street grime and scratched from literally climbing brick walls were cleaned and bandaged.

Growling but internally humiliated, Ethan stepped into the shower and fiddled with the knobs until he got a hot but not scalding spray of water. Ethan had gotten completely soaked before he realized he'd left his soap on the sink, halfway across the room. Grumbling, and still a little angry despite the relaxing hot water, Ethan slid the glass door of the shower aside and stepped out to grab his shampoo.

So many things happened at once, and none of them pleasant. As Ethan was making his way to the counter -carefully, he might add- his foot found a particularly polished section of the floor and he fell against one of the wire racks against the wall. There was a struggle for purchase as Ethan slipped and landed with the rack and all the towels on it landing on top of him. Momentarily, he saw stars when his temple collided with the sturdy tiled wall.

There was a deep sigh, and Ethan didn't know what was happening, only that it lurched him and caused a wave of nausea to come over him. He groaned in confusion, then yelped in surprise as his back was met with hot water.

"Oh my god..." Ethan groaned, and pulled his knees up when he was sat on the floor of the shower. "Don't look."

"Nothing I haven't seen a thousand times before." Jesse replied smoothly, and Ethan made a noise of deep discontent. "Hold still."

Ethan hissed as soap was washed over a new cut on his arm, where the metal appliance had scraped his skin, and opened his eyes slightly to see the blood washing away in soapy bubbles. Glancing up, he seen Jesse crouching just outside the shower, and breathe a tiny sigh of relief.

"You're a handful on your best days, aren't you?" Jesse's voice was serious but he also gave a small chuckle, raising a hand to bend Ethan's head to the side and coax water onto another cut on his temple.

Ethan didn't reply, but instead scooted further into the shower and closed the opaque glass door, obscuring both he and Jesse's view of each other. He heard the vampire sigh and sit down, remaining where he was. So did the human.

Damn it.

"I hate you." Ethan whispered after a time, and backed himself against the wall, cold now because the spray of the shower couldn't quite reach him.

"...I know, Morgan." Ethan tensed up when he heard that; it was the first time Jesse hadn't brushed off his words like they had no meaning to them. Despite his best efforts, Ethan felt a deep aching in his chest, and to make it worse, he didn't even know what caused it.

For a long few moments, there was silence, save for the water hitting the pristine, creme tile.

"I hate this life." Ethan whispered, half bitter, half broken. "I don't want to live like this."

"...I know."

Silence.

"If you want me to cooperate," Ethan spoke, not even caring how vulnerable he sounded anymore. "I need a few things." There was a long pause before Jesse slid open the shower just so and handed him the soaps he'd dropped outside.

"Name it and it's yours." Jesse then said, and Ethan couldn't tell if he was being truthful or not. Whatever the case, Jesse got up and walked out of the bathroom, closing the door with the now broken doorknob behind him.

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A soapy shower and a fresh set of clothes later, Ethan found himself chopping tomatoes at the small kitchen unit of the hotel room, taking his time as he'd been repeatedly told to do under Jesse'd careful supervision.

"Like this," Jesse had shown him after sharpening the knife to a deadly degree with an old sharpening bar. "Slower."

"I can cut a tomato." Ethan had snorted, still put out over all the drama of the morning. "Don't patronize me."

"You were cutting that fruit like a caveman with a stone axe. Everything we're doing requires great care."

"You'd know a lot about stone axes..." Ethan muttered, and could feel the look Jesse shot him as the other male moved around the island to tend to the chocolate éclair he was making. A pot of gently boiling water and herbs sat on the stove, waiting for the tomatoes, peppers and duck meat to be placed inside. In another pot, duck bones boiled to create a broth, and the windows above the sink were open to allow the streak out and the cool air outside to blow in.

"I think...this would be a good time to discuss those conditions of yours." Jesse began, and by the tone of his voice, Ethan knew he was trying to be delicate. Attempting at least, and that made Ethan...not angry for once. "I have a few things to get off my perfectly chiseled chest as well."

Ethan closed his eyes in irritation and dark amusement, pausing in his chopping before signing and continuing. Would there be a time that Jesse ever stopped surprising him? But it was true- the vampires chest, much like everything else about him, seemed to be perfectly sculpted and attractive.

'None of it is real' he reminded himself and placed the chopped vegetable (fruit, whatever) in a nearby bowl and moved on to gutting the peppers he'd been given.

"Before we get into it...just to clarify..." Ethan felt sick, and Jesse looked up at him through dark eyelashes from across the island.

"Mhm?"

"I've decided to stop fighting you." The words were slow, disgusting and he almost choked on them. He put down his knife. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to reach the goal you want me to. Whatever I have to do...to be useful...I'll do it."

"You want to finish the job you think you have," Jesse nodded, cutting the bird meat slowly into thick chunks. "So you can return home to your parents and your old life in Whitechapel."

Ethan said nothing, and watched as Jesse took over- and with grace known only to the supernatural, cut all of the ingredients at a blurring speed, placing the meat into the simmering pot first and then coving it with a glass top.

"The thing is," Jesse sighed. "Even I'm not sure when that'll be. I know it's been four months already...and to you, that may be a considerable amount of time. But I'd be blatantly lying if I said that our situation was going to last anything less than several years."

"Years..." Ethan nodded, trying not to freak out or anything, because he'd expected this. Of course it wasnt going to be over soon.

"I'm talking several years." Jesse stressed, and Ethan felt something inside of him die. "I assume you already had an idea about that."

"Can you tell me what it is?" Ethan asked. "Whatever project it is you're working on?"

"We're." Jesse reminded him. "The project we're working on. It involves you too. In fact, you could say..." The vampire trailed off and then gave the slightest, almost unnoticeable shake of his head.

"What?" The human asked curiously.

"Nothing." Jesse smirked, and then stabbed his knife into the wooden cutting board on the countertop so that it stood up. "It's just that...I feel like a parent telling their kid, 'You'll understand when you're older'."

He chuckled and Ethan's brows furrowed. "I need the truth, Black."

"You need to relax." Jesse walked around the island and placed his hands on Ethan's shoulders. The seer tensed on reflex, and Ethan looked away. "Whatever you're worried about, just know that...everything is fine. You're excelling in all your areas of study, and advancing greatly as a seer, just as I thought you would. You're doing everything right, Morgan."

Just as something had died earlier...maybe something else had just awoken. When had he come to like Jesse's approval? In that moment, Ethan Morgan knew, was positive that from those moments on, he'd come to hate the person he was going to turn into.

"Just keep it up and don't worry about anything else."

"You know how ridiculous that sounds?" Ethan spat, pulling away and leaning on the counter, arms crossed. "I feel like a wild animal being kept as a pet! Something to keep you entertained! Something interesting you try to be friendly with, try to domesticate, only to keep locked up and in the dark anyway!" Ethan stuttered and stumbled over his words, but they were honest and said angrily. "Do you know how that feels?"

A strong hand gripped his jaw, and turned him firmly to look straight into black, lovely eyes.

"You might be surprised to know." Jesse began quietly. "That you aren't the first animal to be kept in a cage, Ethan." The seer didn't look away- and didn't see any dishonesty in the vampires eyes either. "I know how you feel...and honesty, I don't know how to deal with people who don't automatically bend to my will. Well...I didn't until I met you, anyway. You present that challenge everyday without fail."

The raven-haired male gave a brief laugh and released Ethan's chin from his grasp. "I've had my patience tried more in the past four months than in the last four decades. Honestly, for a long time I didn't know how I would handle this either. When I first met you..." Jesse smiled crookedly, sardonically as though remembering something annoying. "I hated you too, Morgan."

"When we first met?" Ethan asked, expression twisted in thought. That first night... "You mean...the day you took me out of Whitechapel?"

"I'm sure you remember, I investigated you for months before that." Jesse's lips twitched again, and the vampire lifted a hand to run a finger lightly over Ethan's cheek. "That was hardly the first time we'd crossed paths. You just...don't remember the rest."

Oh.

Ethan didn't know how to feel about that. Unfortunately, or perhaps quite fortunately, Jesse walked away, to the other side of the counter and began scrubbing his hands in the sink.

"If I can accept taking responsibility for someone like you..." Pale hands began rolling out some thick, fluffy dough from a separate bowl previously covered in saran wrap. He rolled it smooth with a wine bottle. "Then maybe you can accept living with someone like me. I mean...it's not like either of us have a choice, is it?"

"I don't know. Is it?"

"That's enough of that conversation for now."

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AN: LadyMaito (or fersure) is back! Back again. :D

Thoughts? Anyone recognize the book Jesse was reading?

So, concerning this story, there's a lot I have planned, and I hope it'll be interesting to follow. As always, feel free to point out mistakes, etc, and please review! Do point out grammatical mistakes and things I forgot to edit! I've missed this story, I finally have an idea of where it's going, and as I am officially done with my fourth semester at college tomorrow, I will have a fair amount of time to write during my vacay! Yay!

Ahh so many ideas, so many stories. I look forward to writing more. :) As I have nothing else to say, really, except 'I wonder if this story still has followers' that's pretty much all I have for now. No crazy anecdote for now. Wait! Except maybe that I f***in snapped one of my metatarsals in half this February and I can now feel the break through the flesh on the bottom of my foot. I literally hobbled around on a snapped bone because I didn't realize it was broke, and it healed wrong, and it'll never heal correctly, so I need to have half of it surgically taken out this summer so I can walk normally again. :| Life really knows how to treat a girl, right?

Ahem. On that lovely note...pray for me. :D

Have a great day! Mwah!

Updated: Thursday, May 3rd 2018, 12:45 AM