Jesse stood before his naked husband and, for this blazing moment, vague worry was pushed away by sweet surrender.

They were basted with sun in Contra Loma Regional Park, hidden from the fire road by a fold of crisp golden-brown hill. Walter floated beside the big rock with his arms spread, groin at head height. Jesse squeezed his smooth, hairless ass, wet a finger and pushed it in. His world was Walter’s cock sliding against his palate and the hot flesh squeezing his finger. And when Walter’s song reached its peak, Jesse swallowed every drop like a nursing baby, knees shaking.

Jesse pulled away and leaned against the serpentine rock, watching his husband undulate in midair, still hard as a rock and incredibly sexy. The empty sadness trickled back in, though he tried to ignore it. Walter would have come just as hard from sunlight alone. There he went again, in fact: spurting like hadn’t just had a mind-blowing orgasm with his beloved.

Sunlight put blood and warmth back into vampires; it seemed to keep them stocked with semen too.

Was anything really wrong? Walter had always been considerate, and he still was: he made Jesse breakfast in bed and fabulous dinners. He seemed to have memorized Julia Child and since he didn’t eat his cooking was a pure gift.

And good lord, their sex life was cause for celebration. Walter’s come was as sweet as Earl Grey tea with vanilla syrup and cream. Even trivial things were better: no food going in one end meant the other end was always clean.

Why did he miss the old, exasperating Walter and his mock BDSM pirate act: “On your knees, servant, you shall suck my cock and like it”? Why did he even miss the months of no sex at all just before the Big Change?

His mind leaped back to that night four years before.

♦

The vampires weren’t yet as thick as flies, and people still fell for simple tricks. Jesse and Walter awoke to a scream of terror and a cry for help.

They had just fallen asleep after an intense processing session, still angry but drawing comfort from each other’s bodies. Walter sat bolt upright and jumped out of bed to help whoever was being mugged or fag-bashed. Jesse dragged himself to the window, sleepy and terrified, telling himself he’d back Walter up if he needed it. The street looked empty.

Walter appeared and three dark shapes darted from the shadows across the steep street. Jesse’s mouth dropped open as they grabbed him, hissing.

Walter fought hard while Jesse gripped the windowsill. One of the dark shapes fastened its head to his neck and Walter froze, sagged.

The next instant, they dragged him into the shadows, already drinking.

Jesse forced his shaking body to stand. From the Dia de los Muertos altar he picked up Grandma Katie Belle’s gold crucifix and stumbled down the stairs to the door, praying for it to burst open and Walter to stagger in. He called on the ghost of his tough-talking little rabble rouser grandmother who’d gotten religion late in life.

Opening that solid door was the hardest thing he ever did. Dear God, it seemed to take a thousand years.

His cold bare feet took him down the front steps; his eyes flinched as they looked for movement in the darkness of the empty lot.

The vampires were gone. Walter’s drained body lay abandoned against the packed dirt hillside under a grime-crusted city tree. Empty, Jesse looked down at the face he’d been quarreling with an hour before.

Already lonely, tender feet smarting, he dragged the heavy body across the street and up their granite front stairs. Walter’s shoes (how had he found time to put on his shoes?) thumped over each step.

Walter’s eyes opened came to life just after Jesse pulled him over the threshold. The eyes were empty.

A powerful force pulled Walter back towards the door, tugging at Jesse’s arms.

It would have made all sense for Jesse to simply let go. There was nothing left but a monster. But he found himself outside, alive and full of blood, with a newly made vampire in his arms.

Those awful empty eyes looked at him hungrily. Jesse, all his courage used up, closed his eyes, knowing only that he didn’t want the last thing he ever saw to be that look. Waiting for death, he saw Walter as he had loved him, the bright, funny movie buff with the art degree, the world expert on those strange modernistic colored-glass confections from the fifties, the sweetest kisser he ever known.

The bite never came.

When he risked opening his eyes again, Walter was as still as glass, looking at Jesse with an unfathomable expression.

Without thinking, Jesse put his lips to Walter’s. Walter had always had the softest lips.

When he lifted his head, Walter was Walter, but a sad, distant Walter, a person seen through a 1900s stereoscopic viewer.

♦

Walter arched and ejaculated once more. Jesse sighed. He should be happy for Walter – and he was, he was! But he knew he’d have to literally pull Walter to the ground before he’d come back to his senses.

In the months after that night, his journey with Walter had been like Sally’s with Lavinia, except that Sally packed it all into a couple of days. Every day Walter woke empty and lost and Jesse talked him back. Then the chance beam of sunlight through the window and now Walter was nearly superhuman.

Maybe he could talk to Sally Yan. He was in awe of how she just plunged in and did things that he had to work so hard to do. But she was still devastated about her sister. For weeks she had talked to reporters with a stone face, hiding her pain and carefully revealing the things they had discovered about vampires while honoring Walter’s request not to be “outed” just yet.

He shouldn’t go bothering her. But if anyone could tell him what to do with a vampire lover, she could.

When he finally did bring Walter to earth, he made sure a smile was back on his face. Walter opened his eyes and said, “I love you, Buttercup” without noticing anything wrong.

Maybe nothing was wrong.

Jesse Casselberger, so good at healing others, didn’t know what to do for himself.