All the Devils are Here

Stay

Samael

I want to live here forever. Not here in this house but, here….with her. I’m not sure what time it is right now but, from the in pouring of the sun into the room, I guess it’s sometime around 9 or 10am. I know I’d have to leave soon but, I don’t want to. The way the sun rays hit gently hit the bed and her skin makes everything look a little magical to me..

I’m not sure what is happening. I’m not sure what this girl is doing to me but, she came to apologize, she came to make me feel better - and I didn’t even know how much I needed it until she did it. I didn’t know how badly I wanted her here until she was right there in front of me.

Right now we’re tangled in the sheets, both of us a bit hesitant to leave this space. She’s absentmindedly running her fingers through my hair and it feels so good, I want to just sleep in her arms for a little bit. I’ve been with several women before, I though I had felt all the things there was to feel. I was wrong.

“You know I heard another fun rumour recently”, she’s saying as she continues to play with my hair. She looks completely undone and uninhibited and the most beautiful I have seen her which says a lot.

“Yeah? What?”, I ask sleepily. Can I hire her for this? To just wear me out and then play with my hair until I fall asleep and dream of all the wonderful things in life. If Lex where here he’d probably say I’ve been p***y whipped. He’d be a little right.

“That you and your friends are in some kind of rich boys club or something. And that’s how you can afford all of this”, as she says all of this she uses her hands spreads her arms out to illustrate that she’s talking about my apartment. And maybe my lifestyle. I actually get this question a lot and frankly I’m surprised it hadn’t come up sooner.

“Sneaky way to just ask me what I do for a living”, I say but, lightly for her to know I’m not at all offended if that’s what she wants to know.

“I am a little curious”, she says. I could tell her the truth that I own the White Rabbit and most of my income comes from there. And that the initial capital I put into creating the White Rabbit was grown by me running a few errands that may or may not have involved killing bad people for other bad people. Yeah, I wasn’t kidding about the teenage hitman thing. But, whp am I kidding? I can’t tell her any of that. It’s not who I am anymore, it’s all old news. I guess I can tell her about the White Rabbit though.

“The White Rabbit….it’s a family business. That’s mostly how I can afford all of this”, I mimic her hand gestures when I say all of this.

“I swear with how easy it was for me to get a job there just because I mentioned your name, I was almost a hundred percent sure that you owned it or something. But the Zula Blake really threw me off”, she says casually. I try to put a poker face on and not act affected at all by the name she just mentioned but, I guess I’m s**t at hiding how I feel about things. She notices and pauses from playing with my hair;

“Hey, did I say something?”, she moves down the bed a little so she’s face to face with me. I hate to ruin this perfect moment we were having with this stuff but, she’s so vulnerable right now, if I act closed off, she might mirror me and close off as well. I don’t want us to go back to that. The way we are now feels so much more natural.

“No, you didn’t. Zula is my mum. Was….”, I say it as casually as I can but, I’m not fooling her. I think because she has gone through what it’s like to lose a loved one, she sees other people’s losses through the same lens of extreme pain.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know”, she holds my hand as she says that . Hera makes me want to not be alone. She makes me feel like I’m not alone. Like we could be each other's. A naive thought really. She’d head straight for the door if she knew what I was or half of the things I have done.

“I didn’t really know her. I was a baby when she died so sometimes it feels like I never met her. I don’t…I don't remember anything about her”, and with that I feel like I’ve done more than enough sharing for the day. I’ve shared so much, I should be good on sharing for the rest of the year.

“I can’t imagine what that must feel like”, she says then after a few seconds she asks almost rhetorically;

“Do you think that one day we’d reunite with them? Like in heaven”, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that but, somewhere deep inside of me, I’m almost completely convinced that we won’t. And even if I reunited with anyone after this life, it’d probably be in hell. How low will the bar have to be for someone like me to make it to heaven.

I don’t answer her question because whatever my beliefs are won’t matter. We are so comfortable but, I have to remember that today is a big day and I have to get going soon. The way she’s so relaxed, it doesn’t look like she’s in any hurry to leave. How much of an asshole would I sound like if I told her to leave right now?

“What are your plans for today?”, I decide to be a little more tactical in my approach. Because my directness tends to do more damage than good.

“Just work. And maybe apartment hunting. I never had free time like this when I was back home”,

“Yeah? What kind of things did you use to do back home”, I only ask the question as a follow up before I break the news that I actually have some major s**t to do today but, her reaction makes me feel like she was uncomfortable with the question. She shrugs her shoulders and says;

“Usual stuff. Family stuff. We had uh.. A family business and I was supposed to take over someday”, I’m not going to push it. I don’t like to talk much about my family either.

“Wild”, I feign some kind of enthusiasm and I almost facepalm myself for how lame I sound. Jesus, giving a f**k about someone’s feelings is so hard.

“I actually have to make a trip today. Leaving pretty soon”, I add. She seats up and chuckles a little as she says;

“I see what you’re doing. I’d be out of your hair in a minute”, I don’t even think, my reflex just takes control and I reach for her and speak simultaneously;

“No, no. I’m not trying to chase you away. I have to leave, you don’t. In fact, I’d love it if you stayed here”, I definitely did not think that entire sentence through but, I don’t want her thinking I’m trying to get rid of her. Lord knows I can’t go through that whole awkward fighting about me ‘basically telling her to f**k off’. And I don’t think I can apologize two days in a row. As much as I’d like to even take the credit for my apology, the truth is that I’m not sure I would have done it if she didn’t do it first,

“Hmmm. I could wait. What time will you be back?”, she plays around with the idea.

“A week. Maybe two”,

“Oh”, her bubble of enthusiasm bursts rather dramatically;

“You want me to stay here for two weeks? While you’re in…..?”, she obviously wants me to tell her where I’m going but, that’s not gonna happen, I don’t want her to hear some s**t on the news and somehow trace it back to me.

“Out of the city. With my father’s passing, there are a bunch of things that I have to attend to”, technically, I’m not even lying.

“It won’t be the worst thing in the world if I came back home to meet you here”, I say and I do mean it even though I sound like I’m teasing. She’s on her feet now and putting her clothes on. I lean back in the bed and just watch her until she catches me watching her. Her face breaks into a cute smile;

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”,

“I just can’t believe you’d rather stay in that piece of s**t motel than here in this luxurious apartment. I won’t even be here to annoy you. It’s a pretty sweet deal”, that’s not why I was looking at her like that. I was looking at her like that because I wanted to rip her clothes off. Again.

“You can’t be serious. What will I be doing here all by myself?”,

“I have some ideas”, is all I say but the expression on my face lets her know all my ideas are very very nasty ideas.

“You’re gross”, she says but she laughs so we’re both gross. I finally get up from the bed in my birthday suit and even though she’s seen all of me literally just a couple of minutes ago, she still blushes. I reach for my pants and put them on and the whole time she’s watching me just as I was watching her. Yeah, we’re both gross.

“I have to be out of here in an hour give or take. You can leave to get your stuff and bring them here, they’d let you in.”, I say and then start heading for the bathroom so I can take a shower but, then I pause and turn back to her right before she leaves the bedroom;

“Hera?’, I got her attention; “Just to be as clear as possible, I want you to stay here and if I could, I would have pushed this trip away just to spend the rest of the day here. With you.”

She smiles warmly and says; “See you in one to two weeks”, and then she leaves. I’m not sure if that was a yes or no to my offer but, I guess we’d find out in one to two weeks