View User's Journal

A Little Thing Like Forever

I was named for Merlin. Like the famous wizard, I too am the b*****d son of a well-to-do woman. I know little of my real father, and my mother is very tight-lipped on the subject. Unlike him, however, I'm weak. Merlin was able to do many things in his life – search and eventually find his father, lead an army to victory and bring the great King Arthur to unite the Britons in a time of warfare against the invading Saxons. He was able to fight.

All of which were deeds that I could never be able to match up to, simply because my body is incapable of it. Merlin lived and long and eventful life – I have always doubted that I'd be allowed that same luxury.

Turns out I was wrong.

My mother is what you could call a scholar of Arthurian legend. She named me Myrddin Emrys Luck – my first and middle name being the alleged name of Merlin himself. She always likened me to a falcon, despite the conditions of my birth. I was born premature, and with a host of serious health problems. Perhaps her reasons for my name was to offer me strength, to give me a name that would prove the doctors who said I wouldn't live to see five wrong.

All together, I would say that she succeeded in her quest. I lived 20 years with minimal health issues, unless you count the sudden appearance of an inoperable brain tumor and the numerous seizures and near death experiences I faced over those years. The next four years of my life were spent in relative comfort, and it almost seemed as if I was getting better. It appeared that my tumor was diminishing, and my heart seemed to be beating a bit stronger. All in all a good thing, but I knew it couldn't last, and it most definitely didn't. I'd say it got to it's worst. But the only real change that occurred was that I was, for the first time, truly in love.

There had been quite a few girls in high school that I had fancied myself in love with. There was even a trend to what attracted me to them, which should have been my first sign that I wasn't at all interested in women. There were three of them, and they all had no breasts. On top of that, they were all taller than me and much stronger than I could ever be. In short, they were men in the bodies of women, and that was what attracted me to them. In my senior year of high school, I had a crush on one of the lacrosse players. That was the point when it really hit me that I was gay.

But the fact didn't dawn on me, not really, until the day I met him. Handsome, tall, and simply exuding confidence, Sebastian Brennus Hector was exactly what my subconscious had supplied as my ideal. I only knew this because when he looked at me I felt as though everything had changed. I knew that there would never be another moment like that, and that I needed to know who he was and how to be near him.

I remember that it was at a Renaissance festival. He was dressed in one of the best outfits I had seen all day – real velvet and silk adorned his cloak and vest – but he was alone and seemed to fit so perfectly into the scenery that I almost felt as though I had really been sucked back in time. I was one of the vendors, since my sister's boyfriend was working for an antique weapons dealer, and had requested that we sell some of the swords at the festival. He was looking at the weapons, but it almost felt as though he was only there because I was. Looking back on it, I'm sure that this was a possibility. He never gives up a chance to watch me.

I had been sketching one of the other vendors who had fallen asleep at an amusing angle. I hadn't even noticed it when he came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder.

"That's very good." His voice was soft and smooth and faintly accented. I couldn't make out what the accent was, but I knew immediately that it was European.

I'm sure I blushed at his praise, but I was perfectly polite and looked up at his face as I responded, "Thanks, but it's just a sketch."

His amber colored eyes twinkled as he smiled at me, "Sometimes sketches are better than any finished product. Do you draw often?"

"Yeah, whenever I can. It's one of the few things I can actually do." I laughed, but it was a nervous little laugh. He was standing awfully close, but I couldn't bring myself to move away. He had already captured my attention completely, with his golden eyes and corn-silk colored hair.

"I doubt that. Perhaps you just haven't tried anything that truly captivates you." His words brought a smile to my lips, and he smiled with me, "Ah! That is an expression that suits you very well."

I couldn't respond, so instead I looked away from him and at the other festival goers. He seemed to gasp next to me.

"Where have my manners fled to!" He paused, and I turned back to him, once again allowing my eyes to soak up his beauty, "My name is Sebastian. May I inquire as to what I may call you?"

I smiled at him brightly, "I'm Myrddin. It's wonderful to meet you."

The serene and handsome expression on his face darkened for a moment before returning to normal, and I almost thought nothing of it. But it bothered me for a while, even after we exchanged e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers.

It took me nearly three months to understand why my name had upset him.

It was my twenty-first birthday when he told me everything. I was spending the day at my mother's home instead of in my apartment, and my sister and I were watching re-runs of Law and Order. It was pretty relaxed, overall, and I hadn't a care in the world. I reached a new milestone birthday, another quick "******** you" to all the doctors who insisted that I was a goner every time I went in for a check up, and on top of that I was getting up the nerve to tell Sebastian that I had fallen for him. It was one of those almost perfect days.

Very few people get to their twenty-first birthdays with no intention of drinking themselves into a stupor. I had the intent, but not the ability. My weak heart would've made such a feat suicide, but it didn't stop me from having a glass of very good wine with dinner. Considering it was my first real experience with alcohol and the general thinness of my blood to begin with, it made me just tipsy enough to be less reserved than I normally was.

So when Sebastian arrived at my mother's house with a gift for me and a lovely bouquet for her, I was showing more of my glee then I normally would've. My mother was just happy that I seemed to have polite friends.

He had brought me a wooden easel – the type that makes the metal ones look like trash. I was excited about it, and I had to actually withhold myself from kissing him there and then. Once he was certain I loved it, he asked to speak with me alone.

My mother managed to get an amazing house in a New Jersey suburb of New York City after I graduated from high school. It had a gorgeous deck with gardenias and roses and ivy growing all around, fighting for dominance over a red brick patio. It was there, in that small little haven, that Sebastian told me two very important things. One made me happy beyond words; the other left me confused and uncertain. To be honest, even now, years later, I'm still not sure I can truly comprehend everything he told me that night.

I had been sitting on one of the chairs; he stood, leaning against the door. His expression was one of great uncertainty. It was obvious that he wasn't sure if he should tell me what he planned to say. I was a little afraid then, I'll admit, but I wasn't going to let a little thing like fear bring me down.

"Myrddin, I have some things that I must tell you. But it is difficult to find the words, and I fear that I may upset you." He looked pleadingly at me, as if begging for me to swear that I wouldn't be angry with him. I didn't respond, and offered him a smile that spoke more than anything I could've said. He smiled in return before continuing, "I must confess to you that I find myself in a somewhat unexpected situation. I have never, in my entire existence, found myself as drawn to another person as I find myself to you. I had initially suspected that it was a simple attraction, but I have come to the accurate conclusion that I am hopelessly in love with you. On top of even that, I can't bring myself to be concerned about this odd turn of events because it simply feels too right to be something panic-worthy. Am I… mistaken in hoping that you feel the same for me as I do for you?"

It was a mouthful, and it was one of those confessions of love that you really only hear in movies and cheesy romance novels. But it was perfect, and it made the smile on my face widen until it hurt before I was able to move my body, at which point I launched myself at Sebastian, wrapping my arms around him in a grip that would have, at any other time, made me ill. I nearly fell to the ground when his arms wrapped around me in return. "It's almost pathetic how much I had hoped that you loved me."

"There's nothing pathetic about that. If anything, my own uncertainty in confessing to you is what's truly pathetic." I felt him kiss the top of my head before he gently pulled away from me, his hands never leaving my body, "But I am afraid it is only half of what I came here to tell you."

I looked at his concerned expression, and offered up another smile, "After hearing that, I don't think anything could put a damper on my buzz."

He sighed, slowly pushing me back down into my chair before pulling up another for himself. He gripped my hands tightly in his own. "We'll see if you still believe that when I am done."

"Try me. There are few things that could upset someone after a declaration of love like that." I squeezed his hands reassuringly.

"One can only hope." He paused before taking a deep breath and diving headlong into his story. I can't remember his exact words, and doubt I ever will. But the general gist of what he said that night will stay with me forever. Sebastian Hector told me that he wasn't human, but that he had been once upon a time. He told me he was a vampire.

He told me of his childhood in Great Britain during the last days of the Roman occupation and shortly before the Saxon invasion. He told me how he grew up among people of mixed Celtic and Roman heritage, including a name I recognized immediately – that of King Arthur, though he spoke his true name instead of the modern version spoon fed to us. Sebastian told me how they were best friends as children and how, shortly before Arthur was to marry the Celtic warrior known in modern times as Guinevere, the man known to most as Merlin and to his constituents as Myrddin Emrys Aurelius, my own namesake, told Sebastian that there was something he needed to do for his friend. Arthur was loosing hope in his cause of uniting the Britons and driving out the Saxons, and needed something to motivate him to strive harder. What better way then the death of his closest friend? Merlin had arranged a way for Sebastian to fake his death. Instead, he had allowed a vampire to have her way with the knight. But his plan worked, and Arthur succeeded.

Sebastian had been nervous through his telling, and sighed again, "I was there when he died, the day his own flesh and blood delivered the wound that led to his death. I was with him when he was put in a small boat and sent with his sister and others to Avalon. I rode in that boat until I was asked to leave by Morgana. Arthur was delirious, but he knew I was there, and that was all that truly mattered. Myrddin, I have seen many things in my very long life. But few of them have affected me as greatly as you have in the short time we've known each other. Please, don't let what I am change what you feel for me."

I'm very pleased to say that, although I was completely thrown for a loop, nothing he said changed what I felt for him, and I told him as such. Sure, the fact that he was a vampire and pretty much immortal really put a huge spotlight on my own mortality. But it made me determined to live what little time I knew I had left to its fullest and to not let a little thing like forever bother me. I loved him, and he loved me. That was really all that mattered at that point, and it's really all that will ever matter.

No sooner had I pledged to myself to live my life with him as best as I could did he find out the hard way that I was dying. I hadn't wanted to tell him yet. It seemed almost irrelevant to his own history. I hadn't thought how my weaknesses could be important compared to that. I guess my body wanted to prove that it could easily ruin it all. I'm not quite sure exactly what happened that evening. I remember telling Sebastian that I wasn't too concerned about the whole vampire thing, when I went into a seizure. He told me later that it had started as me gagging, before the convulsions started. I vaguely remember blood covering my face from the fierce nosebleed I gave myself when I fell from my chair and slammed my head against the patio. I remember his shout and my mother's running footsteps and then waking up a week later in a hospital, with a tube down my throat and a four inch needle in my arm.

The doctor had said it was because I had introduced a foreign substance into my body that had an adverse reaction to my anemia and heart medication. In other words, by drinking a single glass of wine on my own twenty-first birthday, I nearly killed myself. And, apparently, my mother had told Sebastian of everything that ailed me from my premature birth all the way to the brain tumor.

He was a little upset with me for not telling him sooner. I retorted that at the time I had other things on my mind, mainly him. He had nothing to say to that, and instead sat with me in that damn hospital room until visiting hours had ended and the nurse came in to check me over.

My brush with death spooked him, I could tell. For weeks he was always checking up on me, and when after a few months he noticed nothing bad had happened, he relaxed quite a bit. It was a huge relief to not have him worrying over me every time I would sneeze.

Years passed, and things calmed down. My various ailments left me alone for a while, and I was able to live pretty normally for a while. I had even moved in with Sebastian. He owned a loft in New York right by where I would be teaching high school English courses that fall. I was twenty-four, and he was fifteen-hundred and seventy-nine. A daunting difference, but you couldn't tell it by looking at us. As far as anyone was concerned, we were just another young gay couple living on the lower East side, and I was fine with that.

The lull in my illness was beginning to fade, but I didn't want to worry Sebastian, so I said nothing about it. It was really just headaches – one of the basic symptoms of nearly a thousand diseases. Luckily for me, I knew which one I had and I could deal with it on my own. But no matter what the doctors did, it didn't get any better. Thankfully, it didn't get any worse either – at least not immediately.

I think what really tipped Sebastian off that something was wrong was when my appetite changed. I always ate a lot, probably more than someone like me should've. But my metabolism was insane, and I was hungry all the time. Suddenly, though, I didn't want anything. I'd eat enough to just get by, but anything else made me sick and nauseous. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling, and I started to rapidly loose weight.

Now, I wasn't a big guy to begin with. I was about the right weight for my height and condition, but by the time classes started I was almost a phantom. There was no substantial mass on my body, and I couldn't hide it any longer. Sebastian had to beg me to go to the doctor, and I did.

They put me on a drip, and forced me to eat. I gained back most of the weight, which was great, but they wanted me to stay under constant surveillance. Something had them worried, but no one would tell me or Sebastian what it was. I didn't want to stay there, but I did. I didn't want to worry my vampire love, especially since he was taking a risk simply by being with me. Not a physical one, of course, but an emotional one. Despite knowing that I was probably going to die soon, he stayed with me, and I could never say how much that meant to me.

I stayed in that place for over two months before I finally began to fade, and Sebastian had been by my side through it all.

It built up gradually. I had a few small seizures, major headaches, and shortness of breath – simple things like that. Then I started coughing up blood, my chest would constrict painfully, and breathing eventually became a major chore. They took me off most of my meds, but replaced them with a different IV drip that was supposed to help me. It didn't. I lost about half the weight I had gained back, and Sebastian had taken to simply holding me and whispering sweet nothings in my ear. It was nice. Students from my first year teaching had sent me cards and letters and some had even stopped by to see me. A few left in tears, and others just acted as though nothing bothered them.

I remember one girl in particular. Her name was Autumn, and she had been on of my best students. Her words have stuck with me, "Just like your thoughts were always with us, I promise ours will always be with you." I found out recently that she ended up as a world renowned oncologist specializing in neurological cancers. In an interview she gave she said that "my biggest influence was my eleventh grade English teacher. He pushed everyone to do what we felt was right, and the day he died of complications from a brain tumor was the day I knew what I had to do." She's made some great head way in her field, and I'm glad that I was one of her driving forces. She even started a cancer research fund called the Luck Trust.

You may be wondering how I can be writing this if I died from the tumor. Technically, I did – or at least that's what my death certificate says. I had will, something that many would think I was too young for but considering my ill health was perfectly normal, which stated that I did not want to be autopsied in the case of natural death and that I didn't want to be cremated or embalmed. Simply put, I just wanted to be donated to the body farm in Tennessee and left to rot in a field.

I would have been really dead if it wasn't for Sebastian and his quick thinking. I hadn't even thought of it. I just figured I'd die in the hospital and he'd grieve for a while before getting over me. I mean, he had eternity. Surely something else would catch his eye later. But I hadn't realized just how strongly he felt for me until that very moment when he made his offer.

"I don't want you to die, Myrddin." His voice was soft, and his fingers gently ran through my hair.

My smile was weak, "I know. Do you really think I want to?"

He shook his head, "Of course not. But…"

"But what?"

"Why haven't you asked me?" it was barely a whisper and I would've missed it if he hadn't said it directly into my ear.

"Asked you what?" I was completely unsure of what he was talking about, and it was making my head hurt.

He leaned in and kissed my jaw just below my ear, "Why haven't you asked me to make you a vampire?"

And suddenly it clicked. An opportunity to stay with him, to be by his side for as long as he would have me. I hadn't thought of it because the solution was just so simple, and I wouldn't have thought he would be comfortable with it. But he was the one asking, bringing it up. The choice was to die and leave him alone, something that every fiber of my being rebelled against, or to allow him to make me like himself and giving us all the time we need – all the time in the world – to be together. So what if I would have to live off of blood, human or otherwise. That couldn't be much worse than hospital food and the alternative to even that was much worse.

My answer was obvious.

"I hadn't even thought of it. But I want you to do it. I don't want to die and leave you by yourself." I used what little strength I had to lift myself up and wrap my arms around him, "I'd hate to die when we've really only just begun."

The strength with which he held me was comforting, and I almost didn't feel it when his teeth sank into the flesh of my neck. Call me a masochist, but I can honestly say that it felt good. All too soon I was getting dizzy and my anemia was getting worse, but it was only fleeting because Sebastian had pulled back and had used his own nails to tear a small incision in his neck. I was almost hesitant to do as he bid when he offered his neck to me, but I did and the result was that, simply put, I died that night. I had enough of the vampire blood in me to heal the puncture marks in my own neck, and when Sebastian called the nurse in, the machines were already wailing their siren song at my death.

As far as the doctors could legally tell, I had died from my numerous illnesses. I was physically dead for a few days. Luckily for me, they had sent me to my own sister's morgue for safe-keeping until they could ship me off to the body farm. Imagine her surprise to find her younger brother being wheeled in, dead and naked on a gurney, only to see me get up a few hours later, asking about getting some clothes. She told me a few later that she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I told her to do both, since it probably was a pretty funny moment and that it would be odd if she didn't shed a tear over her only brothers untimely death.

She and I spoke for a few hours – I told her everything – and when Sebastian arrived I couldn't help but feel as though every moment of it all had been worth it simply to know that everything had worked out somehow.

I knew it, sitting in that morgue with my sister as I watched Sebastian walk through the door that he and I had an opportunity that very few are every given. We had the chance to be together for as long as we wanted.

I guarantee that we have taken advantage of it to it's fullest. Even now, twenty years later to the day of my "death", we're still together. And there is no doubt in my mind that we have many more generations to be that way.

Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

More Information