Tinted Lenses: Julian (continued...)

I didn't mind helping my father clean up the mess across the kitchen floor, and I was glad I was able to escape from the situation without too much of a discussion. I think he saw how bent up I was about it all, before letting me go to cool off on my own to talk later. He didn't need to say it, but I knew it.

That was just the way he was.

In the years surrounding my childhood, I had known my dad for being a few things. Firstly, he was a calm man, not too invested in taking people for what they were worth, but not exactly invested in others enough to go out of his way to antagonize them. Two, he was a big guy. Standing roughly around six foot something, he was some sort of Spanish or Latin origin, with dark brown eyes that only seemed to light up when we were all together as a family, or he was watching my mom excitedly talk about something she was invested in. Three, he didn't let anyone pick on us. It was one thing if anyone picked on him, he'd just shrug it off, but it was another thing entirely if anyone ever tried to come at me or mom.

I couldn't find myself hating that, because had it not been for him or the connects he had forged previously, I would have probably been in a lot more trouble than he would have liked.

I wouldn't be hanging out with the twins, who were - for all intents and purposes - likely a whole forty years ahead of me, but acted like they were just barely above me in terms of maturity. It was funny how my dad struggled to explain that, but my mom had no qualms just shrugging it off. She said immortals aged differently, and the first hundreds years was more like the equivalent of a human's first thirty years of life. Exciting, full of mischief, and likely the point where I was more likely to get my head shorn off if I was stupid.

Which... regrettably, I had my moments. My mom said I'd have moments where clarity would sink in here in there, but she didn't really seem to bothered by the way I acted. And my dad just went with it. Now, here I was, petting my dog - a rounded out corgi named Puddles, but only because my ten-year-old self thought it was would be funny - while sitting on the edge of my bed.

I could leave. I contemplated that, but I knew my mom would definitely have a stark disagreement with my dad about that. My head tipped to the side as I let my hand glide over the golden back of my old dog, and then I sucked in a breath. "I don't think I want to start heating up packs of blood," I told my dog, looking down at him slowly as he laid still in my lap, eyes closed, and ears poised in my direction as if he was listening. I hoped he was listening at least.

I cleared my throat, turning my head to the side as indecision rocked me. I didn't want to talk about feeding with my parents. I didn't want to think about how I would go about finding a host, or finding someone willing enough to let me learn how to do all that. "No..." I bemoaned, raking my hand over my face, but my mom said I needed to just to make sure I was safe around humans and Lycans. Lycans... not so much as more for my own well-being, because biting one of them was going to end in a not-so-good ending for me.

"No, I don't to do this." Embarrassment hit harder than a rock to the face. I snapped my eyes shut, flopping back onto my bed as my dog leapt off my lap onto the floor and I breathed in tightly. "Okay... Okay, maybe I can do this on my own. I can just- call the twins, we all go out, and I try it on my own. No big deal." Right? No big deal?

Wrong.

I'd gone through with my own strange motivation, landing myself square in the dark of some lounge that probably may or may not have belonged to my cousin and his husband. My stomach twisted sharply at the idea of them showing up, much less the confrontation of them being aware that I was out before I noticed a sharp gaze on me that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

My head swiveled sharply to allow myself to look back behind me, but not before a hand gripped my shoulder, jostling me from what I was searching for to look up and meet the blue-brown heterochromia eyes that stared down at me fiercely. Mik. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest, before I recognized him and the round golden frames. His black hair always seemed to stick to his head in a way that made him look like one of those sleek models off a magazine. If only his personality matched.

"You should have just waited for us to catch up to you at the house before you left." Mik told me.

"Yeah- well, I was in a hurry," I wheezed out lamely. I could hear the older-brother-like tone edging in his voice as he grunted an annoyed growl at me, but the pressure of his hand lifted off my shoulder much to my relief.