“When did you, you know?”
“Take another lover? Not long after I was turned. I couldn’t say for sure. Time had a different meaning back then. Lizzie didn’t encourage it as she was, erm…” He hesitates and Cole knows what he’s going to say.
“Because she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else but you.” He finishes Devon’s sentence for him. “Lucky for you,” he adds, but not unkindly. He has no ill-will towards Devon. Their situation is circumstance. If anything, he is the one that has encroached on Devon. He understands that and accepts it.
Devon snorts.
“Yeah. It’s not that I didn’t love her or want her any less. In fact, I wanted her more as no one ever lived up to what she could do, but I sought out other women, just because I could,” Devon says.
“Was she mad when she found out?” Cole asks with a slight smile.
“She was furious,” Devon says with his own smile. “She said ‘Devon! If that’s how this is going to be, then when you are finished here, you shall find me with my legs wrapped around the innkeeper.’” He laughs loudly at the memory, and Cole does too at his perfect imitation of Liv’s posh British accent.
“And?” he prods.
“True to her word, that is exactly how I found her,” Devon says with a faraway look in his eye.
Cole snickers despite himself. It is just very her.
“You should find someone else. Just to be here when she isn’t. Nothing more than that,” Devon says.
“Well, I might have a problem with that, being as how I have a type and I know she has issue with that kind of thing,” Cole says cautiously.
“Steer clear of the word ‘Substitute’ and I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” Devon advises. “I mean…look at Jess.” His face goes twisted and it intrigues Cole. Something is off there.
“Did you think of Jess as a Substitute when you first met her?” he asks something he has been dying to know but never knew how to ask.
Devon’s eyes flash briefly, but he avoids Cole’s gaze as he shrugs. “Maybe, in a way, at first,” he says carefully. “I mean she does look a lot like Elizabeth. But it’s not like that now. I have my feelings very clear.”
“On Jess or Liv?” Cole asks.
Devon’s eyes pierce his momentarily, before they soften. “All of you,” he states.
Cole blinks at him. “What do you mean?”
“Another time. Stop changing the subject,” Devon snaps.
Busted. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he sulks.
“Fine but think about it.”
“Do you think there is something more going on with Constantine and Sebastian?” Cole asks, now full of curiosity about what he saw earlier.
“How do you mean?” Devon asks and frowns at him, accepting the change in subject.
“Like you know…I mean, how does he show his affection to a male charge?” He curses himself as he blushes, but he wants to know.
Devon lets out a loud guffaw that startles the early morning birds off the grounds below and says, “The same way as he would to a female charge.”
“What?” he spits out the gulp of water that he had just taken. To hear it said out loud is a different thing than just thinking it.
“You turn people because you feel something for them, usually,” he adds wryly. “It’s no surprise that there is something deeper there. I know it's different with him. He has that many charges, he probably lost count centuries ago and he certainly doesn’t feel love for them. Sebastian is different though, I think. His first charge. It’s special. Someone he sought out at the beginning to be like him, that he could be with forever.”
“Yeah, I guess. I hate thinking about him and Liv,” he adds. “That he turned her to be with him.”
“I know,” Devon agrees. “You have it hard with him wanting her back. I was lucky that I never even met him for a hundred and eighty plus years.”
“Seems like I always end up with the short straw,” Cole says in a mood.