Human Enough by E.S Yu

Author:E.S Yu [Yu, E.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NineStar Press, LGBT, romance, paranormal, Ace, Pansexual, Autism, Crime, Alt Universe, law enforcement, vampires, friends to lovers, interracial
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Benched at a desk job for the next month, with regularly scheduled psychiatrist meetings, was about what Noah expected after he’d reported in to Rob. Not that he minded. He’d had enough excitement for a long time…and enough nightmare fodder, too.

Meanwhile, Jordan hung around his apartment, leaving only to pick up blood pills once a week. He’d gone back to being quiet and withdrawn, and Noah found himself worrying about him. He began to wonder if Jordan had sustained emotional trauma—whether from his clearly unhealthy prior relationship, or from killing his partner of over seven decades.

The problem was that Noah was not only not a licensed therapist, but he was also supremely terrible at making other people feel better. His intuitive approach was to ask people why they were upset, but in the past, he’d accidentally angered people who thought either he was being nosy, or he should’ve already “known” why they were upset (by…reading their minds? He’d never understood that logic). Sometimes they got angry at the idea that he thought they wanted to talk at all, which made even less sense to him, because even with blah blah manly stoicism or whatever, how was he supposed to help if he didn’t even know exactly how they were feeling? So then he tried to leave people alone, but that didn’t really work either, because then they thought he just didn’t care about their problems.

Basically, he sucked at dealing with people, and water was wet.

But the part that hurt him most was when people took his lack of social intuition as proof that he didn’t care about them, or he lacked empathy. He did care, and he had so much empathy that sometimes he actually wished he didn’t have it because it hurt so fucking much, but he just couldn’t seem to broadcast his feelings on his face or translate them into a form that other people could understand.

When Noah was upset, he sought out distractions, and he wondered if Jordan was the same. He coaxed him into watching movies with him at night, starting with The Dark Knight, and Jordan did seem to cheer up a little bit, but not entirely. Finally, Noah decided to bite the bullet. “Are you okay?” he asked Jordan one day.

Jordan raised his head to look at Noah from where he was lying on the couch. “Yes, I…I’m fine. Why?”

Those words told Noah nothing about how Jordan felt. “You’ve been kind of quiet, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Jordan’s shoulders hunched. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” said Noah, bewildered. “I just…hope you’re doing okay after, uh…” He swallowed, mind racing to find a non-blunt way to put it. “After what happened to Julius.”

Jordan blinked. “Oh,” he said again and paused. Then, “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Noah felt like he was walking through a verbal minefield. “I mean…you’ve known him for…a really long time. It’s okay to, uh…to grieve,” he finished, hoping he didn’t sound too stilted.

Jordan’s mouth twisted. “Even though he killed your friends? And he would’ve killed you, too?”

“They weren’t really my friends.

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