It's 3 A.M and the grocery store is rather empty, the florescent lights flickering a little green. He likes the quiet hours of the morning, has to with his predicament, but he genuinely had enjoyed the night on his own.
Now he's buying diapers for the child that keeps him up during the day time, the child that had appeared on his doorstop, crying in the cold air and looking pinker than Arthur had been in centuries.
(Centuries and this was the sort of thing that had never happened to him. He hadn't had children of his own, and was thankful for that, he never had to watch them grow old as his skin simply grew paler after he turned.
He almost regrets it. He isn't sure what to do with the thing. It cries and whines and its face goes red and as he lifts it in its blankets from the doorstep. Arthur simply stares.)
He's used to the crying, and oh how that boys cries and screams, but he's rather cute when he's smiling and it's almost worth the walk to the store.
He stares at the items in the baby aisle, always does, thinks something like Of all fucking people and those working give him pitying looks, think he's a father who's been woken up during the witching hour by a crying child and not quite. He's thankful it's while he's awake, at the very least.
He doesn't enjoy their pitying looks, though. He wants turn around and hiss, show his teeth. He could bite them and drain their some six quarts of blood, snap their necks quicker than they could realize, but he's an upstanding citizen of sorts so he refrains.
Tonight though, he doesn't mind.
For an immortal creature he feels rather dreadful and he isn't looking forward to going back to a crying child.
..
Alfred grows like everyone around him and he hates it. He misses when Alfred was young enough to fit properly in his coffin and pull himself in close against cold flesh (and Arthur thinks his skin would prickle and his hair would raise from the warm body near him if he were still alive.)
(He pretends.)
Alfred still does the same, crawls in with him even as his limbs have grown awkward and long and he almost always ends up half on Arthur. He jokes that he's bigger that his old man now and Arthur will role his eyes, tell him he doesn't have to sleep in the tiny coffin any longer.
Alfred always stays.
..
What a pair they must make.
..
Alfred plays football for his high school and on some nights Arthur makes it to the games that run after dusk. It's odd, being around crowds that he spends years avoiding. He doesn't mind for Alfred, though. Arthur hardly regards himself as a parent at times, but he supposes that would be an apt description for himself—he's raised the boy since birth, nearly, and provided him with what he could, sent him to school, even attended rather odd parent-teacher meetings.
Sometimes he doesn't mind the word father.
Nights after games and practices Arthur attempts to make dinner for Alfred. He doesn't quite remember how to cook so he fiddles around with the dials and knobs on the oven and hopes for the best. He can't particularly recall what the food he makes is supposed to taste like either, but he knows it smells repulsive. (Alfred doesn't question it, but wonders how the man can stand rotted flesh over uncooked meat from the stories he's heard Arthur tell.)
The pastries aren't as bad as the meat he tries to cook, but Alfred eats them all the same, says Thanks for trying dad and laughs.
If Arthur is really honest with himself, every variation of father has grown to be his favorite word.
..
It's two weeks into his sophomore year of high school that Alfred brings home a girl—a pretty thing, dark hair and even darker eyes and he thinks Alfred a bit too handsome for her, a little too bright.
Arthur has had the boy to himself for fifteen years and he doesn't take to the girl very kindly. Nights and early mornings are his, have always been his, and he's disappointed when Alfred begins leaving a little earlier to walk her to school and staying a little later to walk her home. (Ever the gentleman, though.)
He's awake more during the daylight hours, tries to find every reason to be near his son and even as Alfred crawls into his coffin the mornings he doesn't walk with his young friend to school. Even though he still has this he misses it dearly.
Arthur's never had to put so much effort into something he's wanted. (It takes only one hand to grab and two teeth to bite.) He doesn't want to vie for attention—the attention of the only boy left on God's green earth he particularly cares about. And damn it, he shouldn't have to fight with a creature of only fifteen years for such—a creature so fleeting and imperceptible—to win something he's considered so solid and unchanging and his.
If Arthur didn't know better he'd say he was jealous.
And it's petty jealousy. The kind reserved for young boys in a schoolyard, fighting over trinkets that won't last long, trinkets that they'll tire of. (Alfred won't last long, he thinks, he's young but he's aging so quickly and Arthur still has so much time left on this earth.)
Sometimes he remembers Alfred is just as fleeting as the young girl he brings home and in all his 200 years, he's never felt more foolish for thinking differently.