He was lonely. So very lonely. He spent his nights shrouded in the thick black-out curtains framing an expansive bay window, gazing out at the people of this city as they gleefully caroused its streets, unaware that, at that very moment, a predator watched them. He watched as a young child, a girl with brown braids, clung to her mother's arm and wailed, cheeks reddening as her temper increased. His eyes lingered on the couple strolling along the sidewalk, linked arm in arm. He wondered what that warmth felt like, what it was to hold onto another's arm and smile up at them, to have them smile back down at you; he wanted that. Unconsciously, he raised a hand and pressed it against the glass, palm flat, unable to feel the coolness of the glass due to his own cold temperature.
Suddenly, there was movement on the street below - movement he had not been tracking. Luminous green eyes caught sight of the source - a man, blond and tall, smiling - and staring directly up at him. Those same green eyes blinked once, confused. Could this stranger see him?
To his disbelief, the man raised one hand - a greeting. The man could see him! Quickly withdrawing his own hand from the window, the predator pulled back into the shadows. How could the man, who stood on the street so far below, see into the small window so far above?
For the first time in years, Arthur Kirkland, vampire, felt interest stirring within him. Could it possibly be that someone had truly seen him watching the outside world? Had that same someone been watching him as well? Feeling his usually non-existent heartbeat grow to a faint pulsing in his chest, Arthur took a deep, relaxing breath. He needed to calm down or risk losing the last reservoir of blood he had been saving for an excursion to the shops. Arthur frowned. He needed to feed soon or he would become ill. Living alone did not afford him the luxury of allowing himself to skip a feeding, simply because there was not a single soul - alive or otherwise - that would take care of him. Arthur preferred not to feed when he could help it, because he did not approve the taking of another's life for any reason, and instead subsisted mainly on rich wines and the occasional bite of dark chocolate. They seemed to be the only foods that Arthur could most easily stomach, so to speak.
Peering out from behind the curtains once more, Arthur's eyes easily found the blond-haired man again - not only was his sight far superior to that of a human's, particularly at nighttime, but the man was now waving. Arthur had to stifle a smile at the almost-childish action; had he been waving since Arthur had suddenly disappeared? Standing up and letting the curtain fall aside completely, Arthur held up one finger as a signal to wait one moment, bending closer to the window in order for the man to see it. Unbelievably, he stopped waving, and - did Arthur's eyes deceive him? - he nodded.
The vampire turned away from the window and looked down at himself, examining his attire. Black trousers and a grey sweater, both well-tailored, seemed to be acceptable for an evening out of the house. Picking up his traveling cloak - a thick, woolen garment, which was also black - and fastening it around his throat with a large, silver clasp, Arthur deemed himself ready to face the human world.
Opting to take the elevator instead of the stairs in order to preserve his energy, Arthur found himself stepping out of his building far sooner than he would have liked. Feeling the doorman's overly-curious eyes on him - this wasn't the usual time Arthur took for his outings - the vampire ducked his head slightly, wishing that this particular cloak had a hood. Twilight was not as dark as it had looked from Arthur's tinted windows and he felt itchy with the light of the waning sun brushing his blond hair and the pale skin of his face; surely it was only helping to illuminate the hollow of his cheeks and the purple bags beneath his eyes.
He needed to find the strange blond man, though; with that thought Arthur lifted his head slightly, only to discover that the other man had found him first. "Hey!" he greeted Arthur, every definition of the word warm. "You looked pretty bored up there, so I thought I'd wave you down! Oh, I'm Alfred by the way, Alfred F. Jones." Alfred held out his hand, grinning.
Arthur was in a state of slight shock. Alfred was warm, from his voice to his sparkling blue eyes that could encompass the entire sky if they pleased to his actual body heat, the scents of musk and his rich blood minding in the air around him. Without thinking of how his hand would feel to the warm human, Arthur extended his hand as well, gripping the warmth of Alfred's offered appendage. "My name is Arthur. It's nice to meet you, Alfred," the vampire replied softly, almost musical in the way he treated each syllable he spoke with care. "Do you make it a habit to entice strangers from their homes in the evening?" he asked, allowing a slight smile to touch his lips. Arthur's eyes were preoccupied with looking Alfred over, from his nearly-golden hair to those baby blue eyes to the confident smile propped on the other man's tanned face; he was so open, so inviting.
Alfred laughed and shook Arthur's hand once before withdrawing it to run the same hand through his hair. "Only when they look as lonely as you did," he answered, that smile tugging higher, exposing two dimples in his face, one in each cheek. "Your hand's freezing! let me take you out for coffee," he offered.
"Coffee at this hour? Won't it keep you awake all night?" Arthur inquired, his own smile growing in response. He took a small, subtle step towards Alfred, inhaling as he did, and felt his mind cloud over with that intoxicating warmth. Oh, yes, he wanted a taste of this one… Only a taste, Arthur promised himself, trying to fight away the guilt of taking blood. He honestly did not enjoy feeding, but it was hard to resist when someone so warm came up to him; in the end it was easier to give in for a quick taste rather than try to fight it off and end up jumping the human and risk accidentally hurting them, or worse.
"No, I'm a doctor - uh, well, almost, anyway, so I'm up pretty much all the time. C'mon Arthur, it'll be my treat," he wheedled, grinning in his most winsome manner.
A doctor? Arthur felt a slight stirring of panic at that, but quickly stifled it with a nod of agreement to Alfred's question. "If you insist, then I would be delighted," Arthur assented, returning the grin with a special smile of his own. "Where did you have in mind?"
Alfred touched Arthur's elbow lightly through his cloak and the vampire stiffened momentarily, then allowed the man to turn him around to start walking alone the street heading into town. "I know this great coffee place, they make the best lattes!" he exclaimed as he and Arthur began the walk. strolling side by side along the sidewalk. Arthur felt the sudden urge to take hold of Alfred's arm, to feel his warmth again, but refrained from acting on impulse, instead settling for letting its waves roll off of Alfred and brush against him. "They play some pretty strange music, and once they even had a night for beat poetry or whatever it's called, but overall the atmosphere's wicked chill," the man went on, and only when Arthur listened closely did he hear the way the other's heart rate had sped up beyond where it should have been for a light stroll. Was the other man nervous?
"I think that sounds lovely," Arthur offered, both as his honest opinion and as a test to see if he was making Alfred nervous. Yes, there it was; when Arthur had spoken, the human's heart had imitated a jackhammer. Hiding an amused smile, Arthur mustered up his own inner calm and put that emotion into his next words. "Is the coffee shop what you would call "indie"? I must admit that I cannot picture Starbucks hosting a beat poetry night," he commented.
With calm-infused words spun at him, Alfred began to calm down - Arthur listened, and the man's heart rate slowed back to normal. "Yeah, it's pretty indie, the manager's got these insane dreads - oh, here we're here!" Alfred interrupted himself, stopping, and Arthur stopped as well. The shop didn't seem to be much from the outside; it was shabby and had words on the windows, written in peeling purple paint that proclaimed it to be the Leaky Cauldron. The allusion was not lost on Arthur, who allowed himself an amused smile as Alfred opened the door and ushered him inside.
The inside of the shop was a gary cry from its outward appearance. Soft music laced through with acoustic guitar emanated from the walls, which were painted a deep brown, and the sound filled Arthur's ears pleasantly. Booths were placed along the bay of windows that looked outside, and farther down was a sunken room populated with overstuffed arm chairs and couches, all in varying shades of purple; the better to match the color of the aprons the baristas were wearing, Arthur supposed, as he accompanied Alfred to the counter.
"Whattaya want to drink?" Alfred asked, looking to Arthur, who had been examining the chalkboard above the barista's head that said what drinks they sold. It was hard to find anything that his system could handle - even water was wont to upset his stomach.
To the barista, Arthur said, "Whatever the strongest and most heavily-flavored drink you make is. I'm feeling rather adventurous today," he added with a smile, glancing up at Alfred for confirmation that this order was okay. Alfred nodded and placed his order (a vanilla latte with an extra shot of espresso) then led Arthur to one of the booths by the window, where, he assured Arthur, the barista would bring their drinks.
Once they had settled down, Alfred asked, "So, Arthur, got a last name?" with a sly grin, as if he had thought that Arthur had purposely left out his last name. (He had, but that was beside the point.)
"Kirkland," the vampire answered promptly, though on second thought he realized he should have given a false surname. "Are you planning to search me out again, Alfred?"
Alfred flushed slightly and Arthur shifted in his seat; the warmth that had been softly pulsing out of Alfred had suddenly become heat, heat that actually pressed against Arthur; it both pulled him in and drove him away. "Well, I'd like to, if I could," Alfred admitted, smiling in an almost shy manner. "Would you like me to?"
Always one to hold the upper hand for as long as he possibly could, Arthur deliberately waited a few moments to answer. He could hear Alfred's heart pounding, pumping blood around his body, even more now that the man was nervous. Lifting his hand slowly, Arthur placed it beneath his face, resting his chin in his palm. His lips slipped upwards into a seductive half-smirk and his green eyes bore straight into Alfred's blues. "I think that I would like to take you home with me tonight," Arthur murmured, senses on edge and waiting for a reaction.
Alfred's breathing hitched.
Arthur smirked. He had him.