A/N: I'm trying to stay as true to the canon as I can, but I'm playing around with it a little. Since this is set in early season 1, I'm probably going to end up changing a lot of the information that we're shown about Aidan later in the series. Forgive me.

Josh didn't know why he was still watching. All he could see was Charles' butt and shoulders bobbing into view above the back of the couch every few seconds. He was just glad he wasn't naked. With every moan he heard, Josh's face changed a little more into a mixture of surprise and confusion. He stood up and stepped closer to his bedroom, determined to not see or hear any more, when he heard Aidan protesting.

"What's wrong?" Charles asked.

"We can't do this here. I don't bring people home." Aidan said.

"Then let's go somewhere."

"I should talk to Josh first."

"I thought you said Josh was just your roommate."

"He's my best friend, I shouldn't keep secrets from him."

Rustling.

"Just how 'cool' is he?" Charles asked.

Josh understood that question and unnecessarily strained to hear Aidan's answer.

"He'll be fine with it as long I tell him, as long as he doesn't have to find out through somebody else."

Josh straightened his shoulders with a little pride, enjoying the fact that Aidan trusted their friendship.

"And as long as you never call him a dog or make jokes about how awful his blood smells." Aidan added during more rustling.

Josh smiled at how well his friend knew him.

Charles sighed. "I've missed you."

"Come see me at work tomorrow, we'll pretend to have lunch together."

Charles laughed quietly. "It's a date."

Silence. Josh crouched down again to see Charles pulling away from a kiss and walking to the front door. Aidan was about to turn to the stairs and Josh ducked out of view.

"Josh?" Aidan called after the door had closed.

Josh grabbed his bedroom doorknob and opened it. He was determined that their rickety old house wasn't going to give him away. "Yeah?" he called back.

"He's gone."

He closed the door and went downstairs, mentally preparing himself along the way. He couldn't let Aidan know he'd been watching, and had to dive back into the conversation with the same annoyance that he'd left it. "You want to tell me now, what's going on?" he asked at the bottom of the stairs, trying to sound angry and putting his hands on his hips.

Aidan didn't look at him, just gestured to the couch and sat down.

Josh tried to think of something else to say to make it more convincing, but instead he just walked to the couch and took a seat next to Aidan, looking sideways at him.

Aidan shifted to look at Josh, who caught his eye and unknowingly flashed a look of uncertainty. Aidan sighed. "You were listening."

"What?" Josh stood up and his hands went right back to his hips again. "That is absurd! I was in my room, I would never spy on you!"

Aidan laughed, shaking his head.

Josh cleared his throat and let his arms fall loose. "I might've heard everything, but I didn't see…" he waved a hand over the couch. "everything."

"You saw enough." Aidan said knowingly.

Josh sat back down and responded calmly, his voice exposing his genuine confusion. "Just enough to ask who the hell is Charles?"

"He's an ex."

"An ex… vampire?"

"Ex-boyfriend."

"Ex boyfriend." Josh repeated, nodding and staring at the wall. He had assumed as much, but he needed to hear it from Aidan. He didn't want to go making an even bigger idiot of himself than usual.

Aidan watched Josh's face for his reaction, but all he saw was a large, thoughtful, considering frown.

"So you're…" Josh trailed off, leaning his head in Aidan's direction, hoping he'd finish the sentence.

"It's not that simple, Josh."

Josh looked at him "Then make me understand."

Aidan relaxed back and looked away. "I was born in a time when that wasn't heard of."

Josh nodded to let him know he understood.

"I had the luxury of watching the world change. And as it did, it let me...explore."

Josh just nodded again. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but they all felt so rude and ignorant. He didn't care about understanding whatever sexuality, if any, Aidan identified with, he decided Charles himself was the bigger issue to figure out, so he went with, "How did you two meet? When?"

"The 30s." Aidan let himself daydream of that night as he told its story to Josh, leaving in more details than he probably should've.

It was the end of Prohibition, and Aidan had created the illusion that he'd had a few too many. It wasn't hard since everyone else in the bar was too drunk to notice. He'd lost Bishop in the crowd early in the night and saw him leaving a few hours afterward with a woman. He'd paused in the doorway, found Aidan's eye, and gave him a nod. He wasn't coming back. Aidan had started the night with the same intentions, but he'd honestly given up a while ago. He'd given up the act, turned on his stool to face the bar again and put a protective arm around the half-empty glass of beer he'd been faking it with for most of the night.

He scanned the room again, like he'd been doing for the past several hours, trying to find a lady that looked worth draining, but none caught his attention the way Charles did. He was sitting in a booth, backed into the corner by the four girls that sat at either side of him. They all had dark liquor in their hands, sloshing it around with obnoxious laughter that Charles matched as he touched their shoulders and hands casually enough to appear tipsy but not completely smashed, not that they could tell the difference.

He stood out to Aidan, who couldn't help staring for some reason. Without having to search, Charles looked into Aidan's eyes and smiled, almost knowingly, almost like he knew he was being watched.

As soon as Aidan realized he'd been discovered, he turned his head back around and found an interesting glass hanging from a rack near the ceiling to focus on for the next several minutes. He made the excuse in his head that the man had looked far too sober for the occasion and it was an odd sight, so no wonder Aidan was staring. He told himself that so many times that he'd started nodding in agreement. And so what if he was staring? There was no harm in that.

"The humans are so fun when they're drunk, aren't they?"

Aidan tried to look over casually at the person who'd just come to stand next to him. "Excuse me?"

Charles sat down on the next stool. He looked around as he spoke quietly. "I know what you are."

"Do you?" Aidan picked up his beer and took a drink, suppressing the gag in the back of his throat and not actually swallowing.

Charles rested his head on his hand and leaned on the bar, watching Aidan, who gave him a look of defiance. It was semi-convincing until he retched and nearly sprayed beer everywhere.

"We both know you want to spit it out." Charles said lazily.

Aidan brought his glass to his mouth and all but puked the alcohol back into it. "How did you know?" he gasped, his eyes watering at the awful taste.

"Because beer was disgusting even before I turned."

"You know what I mean." Aidan picked up a bar napkin and wiped his mouth.

"I've been watching you all night. Your friend left early, you've been trying to make up your mind about which lush to take home first, but you haven't found anything satisfying."

Aidan's eyebrows twitched. "I'm impressed."

"Don't be, I only know because I've been so bored all night, I have nothing better to do than stare at you. Not I've minded."

Aidan face turned a little confused. Was he being flirted with?

"I'm just here for the entertainment anyway, I'm off humans-"

"Off humans?" Aidan turned to him. "How?"

"I have connections at a hospital in town, they give me what I need. It's not as good as the live stuff, but it's better than this." He gestured around. "All this is tainted."

Aidan had considered that, he knew the blood wouldn't be pure in a bar, but they were easier to hunt when they were drunk and he was willing to deal with the taste because of it.

"It's nice, though." Charles continued. "Never having buyer's remorse."

Aidan hadn't considered that. Maybe it was something to look into.

Charles turned on his stool and leaned back on his elbows against the bar. "There's not many men here."

Aidan turned around too to get the same view. He hadn't noticed but now that it was brought to his attention, he was one of maybe 20 men scattered throughout the entire bar. He made a thoughtful face as a reaction. "Odd." he said.

"Not exactly a dream." Charles commented.

That got Aidan thinking. There were easily four women to every man: Great odds. But it didn't seem like much of a dream to him either, though it had ten minutes ago. Before he'd seen Charles. At the moment, it seemed like he'd never think about anyone else.

"I got plenty of blood back at my place, what do you say we hit the road?" Charles proposed.

Aidan nodded and followed Charles through the crowd, leaving his drink where it sat without any thought of paying. What would Bishop think if he found out Aidan was trusting a vampire he'd just met minutes ago? For all Aidan knew, Charles could've been human, a hunter who tricked vampires to their death by pretending to be one of them. That was why Bishop had made rules, and as far as he was concerned, Aidan, his right-hand man, was too smart to break any of them. All of this was running through Aidan's head as he left with a man whose name he didn't even know. He decided that Bishop didn't know him as well as he thought he did.