Because of one extremely lovely review – BaneLupine – I have decided to write a little more and see where my ideas take me. Feel free to suggest scenarios to me – I love feedback for my work! X
"Anything else I can get you?"
Tom couldn't fail to notice the slight flinch of Hal's arm as he quickly turned his entire body in the opposite direction to the waitress. He shook his head quickly and watched her walk away, hair achingly similar to Allison's bouncy curls. He sighed and turned back to his friend, watching the muscles in his neck quiver slightly, his jaw tense as he ground his teeth together.
"How long has it been since…?" Tom gestured to the few humans scattered around the café, trying and failing to be tactful about Hal's condition.
The vampire gave him a bittersweet smile and folded the napkin to his left for the second time. He tried to ignore the fact that his hands were shaking.
"Seven months," he replied, the words almost choking him. He had decided almost as soon as he and Tom had parted ways that he would stop. But it had been 55 long years without blood, and Hal hadn't anticipated the true extent of just how much damage those few sips of blood could actually do to him.
Tom's eyes widened involuntarily – he had expected Hal to have remained the blood-thirsty addict that had waved him off as he boarded the coach to Cornwall on that hazy summer's evening nine months ago. In some ways, it felt as though it had been just days since he had seen him last, but risking another glance at Hal only confirmed just how much he had changed.
The skin around his eyes was red and swollen, as though he had been crying, and he was constantly gnawing on his bottom lip as if distracting himself from the flesh he would rather sink his teeth into. Tom shuddered to think that Hal had sunk so low in such a short period of time, but checked himself and looked towards the door where someone had just entered. It was a woman, clad in an anorak and wellies though she was surprisingly young for her hiker-esque attire. Tom's eyes followed her until she sat down in one of the corner booths, before finally remembering it was rude to stare and returned to Hal.
The vampire had also noticed the woman entering the café, but unlike his friend, Hal had purposefully avoided looking at her. The smell of her body mingled with the freshness of the rain, and his mouth began to water at the unbearably sweet scent wafting towards him. His hand clutched the napkin as though it was his only support, and it crumpled into a ball in his tightening fist. He closed his eyes, reciting Keats in his mind in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the thought of her blood trickling down his throat as he gorged on the softness of her neck. He gulped hard, now physically in pain as he tried to focus on anything except the burning thirst scorching the inside of his throat. And finally, when even that failed to calm him, he pictured Annie's face, and knew how disappointed she would be if he failed now.
Opening his eyes, he was a little unnerved by Tom's intense gaze on him from across the table, his mouth a thin line and brows raised questioningly.
"Should we leave?" he asked, and Hal nodded, relieved at such a sensible suggestion, and grabbed his coat.
Once outside, breathing in a lungful of rain-drenched air, Hal allowed his mind to slow down to a more tempered pace, and gave Tom a genuine smile. "Better," he said before the wolf had a chance to ask, and they began to walk down the street in companionable silence.
Both recognised the route they were taking, and felt the nostalgia and grief hit them in waves as they turned corner after familiar corner until finally they came to their home. Tom half expected the door to open and Annie to be standing on the steps, baby Eve curled into the crook of her arm. It filled him with such agony that he had no option but to look away, eyes brimming with tears which he desperately blinked away. In the months that he had been on his own, Tom had grown surprisingly older and stronger, but the loss he had suffered was still etched on every inch of his heart, and he knew that would never leave him.
"Where should we go?" The question evoked fear in them both, and neither had the strength or the certainty to answer. Instead, they stood on the pavement outside Honolulu Heights, hoping against all hope that a miracle had occurred in the months they had been away, while three streets away, a young woman shivered in the shadows, the puncture wounds in her neck still burning as her humanity rapidly disappeared.