Alexander took a deep breath, standing outside Etienne's magnificent brownstone home. He clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the little satisfactory pain of long, acrylic nails digging into his palm.
Three months. That was a long time to disappear. That was a long time to be locked in a hotel bathroom, bills paid, phones off, sleeping the sunsleep day and night. Three months was a long time to go without feeding. Four nights, then one week, ten nights, then eleven, and twelve, two weeks...
It had started small, his starving, until the easier it got the more he hated it and the more he needed to feel empty of anything human in order to feel whole. He’d gone far enough to slip into the coma state his kind dreaded to call zombie. Locked in his bathroom, the zombie had slept, emaciated, fingernails rotting, hair shedding down onto the tiles around his head as his body decayed without fresh blood to keep his vampire body healthy. He didn’t know who it was that he’d woken up beside--if anyone found the body, they’d need dental records to identify it.
After being forced awake by that unconsciously drawn transfusion, it had taken a lot of blood to walk without trembling. It had taken even more to muster the courage to look a human being in the eye, let alone allow the technician to clean and paint the nails that were still a dark shade of undead purple from malnutrition.
Far from the skeleton he’d been, he was still thin enough to turn heads, but after all he’d been through, all he wanted was a familiar face and a little sweetness. Strong enough to bear mortal company, it was Etienne he wanted for comfort; the little brother who smelled of bergamot and vanilla, who was mature beyond years, and who was entirely too sweet for all he had been through in his short mortal life.
And so as promised, Alexander had come back to this familiar, beautiful home--overdressed as usual in a black leather jacket and loose-fitting silk pants. Half-starved or not, he’d chosen classic red-soled Louboutin pumps to draw the onlooker’s attention away from his thin face, as well as to make Etienne smile.
Pushing sunglasses on top of his head, he checked in a little mirror that the eyemakeup was bold enough to hide how dark the circles were under his eyes, and satisfied enough that he wasn’t too monstrous for company, Alexander politely rang Etienne’s doorbell and anxiously waited.
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