Chapter 5: Chapter 5: A Romantic Necromancer
Alastair spends the rest of the evening resolute in his attempt to regain focus on his family and priorities. So a man flirted with him, so what? It’s not as though he hadn’t been flirted with before. He gets out! He flirts! In fact, the last time was just…three years ago? That cannot be right.
Alastair runs through the past ten years in his brain. He finds that three years ago was when his sister’s follow count really took off, which means she’d begun endlessly pestering him for anything to keep her face in fashion online. It turns out avoiding the spotlight makes you a mysterious, and very much wanted, bachelor. So Alastair had stopped bothering with dates.
Three years since he last even considered a romantic feeling. So, perhaps, he was overdue and caught off guard, is all. He promises himself it wont happen again. Tomorrow, he will avoid the shop if he has too. There are more than one way to make a place shut down without doing it in person, after all.
This is all well and good until he wakes up from a very sweaty dream featuring green eyes and blood stains. Alastair immediately tell his brother he has administrative meetings today that will keep him from VLOOD and he tells his sister that he will be at VLOOD all day. Then, he spends far too long picking out a satiny black shirt that shifts green in the light.
Alastair considers himself to be extremely well groomed in general, but if he spent a little extra time today styling his cropped black hair and creasing and recreating his dress pants, then that’s his business.
Satisfied at last, he makes it to the shop around eleven, which is just as well given his fear of arriving when they opened and appearing strangely eager. Eager for what? He was supposed to be shutting the place down. Right. Focus.
He witnesses a blob in deep purple pace quickly toward the door upon his arrival to save him from a second struggle with the door. Alastair braces himself for who he believes is on the other side of the warped pain of glass, but still finds himself struck stupid for several seconds as that blinding grin threatens to rival Apollo and burn him to death the way the sun might have just a few centuries ago.
“Hi!” Oliver chirps.
He is noticeably lacking in blood stains today, but his deep purple romper still contains a few mismatched patches and snags. It looks worn and soft. Alastair wants to touch it. He resolutely does not and squeezes his hand shut at the very idea.
“Um, would you like to come inside?”
Alastair blinks. Do something, idiot. He realizes all at once that he is simply silently staring at the poor man. Oliver must think he is so traditional that he must be invited inside each time now. How dreary of a reputation to form.
“Yes, thank you,” Alastair replies instead of slapping himself upside the head. He walks into the shop and once again finds it utterly deserted. Even his sister seems to be missing.
“You open at eight?” Alastair asks, a bit bewildered.
“Ah yes, well, we have our morning regulars, but they’re all gone by now and there’s never much of a lunch rush on Thursdays,” Oliver says with a soft wave of his hand to dismiss the topic.
Alastair wonders if there is much of a lunch rush on any day. The way Oliver squirms under his questioning eye makes him think perhaps he need not do anything to get this shop to close. He finds himself shocked at the immediate grief he feels at the idea despite it supposedly being his only goal.
“Would you like something to drink?” Oliver asks with enthusiasm, already heading toward the machines behind the counter.
Yes he wants a drink. He wants to drink and sit and perhaps invent a reason to whisper again so he might observe those hard to see freckles on Oliver’s lips. However, he has important business to take care of.
“I’d like to ask a few more questions first if that’s alright,” he notes, approaching the counter with all the silent strength he possesses to put on a serious air.
Oliver, for his part, beams at the prospect of another awkward and plainly rude conversation with him. Alasatair tries not to get thrown off balance, but already finds his strength wavering. He is a man after all, vampire or no, who could be expected to be stern and serious with a man that smiles like Oliver.
“I’ve actually got a few questions for you as well,” Oliver responds, his smile dampening to a smirk. Alastair furrows his brow in confusion.
“For me?”
“Yes! Like, what is your name?”
Oliver leans on the counter with both elbows, a move that would have seemed casual to any outside observer. However, it makes Alastair jittery with the inches gained in his direction. He can’t look away from him. Those green eyes seem to reach inside him and latch unto his heart. He really considers lying. In fact, he figures lying may be the way to go. He isn’t as famous as the rest of his family, but he certainly may be recognized if he hasn’t been already.
“Alastair,” he replies.
He then blinks and looks away for a moment, bewildered by his own mouth. He had been set on lying, why then did the truth escape anyhow? He may be rusty at dealing with a flirtatious situation, but this felt like more than a social fumble. Alastair darts his dark eyes back to Oliver’s green to find his smirk just a touch more impish than it was before. Oh no.
“You’re using necromancy on me,” Alastair hisses, appalled and upset.
To use necromancy outside of scientific practices and government approved projects was highly illegal. People went to jail for reviving a single butterfly in a park too near a cop and here Oliver was openly using it to influence someone. Alastair wasn’t even aware that was something necromancer’s could do. He supposes since he technically exists among the dead, necrotic magic may indeed have some effect on him.
“Ah, just a bit!” Oliver complains with a laugh in the face of his blatant crime.
“I had to know if it would work. I’ve never tried to before, I wasn’t sure you’d even be able to tell. Anyway, I’m not sure I should receive a scolding on the topic of mental manipulation from a vampire.”
Oliver chats with the air of someone who has broken much worse laws. Alastair feels a sickly renewal of fear that Oliver is hawking mislabeled vegan blood.
“The laws are in place for a reason, I’ve have never—” Alastair begins, but Oliver cuts him off.
“You’re lying,” Oliver says with a narrow eye’d certainty. Alastair bawks and has to click his jaw open and closed a few times before pushing through and speaking at last.
“You’re still using necromancy!” Alastair asserts with no small amount of distrust and distaste.
Oliver, like a mouse grinning in the jaws of a cat, laughs once again and shakes his head. Alastair feels as though his organs are being tossed around in a rock tumbler by the way this conversation is going.
“No, no,” he reassures, placing the hand he’d just been waving to exaggerate his sincerity on Alastair’s cold, bare wrist. The warmth supplied to his porcelain skin is immediate and he finds that he can’t pull away despite his mind screaming that he must.
“No, I didn’t, but your reaction tells me all I need to know,” Oliver continues with a pleased sort of hum. Alastair stares at him, waiting for his body and mind to reassemble itself.
He felt as though he’d been pulled apart and sewn back together by the clever necromancer's fingers with no input whatsoever from himself. He feels as though he’d been thrashed upon stormy waters and now needed some hours to recover his barings. However, he doesn’t have hours.
Oliver is standing before him now, hand on his wrist and a twinkle of devious expectation in his eyes. After a long moment, Alastair finally decides he cannot think and address the hand on his wrist at the same time so he pulls his hand away to shuffle up his sunglasses onto his head and pinch his brow. This earns a beautiful peel of laughter from Oliver.
“Perhaps you’d like something stronger to drink this time,” he suggests.
“Yes, please,” Alastair says without permission, his voice exhausted. He chides himself immediately and clears his throat before lowering his hand and looking at Oliver properly.
“I wasn't aware you also offered alcoholic beverages,” Alastair continues with a far more controlled tone now that everyone has their hands to themselves.
“We don’t! But I like experimenting and I’ve come up with a few alcoholic options paired with my vegan blood if you don’t mind being a guinea pig.”
He shrugs as he strides to the door opposite the entrance that must lead to more of the building. He pauses and looks back at Alastair expectantly.
Alastair finds he’s closed the distance before he can think, but manages to hesitate after the door is opened and a set of stairs leading up is revealed.
“You haven’t had anyone else try it?” Alastair asks cautiously. Oliver moves behind him so he has the options of awkwardly blocking the path or continuing up the stairs. He chooses the latter as Oliver’s voice echoes up from behind him.
“No, I’m afraid there is only one blood drinker in this house and I think feeding him alcohol may be akin to animal cruelty.”
They’d reached the top and Alastair turns around to question this only to find Oliver’s eyes suspiciously downcast. They dart up immediately to meet Alastair’s, but a redness on his cheeks and nose lend great clues as to where he’d just been looking. Oliver opens his mouth to undoubtedly cleverly recover when a very tired sounding meow distracts them both.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone