Chapter 6: Drinks for the Dead

“Ah, speak of the devil,” Oliver says in the fondest tone Alastair has ever heard a grown man speak in.

Oliver moves around him to scoop up a cat that looks as though it had been run over by three cars and pieced back together. That is hyperbole, Alastair is staring at a frankensteined creature with visible stitches and a single milky white eye. Alastair opens his mouth to accuse him of the almost certainly illegal act he has committed with this creature.

People have received life in prison for reviving dead animals and for good reason. Death is sacred, just as life is, even vampires gave up immortality for the chance to live in peace for a short time rather than forever being hunted.

Alastair has been in this shop for less than an hour and he already has enough evidence to bury this place and send Oliver to jail for the rest of his life. He opens his mouth to say as much, but finds it dies with an artificial gust of wind from his lungs as he watches Oliver coo and give the little creature at least thirty five kisses in the span of thirty seconds.

“You should be more careful,” Alastair notes instead. Oliver focuses back on him now and manages a soft, embarrassed smile.

“Lea says that all the time,” he admits. The cat in his arms is purring so loudly that Alastair thinks it might rumble apart.

“Your sister?” Alastair guesses.

“Ah. Yes,” he confirms. He must catch Alastair staring at the cat because he adds: “Here, hold him for a bit while I find the wine. His name is Hyachith.”

Alastair only has time to look struck and distressed before the cat is clinging to his fancy satin shirt and, undoubtedly, poking holes in it as it kneads sharp claws into his bicep. He does not dare move or breath, fairly certain the cat’s stitching might rip at any moment.

He only manages to take several nervous steps further into the apartment in an effort to keep Oliver in sight as he rummages around the small kitchen. It’s only separated from the main living area by a counter. The whole place is rather small, but just as well loved as the cafe before them.

Something on every shelf looks to have been broken and reglued multiple times and various plants cover the place in pots, jars full of water, and hanging to dry. It smells like a greenhouse, but is nowhere near as muggy.

“Do you tend to the plants in the lot in front of your shop?” Alastair asks, tearing his eye away from Oliver’s back as he searches to glance out the window at the lush growth below.

“Ah, yes-well I try to anyway-oh!”

Oliver cheers and Alastair focuses back on him to see a bottle thrust triumphantly into the air. It looks as though it's a traditional wine bottle from the store but with a handwritten label on a piece of tape.

“Sit!” Oliver instructs cheerfully as he clicks around the glasses in a cabinet.

“Sit anywhere, make yourself comfortable, let me just grab a few glasses.”

Alastair figures he has come this far and he certainly deserves a drink, so he perches himself on the couch beside a messy stack of books and tries not to take it personally when Hyacinth immediately jumps from his lap to circle Oliver’s feet while he approaches.

Oliver has to push away some papers and shuffle a few potted plants before he can find a place on the coffee table to set everything and take a seat in the chair across from him. Alastair briefly hears his mother’s voice in his head wondering if Oliver is going to apologize for the mess, but he banishes the thought without remorse. Alastair does not care for mess, but he dare not call anything surrounding Oliver messy.

It felt more like…creative chaos. Warm, worn, happy. That, and everything always smells so nice. Oliver always smells so nice. Or at least he has these two times they have met. Very nice. In fact, when Alastair focuses on his supernatural sense of smell, he feels almost mesmerized by it. If he spends too long picking apart each scent and what it means, he finds he feels a little dizzy and has to stop.

By the time Alastair emerges from his own thoughts, Oliver has poured him a glass and offers it to him with that ever present smile. Alastair can do nothing but accept. However, he is a bit hesitant. He smells it first, suspiciously. It smells like wine and that preposterously floral scent that almost masks the metallic notes of blood.

“Oh, come on,” Oliver complains childishly. Alastair flicks his narrowed eyes back up at him.

“You liked the latte and you didn’t perish, if you recall,” Oliver tones with a mock air of offended impatience. Alastair rolls his eyes, takes a sip…and then a second, longer one just to be sure. Then he finishes the glass.

“Easy, there,” Oliver laughs, but he's already got a hand over Alastair’s to study the glass as he pours more.

It’s very good wine. He is not exaggerating when he says it is the best wine he has ever tasted and, given that he hasn’t begun choking, he can only conclude that it is not poisonous. Vegan or not, he finds he craves it nearly in that animalistic way vampire’s used to yearn after blood.

Alastair knows what human blood smells like, though. He can smell it on Oliver. As far as he knows, there is not a smell strong enough to entirely mask human blood given its unique profile to vampires. Animal blood, perhaps. It could be an animal that Alastair has not come across yet, more or less smelled the blood of. He thinks all this while unconsciously downing a second glass.

“Well hold on, now. Let me catch up!”

Oliver laughs a little deliriously and pulls a second wine bottle from below the coffee table into sight. He pours himself a glass and winces through drinking the whole thing before Alastair can protest.

“I apologize,” he says with no small amount of embarrassment. “The wine is very good, I was trying to see if I could pinpoint the ingredients through taste alone,” Alastair admits, finding the truth less embarrassing than Oliver thinking him a particularly rude lush.

“It’s bleeding hearts!” Oliver says excitedly, distracting him halfway through his second glass.

“Pardon?” Alastair asks, taking another sip himself.

“I invented it,” Oliver notes proudly, red coloring his face again, though Alastair suspects that has more to do with the wine than any embarrassment. Still, Oliver winces. “Don’t tell Lea I told you that. An undead cat is one thing, but using necromancy to genetically alter plants for the use in vegan blood is entirely another-“

He cuts himself off with another swig, as if fearful he may not stop talking otherwise. Alastair hides a smirk over the endearing nature of it all until Oliver’s words sink into his wine addled brain.

“You-?”

He begins then stumbles, finding chugging two glasses of wine was perhaps not wise for a vampire who rarely goes out. His lips feel a bit numb.

“Forget I said anything,” Oliver rushes.

He moves around the table and thoughtlessly knocks the pile of books on the couch beside Alastair aside in order to position himself in their place. He grabs Alastair’s free hand and presses it to his heart.

“Promise me you won’t tell Lea,” Oliver repeats with such earnest fear that Alastair finds himself too overwhelmed by it all along with the touching to keep from doing anything besides bob his head up and down in ascent.

Do not tell sister. Got it.

Alastair curls his hand slightly into the fabric of Oliver’s romper. It’s cotton, he thinks. He can feel Oliver’s heart beneath it and he is fairly certain human’s hearts aren’t meant to keep pace with a hummingbird’s wings. Is he that frightened that Alastair might tell?

“I will not tell,” Alastair confirms with a set brow.

He feels…slow. His overworked brain sinks into the pleasant, woozy warmth of the alcohol almost desperately. He is tired and he feels nice and Oliver smells so good. Why should he have to worry about everything all of the time? Why is he worrying at all when Oliver is looking at him with glassy eyes and a smile that threatens to give way to a laugh at any moment?

“You seem nice,” Alastair says cleverly, more to convince himself that Oliver could never be a villain than anything else.

Oliver does laugh now and rocks a little closer so their arms are less strained as they cling to each other. Alastair thinks for a moment that he should let go, but then Oliver speaks and he's happy to forget for another minute or two.

“You seem nice, too,” Oliver echoes in return, squeezing Alastair’s hand against his chest for emphasis.

Alastair huffs at that and looks down at their hands. Experimentally, he pulls and twists his palms to get a better hold on the others. He flexes their fingers together distractedly while he tries to process begging called nice.

“You don’t think you’re nice?” Oliver asks, his voice is warmer now…softer. That almost ever present mischievous lilt is replaced with that certain sincerity that often only comes with wine. Alastair finds himself smiling wryly as his dark eyes search glassy green.

“I think I have the potential,” he says.

Soon, Alastair finds that he physically cannot stop himself from dragging his eyes down and up again along the lines, colors, and curves of the other man’s body while thinking of all the things he might do that Oliver would consider ‘nice.’ Oliver’s hand is still trapped in his own and he takes uncharacteristic delight in the quickening of Oliver’s pulse as he moves a finger to soft skin beneath his wrist.

“Alastair?” Oliver begins.

Alastair hums in question. Oliver’s voice is coming from a great distance in comparison to the careful cataloging Alastair is doing in his mind. He can see a tanned and freckled collarbone shadowed by hemmed purple fabric. His teeth ache. His whole body aches.

“Alastair,” Oliver repeats.

This time, Alastair is shaken by his hand and forced to focus back on Oliver’s face and, oh, what a face it is. He is flushed and his hand is sweating in his grip. His pupils are so blown, Alastair can hardly see any green at all.

“Yes?” Alastair asks, softly.

“Be nice to me,” Oliver replies with a sort of intense, exhausted sincerity.

This is it. Nothing can be done except to lean forward and…

“Oliver!”

If not for the wine, Alastair would have shapeshifted on the spot out of instinctual fear. The shrill voice of Lea fills the room, and they both shoot across to opposite ends of the couch as if they hadn’t already been caught.

“The store is still open!” she storms. Alastair looks at Oliver who merely blinks in bewilderment at his sister. Alastair follows his lead and blinks at her too.

“Are you drunk? It’s barely past noon,” Lea scoffs. She’s moved fully into their space now and spotted the half drunk bottles of wine.

“I’m not drunk,” Oliver manages to complain, but Lea presses on.

“You.” Alastair jumps as she turns on him. “Out.”

“Yes ma’am,” Alastair agrees, feeling foolishly like a teenager. He stands and only stumbles once on his scramble for the door.

“We open tomorrow at seven!” Oliver shouts after him.

“EIGHT!” Leas shrills. “It’s always been eight!”