Aidan

Seated in the corner of the room, in a sketchy London pub, Aidan looked at his glass, placed in front of him on the sticky table. While the buzzing of the surrounding crowd seemed far away, he sank into his loneliness. The vampire was free now. Free from his sire. Free to live his own life. But what did it mean? Did he even have a life?

Everything had ended when he had died, in this dark alley, on one strange Thursday of November 1191, in a small town near Yr Wyddfa. On this night, Aidan met a man with a foreign accent. He had a massive stature, blond hair, piercing eyes, and a disarmingly charming smile. They exchanged only a few sentences at a tavern, but Aidan could sense an interest in the man's gaze. He thought nothing of it and kept on with his evening. But when he walked home, quite drunk and tired, he felt a presence behind him.

Before he could turn to see who it was, strong hands were on his shoulders, preventing him from moving. He recognized the voice of the foreigner and felt the warmth of his breath on his neck. Paralyzed with fear, he didn't even scream for help when he felt the man biting him and feeding on his blood. He thought this was it, that he was going to die, drunk and alone, in an alley at 26. But the foreigner had decided otherwise.

Why did Stanislas turn him? What had he seen in him? He had always wondered, even more now that his sire had lost interest in him and had abandoned him, after two centuries. He must have been a mistake, he thought. He had done everything Stanislas wanted, though. They had killed so many people.

It was the pleasure of the hunt for Stanislas, but not for Aidan. The younger vampire had almost convinced himself that he was the monster his sire wanted him to be. He was submitted to any change of temper from his master, overindulged or brutalized, depending on the day. And he became his favorite among the followers, a companion in crime, lust, and depravation. Or so he thought. But there was nothing special with him. He was just a temporary trend, meant to be replaced as soon as Stanislas would have found a shiny new killer to be his next protégé. And of course, he did.

And since Stanislas had banished him, his time had been full of blood and violence. He had always assumed he would just die at some point, maybe killed by his sire in a moment of anger. But Stanislas had simply forgotten about him. And Aidan felt he was nothing anymore. Now, he was alone, unable to imagine a day-to-day life beyond killing.

So he killed. To feed. To forget. To disappear.

It lasted more than a hundred years, during which he lost himself so deeply he could not recognize the expression on his own face.

Until this night, in the pub, when he felt the presence of another vampire. He looked up from his glass and crossed his gaze. They stared at each other and the blond man walked across the room before sitting down in front of him. There was a fire in the other vampire's light blue eyes, that Aidan could only read as a will to live emerging from despair. It burned Aidan's heart. They did not speak for a while, but already he wanted to cling to him, to kiss him, to bury himself in him. It was immediate, irrational, boundless, frightening.

"I'm James," the other vampire finally said, with a smile. He was there for it, for everything. It was obvious. So he did not even wait for Aidan to come to him. He pulled him outside, in a dark empty street, and pinned him to the wall with a kiss. Violent, hungry. But also sad. Aidan knew it. On this night, they needed someone. But not anyone. They needed each other. And they drowned desperately one into the other.