Casey jogged up the steps of his brownstone, pausing long enough to unlock the door before heading inside. Inside, he flipped on the lights in the hallway, then closed and locked the door behind him. A typical ritual of hanging up his coat, and depositing his keys on a nearby table ensued before he made his way to the living room and sat. He spent a moment searching for the remote before finally finding it tucked between the sofa cushions. A moment later, the television was on and glowing, channels changing at the press of a button until he found a hockey game on one of the sports channels.
The volume was low, but he could hear just fine. The rest of his place was quiet; lonely, and he used the noise to distract from the void of both. The night had wore on him a little, though it was less having to do with the assignment Cassandra had given his coterie, and more to do with coterie antics themselves, he felt. The job had been relatively easy, all things said and done. His thoughts drifted instead to his coterie, and he sighed, mulling things over in his head.
Maddie generally wasn’t an issue. They got along well enough that he considered them friendly, but not close friends. No one he’d share his deepest thoughts and feelings with. Still, he trusted her to keep her word and have his back, and he intended to help her however he could, even if all it was, was calling her a member of his clan instead of Caitiff for now.
Lisette was hard for him to pin. He hadn’t known her or Celeste very long, and had, with Maddie’s permission, invited them into the coterie as a sort of protection measure. She seemed alright, though Celeste seemed….childish almost in her naïveté sometimes. He got that she had been sheltered most of her life, and tried to give allowances for that…but he also knew she’d need to smarten up soon. She couldn’t offer every sob story finances, after all.
Leran was new, and a veritable mystery. It had startled Casey that Leran’s life had literally depended on his coterie’s assessment of the man. He seemed alright, and time would tell what he was actually like. For now, they seemed to be stuck with him, but there was nothing wrong with that, really. Unless you counted his sire’s request to gain a book from Helena Voss. Casey made a slight face at that thought.
Eventually, he turned off the game, and stretched before getting up. Silence, save for the sounds of him moving around and securing things for the day, filled the house. He tried to ignore it. He was used to living alone, save for before the Battle of New York when Étienne was still responsible for him. With silence came loneliness, he felt, and he’d felt that way for some time.
He needed friends he was comfortable hanging out with regularly, but what he wanted was a partner. Since he became a vampire, that prospect seemed within his grasp, but only just. Part of that was on himself, he knew. He’d spent so many years being afraid of being discovered as gay, that he hadn’t approached anyone. I should change that he told himself. There was still that lingering fear of coming out, and of being rejected, however.
Certainly, he had a crush at the moment. But he didn’t know them very well, and they were in a position of power within the city, and likely never to notice him that way. He tried not to think about it too much. But the guy was good-looking. The loneliness will end eventually, he told himself. I just need to work on myself more first.
Turning his thoughts away from h is loneliness, he set the security alarm, turned off the downstairs lights, and headed upstairs, pulling off his shirt along the way up to the third floor. He changed into sleep appropriate attire, and climbed into bed for the day.