Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit.
Vince swore to himself as he left the motel room. He knew there was something there, some kind of spark, and he’d walked away. He’d walked away, because she was under the influence of his blood, and to him that would be like taking advantage of someone when they were drunk. It would have just caused problems on down the road, and they had a job to do. Fun might come later, but he needed to focus. While he’d given the excuse that he needed to eat, that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t given her a lot of blood, and he was more peckish than anything. Mostly, he’d just needed to get out in order to avoid temptation, so they could both clear their heads.
He headed for a nearby bar, spending time eating a big ass, greasy cheeseburger with a lukewarm beer in between drags from his cigarette. He’d managed to successfully quell his urges, and in fact lost track of time to an extent. After time at the bar, he picked a fight with a group of bikers at a different bar before finding a person or two he didn’t mind feeding from. He was halfway back to the motel when he remembered that he’d told Petra he was going to bring her some food, though he had no idea in hell what she would eat. Detouring to grab a basic burger and fries for her, he entered the motel a bit noisily, only to find her asleep.
He hmfed to himself, thinking that he hadn’t been gone all that long, though a look at the alarm clock in the room told him otherwise. Shrugging, he closed and locked the door before picking up the remote to flip through channels, though he kept the volume low. Half his mind was on attempting to find something worthwhile in the sea of infomercials, and the other was on trying to figure Petra out. While he could make some guesses, she was a bit of an enigma, and it got him thinking.
Eventually, he shut off the TV, and rummaged through some of the draws, finding a couple legal pads and a stubby pencil that the motel had provided. He kept sitting in his chair, his focus on a variety of things from the next evening’s negotiation meeting, to being alert for danger, to whatever earworm was running through his head at the moment. It would not be wrong to say that a decent potion of himself was focused on Petra, watching her sleeping form.
Her dark red hair was still slightly damp; evidently she’d taken a shower. The thin blanket hugged the curves she had, and her sleeping face was different from when she was awake. It was…untroubled, he supposed was the right word. It held the freshness of youth, and a certain innocence that, when awake, was masked by experience and a fighting spirit. Ultimately, he found himself using that stubby pencil to sketch her. If he never saw her again after this job, he wanted to make sure he remembered her. He hoped he’d see more of her after this. There was that connection he’d sensed after all, and while he might scoff at the idea of a soulmate, secretly, so deep down even he was no longer aware, he hoped. Still, he’d seen enough and done enough to be pessimistic. None of that was stopping him from committing what he could to memory, or having something to look at on lonely nights.
When Petra woke in the morning, Vince was asleep, and there was no sign of his late night sketching to be found. There was, however, a note in his scrawl next to the food, letting her know it was for her, and what time to wake him up by. She tore it up after reading it, put it into the wastebasket, and ate the cold food, mulling things over. Eventually, she decided she needed to leave until it was closer to time to wake him, and it wasn’t like there was a lack of anything to do in Los Angeles.