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"I was in Philadelphia. There was a storm, and I was out during the day - something I was not completely comfortable with yet. I knew standing in the rain would attract attention, so I ducked into a little half-empty diner. My eyes were dark enough that no one would notice them, though this meant I was thirsty, and that worried me a little.

"She was there - expecting me, naturally." He chuckled once. "She hopped down from the high stool at the counter as soon as I walked in and came directly toward me."

- Eclipse // SMeyer

She'd been coming to this diner every day for a week. A new dress every day, her hair nice, orders the same coffee every day and never drinks a sip. It's her prop and she plays her part well. The waitress doesn't bother her, just a quick "okay, dear?" and refills her cup.

A week, she sits there, all day, book in hand and she reads it over and over again. A week passes and she still doesn't stop coming. The staff murmurs and wonders what she's waiting for.

Today, dressed in yellow, with a yellow band in her hair, Alice smiles, slow and feline.

She turns the page of her book (Sense and Sensibility) and waits.

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He'd blamed the storm on his bad fortune. It was only his luck to have the downpour happen so soon after he'd decided to pass through the city that cloudy afternoon. He should have waited until night. He knows that standing in the rain, huddled even as he is in the doorway of some store, attracts more attention than a stroll through the dark.

A woman watches him from behind the counter, curious to know if he'll come in or not. Her hand hovers near the phone. She's scared of him, he looks dangerous. He is dangerous.

Jasper sucks in a breath and darts away from the door. Across the street, heavy boots splashing up puddles as he runs, and into the half-empty diner whose neon-florescent lights shine like the most welcoming of beacons.

Alice picks up her coffee cup and serenely pretends to take a sip for a moment before smiling brightly at the woman behind the counter. She smiles back, hesitant, not sure about the man who just walked in.

She slides off the stool, her skirt swishing around her knees as she moves, smiling as she comes toward the newcomer.

Her movement from the stool catches his notice and Jasper knows right away what she is. Her smile makes him nervous, despite however welcoming it is, and he tenses, visible only to the trained eye, poised to flee or fight if need be. He hadn't meant to cross in on another vampire's territory.

She tilts her head as she comes up in front of him. Glancing to the side for a moment, she bites her lip before holding her hand out to him, her eyes wide and gold, unblinking.

There's so much bubbling under the surface of her, so many emotions. She's happy, excited, worried, and underneath it all, love simmers. She's had 28 years to fall for him, through her visions, and with him standing there, in front of her, it's almost too much.

"You've kept me waiting a long time," Alice murmurs softly, watching him.

Her emotions are a complicated mess for him to make too much sense of. He'd never felt anything quite as strongly as what she emanates. And all toward him. For him.

Jasper doesn't quite understand what she says or why she feels the way she does, he only knows that the sudden sorrow he feels is for having kept her waiting.

He ducks his head. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

Her hand is still held out for his and she takes a half step closer, her expression pleading. She takes in every inch of him from the rain on his clothes, to the red of his eyes, to the scars on his skin.

She laughs helplessly before glancing over her shoulder. "Come sit with me."

They're being watched as Jasper takes her hand, a swell of hope at her laugh - Maria never laughed, not like that, and he senses nothing to fear - and he follows her to a booth.

He sits across from her and the waitress comes, with a coffee pot in hand, and she eyes him warily the whole time as she pours two cups. He waits until she saunters off, not missing the look - if he gives you trouble, you let me know - that she gives the vampire across from him.

"I'm Jasper," he offers softly after a pause, his hand still holding the girl's atop the coffee-stained tabletop.

Alice watches the waitress leave before looking back at her companion. At Jasper. She wants to tell him she knows his name, knows about their future, knows that he's going to tell her everything, but some sense of self-preservation kicks in. She'll wait just a moment longer before divulging everything.

The waitress comes back and sets Alice's weathered book on the table before leaving them alone.

"Alice." She says suddenly, looking down at their hands. "I'm Alice."

"Alice," Jasper tests, the name rolling quite easily off the tongue, and he follows her gaze to their hands, his scarred in her perfect, pale one.

"You were waiting for me?"

His question is soft, if somewhat concerned.

"Yes." She nods, hesitating. "I...uhm. Okay. I saw you when I woke up...twenty-eight years ago. I uh, I can see the future, sort of?"

She wrinkles her brow, feeling rather dumb at trying to explain this, her voice soft. "It's really weird, yeah, but uh, I knew that I would meet you here. You're what I've seen every day since I...changed."

Jasper calms her, a subtle influence, before the wrinkle in her brow becomes a permanent fixture. He considers what she said, sorting through the hesitant, bumbling mess.

"Perhaps you should start from the beginning." He keeps the condescension from his (softly accented) tone, knowing all about strange powers and having to explain them. "I promise to not pass any judgment. You woke up as a - You woke up changed?"

Edited 2009-04-16 15:07 (UTC)

"Maybe we should go elsewhere." Alice whispers, looking around the restaurant. "This isn't the place for such conversations. I'm staying at a hotel down the street, if you'd like to accompany me there."

She's hopeful, the emotion bubbling up over the surface and her fingers tighten around his, just for a moment.

Jasper stares at their intertwined fingers a moment longer and then nods, putting what could very well be the last of his trust into the mysterious but beautiful girl before him.

He seeks a few coins from his pocket and leaves them on the table for their untouched coffee (and the mess) as he stands, dripping water.

"Lead the way."

Alice smiles at the waitress as she grabs her book and leads Jasper to the door. The woman had been so nice for the past week. The entire diner had been as they wondered why she was waiting.

And now they knew. This edgy man, who towered over her was who she'd been waiting for.

They stop just outside the diner and Alice peers into the rain, clutching her book to her chest and pointing down the road. "The hotel there," She murmurs, her voice barely heard over the rain (by human standards, at least). "The one on the corner."

Without much thought to it, he offers the cover of his coat, stripping off the already soaked thing to hold over her head. They then dash, at a more human pace, through the storm and into the spacious lobby of the hotel she pointed out.

Jasper shakes off the excess rain onto the carpet meant to soak it up. They both earn a curious look from the clerk behind the desk. She thinks they're a couple. An affair, maybe. She's seen many of those wander in and out of the place.

Edited 2009-04-16 18:36 (UTC)

Alice ignores the clerk, holding her head high as she leads Jasper up the stairs and down the hall to her room. After a moment of fumbling with keys, she gets the door open.

The room is simple. Bed, armchairs, closet, adjoining bathroom, small tables. Alice sets her things down before turning to Jasper and gesturing at the chair. "Sit. Uhm...do you want a towel?"

Frowning down at his clothes, he needs more than a towel. "May I use your bathroom?" he asks, gesturing toward the door in question. He'll wring out his clothes over the sink or something.

"Oh!" Alice holds up her hand before wandering to the closet. "I'm not normally this...flighty. I'm sorry." She comes back out of the closet with clothes that are distinctively male.

"I knew it was going to rain." She whispers. "All this week. And...that you'd need these."

The clothes are thrust at him. "Take your time."

Jasper looks as if he wants to say more than quick murmur of thanks he gives, yet he simply turns and moves into the bathroom, the door closed behind him.

He waits a moment, resting against the wood, wondering where his head is, before he starts to pull off the soaked-through clothes.

Knowing she can hear him, even if he kept his voice low, he speaks through the door: "You said you woke up as a vampire?"

While he changes, she does the same, quickly so she'd be done long before he finished. The wet yellow dress is tossed over the back of a chair and a simple blue one pulled on instead. Muddy stockings exchanged for clean ones, headband changed. She listens to his question as she finishes with the buttons of her dress.

"Yes. In 1920. I was alone and had no idea what happened. I don't...remember anything from before, either."

"And you saw me?"

Why, is what he wants to know.

All of the clothes she provided fit him perfectly, nothing like the rags he'd taken from his last kill, and he pulls on a clean undershirt and trousers. He leaves the new button-up on the edge of the sink for now, his wet clothes hung over the shower line, and he steps out back into the room, finding Alice almost impeccable in her new dress.

She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap and she nods. "Yeah. You. More important, I saw...us together, a future together. I...at the very least we're supposed to travel together?"

There's a note in her voice though, that says it's not the whole story and that's not what she hopes for. That love, after all, still bubbles under all the nerves.

"'At the very least'," Jasper repeats, his bland tone suggesting than he very much knows that it's not the whole story. He joins her on the bed, calming her nerves as he does. "You can tell me what you've seen. The whole story. I... I know how you feel."

She has no reason to fear he'll run away, seeing as he hasn't yet.

"I know." She whispers. "I uh, saw it."

She laughs, awkwardly, before tugging at her hair and sighing. "There's a family, I saw them too. They live differently than other vampires. They live on animal blood, not human. I saw us finding them. And us living like them."

Alice gestures between them. "And us...together."

"Is that why your eyes are...?" Jasper is staring into her eyes with a frown, overlooking the bit about them together. He'll broach that later. "Because you live off animal blood?"