Royce was sure that he had never been this fucking nervous in his entire life.
It wasn't something he was used to. Being afraid or cautious or being worried, sure. That was a daily thing but nervous? Not usually. It wasn't part of his nature to be apprehensive. He didn't run around with his tail tucked between his legs, constantly afraid of what could bite him in the ass. Yeah, he liked to stay a couple steps ahead of the game. He had a healthy amount of fear when it came to hunters and fangs. It was more a respect thing, he guessed. When it came down to a fight, he wasn't afraid. That was a natural part of the system.
Fighting his own kind was a different kind of fear. It was like fighting himself, fighting what he was. But that was different kettle of worms and right now, he had flowers to deliver.
It had taken some searching to find just the right ones. Not knowing much about flowers in the first place, he could only guess that the brighter the color, the prettier the flower. Being without much money, he was left with the choice of either stealing flowers out of someone's yard or going out in the woods and see what he could find. It didn't feel right giving Charlie stolen flowers to he took to the woods.
He didn't have to go too far in before finding a bunch. There were plenty of yellow ones but they looked so plain that he had to look for a different color. There was a purple one but it wasn't all that nice looking. Looked more like a popsicle than a flower. He searched half the woods for another color, only finding a couple small blue ones. Blue and yellow went together, right? They matched okay. He'd seen Rosemary wear blue and yellow stuff together. Once he had a nice enough bouquet, he used an old red ribbon he'd found and tied them up with a nice bow.
Or, uh, nice a bow as a guy could make.
When he got back to the apartment complex, he didn't bother stopping to check if Rosey was home or not (though he debated to) and went straight up to Charlie's apartment. On the way up the stairs, he caught a whiff of Crowne. The scent was old but still there. Smelly bastard. As he got to the top and turned towards her front door, he caught a different kind of scent. It was definitely fang but he didn't recognize it. Weird.
But not unusual. Having the scent get stronger the closer he got to Charlie's door was not comforting. Charlie wouldn't have been stupid enough to invite a vampire into her home, would she? Then again, how would she know? He knocked, hoping that maybe he was just imagining things and hid the flowers behind his back until she opened the door. "Hey, I got these for you," he immediately pulled out the bouquet, hoping that he hadn't screwed up and that she liked them. If the flowers were a bust, he had a plan B.
Leaning, he boldly kissed her cheek and grinned. "Do you like them?"