Damnit, fucking fuck fuck. Royce knew this wasn't going to go well. And yet he had followed her out anyway. Followed her right into their first fight. Except there wasn't much to fight about. Charlie didn't know what that she had invited the living dead into her home so as far as she could tell, he was just being a total ass. There was no possible way to explain himself out of this freaking situation without looking like the biggest jerk on the planet.
All because some fang decided to get all cutesy with his girlfriend.
Damn, the rest of this night was not gonna go well.
He bit his tongue hard, his shoulders going tense as he kept inside years of hatred. As much as he wanted to lay into the little twerp, he knew he couldn't. One, this town had rules against fighting and two, even if there weren't any rules against fighting, doing so in front of Charlie would only make things go really bad. In order to explain the whole thing, he'd have to explain what he was and that simply wasn't gonna happen. Not yet and not in that way. If he was going to tell Charlie, it was going to be on his terms.
When. When he was going to tell her.
It was understandable that Charlie was upset about him being irritated by the kid. She was a girl and that apparently was some kind of mother's instinct. Whether she had known the kid for only a few seconds, it was natural for her to protect it. As she continued to talk about the kid, it was clear that was her intent. There was no backing out for her. If she thought the kid needed help, she would step in without a second thought. That was just who she was and he did love that about her. He watched her face soften and his own stern look wavered from it. Her saying that he was the best thing in his life kind of burst his anger balloon too. Burst into unfixable pieces.
But c'mon! This wasn't yet another cat that decided to show up at her front doorstep. This was a monster and he'd be damned to hell, resurrected and damned all over again if he let that monster hurt Charlie in any way. That was the real reason he was upset. Sure, the kid was interrupting their first date but Rosemary had done that enough times that it wouldn't have bothered him that much. It still did bother him but not as much as having to worry about Charlie suddenly having her blood sucked out.
This date was not going to be easy.
Feeling like a heel, whether he was justified in his actions or not, he stepped down the rest of the steps until he was standing right in front of her. "There's nothing to be sorry about, Charlie. It was my fault." He reached out, took the hand she had used to grab for him earlier and pulled her towards him, arms going tightly around her. "I just want you safe, is all." That was the closest he could come to telling her the truth. He gave her a quick kiss to the top of her head and then pulled away, though he still kept a hold of her hand as he led her back up the stairs. "C'mon, you better properly introduce me to this kid before I make an even bigger ass of myself." Because Royce had a feeling there was a high chance of that.