A little bit of difference in one person's life Who: Calliope and Lucien What: A walk on the beach When: Monday evening/night Where: The beach near Lucien's beach house Warnings: None really
Lucien had managed to convince Calli to join him at his beach house. He needed a bit of time away from the main house and to give the rest of his pretties a bit of time on their own without him. Plus there was the additional fact that he just wanted to spend some time with Calli without their watchful and usually prying eyes. He'd had a dinner prepared when they arrived and shooed away the help as soon as the table was set. They could manage alone for a couple of days. He was centuries old, he knew how to cook a meal after all.
When dinner was over, he helped Calli bundle up in one of her many new coats and collected his own along with the box that carried her present inside of it. He'd been intending to give her something special and tonight he'd do just that. As they headed out down a path to a secluded spot of the beach, he smiled over at her. "Are you warm enough, my dear?" he asked her.
The longer Calli stayed with Lucien, the less she thought about New York. She hadn't told her family she was living with a vampire, but her mother had called her out on how happy she sounded on the phone and at least pulled out of her there was a guy she liked. Calli couldn't help it. Lucien was like her own personal Prince Charming. When he had asked her to come stay with him at his beach house for a few days, she readily agreed even if it wasn't exactly beach weather. The opportunity to spend time with Lucien alone was worth the cold.
After the amazing meals, she was happy to go for a walk with him, even though the wind off the water was cold. He had bundled her up well, though, and she barely felt the cold. She looked up at him with a smile. "Yes, thank you very much." she said.
He nodded, still smiling at the girl. "So long as you're warm, love." he commented, somehow drifting a bit closer to her as they walked. "I'm glad that you decided to join me. I know it's not quite beach going weather, but I prefer when it's cold because it's much less crowded. More personal if you will. And it's beautiful. The water can be so still sometimes it's practically impossible to tell it's even a beach."
Calli smiled as they paused near the edge of the water. The water wasn't calm now, it was much too windy for that. In fact it was so windy her hat flew right off her head. It frre her blonde hair that obscured her vision and her hat went right out into the lake. "Oh no....I'm sorry I lost my hat." she said. It had been a hat he had gotten her and she felt bad for losing it. She liked the hat too. It was from him.
Lucien couldn't help but chuckle a little at the girl. His hands moved up from his sides to brush her hair back behind her ears and out of her face and finally came to rest against both of her cheeks. "No need to be sorry, my dear." he assured her. "It's just a hat, it can be replaced. Besides, I quite like your hair all wild and free so I'm glad it blew away."
His hands on her face made her shiver and not from the cold. She looked up at him with an adoring smile. "I'll have to wear my hair loose more often then." she said, blushing. She always felt so awkward with him when they were so close. He was so amazing and worldly and she....she was not.
He didn't care if she was worldly. He was worldly enough for the both of them. It was opposites that truly attracted after all. There was something about this pretty little thing that pulled him in and it was such a different sort of gravity than he felt with any of his pretties. She was different. There was just something about her. "I'd like that very much, Calliope."
Hearing him say her name like that....Hearing her name had never made her feel the way she did when Lucien said it. It was.....indescribable. She was so drawn to him. It was magnetic. "Thank you...for everything you've done for me. If wearing my hair down is something you like, I'll gladly do it. You've done so much for me..."
"Darling I've done nothing for you that shouldn't have been done for you quite some time ago. You were left to sit on some shelf back there like you weren't special. Like a precious jewel set in the back of a cabinet acquiring dust until you couldn't even tell just how beautiful it truly was. I might have picked you up and polished you a bit, but darling you were always a diamond." He didn't think that he deserved any thanks really for anything that he'd done. He'd been happy to do it and her company was plenty enough payment as far as he was concerned.
Tears came to her eyes as his words made her heart ache with longing. "Lucien...No one has ever said something so....beautiful to me in my life." she said, trembling a bit. It was almost scary, just how much those words meant to her.
"Well then I'm glad you're here with me because you have needed to hear things like this for your entire life, not just now." he said to her. He didn't mean to make her cry and gently he let his thumb brush beneath her eyes to wipe away her tears. "You'll never want for compliments around me." he assured her.
Calli smiled up at him. She was falling in love with him. There was no way around it. It was like one of those bad teenage romance novels. A human falls in love with a vampire. It wasn't exactly normal, but to her, it felt right. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." he told her as he reluctantly slipped his hands from her cheeks and let one find his jacket pocket. "I have something for you." he told her as he pulled a tiny box from within the jacket. He opened it and removed the necklace and close the box, tucking it away again and holding the necklace up for her to see in the light of the evening. "It's a peculiar sort of thing really." he told her. "This gem is actually made when lightning strikes the sand." he explained to the girl. "And it reminded me of you because you see lightning never strikes twice in the same place and in all my days I have never seen such beauty as yours."
Lucien had given her a lot of things, but this necklace by far was the item she truly cherished. She wasn't one for material things, but it was the meaning behind this necklace that meant everything to her. She smiled, reaching out to gently touch the necklace before she took off her scarf. "Can you put it on me?" she asked.
He'd wanted to get her something that was as beautiful and unique as she was and this necklace was just that. He smiled when she asked him to put it on her. "Of course." he murmured, moving behind her and draping the necklace around her neck, fastening it in the back and moving her hair out from beneath the chain. "Lovely." he murmured as he let his eyes wander over the necklace now that it was on her. "It suits you."
A blush came to Calli's cheeks as his eyes wandered over her neck. "It's beautiful." she said, touching the necklace gently as her heartbeat and pulse picked up. The way he was looking at her was so intense. No one had ever looked like her that way before and it didn't escape her notice that he was a vampire and was looking at her neck. That made her heart race all the more.
Lucien let his eyes drift back up to meet hers. "I'm glad that you like it. Means I did a good job in picking something that would be beautiful for you. Now, I think I should take you back to the house before you freeze out here." he smiled. "I'm used to being cold, but you're still a hot blooded woman. I can't have you turning into a Popsicle."
Calli giggled as she put her scarf back on. Her nose was bright red from the cold and she was inclined to agree with him. The wind was starting to pick up. "That sounds good. Maybe we can even start a fire." she said, having been enchanted by the beautiful stone fire place in his beach house.
"Sounds perfect to me." he said to the girl as he gently too her arm and looked it through his own. "You're practically an icicle." he breathed, a tiny smile sliding over his lips. "We'll have to do something about that."
By the time they got to the house, Calli was shivering and her teeth were chattering. "I thought New York was cold! It's not even proper winter yet." she said as she tried to get herself unbundled, but her hands were shaking too badly. "Darn it all..."
Lucien shifted away from her long enough to open the door and usher her inside. Once she was settled on the sofa, he then moved to the fireplace and tossed in a few logs. Then he went about lighting it and once he'd stoked it to a decent flame, he settled beside her on the sofa. "I'm glad you agreed to come here with me."
The fire began to thaw her out so she could get unbundled and she let out a sigh of relief once the house was awash with heat and she was warm again. "Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here." she said to him with a smile. "You have a lovely home."
"Thank you." he murmured, removing his own jacket and laying it across the arm of the sofa where they sat. "I have quite a few homes. It's just one of those things a person acquires when they're as old as I, you see. Money and real estate." he chuckled.
Calli smiled at him. "But you use it to help others. Not a lot of wealthy people really do that as hands on as you do. Sure, they donate to charity, but most of those are corrupt. You actually find people and bring them into your home." Calli thought he was the perfect man and she really thought he was a good person.
"I try to help others." he agreed with a little nod. "I suppose a lot of people will assume that I'm doing it entirely for myself, however." he went on. "And in part I am, I suppose. I mean I like the company. It's not that I'm asking for anything in return, I just have spent a great deal of my life with nothing but myself and loneliness gets boring." he explained to her with a little shrug. "But thank you for your kind words."
Her brow furrowed a bit and she reached out to take his hand. "Lucien, there's nothing wrong with wanting to not be lonely. We're social creatures, after all. Your way of having friends may be different than others, but it doesn't make it wrong or selfish...just different."
"Well I don't mind being different." he shrugged. "I'm a vampire. I'm made to be different. So long as I'm helping others, no matter how unconventional my help might be, I don't think it'll be too much of a problem really."
Calli smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder as she looked at the fire. "I certainly don't have any problems since you found me in New York." she said softly. Her life had never been so wonderful before. Lucien was a wonderful companion and Calli was happy to make him happy.
Lucien smiled at her. "Then I'm making a difference in at least one life. That's all that really matters to me." he told the girl. So long as he improved at least the life of one individual, then maybe being a vampire doomed to roam the earth for all eternity wasn't as bad as it might have seemed.