The muscles are tensing, spasming against his jaw where it’s pressed along the tender flesh of neck. Hands scramble for purchase along the rough brick, then against his shoulders—push, push, pushing with what is left of quickly waning strength. It does nothing to deter him. In fact, he only responds by clamping down harder around the wound he created in a way that shows that he doesn’t plan on letting any more of the fluid escape his mouth. He drinks it down in large gulps, savoring each pull as the body against his own trembles before finally stilling.

When it doesn’t protest anymore, he lets it drop into a useless heap of meat and bones on the concrete below. He lifts his foot, catching it on the side of the dead body’s head with a sickening crunch as he brings it back down. The skull caves in under the sole of his boot as easily as if it were a simple autumn leaf—the splatter of blood one would normally expect is missing. Instead of being smeared on the pavement, it’s spilled down his chin and soaking into his shirt. It’s pressed into the fabric with impressions of hands in a way that reminds him of paint across a canvas.

He licks the remnants from around his mouth as he pulls his jacket closed over the ruined mess of his shirt before casually striding out of the alleyway. It wasn’t like he feared being caught. Quite the opposite. He knew that if anyone ever happened upon him in one of those moments, he’d be able to take them as well in an instant. Thankfully he’s never had too—he very much prefers toying with his food first before simply digging in. Sure, that isn’t exactly proper, but then again it has been a good number of years since he’s had an authority type figure to tell him what to do.

Making his way back to his apartment, he glances at his watch. The face of the fancy device tells him that he’s got a good bit of time before the sky will lighten with even shades of orange and yellow shaded with tints of pink. It’ll soon turn into a brilliant shade of blue that he hasn’t seen with his own eyes in so long that he would forget what it looks like if not for the improvements of photographs and television. As well as the internet—many thanks to the guy that invented that.

He reaches the building, feet click-click-clicking up the stone steps to the front door when he feels it. A shift in the air. It’s a good twenty yards away but it’s enough to have his whole body prickling and on edge. To him, sensing another’s presence is like being able to feel them as if their body were pressed up as close as his last prey had been. The heat, the sounds, and the smell—just enough of a hint—has every hair on his being standing out as if hot breath had been ghosted along his spine. But that’s not what bothers him. It’s the eyes, the gaze he can feel boring into his back in a way that makes him feel like he’s nearly made of glass. Like the walls he’s been holding up for so long have been shattered, violated and he knows he’s felt like this before. He knows that gaze but as soon as he’s able to register it, it’s gone. It’s instantaneous, as if it was never there to begin with but he knows it was. His body is feeling the aftershocks before he can even turn around to look.

When he does, he’s greeted by nothing more than the empty street his apartment building is nestled on and a light wind playing with the hairs knocked loose by his meal. He scans the street, the buildings, and the alleyways but finds nothing out of place from just moments before when he’d been at the bottom of the stairs. It’s slightly unsettling but the feeling passes after a moment because really, what does he have to fear anymore? There is nothing out there that he can’t handle. With that knowledge, he turns back to the door so he can make his way up to his apartment.

His apartment is on the top floor, ten whole flights of stairs that he could take in a second—faster than even the elevator—but he takes his time. After being gifted with all of his abilities those years ago, sometimes he likes to just take things slowly. At a normal pace. At a human pace. So he takes the stairs as quickly as he would have years ago and it doesn’t really take all that long. He reaches the top, and then the brown door with its golden numbers fastened into the wood in record time. He goes in, locking the door behind himself before making his way to the couch to settle in for a long day. When the deadbolt slides into place, it’s like a sense of relief washes over him. It’s a horribly odd feeling, leaving him wondering why such a simple action makes the smallest bit of tension unwind from deep inside. Perhaps this is how a human would feel if they ever managed to get away from him—safe behind their flimsy barrier that is in truth, one of the few things that can stop him.

When he gets to the couch, no sooner does he get seated then his thoughts are immediately drawn back to the front steps of his building and the feeling he had of being watched. Normally, he’s used to having people watch him. People stare. It’s just what they do when they see something that’s abnormal, highly intriguing or attractive. It’s not his fault that every time he walks into a bar for a quick meal, he has every head turning in his direction. Of course, normally he’s not getting the feeling that something is watching him just before dawn after a meal and it makes his body respond like that. It was unsettling.

Kurt Hummel does not get unsettled anymore.

Being unsettled is so foreign to him now, in fact so are nearly all emotions by this point. He knows that he hasn’t felt that way since that night years ago when he lost everything. That night when no sooner had he started his life, but that it had ended—ripped from him with no warning and though he had been angry, he knows now that there was nothing he could have done to stop it.

He also knows that he usually doesn’t think about it. How is it that this one fleeting moment has shaken him so much to get him thinking about feelings that he was so sure he didn’t have anymore, as well as that one night he had locked away inside to never remember even though his existence itself is proof enough? He likes to pretend sometimes that he was born this way—that he’s always been like this and nothing changed. A silly, nonsensical thought really. That vampires could be born and not just created.

He looks to the window, blacked out and covered with heavy curtains, as his mind wanders. What could it have been? he thinks. The simple fact of not knowing is driving him to get more angry then concerned. No, Kurt doesn’t get concerned anymore. There’s no need to.

But he knows that he’s felt that way before. The gaze that cut through him as if he wasn’t made of flesh and bone. The years have put a haze over some of his memories, the early ones from the time before and while he knows that he should be thankful for it, right now it’s simply frustrating. He didn’t make Kurt feel this way, not quite. Similar but not the same. When he had watched Kurt, it was possessive as if being able to claim him with the action of placing a gaze on his person. It was always dangerously playful, and in retrospect, even lustful. It wasn’t all that much of a wonder that Kurt couldn’t pick up on it in the past. No one ever showed him any kind of affection other than his parents.

Well that train of thought isn’t very pleasant.

Kurt scowls a bit as the memories start to resurface and he does his best to beat them back down into their proper place. Tonight was supposed to be just like any other—go out, kill, eat, then return to his place of residence without incident. Just as he’s always done. Just like every other day since that one all those years ago. Yet, even though the night went smoothly like all the others up until this point, of course something would go awry. It is the one day a year that something sour is bound to happen.

He pushes up from the couch to head for the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he goes. He hopes to wash away the lingering feeling of that gaze burning into his skin, as well as the left over blood caking down his neck. He wants to wash away the emotions that crawled their way out, the thoughts that spilt into the forefront of his mind which is normally blissfully blank or concentrated solely on the prospect of another meal. Kurt had learned quickly in his new life that faking emotions would get him much farther than relying on his actual ones.

A vampire that feels guilty after a kill doesn’t deserve to be a vampire at all.

After he showers, having scrubbed at his skin until it turned a nearly healthy shade of red compared to his normal tone; Kurt throws on a set of clean clothes. He spends a good portion of time in front of the mirror, fixing his hair and making sure he looks nothing short of stunning. After all, he has a whole day to waste so why not do it through a little bit of vanity? He may not have anyone that he needs to impress, but why not make himself a stand out target for his next meal? It’s how he works, dressing in a way that brings his prey to him. It’s not that he’s lazy, he just learned through many years of practice that he himself doesn’t have to do all the work. It also helps that it seems people these days are lapsing in their commonsense.

He sets himself back onto the couch, snatching up the remote for the television and turning it on to surf through the mindless programming that people these days are calling entertainment. Sometimes he wishes that there was more to do when the sun comes up, forcing him to hole up in his apartment like some kind of caged animal. Being eternally nocturnal is a small price to pay, he supposes, for some of the much more appealing perks of what his life has become.

Tap, tap, tap

The noise comes through the wood of his front door, so feint that any human wouldn’t be able to hear it. But Kurt catches the sound as clear as a bell over the loud chattering coming from the speakers of the television. His head whips around to face the entrance, eyes narrowing at the door as if it was the barrier itself that had made the noise. When he raises out of his seat—fully prepared to tell off whoever is knocking at his door at this hour—he hears the shuffle of paper. A small envelope shoots its way towards his feet from the small space underneath.

A step back, a raised eyebrow and a few tense moments of eyes flickering between the small paper gift and the door is what follows. Kurt doesn’t hear anything more but he swears he can feel it again. That shift in the air. After another weary glance, he picks up the envelope to flip over in his hands. The paper is blank on the outside and the flap has been stuffed inside in lieu of actually sealing it properly. One more pause to consider, there is nothing in an envelope that could harm me, Kurt opens it. He unfolds the single small scrap of paper to read the elegant script waiting for him.

‘Happy Birthday, Kurt.’

The message has the briefest of chills coursing along his spine. Tonight, he decides, is going to be interesting.