He is a very cute accidental(?) serial murderer.

"So, um. Do you. Have any hobbies," she asks, because she would like to know more facts about him than his dietary habits.

"No."

???!!?!?

This is an alarming sentence to hear from someone that is supposed to be her mate, too.

"Uh." She peers at him, her brow furrowed. "..... are you. Okay?"

He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then opens it again to say, "No?"

Yvette raises her eyebrows. She is deeply concerned.

... It is, upon reflection, very plausible that being a creature who needed to stay alive via murder is the sort of thing that would fuck someone she could fall in love with right up.

"... How um. Old are you?"

He furrows his brows, now. "A bit over two hundred and fifty years old, I think."

Hoooooly shit that is a long time.

"Have you, um. Done things in that time?"

Alexei opens his mouth again but then thinks about what she probably really means by that question and... shakes his head. "Not really."

"Oh darling," she murmurs, and clings to him, petting his hair. "Okay, um. It sounds like you have had a very bad time."

Purr purr purr—

—wait serious conversation. "It... wasn't so bad?"

Incredibly lonely, no one and nothing mattered, only barely not suicidal and mostly because killing himself would have been such a hassle, all vampires are terrible, all humans are fragile and breakable and could get the Volturi to kill him...

His mate is unconvinced.

"Bullshit," she says, flatly.

That startles a laugh out of him.

This earns him a little smile.

Then:

"When I think about someone I could fall in love with, and then imagine that someone, what. Completely separated from humanity on account of the secrecy, forced to eat them to stay alive, surrounded by peers who spend all their time hissing at each other and fighting over territory and lying low so the all powerful mindreaders in charge don't notice them and take offense, I do not imagine they have had a good time. That sounds horrible, you poor thing???"

Well she didn't have to peel his skin off and expose him to the world quite like that. He is having trouble disagreeing, but also agreeing because who cares about people.

(Maybe he did? He doesn't... remember.)

"Sorry, that was probably too blunt, I just. You don't seem okay. You seem like you're sleepwalking through your own life, and have for over two hundred years, and, and. You deserve better than that?"

"...do I?" he asks, sort of inanely.

"Yes! Everyone deserves better than that. No one deserves that, it's horrible!"

She is so good it's no wonder she is the best person in the world. He nuzzles her because words.

She smiles a little and pets him.

"So I'm so, so sorry you had to go through that? I want you to enjoy your own life?? Um. What do you remember of being human, has it all just been rudely shoved out of the way by your vampire experiences?"

"...most of it. I was in... Moscow. When I turned. There were riots. I don't know what I was doing there. I think I almost died and someone turned me. Russia still had a czar."

"I don't know nearly enough history to know the significance of that. Uh. Do you know what the riots were about?"

"Something about corrupt military commanders? I'm sorry, I can only piece together some things I remember hearing from then, my sire and I left Moscow not too long after."

"It's fine," she assures. "I'm just. I want..." She sighs and leans into him some more. "... I want you to have all of the pieces of yourself that you can."