Yeah no he'll. Stare at them for a bit from a distance and try to figure it out don't mind him.

His mate doesn't. Breakfast is made and delivered to her father, who she wakes up at the same time.

She finishes her morning routine, then calls, "Okay, I'm heading out. Take care of yourself!"

This is plausibly to her father, but also definitely to Alexei, too.

He takes a book and follows her along the rooftops.

Then he can see her walk to her day job! Nothing accosts her on the way there.

And then she's at work. Being a nurse, with a bedside manner that displays a lot of her typical humor and charm. Also doing various boring menial tasks involving cleaning up the various disgusting fluids the human body makes, but. Probably when she's aggressively being herself will be his favorite part.

Alexei finds listening in on Yvette being herself intensely pleasant, and he can multitask reading at the parts where she is doing other things.

Work proceeds! Someone asks Yvette to organize the new equipment delivery! She is happy to do so. Lunchtime arrives! Yvette is lunch delivery person for everyone in this ward and then scarfs her own meal down in five minutes in the break room. A patient hits on her!

"Taken, sorry," she says absently, already back to work.

  "Really?" says one of her fellow nurses, delighted at the chance to gossip. "Since when? Is he cute? What's his name?"

"... Uh, it's recent. I am contractually obligated by the standards of dating to say yes, but fortunately it's also true. And. Alexei. I'll... let you know more as it develops, it's still new."

  "Aww! Well, congratulations, I hope you work out!"

"Thanks. Don't worry, he's already swept me off my feet."

And then work resumes without conversations nearly so interesting!

eeeeeeeeeeeee

Work continues to proceed! It feels like it goes on for ages.

But then it does end, and sometime in the late evening, his mate heads home. She gives a little yawn as she walks.

When no one's looking he appears by her side.

She jumps a little at his sudden entrance, but relaxes and smiles.

“Hey. I hope you weren’t too bored?”

He lifts the book he's holding to show it to her.

“Awww! Good. I hope you liked it, then!”

"I... think I did." How do you tell if you liked a book?

Well, it probably helps that Yvette reaches out to take his hand over it. Her (very delicate, very breakable, very human) hand is quite warm. She can hold his hand while walking (at painfully slow human speed) home.

"I imagine it's hard to decide that without anything to compare it to! My library is yours if there's anything else you'd like to try."

"...I think I would."

"Okay! And I was thinking about other hobbies you might like to try, for variety. Music's fairly obvious, either singing directly or learning an instrument. I couldn't actually teach you any of that, but I promise to be delighted if you pull it off. Oh, and what was that other one I thought of, um... ah! Drawing or painting. I also couldn't help much with those, but I've been trying to think of suitably introverted things for you."

"In...troverted?"

"Oh, uh. An introvert is someone who enjoys spending time alone. I'm one, and I think you are too. I don't expect you'd want to take up hobbies that involve a lot of socializing, it seems like that'd be really overwhelming and unpleasant?"

Alexei immediately makes a face at the idea and lets out a low hiss under his breath. "Mmhm," he says.

What a cute hissing vampire. His hand gets a squeeze.

"Right. So. Things you can do entirely by yourself. No people involved."

Nodnodnodnod she is so good and thoughtful and amazing and he loves her so much.

"Now there are things you can just do with one person, which I expect you'll be okay with if that person is me, but hopefully still like if the person isn't me. Board games come to mind, you might like chess or checkers."

"Board games," he repeats. "Okay."

"That one's entirely selfishly motivated, by the way. My brother Blair loves to play chess, and I want someone else to distract him because I get sick of only losing."

"...so you want me to lose instead."