The elevator was silent, aside from the restless tapping of his shoe against the polished floor.

Roman was in one of his moods, the volatile kind, where his employees knew that one sneeze in his direction could spell the end of their future here at the Godfrey Institute. It was his demon of a mother again, calling in unannounced and seemingly overlooked by security. As usual he would either scream at her to leave, or he would take it upon himself to go.

He'd been on a spiral for months. Ever since becoming Upir, he found himself in a constant state of stress and guilt and detachment. His mother was trying to reel him back into her life- trying to gaslight him into needing her, that she was the only one who could help.

But Olivia Godfrey was not who he needed most.

You had been gone for months. Dropped off the face of the earth, gone without a trace. Vanished into the night without a word, without a call. You were the first and only person he could call a real friend, maybe even more than a friend. You were the first person who wasn't family that he grew close to. Losing you had left a gaping hole in his life, in his soul. There was still that part of him that clung to his humanity, that clung to the thought that you could fix him.

Like a dog without a bone, Roman yearned for you. It hurt to miss you with him, so eventually he taught himself not to search for you over his shoulder, not to call your phone, not to think about you when he hooked up with someone else.

It was late when Roman got back to the mansion on the hill. It was late when he showered, late when he was about to climb the stairs and head to bed- where sleep would not find him, not for hours. It was late when the doorbell stopped him.

He froze when he looked at the screen on the inside of the door, when he saw who was standing on his porch in the middle of the night.