Kerr rolled listlessly forward on the couch, picking up the phone ringing on the coffee table in front of him almost fearfully and looking warily at the display window. He expected to see \'Home\' written there, as it usually was, whenever it had rung over the past week. Thankfully, Ben wasn\'t ringing every half an hour like he had been at first - because it hurt him every time he had to push the red button and hang up without speaking to him at all - but he was still calling.
With a vague stirring of emotion that was akin to surprise (if it could be bothered working itself up to that level), he noticed that the phone wasn\'t being rung by Ben at all, but by \'Unknown\' instead. Someone he didn\'t know was calling him, which meant it could be an auction house, an independent agent or even the real estate agent he\'d bought his new house from. Unless Ben was just getting smart and not calling from home now.
The vampire mulled it over for a few moments, staring at the ringing, vibrating machine as if it was an alien recently arrived from its home planet. It was very hard for him to think beyond his current situation to actually care who might be calling, but he debated it nevertheless.
It was funny what the difference a broken heart could make to things, such as making simple decisions. It impaired judgment, too. The first place Kerr had turned the night he\'d left Ben in a fury of confusion and melting emotions had been his sire. Given that the prior two times he\'d intereacted with Sawyl, he\'d ended up with his brains scrambled and his head almost cut off, it could be stated that this was a really stupid decision.
Surprisingly, Sawyl had welcomed him and not pushed him too hard to talk when he\'d crumpled into a sobbing ball upon his old bed. The entire family had come to listen to what had happened - they hadn\'t even ripped it out of his head without invitation - and offered hugs of soothing. The twins had retreated but Wyl had stayed with him through the remainder of the night and the day, holding him as best his pudgy little hands and arms could.
It was only during the second night it got awkward, when Sawyl allowed Kerr\'s leaving Ben to go to his head and started telling Kerr what a good thing it was and how they could all go back to Europe together, to reclaim the way they had been. It was too much for the Irishman to handle; he kissed his sire\'s forehead, hugged his fledglings and went off to find somewhere to be by himself. His heart hurt too much to contemplate leaving the city Ben was in immediately (plus, there was a sick comfort in knowing that his love wished to make amends with him and was still calling) and he knew it was a mistake to walk down that road with Sawyl and the twins again.
It seemed that every door had shut and he needed to do some serious reassessing.
That second night, he\'d walked into a real estate agent that was closer to the coastal side of the city and told them that he wanted to buy a house near the ocean and he didn\'t have a limited budget. He was given exclusive treatment and shown everything he didn\'t want. In desperation, he was taken to a property they hadn\'t been able to move for months, at around midnight, and that was the one he\'d bought on the spot.
It wasn\'t the prettiest house any more, he had to admit it. Access to it was limited - you had to drive down a long, steep road that had rock wall edges and would barely allow two cars to pass one another - and it couldn\'t be seen from the road due to the overgrown forest that surrounded it. It was four levels but a sprawling beast of an abode, because it was actually cut into a steep cliff face that presided over a restles bit of ocean (restless because of the rocks the waves were constantly shattering on, below). There was a small, secluded beach that was also part of the property, a short distance away, but the stairs that led down to it were unsafe at best.
No-one in their right mind would\'ve paid the two million dollars they were asking for it... but Kerr wasn\'t in his right mind at the time. He bought it, knowing that its delapidated condition could easily be fixed by his skilled hands and that that would give him something to occupy himself with. He\'d had brand new furniture delivered - including new, thick curtains to block the enormous windows that surrounded the place, affording it a two hundred degree panoramic view - and the electricity and phone connected... but that was pretty much it. The past two nights had seen him slothing about on the couch or in the bed (he\'d bought a coffin too, for he didn\'t trust the curtains and the winds and he certainly wasnt going to board up such enormous windows) and the days in his coffin, not really sleeping.
He was closer to a zombie than a vampire, listless and floating in a netherworld of hurt and betrayal. Without thinking about it any longer, he clicked the \'Answer call\' button on the singing phone and lifted it to his ear. "Hello?" he asked, his voice an empty, dead thing.
