Vanilla Dusk ✓

Fallen Part 3

A cold raindrop landed on Erik's aquiline nose. He shifted slightly in his siesta, his head still leaning comfortably against Shayne's shoulder. Shayne sneaked a look at the grey clusters slowly forming tremendous, thick shapes in the sky and the fading whiteness in the background. It had started drizzling again – typical obnoxious London weather. In no time the bench would be soaked, and they too, would be dripping wet, but it was such a blissful moment to watch Erik sound asleep. When he slept, he produced these adorable, almost inaudible snores that one could only hear in close proximity and sometimes he would drool if he was finally having a decent rest. Erik was the kind that had to combat insomnia from time to time and for most of his teenage years, as he had claimed to Shayne, he had barely slept for four to five hours a day, always rolling in bed for the entire night. With Shayne beside him though, he found it incredibly easy to fall asleep, the only time he truly felt that he was safe inside his own bedroom but not lying in the middle of the woods surrounded by feral beasts – as he described how he felt most of the time when in bed alone.

Shayne shook him gently and Erik opened his eyes, blinking several times before more raindrops landed on his eyelashes, trickling down his pale cheeks. He sat up, yawning. Shayne took his hand and together, they ran for a while and took shelter in a souvenir shop nearby. It was crowded with tourists shopping for postcards displaying the magnificent view of Tower Bridge, oil paintings of London landscape, keychains of cartoon British soldiers or ceramic plates with faces of the Royalties. Next to the souvenir shop was the ice-cream shop they often patronised whenever they took a stroll near Tower Bridge. Shayne went there and bought two cones for them.

Erik was busy savouring his treat when he caught a beam of blacklight flashing from afar, somewhere near the top of the Tower. It looked like a flitting shadow of some kind, or a black bolt of lightning.

'Is something wrong?' asked Shayne, stealing a bite from Erik's vanilla cone and flirtatiously licking his own lips in a way which would usually entice Erik, but Erik was distracted by the presumable silhouettes he had just caught sight of.

And it didn't make sense that somebody was standing there.

'Nah, thought I saw something there,' said Erik with a shrug. 'Hey, stop eating mine!'

The topic was changed swiftly and while Erik was fighting for Shayne's cone, a black feather landed in front of the shop entrance, trampled by the incoming tourists.