Rainy weather fit his mood, if he was honest, but Matt didn't appreciate the drizzle dripping patterns onto the fabric of his hoodie. April showers, he knew, brought May flowers, but it was June already and there seemed little to show for the rain. There wasn't much of it, just enough to make things dreary enough to avoid leaving his apartment until he absolutely had to. Eventually, though, he did absolutely have to; the scuffed, unpainted walls of the place were driving him crazy, and his loneliness was finally enough to drive him into the damp summer outside.

Two months. It had been two months since his maker had died, and the reality of the pain of his loss was still resonating like a bell in his hollow chest. Even now, rain whispering in the dark around him, puddles splashing up to dampen his all-black Vans, it was hard not to notice the longing and emptiness that lurked like some long-ignored illness. To say there was a hole there was cliche, stupid, and gruesome, but he felt ragged and less-than more often than not so perhaps a hole was an appropriate metaphor. Andrei had been his life for the past five years - the blink of an eye for most vampires, for some people, even, but their bond had been deep and their lives had been close, and the pain he felt was too real. It went beyond any heartache he'd ever felt before, and when he'd died at twenty-five he'd been through his fair share of breakups and letdowns. Even saying goodbye to his parents hadn't hurt this badly, if he was remembering it right; maybe it was just that this wound was fresher, but Matt doubted it.

One positive to the dismal weather was the lack of crowds. Downtown admittedly was probably not the best choice if he was looking for peace and quiet, but that wasn't exactly what he'd been seeking, he reminded himself. He was looking to distract himself from the gaping mouth of sadness that threatened to swallow him, from the sea of loneliness that daily filled his apartment and threatened to drown him if only he'd let it - but he was being hyperbolic, surely. Life without Andrei would be difficult, had been difficult, but he had to be reasonable. More than anything he had to stop thinking about it, had to stop feeling sorry for himself and let the pain fade, for a little, if he could.

A crowd would have been too much, though. The gift that came with his turning gave him the ability to read the thoughts of others, but too much reading and he could barely hear himself. After he was first made, the thoughts of everyone around him had been entirely too much, and in times of stress and anxiety - times he'd been living in the past two months - the ability to block out all but his own thoughts, or the thoughts of whoever he chose to hear, was lost. He'd find himself sitting, knees to his chest, catatonic and staring for days as he tried to reclaim his own voice amid the endless murmuration of a city's collected brains. It had been years since he'd lost himself like that, though in the days since his maker's death it was more and more frequent. His spells of inundation were petering off now, thankfully, but the crowd of a city would have been too much to handle. The rain prevented a crowd, and Matt was thankful.

What he wasn't expecting was the hum of magic, pulsing like a bloodflow just beneath the city's skin. He was new to the city, a recent import from some other place, mostly because he couldn't bear the thought of continuing to exist in the same space in the absence of his creator. Some of his elder vampire acquaintances warned him about the activity in the city, the congregations of weres and the enigmatic hunters, but no one cared to tell him about the thrumming, living soul of the place. He felt it the moment he'd moved in, of course, on some level, but now, walking in the rain down the muffled street, hood up against the cold rain, Matt could barely believe the electricity of the place. It was almost a thought in itself, so vibrant and alive, and despite himself a smile worked its way onto his mouth.

Still, pleasant as it seemed, the magic (if that's what it was) was a bit overwhelming. A pair of dark eyes scanned window to window, storefront to storefront, seeking somewhere to step inside - out of the rain, and out of the current of magic that ran riverlike throughout the area.