He hadn't anticipated the rain. It was light, barely enough to even dampen his clothes and yet the thickness of the clouds above indicated more was surely on the way. His hands tucked deeper into his pockets, his shoulders hunching against that cooler breeze as his slender figure clung closer to the shadows cast by the buildings. It was nearly midnight, those streets almost empty. The occasional car rumbling past and yet it hardly stopped, Frost paying little mind to them all the same as he strode determinedly along and towards the café. He had already seen Alexander earlier tonight for that training session. Frost almost sure the Hunter had forced at least three extra rounds of that arena, two half passes and that canter pirouette (a movement Frost had come to loath if only because of how difficult he found it) all because of those cupcakes he'd pilfered. Cupcakes he couldn't bring himself to stop eating all the same. He near dreamt about those fucking things. That baker at his wits end with trying to keep enough to sell without that stallion getting into them. Frost almost daring to allow that amusement to find him now as he rounded that corner into the street where the café sat.

He was hardly willing to admit how well that training Alexander afflicted upon them both with meticulous co-ordination and dedication was working. Frost almost sure he had never been this fit in all his life. Alexander by far the most demanding being Frost was sure he had ever known outside of himself. That age-old adage of 'practice makes perfect' should have been tattooed to Alexander's forehead. The Hunter seeming to live by it religiously. Those equestrian movements Frost had once believed he held some mastery over had begun to be far more perfected and polished then he had known possible and yet that stubborn pride that existed within the stallion still refused to see him admit that very truth to Alexander himself. Even if he suspected the Hunter already knew. There was little that did not exchange between them, wanted or otherwise, during those rides that he suspected they had both.....almost, come to enjoy. Not that Alexander was about to enjoy his unexpected arrival at near midnight and in the rain. Frost himself almost displeased to be out and abandon the warmth of his bed and Nadya's side. Malia alone having woken when he left. The stallion content to leave her guarding their home even if he hardly suspected it would come to that.

His violet gaze glanced upward then, resting upon that café, his feet halted briefly upon the sidewalk at the sight of a light on from somewhere within it. Was Alexander awake? Had he anticipated this? It was curious, that sensation of being watched that seemed to prickle like fine needles at his skin. Frost summoning that affinity for heat to himself in that moment in some readiness all the same as his head angled back to peer behind him. That empty street meeting his gaze as he merely frowned, his eyes roving along those rooftops above just to be sure and yet that night was as still and silent as it had always been. Frost shrugging that sensation away for now even if he remained alert all the same as he reached for that door, opening it quietly to step within the warmth of that café.

He had hardly anticipated to find the Hunter up much less seated at one of those café tables, a game board placed before him that looked like it had been abandoned mid-play, several coffee cups scattered about and yet that chair opposite Alexander was decidedly empty. Whoever he had been playing with had apparently left and yet Frost was almost entirely sure no one had come out of that café. Had they gone upstairs? It hardly mattered here and now he supposed, his features frowning all the same as his fingers reached to pluck a playing piece from that board, the equine rolling it about a moment before glancing up at the Hunter.

"Do you often play Risk by yourself at midnight?"

One eye arched slightly upward. Hell, maybe the man had been playing by himself. Frost briefly eyeing that game board once more in some mild show of curiosity. Alexander's pieces largely seeming to have gathered in Macedonia, the Balkans and those Middle Eastern areas he knew the man had once owned. The other pieces seeming to have formed a strong hold in France, branching out to England, Ireland and Wales. Two very different tactics and yet both those opposing armies looked near equally as large. Frost returning that piece he twirled beneath his fingers to the board then. His appearance in the middle of the night surely requiring some explanation as his hand reached up to run through his hair, pushing it away from his eyes, that rarely seen violet gaze clear to the Hunter alone in that moment. Frost hardly a being to mince words in any sense- the man moving right to the point of why he was here.

"Our friend is finally back in town after all this time, on the far side of the south forest where those fields are. It's only Xerxes himself and a handful of his so called Immortals, no other Hunters. I suspect they are only passing through like they did all that time ago. Which gives us tonight alone to get rid of him. I want my amulet back and you can have you revenge- but we're going to have to go out in the rain. Unless that bothers His Majesty."

It didn't hurt to goad him a little surely? Frost hardly knowing the full extent of why Alexander seemed to so loath that other man. Whatever it was it had been enough to have attempted to murder him two thousand years ago and without a funeral. Something history had indicated that age-old hunter always afforded his enemies- except in this case. Xerxes the only case of Alexander having attempted to deny someone that so called afterlife in turn. Perhaps he had hardly needed to goad him into to finishing this job at all. Whether or not they were truly ready for this perhaps a little debatable and yet they had survived Siberia hadn't they? Frost as unwilling to leave the job of Xerxes unfinished as Alexander himself surely was.


f r o s t
we built this city on broken glass