The town of Lancaster is currently free of vampires, which makes it a decent enough place to find food. To anyone that's paying enough attention, though, there is a bit of a hint of a scent of one that was apparently lingering for a while. Localized and faded, like they had a favored den for a couple of weeks and have since abandoned it. England is lousy with vampires, but all of the local ones don't tend to hang around here, or at least didn't in the past couple of decades. It might be smart to see if that's changed, or if someone new has moved in and is likely to get territorial.
"Okay," she says, nodding. "Then I guess just hover around me and be prepared to teleport in and save me. Do you want to borrow some books for when I'm sleeping?"
This is the most tragic and depressing thing she's ever heard. He has lived for over 250 years, and apparently he never bothered to learn to read.
"..... Well, I'm fixing that," she sniffs, offended. "Hold on, I'll get paper and a pencil, we'll go through the Latin alphabet. If you um, want to learn."
"Yes," he says, and it's only 80% because this seems important to his mate and she seems like she will be happy with him for it.
"Okay," she says, nodding firmly.
Paper! Pencil! Careful explanation of the alphabet, with color commentary! (With such examples as: "It's not clear to me why capital and lower case letters exist when they're essentially the same thing, it just seems weird and inefficient," and "So 'T' and 'H' make a 'TH' sound because my ancestors were cruel and terrible," and "Why do vowels make so many different sounds? Because English hates you and the French ruined everything.")
He still has perfect, eidetic memory, so memorising those is pretty easy. The main thing he'll need practice at is... staring at letters enough to make words click in his head as a flow thing in themselves, if that makes sense?
It does! When he gets the entire alphabet (and numbers, she also shows him numbers just in case) and it's clear he just needs to practice:
"I propose we practice via cuddling on the couch and me reading to you while you look over my shoulder."
She giggles, then picks out a book that she's still fond of, and cuddles up with him and quietly reads to him.
Alexei should... definitely actually pay attention to what she's reading rather than just to the feeling of her skin against his. He can mostly do that.
It's a pretty good book! And she's a good reader, even if she might feel a bit too slow for vampire sensibilities.
But she does eventually interrupt herself with a yawn. It was already evening when she was doing her repotting, now it's gotten quite dark outside.
"Yeah, I should. I have work in the morning." Yaaaaawn. "Um. Do you want a couple books to go? Or? I don't know what you plan to do while I sleep."
She blinks at him.
"Are you going to be okay, do you want to be around me while I'm sleeping and vulnerable?" Pause. "... We could cuddle?"
Yvette giggles a little.
"Okay. Uh. Go out the front door and then meet me in my room with teleportation once I'm done changing? You'll be able to hear me even if I call you very quietly, yeah?"
"Yeah. I... need to have visited a place before teleporting there. Or at least seen it. Open a window?"
also can he watch her change
She kisses him on the cheek first, but she does assist with this unsnuggling endeavor! And then going out the door is easier, she'll walk him to the exit and everything.
His glee at any kind of bestowed affection is adorable, and also deeply concerning!
She goes upstairs, changes into a nightgown, then opens a window and pokes her head out. "Alexei," she says, very quietly.
Yvette smiles at him, then looks away bashfully. She feels, uh, a bit more exposed than normal, but. It's fine. She closes the window, and then heads over to a nearby bookshelf.
"Do you want some books to practice reading?" she murmurs, index finger already on a book that looks promising. "I can't imagine it's very interesting to watch me sleep."