"Why do you have the key?" I said, staring as Nolan unlocked the door to his clubroom.

He pushed the door open. "I'll tell you next time."

"Wait, why can't you tell me now? Are you like, the club president or a super important club member or something?"

"Hurry up and come in," he said, grabbing me by the hand and tugging me into the room with him. "We shouldn't stand out here for too long."

When I stepped in through the doorway, the first thing I noticed was the giant telescope placed in front of the center windows. I couldn't quite make out the details because the lights were still off, but from what sparse outside light that reflected off of it, it looked pretty sleek.

Their clubroom felt a lot more spacious than ours, even though we were using the same kind of room. It probably had to do with the fact that we were hoarding tons of books that were so numerous, not even our cabinets had enough space to store them.

It was weird being inside a clubroom this late at night—the latest I'd ever stayed in my own was before dinner, since we never had night meetings. Moonlight spilled through the window and onto the floor, reaching across half the length of the room. The whole atmosphere felt different.

"What if someone comes in?" I said, as Nolan closed the door behind us.

"No one will. We have fixed meeting days, and today isn't one of them. We should leave the lights off in case they draw attention." He walked up to a tall stack of chairs leaning against one of the walls. "Want to sit down?"

I went over to him and took the chair he was offering me. "Yes, please. Thanks."

"Anyway," he said, grabbing another chair and hefting it up to his side with one arm, "let's sit there."

"Okay."

I followed him to the mostly white telescope and watched as he set his chair down in front of it. Then I placed mine adjacent to his.

However, Nolan remained standing. After reaching over and throwing the window wide open, he returned to the telescope. As he bent his head down and peered through the finder, he began fiddling with some knobs on the telescope.

Since I wasn't as into astronomy as Ryan was, I'd never really paid much attention when he was using his telescope.

"What are you doing?" I asked, plopping down onto my own chair.

"Just looking for something," he said. "I'm still listening to you. You have a lot of questions to ask me, right? Go ahead and ask—I'll answer them."

"Yeah!" I pulled my phone out from my small messenger bag. In anticipation of tonight's meet up, I had prepared a bunch of questions I wanted the answers to.

The second I unlocked its screen, though, Nolan raised his head and looked in my direction. "What are you doing?"

"I'm pulling up the list of questions I want to ask. I just want to make sure I don't miss anything, you know?" I paused. "What's with that reaction? What did you think I was about to do?"

"I don't know—that's why I asked," he said. "You seem to love turning on your phone's flashlight in dark places."

I couldn't help but smile a little. It felt like we'd been over this topic so many times.

"Okay, let's start with that. Why do you hate it so much when I turn on my flashlight?"

"Chelsea." Nolan looked up from the telescope again. "Do you even know what a vampire is?"

Frowning, I said, "Uh, yeah. Of course I do! You drink blood, right?"

"And?"

"And ... you're afraid of garlic?"

He groaned. "No. I can't step out into the sunlight. My days and nights are switched around—I can only sleep during the day. Artificial light is normally okay, but in the dark your flashlight is still too strong, especially when there's a chance you'll shine it in my eyes."

"Oh. Hey, so when you said I almost blinded you the other time, you weren't kidding?"

"Yeah. I think it threw off the balance in my brain for a few days. I couldn't think or walk properly, and I couldn't sleep either."

Oof.

"I'm sorry! I didn't know it was so bad. I just thought you were exaggerating," I said, wincing. "You said I gave you that headache—so that really was because of what I did."

"It's okay," he said. "It's already over now, and I didn't want you to know, anyway. I couldn't have told you the truth then."

"I guess that makes sense. What happens if you go out into the sunlight?"

"I'll burn."

I probably shouldn't have been that surprised, and I didn't know what I was expecting for an answer, but I gawked at Nolan anyway. "Burn?!"

"Yeah, burn. I tried once, and my hand immediately started blistering. If I'd stayed out any longer, I'm guessing the consequences wouldn't be pretty. That's why I don't go to gym. It's not," he said, shooting me a look, "because I don't like exercising. I can't risk the exposure."

No wonder he refused to tell me why he seemed to hate going to gym so much.

"When you say you can only sleep during the day, does that mean that you literally can't sleep at night, even if you try?"

A sigh left his throat. "Trust me, I've tried many times to sleep at night. I don't know if you thought otherwise, but I don't actually like sleeping in class. It's a pain to study on my own at night just to catch up with everyone else."

I scrolled down the questions I'd typed down. "Okay, um, I've been wondering this for a while now, but have you always been a vampire? Like, were you born one?"

He turned to stare at me. "No."

"Oh." Well, okay. I didn't think he'd react like that. Maybe I was just imagining it, but he looked kind of offended.

"I was normal, like you, about two years ago," he said.

What? Really?

Before I realized I was doing it, I was already sitting on the edge of my chair, leaning forward to stare at him. "What happened?"

He paused. "I feel like I'm in an interview for a feature article you're writing."

The laughter bubbled up from my throat, and I nudged him with my elbow. "If you just gave me detailed answers without me having to prod you, this would be more like a regular conversation!"

"Hey! I'm adjusting the telescope," he said, shifting his body away, but I could hear the smile in his voice. "Don't knock into me."

"What are you looking for?"

"I'll show you later," he said. "Anyway, back to your question—long story short, someone I thought was my friend attacked me when we were alone. When I came to, things just felt different. Then the sun rose, and I knew that everything had changed. I instinctually knew I shouldn't go near the light, and all I wanted to do was sleep."

My lungs didn't seem to be using the air that I was inhaling. The betrayal and pain he must have experienced was something I couldn't even fathom. If any of my best friends had done that to me, I don't think I could've ever recovered mentally.

"You were attacked? By your friend?"

He shrugged. "Growing up, it was really difficult for me to make friends. She was the first one who reached out to me, and we got really close over the course of a few months. It turned out that she was looking for someone to make into her 'companion', and it didn't matter if I was willing or not."

I covered my mouth with my hand. "I'm so sorry."

"I never had the chance to share this in detail with anyone," he said. "Except for my father, but I was too much in shock back then to tell him anything apart from the fact that I got bitten."

"But you're better now?" An insistent ache pulled at my heart.

Nolan gestured to himself. "Well, I am standing here talking to you."

I didn't know what to say, so I quietly sat there as I tried to absorb all this new information.

After a couple of minutes, he broke the heavy silence that had fallen over the room. "I was sort of catatonic for a while after that. My father put me in therapy, but it didn't help because I couldn't be honest with the therapist. How was I supposed to tell someone what I had become without expecting them to send me to a mental asylum?"

"Even after you got bitten, you couldn't tell anyone what had happened," I said softly.

"I could never tell anyone. Be honest, Chelsea—if I had told you what I am when we first started hanging out, what would your reaction have been?"

"I wouldn't have believed you," I admitted. "I didn't even believe my own eyes when I saw you turn from a bat."

"But if for some reason you did believe me, would you have just continued going to the forest with me without fear?"

It was too dark for me to see them, but I looked down at my shoes anyway.

When I'd first found out Nolan was a vampire, despite having been good friends with him for several months already, fear had still sneaked its way into my mind somehow. I had still been afraid, because knowing that he could potentially hurt me made things seem different.

If I'd learned that at the beginning, before I grew to trust him this much, I'd probably have stayed far, far away from him.

"Probably not," I said. "Not when we were just getting to know each other."

"If I were you, I wouldn't have either. That's why I never said anything," he said, looking up at me. "There was no point in telling you."

I could understand that. But then ...

"You didn't mean to transform back into a human in front of me, right? Couldn't you control your bat form?"

He shook his head. "I didn't even know I could transform into one until a few months back. I can't do it at will, and it took me a while to connect the dots, but I've figured out what causes it. It always seems to happen when I've had too little sleep."

I frowned. "Too little sleep?"

"The first time I turned into one, it was the day I went to gym class because you kept asking me."

I could only stare at him.

"I spent a pretty large part of that day awake talking to you," he said. "I don't even recall how I fell asleep. When I woke up, everything was so huge. The hallway, the people ... everything. I thought it was all some kind of hallucination. I almost lost it, and then suddenly I was flapping in the air."

"No wonder it—I mean, you—flew like you were drunk or something," I said. "I totally thought that bat was sick."

He snorted. "Yeah, well, it was my first time flying. Forgive me for not being good at it on my first attempt."

"How does it feel, though? Flying? Is it fun?" Although I had never wanted to be one, I had always wondered how birds felt when they were soaring through the sky. They looked so free and happy.

"It's weird. Kind of scary. I really don't like it," he said. "I don't want to fly. I just want to be normal again."

Right. Of course he wouldn't be enjoying these 'abilities', especially since they were forced onto him. I shouldn't have thought, even for a second, that it could be fun for him.

Guilt roiled at the pit of my stomach as I stood up.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have asked that. For what it's worth, you're normal to me. You're thoughtful, sweet, funny, kind, and smart. You've saved me so many times, which shows how much you care. If you didn't, I'd probably be lying in a hospital bed right now. If you weren't full of human emotions, I don't think we could have grown this close. You're normal in every aspect that matters."

His lack of an immediate response made me tense in preparation for what was coming next. Being unable to see his facial expression didn't help to temper the flurry of questions that raced through my mind. Was it too much too fast? Did he think I liked him too much? Should I not have said that?

Finally, he said, "Wow. I don't think I've ever received this many compliments in my life before."

Suspiciously, I narrowed my eyes at the teasing inflection in his voice.

"Are all those qualities why you fell for me?"

Warmth flared up in my cheeks. "I'm being serious here! Here I am, trying to comfort you, and you're—you're—!"

He laughed, and it was such a lovely sound to my ears. "Sorry, I couldn't help it. Your reactions are so cute that I just want to keep poking you."

The heat that had already spread throughout my face intensified further. I gaped some more.

"Wh-why do you keep calling me cute?" This was the second time he'd done it today! "Stop!"

"You don't like it when I call you cute?"

I definitely did not dislike it, but hearing Nolan say it and knowing he was referring to me made me so embarrassed that I didn't know how to react.

"No, but I feel like my face is going to explode," I wailed, as quietly as I could, bringing my hands up to my cheeks.

"You know, I wondered why your face went red sometimes when we were in the forest," he said. "Now I feel like an idiot for not realizing that you were blushing."

"What? You could see when I was blushing?!"

To think I was so thankful on those occasions when I thought that it was too dark for him to see!

"I don't think I've mentioned this, but I have really good eyesight and hearing. One of the side effects of my condition," he said. "That's why I don't need a flashlight to make my way around the forest. So, yes. I could see."

I groaned. "I can't believe this!"

"It doesn't matter now, right?"

"I guess not," I muttered, still moping.

"Hey," he said, and then he reached out to take my hand. "Thank you. You wouldn't know this, but when you initially lectured me for entering the forest and insisted on coming along for my own safety, I felt like a normal person again. Thank you for walking into my life. You make me feel normal."

I should've been used to it.

We held hands all the time in the forest, mostly when he was guiding me through the dark shadowy parts so that I wouldn't fall.

There was no reason for goosebumps to run up my arm the way they did when he grabbed my hand. Disregarding the facts, my fingertips began tingling anyway. The sensation rushed through my hands up to my arm, and then floated into my chest.

Could he hear how loudly my heart was beating? Because it sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants to me right now.

"I'm thankful I did, too," I whispered, only able to look down at the floor.

He squeezed my hand.

"By the way, here. Take a look," he said, gently tugging me towards the telescope.

"What is it?"

I looked through the main telescope.

It was the Ursa Major, but in much greater clarity than I normally saw through my binoculars. The familiar pattern of the bright stars that made up the legs, body, and tail somehow seemed more mesmerizing against the dark backdrop tonight. I couldn't quite tear my eyes away from the sight.

"Your favorite bear constellation," he said. "It's still not as cute as you, though."

Was he trying to give me a heart attack?

"Nolan!"

---------------------------------

AN: first off, SHOUT OUT TO CovertEyes FOR THIS LOVELY LITTLE FANFIC THAT SHE WROTE FOR YOU ARE THE SHELL TO MY TORTOISE. i feel super honored and at a loss for words for this, you have no idea. thank you so much again!! ˉ̞̭(′͈∨‵͈♡)˄̻ ̊ and everybody, whoever wants to read a valentine's day themed Nolan/Chelsea fanfic, this is the one for you! it's hilarious and totally in-character and i 100% LOVE it. i made an announcement about it before, but not everyone who's following this story is following me, which is why i'm sharing this here too! it's on her profile, the title is You Are the Valentine to My Nor'easter and it's a completed one-shot!

next: you'll have noticed they haven't discussed getting together yet, but that's because there're so many important questions chelsea has to ask, and even then she hasn't asked them all yet. but we have many more chapters left, so ... :D thank you so much for reading!! i hope this part at least answered some of your questions, and we'll go even more in depth for some of them later on in the story. have a great week and please take care, everybody! （'ω｀♡%）

dedicated to ThePotatoBrownie, i really appreciate all of your support so far, thank you so much ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡ every time you leave a vote or comment i always notice and it brightens my day so much! hope you have a wonderful week that puts a smile on your face every day the way you put one on mine!! ◟(◔ั₀◔ั )◞ ༘♡