[open] The Lights That We Fade In

[jackie damiano piazza]

This kid had some serious issues bothering him without a doubt. It wasn't normal to work yourself into almost a frenzy just because someone grabbed you. If I didn't know better, I'd bet there was some underlying trauma bugging that kid because now... now he sat there like a skittish thing, the air still tinged with his fear, and if it weren't for my vampire senses I would've missed that 'okay' which he'd mumbled meekly. This was more like it. I loved it when people played along.

"Good." I said in reply as I refilled the kid's glass with his previous order plus a shot of something alcoholic. "Here, kid. Drink that up and get some hairs on your chest." As impossible as that was. Once you were bitten it was as if your body became suspended in time, you didn't age, didn't mature, you just stayed the same until you steadily faded away. The bitten ones did anyway. Us, the pure ones, we didn't gain that unsightly weathered look after a few centuries. Thank fuck for that.

I scooped up the cloth I'd been using to futilely clean the glasses to wipe the blood dirtying the kid's young face. He was painting a sad picture right now, sat there all small in his chair, blood on his face and clothes, his skin pallid, looking lost and his panic still stinking the air up. I could pretend to take pity when I felt like it. This show of forged caring seemed to settle the other punters and they returned to their drinks and solitude now that the hubbub had calmed down.

"Going to take a wild guess and assume you're a kid from that Academy. You look a bit young, don't you?" The last time I'd checked, we weren't allowed to bite the young ones, let alone turn them. This poor sucker was stuck in the body of a child for however long he lasted. I didn't envy him in the slightest.

[Milo Dakota Lark]

The boy flinched at the touch of cloth to his cheek, but nothing more than a quick cringe and a defensive raising of his shoulders. Hee didn't try to stop Jackie. As he started to get his head together, Milo felt the embarrassment catching up to him. Good, what a pathetic scene he'd just made. But he reassured himself that, after next week, no one would care about one little freak-out in a bar compared to everything he had planned.

He took his drink quietly and took a long swig. The been of alcohol calmed him some, and he let out a slow breath. "Yeah," he muttered, "and I'm gonna keep looking a little young, so thanks for reminding me." The comment was sullen, not snide, but he regretted it anyway, afraid the guy might grab him again. He peeked up at him sheepishly. "I got bit last year," he explained, a bit more respectfully.

[jackie damiano piazza]

For a moment, it almost sounded as though the kid hadn't learnt from his express class on respect with that little backchat of his. But then the boy's words lost that tang of cheek and calmed to something more suiting and respectable. I relaxed and gave a nod as I sipped from my own glass. So the boy was a fresh vampire, bitten not even a year ago... and he was alone in a bar with a bit of a rough reputation. I don't know but something didn't add up.

"So, where's your sire... or master, your maker or creator or whatever you call them nowadays?" I asked with a rolling gesture of my hand. "I don't think your biter would let you hang in a place such as this." I might be a lot of things but... I've had my fair share of scions and taking them under your wing was a tradition I respected greatly. Even as a child, I remember how every so often I'd gain a 'sibling' for a year or more, some were even adults, but I still saw them as a form of brother or sister. It was something my father had instructed to me from very young. If you make a mistake with blood, you assume it and help it grow because, sometimes, a meal that came back to bite you could be useful at times.

"Why are you even here anyway?" I swallowed the last of my blood and tossed the tumbler haplessly into the sink where it chinked and rattled against the metal basin. "This isn't a popular joint for you little things."

[Milo Dakota Lark]

The way Jackie asked about his sire, like he was asking where Milo's parents were or something like that, made him snort in bitter amusement. He'd gotten that tone plenty when he was human, and the fact that he was still the wandering orphan as a vampire was...well, irritating, but not surprising. "Hell if I know," he said with a one-shouldered shrug. "I was an oops baby. Didn't taste good enough to finish. So I don't think my 'biter' gives a rat's ass where I am." And wasn't that an odd sort of symmetry? The vampire had saved him from AIDS, the AIDS had saved him from the vampire. It sounded like the sort of thing a Buddhist would dig, he thought.

And all that beautiful symmetry added up to put him here, in this nasty old bar, talking to this asshole who just gave him a freaking PTSD flashback. Oh, well, he reminded himself. It would all be worth it soon enough.

As for that second question? He took a long sip of blood to give himself time to think on it. Milo considered being evasive, giving some non-committal answer like 'I go where I want' or 'there's nowhere else worth going in this lameass town.' Instead, as he looked up at the calm, almost reasonable look on the bartender's face, he recognized something predatory underneath the surface of that expression and found himself with a mouthful of truth.

"I hustle at The Gateway, and the clients don't understand the phrase 'night off.' So it was this or sit in my dorm like a loser."

[jackie damiano piazza]

Didn't taste good enough to finish. I suppose that what the boy was referring to was his possible 'dirty blood'. Blood could taste sullied for a myriad of reasons: illness, medication, drugs, etc. But, normally, a vampire would be able to smell what he was about to drink before even his lips touched his meal's neck. It was probable that whoever had bitten Milo had been a freshly bitten also or a vampire who had been feeling debilitatingly famished. Well, it didn't matter. What was done, was done. And Milo was another one of those sorry, lost biters without a figure of guidance.

As I waited for the kid's next answer, I slowly ran my tattooed fingers through my choppy, charcoal hair with the flash of red. My shoulder joints popped and I groaned out a heavy sigh - working in this place really wasn't my style. It was surprisingly tiresome. Every day was as dull as the one that'd preceded it and my body was growing anxious for a change. To hell if I was going to work here the next few years of my immortal life.

"So you're a little whore?" My voice indifferent and my expression unchanging as my hazel eyes wandered back over to the boy, this time looking him up and down. "Yes. You've got the tired look of one." I reached out and patted his head, tousling his stringy and already unkempt hair. "Don't go shouting that about, will you? You might have a few takers here and this is, amongst other things... a respected establishment." In other words, the sex trade wasn't allowed in here. It might look rough, dirty and shady but this place didn't fall as low as to sink to the selling of underage kids. At least not on my shift.

[Milo Dakota Lark]

Milo had been prepared for one of several responses: disgust, insisting Milo was too young for such things, or maybe even wanting a free sample. This non-reaction caught him a bit off-guard. The words themselves, "little whore" were condescending, but his follow-up was so matter-of-fact, and the pat on Milo's head was nearly...friendly? Affectionate? Which didn't match this guy's terifying energy in the least. It left the boy confused and on-edge.

He glanced around at the other patrons in the bar. This place was actually a bit like some of his old haunts in New York, the ones he only went to when he was too cold to work streets or desperate enough for work. He generally didn't like the look of them. They were too predatorial, unpredictable. These were the sort of places you only went if you were willing to risk your life for some cash. The kind of place he'd met his sire.

Snorting in quiet amusement, the boy jerked his head up and down. "Don't worry. I do fine without risking my neck here. No pun intended." He rubbed at his bite scar without really thinking about it. The fang marks weren't too large, certainly nothing compared to the cigarette burn scars that littered his arms. He fought off a grin imagining beating his father with the same arms he'd once brutalized. Yeah, that was going to be more than a little fun.

Milo still had a slightly meeker air about him, but the tension in his shoulders had been eased somewhat by the calm talk and the warmth of alcohol in his throat. He took another slow sip, humming In pleasure at the taste. "You'd call this respectable?" Milo asked, his lips quirked in a faint suggestion of a smirk, voice softer and cautious in case his humor was unwelcome.

[jackie damiano piazza]

I mirrored the boy's small smirk. "Aye. I would." I looked away to the other punters who still mooched over their glasses and seeming lost in their thoughts or minds. "Compared to the Gateway anyway. That place breeds impurity like a sewer does rats." But I'm not saying that's a completely bad thing lest I wish to be a hypocrite. I'm no better than most there, maybe even worse. We all have our vices, but it's up to ourselves if we're consumed by them - I think I do a good job of controlling my darker and socially unaccepted impulses. "Here? We have a slight infamy of being a feeding ground but... a vampire's got to do what a vampire's got to do, correct?"

One of the drinkers in the gritty bar stalked over to the counter, his glass out with change in his other hand - a silent gesture for a refill - and I wandered over with the glass blood bottle and some bourbon. "Another for yourself?" I asked Milo before I put them away once more, still holding the bottles up.

"Here, if you're not a vampire and you come to drink here... it's safe to assume you'll be thought of as food." I continued, pouring myself a small drink as I did so. "Ever eaten properly, kid? As in... bitten someone? Here, willing meals and humans are sadly scarce." Scarce was right. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of inhabitants around here were willing to offer their neck for a vampire and humans generally didn't live here. Faeries were supposedly out of the question, their blood being too potent for just any vampire to stomach. I miss the old days when I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted without having to hide my leftovers. "You're probably too young to know yourself but we vampires definitely drew the short straw with that damned peace treaty."

[Milo Dakota Lark]

Milo watched the older vampire's movements carefully, sort of fascinated by the power and elegance that he gave off. Milo wasn't sure he'd ever met someone like that before. He nodded, not about to disagree both because he didn't want to piss Jackie off againand because he'd been bent over the men's room sink at the Gateway one too many times to even try to defend it. He glanceddown at his glass, realizing belatedly that he'd finished the whole thing off in his panicked state.

He would be drinking plenty of blood next week, so when he agreed, he added, "Uh, just booze, though. Whiskey? Cheap stuff is fine." Milo traced a finger through a ring of condensation that had gathered on the bar. He wondered what it would be like, living as long as some of these vampires. Having been through decades of war and change and probably heaps of bullshit tragedies. To him, it sounded unbearable. But he wouldn't have to worry about that.

He actually had to think about Jackie's question for a moment. "Uh, I think they fed me live right after I turned. I don't remember too much of that, though. They had to flush some stuff out of my system." The disease. They told him he reeked of it, would smell of it for a while, but at least with some fresh blood in him, the stench wouldn't be so unbearable.

"And, no, I don't know a whole lot about the war and stuff. If you'll believe it, I'm not really front-of-the-class material."