Evelyn Frisk

It was hard to get back to normal life after something like a fucking vampire attack. He had been shaken, terrified at seeing his sister being hurt in front of him. The adrenaline of the shift and the pain it brought on, not to mention the injuries sustained in the ensuing fight, it had all left Samson a little out of it when he’d finally reverted back to his human form. Evie and he had a lot to talk about, but neither of them had been in the right state for it at the time. But that night, as he tried to calm himself in his room, he felt as if he were high as a kite. Maybe the full shifting really did something to his endorphins, but he felt the best he had in years.

But as time went on, even though his wounds healed abnormally faster than he was used to, the time never seemed to come up. It didn’t help that he was doing his best to avoid coming out of the apartment above the bakery. Fear at the aftermath kept him there at first, scared that his attacking Kolya might have grievously injured the man. And even if he hadn’t, attacking the best friend of the guy he was kind of seeing was definitely not the best way to make a good impression. And then there was the depression, the self-hatred at how selfish he could be, turning the situation into something all about him.

And then he started tweaking. There was no other word for it, and as someone who had experienced withdrawal, he knew the signs. It took longer than he’d like to admit, but somehow he’d pieced it together. V. It was a drug, and he’d accidentally ingested a large amount of it in the fight with Kolya. And, well… it doesn’t take much for an addict to hit the ground running once more. So with a quick visit to a friend at the vets, one he hadn’t spoken to in some time, he had another dose.

The week went quickly after that. It was easy enough to stay away from the outside world, locking himself away in the apartment. And without a phone, since his broke before the attack, he didn’t have to worry about the outside world coming in. Sure, he had to run the bakery, and when he was riding the rise of the high it was easy enough to maintain. And while he was riding the rise of the high, baking was a breeze, and he was able to make some pretty fucking fantastic pastries if he said so himself. The customers seemed to enjoy them as well, and the displays were empty at the end of every day.

The peak was, of course, his favorite part. He’d heard of euphoria before, but even on the more mundane drugs, he’d never quite experienced it to this degree. It was something else, and for the first time in his life, he felt truly happy. Careless. Free. The hallucinogenic effect was something of a bonus, here, and he would lose hours after the euphoria wore off simply staring off past a book he was attempting to read, or even just at his ceiling as he lay in bed. It almost reminded him of getting high back in high school, or the good nights back in California when he managed to find something strong enough to last, but so so much better.

And then, of course, there was the fall. The crash. The end of the high. That was when he would pull away entirely. Lock even Evie out. She was the only one who bothered to check on him, anyway. Selene and Hadley were busy, and he couldn’t face Peter if the man even did bother to show up. He’d mutter to himself, or to whoever his drug-addled mind decided he was seeing in the corner of his eye. He’d let the bakery run out of stock, not for lack of trying. All that mattered at that time was getting the next hit.

So, when the alarm wouldn’t stop blaring in his ears, he smashed it with a rolling pin, grabbed the sheet out of the oven without caring that it seared his hand as he did, and stormed out of the bakery without caring that the oven was still on. If it burned down, it would save him some time in the future. Up the stairs, into the apartment. He had more left, plenty really. He just needed to be better at taking it, that was all. So he did, and soon enough he was laying on the not-so-shitty couch Selene had convinced him to get, calming down.

So when Evie burst into the apartment, screaming his name, he shot up and held the rapidly healing hand to his head as the movement made it swim. He could only answer in a groan as he lay back down.

“What…?”

All the pieces were in front of her, but she didn’t want to solve the puzzle. It would mean stepping into her sketchy past and reliving through the memories of her own addictions. Not to mention her abandonment issues held her tightly in place with no wiggle room for misinterpretation. There was more she worried about since that night.  That she couldn’t bring herself to think of. Samson could shift, but he shifted into a bear. Evelyn didn’t mourn for her father, not really, but it was their father. She couldn’t bring herself to ignore the small whispers in the back of her mind.

Stay with him and maybe he’ll kill you too. 

The self destructive conscious whispered to her. Samson looked out of it, and she almost wanted to leave him alone. However she caught the injured hair against his head and moved in closer with a frown. “A..are you ok?” She meekly whispered and set her purse aside. “Let me see.” Evelyn repeated a little more forceful than she meant it to be. Warmth and joy from her pending news dissolved into her nerves instead. Her meeting with Peter hadn’t gone to plan at all, but it made her realize something important.

This talk needed to happen sooner or later, and for her own nerves she wanted it to happen tonight. However, now she second guessed it as she stared down at Samson. It was her brother laying there, but it wasn’t the brother that had greeted her at the hospital nor was it the brother she used to play tea parties with. 

“Sammy..I think we..we..should talk.”

Knots in her stomach constricted and she could almost hear him leaving in her mind. She knew she had complicated things. Samson had a life here before she came, and from the evidence downstairs she was just a burden. Maybe this time she should leave and he would be happier. Maybe she was his problem, and part of her was frightened he would confess that to her. 

Clary + drawing

“Kolya.” The word came from his mouth before he could stop it, spat out somewhere between annoyed and pained, and he quickly shook his head. “The man who attacked you, that’s his name.” Not likely that the girl cared what his name had been, but he couldn’t quite help himself. Watching her actions could only cause him to wince, something akin to pity washing over him. He had no detail on the attack that had occurred, besides knowing what the vampire had looked like after Samson had gotten a bite or two out of him. He could only imagine what the baker boy, what this girl, had looked like in the aftermath. He didn’t want that mental image, and quickly tried to wash it away with a gulp of his whiskey.

“I’m glad that you’re okay.” All of them, though he kept his words directed at the girl pointedly, didn’t add that addendum out loud. It didn’t matter what his feelings on the matter was, what mattered is that he was sitting and looking at the girl, that she hadn’t been turned into a corpse. He could only assume that she wasn’t quite human herself, if her relation to Samson and the fact that she wasn’t sporting some nasty scars right now were any indication. Peter highly doubted that Kolya had stuck around to heal the girl with a drink of his own blood. “Physically, at least. I’m sure that emotionally you’re not… quite there. It’s understandable.” His words had turned a bit more clinical, an attempt to distance himself from the entire situation. He sat up a little bit straighter once more, fixed his tie, his hair. That professional demeanor reappearing as he slipped into the mask of it to hide how he might truly feel about the entire situation.

It was easy enough to move on, however, when Evelyn finally offered her explanation to what a… fuck boy was. And… well. Peter winced once more. He was a bit guilty of that, wasn’t he? Maybe technically he and Samson had only ‘hooked up’ as she said, once. But he did keep a rather nasty habit of not reaching out, not contacting the boy more often. And coming up with the worst excuses for it, as well. “Not exactly. I’m just… not the best with friendships. A bit of an introvert, bad at reaching out. I assume that he will be upset with me because…” He paused, wondered if he was about to scare this new hire out of his office. “The man that attacked you is– was– my best friend. And I didn’t bother to reach out sooner. No matter, shall we take that tour?” Anything to get away from this topic of conversation.

Everything went downhill after his name.

“Kolya.”

Evelyn’s eyes went someplace else entirely back into the scope of her memory. The flesh and muscle being ripped by open by that monster. The pain she had endeared, all the blood she had lost, and that sense of innocence that a vampire attack would never happen to her. All of it gone. Her fingers leave the glass unattended on the desk and instead comb through her hair. The nails themselves breaking slightly apart as the claws came out from underneath them. Part of her thick fiery mane fall from her head as she tried to tell herself this was all over.

Kolya’s attack was over.

Then that made her semi predatory brain wrap around another fact. Peter knew about the attack. He knew about it. Yet he hadn’t even attempted to check on Samson to see if he was alright. A person that was supposed to be her brother’s friend or fuckboy. It was still unclear. She tried to calm her emotions as they flooded to the surface like a tropical hurricane. Finally her eyes peered back at him. The nervous jaded girl’s irises become hidden under the diamond slit obsidian pupils. 

“I’m glad that you’re okay.”  The words repeated in her mind. The jawbone muscle cracked in and out of place, enough to darken the area around her neck. To make it visible, to make him see. Also breaking the way that she his assumption was right and she was definitely not a mere human herself. There’s a brooding guttural growl that retracts, as she takes the gentle reign back into her emotions. 

“You knew...” She whispered in a heartbroken tone mixed with the vocals of the cat. “And you ..just..” Her hands land on the desk as the claws scratch against the surface. Evelyn reminded herself that she needed this job, and surely changing into a lion wouldn’t be helping her chances any. Hell she could have already blown it.  She took in several deep fast breaths starting to hyperventilate as the partial shift started to retract itself. 

Quietly she sank back in the chair and kept her eyes locked onto him. The eyes of a cat that hadn’t turned back to her regular ones, but the tears that slid from the ducts were all human. “You knew.. and you didn’t.. you didn’t even care to check on Sammy?”  She stood up from the chair and found herself pacing behind it trying to dispel the feral energy inside her being that wanted to rip out. “I’m an introvert, too. But if I knew.. my friend might be hurt.. I would..have at least CALLED.” The word bounced off her lips in the volume of a lioness’s roar. The next set of words were full of her normal softness. 

“You’re a..a..coward. Sammy needs you, his friend.” On the defensive once more about it, as she ignored the image that flickered in her mind. Peter’s best friend had ruined her.  He exposed their secrets, and he may as well have taken one of her nine lives. In all her slip she had failed to note that he said ‘was his best friend’. Her shoulders lift and fall with the pattern of her shuddering. Words weren’t easily found as she vigorously wiped at her tears and motioned to the door with a slow nod. If he would still accept her they needed to get this tour out of the way. 

Hadley was the type that asked for permission and then acted before the other person could say yes or no. Convenient that the answer was yes in this case, since the brunette was halfway to the ledge anyway. She kicked off her sneakers, preferring the feel of the wind pulling at her bare feet. Keen eyes took in the girl without being too direct. Shy, sad, on the precipice of some kind of emotional blowout, she looked like she needed a friend. Hadley could sympathize, had sat on a ledge or two with the same kind of look in her eyes. “Ah well, people here want to feel rooted, I think. They think the ground offers stability and heights like this are unsteady….all changing winds and intangible maybes.” The people on the ground below were not like them, Hadley and this is sad, nervous, creature beside her.

“Warning labels. God wouldn’t that be convenient?” she asked with a chuckle. “Though do you think you’d heed them? My brain always tries to tell me that I’m the exception to all red flags and warning signs.” This girl sitting beside her was a red flag, fingers nervously kneading, an unpredictable hurricane in the air around her. It reminded Hadley of herself. “Flying is exhilarating, it’s like running but there’s nothing under your feet.” She smiled, suspicions confirmed when the girl mentioned landing on her feet. A Felidae then, how fun. “Well that’s a valuable skill right there. Me and my wings don’t always have the most graceful of landings. I excel at the takeoff though.”

She doesn’t know this girl. Whatever is going on behind those sad eyes is most definitely not her business. But something in Hadley didn’t want to leave her here on this ledge alone. Back when she’d been a hurricane on the edge, she wished someone would look at her with understanding in their eyes. “I’m Hadley,” she greeted, offering her hand. “I’ve probably on been here a little longer than you. Have you shifted since you’ve been here?”

Evie didn’t seem the mind when the girl didn’t really wait for her answer to come join her on the ledge. Her hues still watching over the ants down below somberly. She listened to the other girl’s words and there’s a slow smile that progresses across her lips before it flattens into a straight line. Evie is glad to have the company of someone else, even if she is dealing with her own existential crisis on the inside. She hummed thoughtfully as she slowly peeked again for better observation.

“Mmm. Depends. And would the warning labels be correct or would they be defective because they wouldn’t be able to predict what would happen? How a person would change?” Evie tilted her head curiously fiery curls catching on the slight breeze. Entangling the flaming tresses in the night air. “Have you ever been scared..to fly?” It was a silly question, because Evie had never been afraid to jump. Though Evelyn’s reasoning was  more her broken interior and lack of wanting to live than fear as a denominator.

Evie finally calmed her anxiety enough to instead lightly tap the ledge with her fingernails instead of kneading the fabric. “I guess I fly for a few seconds, and then I take a dive.” She blinked finding herself curious about something else. Canine teeth pressed into her bottom lip before she finished asking her question, “How do you normally land?”

She stared at the hand hesitantly. One of her hands slowly moved from the ledge, and at the pace of molasses finally shook Hadley’s hand surprisingly hard. Before she darted it back quickly. “I’m Evelyn, but you can call me Evie.” Grateful in this moment to have company, and not just any sort of company – but someone like her in a way. “I only got here..a..few days ago..” She whispered turning back to her nervous wreck of a self because she remembered the circumstances of when she had awoken in Ashbourne. “Oh yes, I shift every night.. but my brother doesn’t know. I.. I don’t want him to know.”

Peter shouldn’t have taken a drink exactly when he did, but apparently he was cursed with extremely rotten timing, because the moment the girl’s question was out in the air, he was choking on his whiskey, sputtering, coughing, trying to catch his breath. Was he a what now. A fuck boy. It took him a moment to regain his composure from his little coughing fit, taking another sip of his whiskey for good measure, and let out a harsh sigh through his nose. “Am I a what now.” He had to know what the girl meant by that, because if she was speaking literally than, well…

But she was starting to tear up. Oh, dear. Emotions. Peter felt something in his chest tug a bit as he watched the display and then she spoke up again and…

I met one of those sharks… I got attacked…

I took a bite out of someone he didn’t want me to, apparently, so he bit back.

Pieces of a puzzle, snapping in place and Peter felt himself letting out a hissed groan through his teeth, hands coming up to press roughly against his eyes. This was just fucking great. “I’ll drop by this afternoon, see if he wants to chat with me.” A pause, and his hand lowered to look at the girl again, opening his mouth again, only to snap it shut again. The part of him that wanted to defend Kolya, the part that wanted to tell the girl that the vampire wasn’t… whatever he was doing right now… pushed against his lips but stayed quiet. He couldn’t tell her that, because Peter himself didn’t even know that was true at this point. 

“You have nothing to apologize for.” He took the paper from her, barely gave it a cursory glance before he set it aside, before he rested his arms on the desk and looked her over. “Are you alright? After your attack, I mean?”

Evelyn’s cheeks had turned the color of her fiery red hair as it settled in. It was worse when he sat there and almost choked because of her. The redness tricked down to her neck as she tried to physically rub it off with her hand. Part of her found this funny, but not enough to sink into with her current state of being embarrassed. What was she thinking? She can’t go around blurting out someone’s a fuck boy without any receipts.  The conversation had taken a turn, but she would revisit on what she had called him. Instead her the redness drained from her face and her neck and instead grew fairer than her normal tone. There was still a pink blush tone to her cheeks from the intake of alcohol.

She didn’t take note of the hissed groan, but she did take note of him roughly rubbing the palms of his hands against his eyes. Did he know something that she didn’t? “Yes, please.” Evie pleaded with a slow nod of her head, her lips drawn downward into a small frown. He wanted to say more, she could tell. The way he opened his mouth and closed it was something she did too many times to count. “You..you can tell me if..there’s something I should know.”  She whispered unsure if she wanted to hear the man’s words or not.

Before she could inquire more he had taken the paper, and his question.. Evie nervously fiddled with her fingers in her lap. “We..we are alive..so that’s good. I’m fine. The shark and Samson both.. survived. So everything is okay. ” She answered meekly and quietly rose a hand to her neck where the phantom pain came with the memory of it. She had never been bit by a vampire before, but there was a first time for everything it seemed.

Evie blinked and remembered what she had called him earlier and finally answered the question that got side tracked. Hoping to throw the conversation away from her, onto him. She swallowed and prepared herself

“A..fuckboy. You two hook up and then you don’t answer him for a few days. Is that why .. is that why he would be pissed… at you? You just umm..just..talk..to him..when you ..want to hookup? Then ignore him?” The girl had slumped back in the chair. Way down. Almost enough to disappear, at least she hoped so. Did Peter even want to hire her after all this?

A small tilt of the head, watching her carefully, and Peter offered a bit of a chuckle. “You can speak freely here, you know. I’ve already decided to hire you, and I don’t fire employees for having an opinion.” He reached for the bottle of whiskey himself, poured some into the other glass and brought it to his lips. It was, perhaps, the worst kept secret to the staff that he drank on the job, but when it took so much to get him drunk, it wasn’t as if it hindered his work. He kept his sips small, however, not wanting to come off as the very blatant alcoholic that he truly was in front of, essentially, a new hire. 

Peter almost couldn’t help the twitch of his lips, up at the edges when the girl spoke again, and he offered a small nod of his head. “Yes, I know Sammy quite well, as a matter of fact.” In that they had been on… three dates now? Peter was rather bad at keeping track, but as it stood, since he’d found Kolya ripped apart by Samson, he might have been pointedly avoiding the boy. Big can of worms, and he’d had quite a few… bad days in a row since then. He needed to reach out, to make sure that Samson was okay after that.

Then again, would Samson want to talk to him at all?

“We’re… friends… Or something of the sort. He might be kind of pissed at me, at the moment, actually. I haven’t spoken to him in a few days.” He offered a small pause, then he couldn’t quite help chuckling again. “But something tells me that, with how sweet he his, he wouldn’t consider you anything close to a burden or a distraction. However, if that’s how you feel… As I said, I’ve pretty much decided to hire you. I just need you to write down your school schedule so that I can work around that for you. Then I can give you a tour of the place.”

Was he just saying that? Or did he mean he wouldn’t fire her. Jaded eyes widen as she flashed a grin for the first time in awhile. She could use this to lure Sammy out of his funk maybe. “Really? You’re going to hire me?” For a second she was able to ample herself out of the fictional waves of anxiety that held her down. Evie slouched in the chair and brought her arms to hug her legs towards her chest.  Why hadn’t Samson mentioned Peter to her? 

Wait.. Wait. 

Evie coughed slightly to keep herself from asking a rather probing question of her own.He did say he would hire her though, and he had started the personal question. Evie glanced from him to the bottle of whiskey thoughtfully. She had mostly fallen silent as he continued. They were friends, but Samson might be pissed at him.

Oh my god. I’m in the office with a fuck boy.

Evie blinked her eyes and sighed lowly. “Oh..you..I..” She fidgeted in her chair and before she could catch her nervous energy it unleashed everything. The tears had started to swell in her eyes, “I..I.. He.. he.. you..” Where did she even begin? “By.. friends..and being close.. are you a fuck boy?” She didn’t exactly mean to ask it so bluntly and blinked slowly with a wave of her hand. The look on her face moved from concern to being mortified.

You did not just call your boss a fuck boy.

“No.. no, wait. If you’re his friend you need to call him please. He… He hasn’t…been.” She took another deep breath and already felt the tears on the verge of falling.