thorns

“Can we get fries after this?” Picking himself up for what felt like the hundredth time that day, Myles pulled at the front of the tank top stuck to him with sweat. He should have known JJ wasn’t going to go easy on him. She was too competitive during board games to not be the same way when it came to this kind of thing. It’s not like he thought her a poor teacher, however. She seemed pretty quick to point out any flaws in his technique and offer tips on how to correct it.

If there was one thing he was entirely certain about when it came to the huntress, it was that him evading her personal space would without doubt get him the disgruntled welcome back to the city from a single one broody new yorker that he’d surely appreciate above a multitude of others. “I leave you on your own for a whole year,” he stopped just shy of the table she occupied, the bright red Twizzler caught between his teeth as he snapped a piece off.  Asher having shamelessly wandered past the campus and beyond the handful of cafe’s just beyond when he’d seen her. “And you’ve barely moved.” How he could have so easily sat by as any given time they’d ever spent together had included her with her head in a textbook or her laptop was beyond him, though he supposed centuries of built and honed patience made it a little more bearable. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”

“One month.” He repeated. This was extremely difficult for him, harder than she could ever really know, but living here wasn’t as easy as it once was either. He knew she could take care of herself, he raised her after all, but things were different now. “I promise, June.” He added. “We’ll get everything ready, but the second this semester is over I want you on a plane out of here. I can’t handle the worry. Every morning you walk out that door I’m not sure you’ll come back, not anymore. It’s killing me.”  

CJ shrugged as if to say suit yourself while she finished wrapping her abdomen and pulled a shirt over the bandages. “Believe it or not, this is the only place I’m allowed to be, practically anyway.” She wasn’t allowed back to work just yet, another two days or so and she’d run through the fitness gambit to show her higher-ups that she was more than cleared to get back on the job. Until then, the Sanctuary was as much home as her apartment was and it served as a distraction just then while she wrapped her head around recent events. “I’ll be fully healed in another day or two. Not like I died, right?” Wry smile formed on her lips because they both knew she very well might have. 

Opening his mouth to offer confirmation, Myles again just nodded, swallowed, and turned on his heel to start searching behind them. The snack table in the room had been completely destroyed by the falling debris and Myles dodged around people and piles of rubble to get to it. He swore he could feel his heartbeat against his ribcage, his head was a mess of thoughts and worries but at the forefront was his mission and JJ. The actual table was in half, a large chunk of debris in the middle of it and he was quick to check the legs of them. Not lose enough, there wasn’t time to worry about prying one of them off so instead he dub closer to the middle where the table splintered. Shoving aside broken glass, scattered food, and ignoring the splinters he was sure to get, he grabbed at a piece of the broken wood and pulled hard. Stumbling back from the table from the exertion, he regained his footing and looked to the sizable chunk of wood. Not a stake, but the next best thing. He didn’t really have time to be picky.

 Mission accomplished, all that was left on his mind as he ran back to where he’d left her, was JJ. A mantra of “please be okay” played over and over again as he maneuvered around people. He couldn’t lose her, she had become such a staple in his new life on his own that he didn’t know if he could handle-His thoughts were brought to a halt as he stopped short of her and the vampire. Frozen in place, he felt like he was watching what took place in slow motion. JJ still gripped the pipe and he watched her body recoil from the force of her strike, saw her knee going down towards the floor. The vampire jerked back, the strike landing solidly against its jaw and let out a howl. Blood erupted from it’s mouth but instead of retreating, it seemed to ready itself.

 Myles couldn’t hear himself shout her name over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears.

 And he didn’t hear the cry the vampire let out either as he dashed forward and ran the makeshift stake in his hand through its chest. It didn’t last long because blood gurgled from it’s mouth and he was quick to push it forward and away from them, digging the stake in further in the process. It stepped back and stumbled, fell to it’s knees and then forward. 

Mouth hung open in shock, Myles turned his attention away from it to look at JJ behind him. I just killed somebody. That’s what he wanted to say, almost wanted to lurch forward and regurgitate all of the appetizers he’d had from the table that’d supplied the weapon. “Are you…?” But right now he was worried about her and his eyes went from her to the vampire’s twitching form feet from them. “Holy shit did that really happen.” 

        The disadvantage of being human would not stop her from holding her ground. Truthfully, if she were Myles, she’d have gotten as far away from the altercation as possible. Something told her he wouldn’t do that, though, and perhaps that was the most worrying of it all. If she let a fellow human, one more so than her, die from a vampire who just so happened to spot them in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d never forgive herself. Death was not a foreign concept to her, nor was pain. She knew them well, like old reluctant friends. Still, the idea of letting them take hold of her kept her going. Her life depended on it. She swung again with as much force as she had, looking to buy herself ample time to run, hide, or even find someone else for the thing to sink its teeth into. She just hoped she didn’t have its prefered blood type running through her veins.

“I agree. I actually miss it now that I live in the city; I used to spend a lot of time outdoors back in Salem.” But there was a ton to do outdoors in Salem. It wasn’t a sprawling city like New York though the population far exceeded its square footage like the city. “We should go sometime?” It came out sounding like a question, knowing they weren’t close but wanting to make a friend all the same. 

“Enemies are a waste of time and more aggravating than they’re worth.” One particular hunter came to mind as she spoke, though Sloan hardly wished to provide him a spotlight. “It’s better to keep a circle of those you can pry information from.” More useful, at least. “Very kind, but I’m sure the city breathes a sigh of relief whenever I vanish. Nonsense and even if I did, I’m a great nurse.” Gesturing towards the door as if in agreement over JJ’s terms, “Dog park it is.”

Bea smiled as she listened to the brunette, charmed by the young girl. Their interaction may have been rather brief so far, but Bea got a sense that she was rather empathetic. A surprising thing for someone so young. “Oh, my first dog’s name was Bumble. That one wasn’t so creative. It was to go with my name, Bea. Although, I was a child then,” Beatrix replied warmly, introducing herself at the same time. “It is warmer than expected, although neither of us are strangers to cold weather coming from Canada.” 

“Who knows,” Laurel shrugged. “I am going to milk it as long as I can and reap the benefits. I am the one stuck to a bed and at the edge of losing it on the next person prodding me when I’m trying to sleep. Have to find someone willing to bend to a little pout or potential blowup,” Laurel stated. “Thanks JJ,” she said in full honestly. “You know before I passed out, Derek helped me which was shocking. If the positions were switched- I don’t know if I would have helped someone else if I was as injured as he was but he tried to help me. We had a bit of a heart to heart- he is in the room next to me. So karma fucking biting me in the ass.”

“Even if I won,” Cassie confirmed before adding, “It’s not just about winning, it’s about how you win”. She moved her beer to her lips again as she considered what the girl said, “Maybe I will, but not tonight”.

                    “That certainly has it’s appeal,” a timid grin flourished on olive countenance,  though he offered a discouraging shrug, all the same, “I’ve lived in big cities all my life, yet the smog of New York City is a whole other breed, I feel a day trip outside of the city would be the only true escape.” Even Central Park didn’t offer much reprieve, Elliot discovered; the military clad officers finding their way through every crevice and corner of the city. “Please don’t jinx us on that,” he offered a grim chuckle at her final statement, shaking his head in tandem.

“How is your plant doing? Been to any dances with it recently?” 

“What if I agreed to join you?” His words came out as quickly as hers, as if he’d been planning this all along. He wasn’t. Alhough he knew June wouldn’t leave the city so easily, he didn’t think to prepare a persuasive monologue to convince her. “You go somewhere, anywhere, get us set up and after a couple of months I move out there too. It’s a good option.”

                    “A pact for when we find ourselves in that situation again, eh?” Mal drawled out under a scoff, understanding full well such scenario was a spec of insanity if he had ever thus witnessed it; an event that he would surely never undergo again. “Looking forward to it,” he deadpanned, despite the roguish glint in his hues that was deemed perpetual, hand held out in tandem as if in mock agreement to such pact.  

Cece snorted, nodding her head a little. “God knows there’s probably some coffee shop in Florida who currently sells it, for sure,” she pointed out, offering the girl a smile before writing her initials on the cup. She didn’t even have it in her today to get the girl’s name wrong, she’d probably already succeeded some other day, anyway. “Oh? That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard, thank you,” a chuckle left her lips. “I’m a coffee snob myself, so I try my best. Good to know he enjoys it. I hope you like yours, too,” she was quick to finish up the girl’s order with the cup’s lid and hand it over.

He shook his head, a pertinent reminder that he’d be entirely at a loss without his job. “I’d get too bored, and then you’d have to put up with more than you already do. Sure you want me to file that claim?”  Hendrix wasn’t ignorant to how irritating he could be, most of the time it was entirely purposeful. Riling others up was something of a forte, a pastime that he never let slip between his fingers, the Jarvis family, had never been an exception to such a rule. “No? You’re telling me you’d rather them be here? You can’t watch them twenty four seven, JJ.” A vibrant and bitter monologue that truly only cast flickering memory of how erratic he’d been in his own thoughts before Sloan had found him in the milling crowd outside of the destroyed station come new years. No matter the fact he knew she could handle herself, he’d been entirely distracted, without ever admitting it and he knew that without a doubt, the same collision of torn certainty. Unsure of whether it felt better knowing they were close, or whether that simply heightened the possibility of falling to distraction. “Maybe not, but it has.” Put simply, there was nothing they could do about the position they were in — but they could at least figure out what happened next, if those intent on changing the stance between those attacking them in the first place were willing to do what was necessary. “So what bothers you more, them being gone and safe or the idea of them being here? You’re gonna’ have to figure it out, because the back and forth and being unsure isn’t going to help anyone, especially not you.”