#ohmolloy

@ohsunshine / @ohmolloy // tw: i dunno, age difference? corinth is thousands of years old after all :/ problematic. anyway have an AU where they meet while Corinth2 is temporarily human because I said so :)

The irony of the stranger's name isn't lost on him, but it's an afterthought and easily discarded; his newly-transfigured lord is no more 'Daniel' than he is the first Corinthian, after all, and there are many Daniels in the world.

Not that he's the Corinthian at all, really, not now. The sunglasses on his face hide not a pair of smiling mouths, but regular eyes, grey and unremarkable - if haunted. He doesn't like seeing them in the mirror. He doesn't like mirrors in general.

"No," he tells Daniel, not quite turning to look at him between drags of a cigarette. "Are you offering?" He knows what this is, or thinks he does, and it's strange being on the other side of it: the younger man being pursued by an older stranger. Like someone's tilted his narrative the wrong way, like they're telling his story all wrong.

He doesn't hate it. It's just... new.

So is the spark of real interest firing low inside him when the man's eyes meet his through their respective sunglasses. The Corinthian--Alex--feels a want that he hadn't expected to. The desire to take this man home or be taken home by him, to see how he looks in the true private dark. To take out the knives he doesn't carry anymore and--

He really shouldn't. But he's still stupid, and still a fuck-up, and he lowers his eyelashes and looks the man over and offers:

@ohmolloy

He knows this man.

From his dreams, yes. But not only.

This old man used to be a boy, a rambling idiot of a journalist who let a white-haired stranger take him to dinner and share drinks with him while they talked about city living and the night life there. The Corinthian had laughed when the boy begged to interview him and said no, he was flattered, but his story wasn’t right for Daniel’s… medium. Then after a while he had hummed and said maybe. We’ll see.

The current Corinthian doesn’t remember the rest. But obviously the boy survived; the beautiful, grey creature he’s become now is fascinating. Confident in himself, cocky to the point of arrogance, he paints a very different picture to the one in the Corinthian’s fragmented memories. Vampirism alone can change a man, sure. But this isn’t just that: his story has changed. Who he is has changed. The Corinthian can see the threads of it, the strands of narrative woven around him, twisted and pulsing with recent change.

It licks its teeth and offers Daniel its best smile. It has hunted him in the Dreaming before, and that was technically their last meeting, but who remembers their nightmares if they can help it? It’s almost funny, each of them remembering what the other can’t.

“My predecessor planned to kill you, yes. I have no such intentions… and you’re already dead.” Not that he’s never eaten carrion before. Daniel’s eyes are beautiful: sharp, vibrant, and brimming with experiences this Corinthian will never have.

He envies him. It’s a hunger, that envy, and it shows in his demeanor: he’s too close to Daniel, crowding him in. Old habits die hard or not at all.

@ohmolloy

Heat licks up his spine, curls greedy through his ribs and the toothy organs within. Molloy is cockiness made manifest, arms sprawled either side of him over the back of the couch, fangs showing when he smiles. And he does smile, often: not the nervous-energy grin the first Corinthian remembers, but the kind of smile that would even give that bloodthirsty fucker a run for its money.

The second Corinthian, who doesn’t smile very often at all unless there’s a knife in his hand, wants him so badly it makes his eyeteeth grind. He has kept a careful distance tonight. The last time they met he was reckless enough to let hunger take control and this time he is trying (keyword: trying) to be a little more sensible on his nightly Waking jaunts.

“Did we fuck before?”

Redirect him to the past: no-one likes that, it’ll turn him off. Good. Stop staring at his mouth. His eyes too. Fuck.

The Corinthian looks away, as if the dark windows and the city sprawled beyond them has caught his interest. It hasn’t.

@ohmolloy

“mhm. seem thrilled. looks like you didn’t either.”

the gravedigger’s flat irony isn’t quite a match for molloy’s brand of whip-smart sarcasm, but maybe it isn’t trying to be. violet eyes sweep daniel like a searchlight. he is decades older than the griefbringer remembers, which has caught him off-guard somehow. the wick of a human life burns so fast.

not that this one is human, anymore. that catches him off-guard, too, and the illusion of humanity slips away to reveal the rotting nightmare’s skull beneath it. graves leans his elbow on the tiny, round table next to his seat. it creaks under his weight as he weighs daniel up with his eyes.

“thought you’d quit places like this.”

places where the dead and the damned come to prey on those more fortunate than themselves. graves isn’t a bouncer here, hasn’t worked a job like that for over a decade, is here for the… the ambience, mostly, the reminders of other places like it. he is haunting himself.

choosing his words carefully because he knows they will run out fast, he gestures a broad, grey-brown hand to daniel’s everything and asks: