crucify me with blame

@xcruelgame​​ .

   she  really  wasn’t sure what to expect when she’d went out with kai to the elysium district of all places but he had a point in doing something different and from what she knew neither had gone before. the warlock was something in a bar enjoying himself while alicia was a few drinks in, gently laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. everyone was rather goth in appearance and she felt out of place in a new way.  the bartender being nice enough to check on her everyone once in a while since kai slipped away, but she felt like asking him the question in her mind wouldn’t be so smart. her gaze began to linger on the others close by; a pair in deep conversation, then a man seemingly alone like her. 

  bingo, rang in her mind. she leaned a little in his direction, arms resting on the bar. “sorry to bother you i’m just gonna be real honest - am i missing a theme night or something? i mean i have leather pants i would have worn them if i’d know it was that kind of place.”

immortality was disruptive. it wasn’t the speed or strength. it wasn’t his forsaken power lost, but the rapidity with which his senses were overcome. it wasn’t that first night where he broke through the ground when the skies above weren’t black as they once were, but a kaleidoscope of blues and purples splattered with stars. it wasn’t the roses and gardenia drifting through the summer air that wrapped him in a blanket and brought warmth to his now cold skin. nor was it the feeling of dirt beneath his nails or brushed across his skin, hiding the true pallor of his second life. it was the sounds. sound hit him like a freight train: hard and all at once. learning to drown it all out was a useful tool for a vampire to have, if only to entertain the idea of normalcy when luring in prey. that’s why he wasn’t prepared when she spoke. coming back to all that noise, all at once, trystan froze a moment. “huh?” letting the fleeting expression fade, his attention was captured by the patron settled beside him. “oh, uh...” he struggled with the words on his tongue, thinking for a moment before he carried on. “no, but it’s kind of a gimmick. this crowd has a penchant for luring in vampires. especially dressed like that.” the knowledge of their existence was common enough now that it wouldn’t come as much of a shock. at least, he sincerely hoped not.

@xcruelgame​ .

  something about being on the real outside of her family made melanie wander the streets in her free time, in late hours of the evening like a psycho-murderer, because sleep would evade her. people could usually do that, she could usually do that, sleep away the pain but it crept from her heart to her mind and it was darker than she thought it’d be. the dragoumis stood on familiar streets but felt like a stranger. her gaze lingered in dark shop windows catching a glance of herself; she looked nothing like the happy one she usually was. the person she made up to protect herself from the very people causing this distress. 

   this particular reflection captured her till a dinging from the side building door pulled her from that hollowness.  she was only giving a brief glance their way, assuming it was someone closing up for the night but something about the tallness – a familiar feeling lingered and she did a double take. did she finally go insane? melanie couldn’t get words out, when he finally faced her she simply hugged him. her cousin. “i missed you so much.”

There always seemed a point in the night where he had to call it. No one had been in for a few hours, creatures or otherwise. Trusted to lock up, the vampire twisted the key in the lock, hairs lifting on the back of his neck at the sound of a heartbeat mid-skip. Boots settled against the concrete never faltered as a body collided with his, warm and full of life against cold and time-locked. He knew her scent, one that had stayed with him even as he transferred from life, to death, back into his half-life that would be his permanent paramour. Arms coiled around her torso, pulling her closer as he hid his face in her shoulder. His night had afforded him nothing, and still his expectations had been defied by the cousin that had been too young the night he’d disappeared. Forehead pressed into her shoulder, the vampire let out a sigh, lashes fluttering as his eyes fell shut, cool breath brushing off of her shoulder and back against his own face.  “I know,” whispered on an exhale, Trystan pulled back only just, his hand coming to brush against the side of her cheek. “I missed you, too.” Moving his palm away from her cheek, forcing his icy hand to drop, he offered a small, watery smile. “Hey, Mel.”

.

         So far to Zoya the night shift seemed dead, looking around the small tattoo parlour it was pretty much dead but it was the holiday season, most people were out partying or with their families at this time of night. No doubt the tattoos and piercings would come in the new year when they’d all been given money for Christmas and got drunk enough to make silly decisions when the clock struck midnight. “Well, hopefully I can make this one interesting for you, or if I don’t someone much more amusing comes in,” she offered, looking to the door but realising that wasn’t about to happen any time soon. In her mind her brother was telling her she was being unsafe, alone at night with a stranger, somewhere they could lock a door but all Zoya could think was that the tattoos on his neck made his jaw look sharp but the smile on his face made his eyes light up. Zee was just a sucker for anyone in a leather jacket.

          “Oh uh, just you,” she acknowledged. Yes, just him, no one else had appeared. It was maybe good, the other person that worked there was in a pack outside her brothers and that just seemed like it could be an awkward interaction. Still she had sort of assumed she’d get to ask a female, and he was…crazy hot. Zoya flushed at the thought of what she wanted, redness rushing to her cheeks and remaining there, heartbeat once again increasing because she wasn’t dumb. She was in her twenties and how she knew how she’d react to someone attractive touching her, regardless of intent. No doubt her brother would lose his head, but…then again…so would her mother.

         So confidence overtook, this was what she wanted and who cared if some random hot guy saw her react to him being hot, more embarrassing things had happened to her. “I could probably just have gone to Claire’s if I wanted my ears pierced,“ Zee joked about his suggestions, the lightness of the comment allowing her to realise she could speak, that she could ask for what she wanted. This was his job after all. “I was actually hoping to get my nipples pierced. Are you able to?”

“Doubt it,” Trystan drawled, voice low as he leaned his elbows further into the counter, a smirk finding its way over his lips. “People don’t really venture out this late anymore. Y’never know what’s gonna go bump in the night, these days.” That much was true: while he was a member of the after hours club, he wasn’t the worst of what they had to offer. He was almost the same person as he was when blood flowed through his veins, rather than down his throat. “Claire’s are such butchers, though. I’m much more gentle, and I won’t give you an infection.” Throwing a wink before correcting his posture, the vampire offered a smile and nod, confirming her suspicion. He was the only one in the shop, the keeper of needles and ink the minute the sun disappeared beyond the skyline. He didn’t often get people quite this late, especially not for as new as he was. Once a former resident turned missing person, Trystan doubted quite heavily that people were just going to get used to his place back in the rote system of their lives. He wondered sometimes, how many posters of his face remained out there, plastered over a thousand times with better news and more pressing concerns than one twenty-two year old on a bender. He wondered if his return would mean anything for those in the family. He was home, yes, but dead. Different. His magic and any hope he’d had of passing it onto an heir, another Dragoumis was dead, right along with him.

Attention returning to the woman in front of him, the vampire nodded, motioning for her to join him at the jewelry counter, thin-fingered hands ghosting over the glass as he showed off the gleaming hoops and bars nestled against black velvet. “These pieces are all titanium, these are stainless steel. Because you’re going for such a sensitive area, I’d start with titanium. It’s lightweight and shouldn’t cause any irritation. Once you’re healed you should be good to come in and get the jewelry replaced with whatever you want, but it’s best to start off with standard bars before moving forward.” He was all business, flattered as he was by the flutters of her heart and the heat he could feel pull to her face. There was a time and place for something flirtatious, even for a vampire. He wanted his client to feel safe, comfortable, and satisfied with her experience, regardless of where his hands were set to drift. “Take your time looking through these, ‘kay? I’m gonna go set up a station in the back.”

Christmas time could either be extremely slow or somewhat busy. A lot of the time people would only come in to buy gift cards for people who were interested in getting something done. Very few people came in themselves to get something done. Perhaps because they were too busy with he holiday season or perhaps they just didn’t want to venture out in the cold. For someone like her the cold didn’t really matter- it actually would have to be a blizzard for her to feel the cold at all- but she knew that not the entire town felt that way. So, while she did have customers she didn’t have as many as she normally would have. And yet despite that she had lingered around in the shop the entire day and into the night. It happened more often than she cared to admit. Sometimes she just didn’t feel like going home for a long while so she stuck around working away at sketches- it was far more interesting than sitting at home alone. And later at night when she wanted to she could play her music as loudly as she wanted to. Putting her pencil down the werewolf got up from her work station and moved over to the radio, glancing out of the window onto the mostly empty street. “Tell me the truth,” she began as she turned towards the only other employee there at the moment and arching an eyebrow at the werewolf. “Just how many customers do you tend to get in here during your hours?” @xcruelgame​

In his human days, even as a warlock who fought to learn what he could about other such dark creatures, he had always believed the effects of vampirism an exaggeration. He couldn’t fathom, then, how one could see, hear, smell, feel, and even taste everything under the vale of the blackened heavens. Trystan was quickly proven wrong the moment he woke beneath that pile of dirt. Alone and cold, surrounded by the crisp echo of worms burrowing through the soil that caked him, noises like whispers driving him from his grave, the vampire shot up quick. He stared at a vivid, star freckled sky, greeting the new life forced upon him. He could feel the drag of graphite against his sketchbook, the scratch of his pencil against the paper sending vibrations shooting up the length of his long-tattooed arm. There wasn’t a time he could’ve felt it before he was a vampire. Brows furrowed as his eyes locked in a hyperfocus on his line, Trystan paused to glance up at the call of her voice, pursing his lips a moment before he carried on. “Only a few drunks tumbling in from the bars at two a.m. Kind of a bummer when I gotta tell them they gotta head home and come back sober so they can consent.” He breathed a sigh, leaning back against his chair, the padding sinking beneath the curve of his shoulder blades. “’Specially not now. After Halloween, tattoo specials kinda suck until the new year.”

–

“I’m sorry, did you say seventeen?” Ezra looked up. If he did the math correctly there was no way in hell this guy was only two years younger than him. They looked like they were just passing the age of being a legal adult. It only took a moment for the Jones to remember that he was immersed in the world of supernaturals, so maybe it was just simply that. Otherwise, this man had some genetic predisposition to make him look incredibly young. “You know if you’ve got some secret anti-aging serum that you haven’t marketed yet, the beauty industry is a multibillion dollar pool to jump in.” Ezra couldn’t help but be curious. As he closed the book and approached the man at the station, he whipped out his phone from his jacket pocket. “Actually…I had this in mine to go on my left shoulder blade,” he said showing the man the image on his phone. 

“Damn straight.” Trystan felt that familiar grin pull over his face. Since vampires had come out of the coffin, as it were, there was always a mixed bag of reactions when one found out he was of the other, the undead. In the early days, there was fear. Then, the more people grew used to the idea, there was segregation, wonder, acceptance, and finally: apathy. The man’s surprise felt reminiscent of the early days, something interesting in the dead of night. “Well, dude, to be honest: it’s pretty brutal. There’s this whole bite thing that happens, then some pretty wicked pain, then you have to die and get buried and wake up clawing your way outta the dirt, but you’re so overstimmed by everything that you feel like you gotta go through a whole panic attack before you ever even break ground.” He feigned a wince, nose scrunching as he glanced over his companion in the shop. “Dunno, man. Money can buy a lot, but it can’t buy life. I don’t think anyone should trade that, ya feel?” Dark brow lifting, Trystan stepped forward to glance at the design pattered behind the blue-lit screen. “Spiral. Fibonacci. Beauty of nature? Or does it mean something different to you?”