Dallas O'Connor: The young man wavered a zippo beneath the script in his hand, then tossed it into a trash-can on the street corner, as the flames engulfed the sheets of paper, and he stormed down the walk, ignoring the looks he got from people as he passed. Let the cops charge him for destruction of public property. He did not care. He could not believe the jobs his agent tried to cram down his throat. Did he even LOOK at the script he sent him to pick up?? It was porn! The smutty action tags were cut with the worst lines any schmuck could possibly conceive of. Any joe-shmo with a tool could have taken that job. He was disgusted, and determined to fire his agent the moment he laid his hazel-green eyes on him. Sandy blonde hair was smoothed back from his handsome but all too sun-browned face. His skin was leathery from being oiled and baked in the sun, or tanning booths, and his muscles were sore with the steroids which had built up his physique unnaturally. He had once been sleek...athletically slender, his skin fair and creamy, but what the modeling industry had wanted from him, was a tanned, muscular, bleach blonde hunk. His hair had only recently outgrown the bleach to reclaim it's natural sandy-blonde color. The money...it was good, but they urged you to spend that too...on PR...fast cars, fast women, expensive clubs, mansions you did not even need. The money was almost gone, and so was the man everyone had seemed to want a piece of. The beautiful male youth whose appeal had stopped women, and some men, dead in their tracks, and attracted modeling and acting agents from the West to the East, was physically and emotionally burnt out at age 26...His body, his passions, his hopes ruined by those who had exalted him, and then thrown him away when he was used up. Worst part of it was...He had let them...been too naive to even realize what was happening until it was too late. He was still unwise to the fact that his agent Bobby Styles had, and still was, robbing him blind, and worse, intended to sell him up the river to porn traffickers for a pretty penny. Now he had heart problems from all the steroids they had pumped into him...and wrinkles from the sun that were premature for his age. He didn't even have enough money left to fly back to Meridian. He had stopped taking the steroids a few weeks ago, and was working his ass off to make sure his muscles did not get flabby when the muscles wasted. He wanted to restore his health. He wanted a real job...a good part in a movie that inspired and impassioned him. He was a damn skilled actor, but he had not gotten the breaks he needed. He had modeled and done commercials for Hotshots, for Balken Brothers, for Argasi...and other prestigious clients, but the good acting roles were never offered to him...It was always the steamy dark Sudarian ahead of him, or the Juvare stud behind him. Dallas had a second audition for the the role of a life time in two months, and he was determined to make it to the Met to perform the audition. He had to, just had to.
Alaina Date: Mar 13 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Socrates Tucker Be it as it may, life would always find a way, as they use to say in the movies. Of course the movies never told you the fact of the matter, that being nothing lasted forever. It was only a matter of time before humanity ripped itself apart, no help needed from any of the other beings that seemed to have sprouted up over night like a plague ravaging villages down a hillside. Well, maybe not over night but it surely felt as such now didn't it? Thoughts along those lines filled the head of inky black hair, hair that would have fallen over the front of her face to obscure her vision from her daily duties had the ornate piece of silver not rested atop it like a bohemian crown. The balancing of three thick worn out looking hardback books that might have once been used to jack up cars with, a handful of pencils that had already been nibbled on and they were still in their plastic packaging, a large brown paper bag tucked under her left arm that had a small leak in the bottom and last but certainly not least, a small red deck of playing cards she'd managed to talk someone out of in exchange for a new pair of shoelaces. A child, mind you, who was in dire need of such things though so Socrates didn't feel too shady about exchanging said playing cards for the laces to shoes she'd never worn, and didn't plan to any time soon. She was short in frame and deathly pale. Given how just about everything she wore screamed the sort of wealth most people only read about in books. Or was it just the way she dressed that drew so many stares? Humming as she sprinted down the sidewalk, weaving in and out of people like someone running for their life as oppose to someone running to the job they were terribly late for, she could almost hear the high pitched screaming of her motherly like cook even two blocks away at how if she was late again her ass was out of there. Then again she was late every cotton picking day, so did that mean the old bitty had a soft spot for the stray cat she had let in just a few months ago? Maybe. Or maybe she was just in the harsh grip of alztimers and couldn't remember that she came running in everyday at twenty minutes after the fact. Or that the said late youth owned the establishment in the first place? Probably not. A pair of men were moving some sort of timber to board up the windows of a store directly in her path. She did not deter but rather do a sort of skidding feat seeing as how the soles of her shoes were almost gone. The men quirked their brows at the short female that ducked under the wooden beam and made cat calls afterwards. A smug grin yanked the corners of her mouth up as she pivoted on both heels, minding to keep running just do it backwards, as she batted her lashes at the two fellows and then shouted, "Aww, I bet you say that to all the guys." The looks were always priceless. Not that she hadn't seen them before. It was just she found it extremely humorous that most of the people in the neighbourhood thought she was some stranger who was bent on stealing their children. She pondered a bit on it as her hips shifted to the right so she wouldn't bump into the three children playing jacks in a circle made of used syringes, only to pause and back up a few steps. A scowl was made at what the three heathens were playing for. A cup of water. "Don't suppose I could interest you little ****s in something better then the death in that cup," she said as she lowered down into a crouch beside the dirtiest of the three. None of them had shoes. All of them shirtless. The boys were cut up from head to toe, probably from running from the law she supposed as she ploped down the big brown paper bag in the circle of used needles most likely all of which contained one drug or another but all would surely kill them. Specs of blood could be seen that covered up the numbers that counted the milliliters. Whose blood it was didn't matter. Two of them scoffed and the third barked that he would pump Socrates full of the crap if she told anyone what they were doing. She sighed, shrugging as her eyes that were as black as her hair rolled up towards the skies. "Suit yourself," she said, rising to stand, "but the apples taste better, seriously." An index finger with a thin silver ring pointed to the bag before she turned to walk away. One of the children yelled she was a liar. Another said she was some crazy ass that just wanted to poison them and then feed them to her dogs. The third one however, would reach a hand marked with dirt and grime into the bag to retreive the green little round shaped fruits. The other two non-believers blinked before they pounced one another for the bag. As the sounds of smacking and hisses of not being greedy filled the air, she became content. Least they'll live another day she mueled over as her arms were a little bit more free with the books, the playing cards and the pencils. She had just turned the corner of the alley way and was about to leave the little grub puppies to their own devices when one of them had snuck up behind her to tug at the end of her thick, dense sage petty coat. A look of suprise crossed her face as she stopped and leaned down a bit so she could hear what the smallest and most filthy of the three boys had to tell her in her left unpierced ear. The boy whispered his thank you and then darted off and back into the alley way to follow his other hellion friends to whatever safe haven they had. "Oh, bother," she mumbled as the smile turned into a wide grin as she watched the kid scurry off and disappear. After the kid was gone, she turned to the street to sprint across it and to the coffee shop she was suppose to have been at an hour ago. The fact that she was bumped in to by some big hairy ape of a man or that the guy threatened to kick her teeth in didn't ruffle Socrates' feathers one bit. She just slipped into the shop with a push of the toe of her sneakered right foot to the door, and off she went to step around or over things and people to get behind the counter. No sooner had she entered did that overbearing voice call from the back of the restraunt. Something about her ass being grass? She laughed as the books were dropped beside the register of sorts, if you could call it that, before a suprisingly clean white apron was tied around her narrow waist. "Ahh, c'mon Grams," she said, rolling her eyes as her free hand busily wrote down the orders of the tables closetest to the front door while her other hand finished tying her apron, "You know nobody else wouldn't set foot in this place as long as you do your hair the way you do." A snickerfit over came her as she stepped out from behind the counter, tucking the small note pad into the right pocket of the oversized apron but unfortunately, this "Grams" had played the game softball, once upon a time. An onion came out of nowhere to peg her in the back of the head. She took a step forward after the vegetable had hit home and then straightened up as a hand came to the back of her head to rub where a small knot would be forming momentarily. "Goddamn orge," she mumbled as she knelt to pick up said vegetable of pain, and it was at that moment those childish like blacks were laid on the form of Dallas where he sat all the way across the room on the other side. In that kneeling position she would stay for a few more moments as the sounds of conversations, dishes clattering, soup or drink being slurpped and the soft rumble of the machines used for dicing foods filtered through into her ears. Not much could be said about the black eyed woman who looked no older then twenty-four or so. Not even from the mamoth of a cook that insisted they were part owner of the shabby little establishment. She came and went as she pleased, but she kept the customers happy and that was good enough for business, right? Her co-workers would say she never spoke of her family, or friends, or anything else for that matter outside of the shop. Not even a pet or her favorite song. Everything that came out of that mouth with its full set of lips had to do with the shop when she was there, and nothing more. Be it an irate customer or a shipment issue, Socrates didn't so much as hint that she may very well have an actual life outside of the coffee shop. Neithertheless, she came to work and did her job, as well as that of most everyone else that was present at the time because although she wasn't a perfectionist, she was terribly energetic. She tended to be over zealeous with the customers and their children, if anyone dared to bring their families to this side of the city anymore. The locals knew her in no time and named her Socrates for one reason or another. Maybe because she was always spouting some poetic nonsense to the children and their mothers. She was very fond of kids. Even if they swore she was a very confused woman not to have a boyfriend. One such girl child happened to be sitting in her mothers lap as she rambled on to the man in the suit across from her about the enviroment and how the government is making it worse for everyone. The little imp of a thing saw her and instantly squeeled with glee as she squirmed from her bewildered Mother's grasp to skip her nine year old self up to her where she was still kneeling and latch onto her left arm, scaring her half to death. "Gah," Socrates exclaimed as she startled her and she fell backwards onto her rump with her still attached to her arm. Her expression softened into that of being appaled, mockingly, as she said, "Ohhh, it's you. Icky Sarah. Come to give me cooties I see?" She made kissy faces at the girl and she squeeked and put her hands over her face. "No, no, no! Soci! You owe me a dollar," Sarah said, making a face as a hand was held out for such a payment. She was baffled at how sharp the little ingrate was getting but she forked over the demanded item but not without asking, "So are we going to see a movie tonight or what Beautiful?" Sarah giggled in her girlish way before nodding quickly and then gave her a wave, running back to her mother whom glared at Soci with every intent on taking away her reason to be called the coffe shop owner. Sarah piped in how Soci was taking her to the movies to go see the new kid flick with the cartoon bunnies when her mother barked at her to be quiet and sit or else. She furrowed her brows for a minute or two before standing up, taking the note pad out of her pocket as her steps took him to Dallas' table where she paused, still eyeing the evil mother creature person before she turned her attention to Dallas. Her soured mood vanished the instant those big black eyes rested on the strikingly handsome man. A smile curled on her face. "Can I get you anything," she asked, leaning on her left foot as the end of the pencil was placed just between her lips to hold it there so her hand could be free to itch along the back of her neck a bit...
Dallas Date: Mar 14 Moss green slits shifted as a pair of slender legs passed him, and his eyes followed them to lift on Socrates back as she passed. A faint smile curled the supple fullness of his lips and then his attention was drawn to the door as someone threw it open, stepped in for a brief moment, then changed their mind and walked right back outside. 'People are strange...' he muttered under his breath, and lifted that large mug to sip the coffee again. He liked Queen's Coffee Shop because they had big, ceramic, black mugs, that and their coffee was good. Yes, the neighborhood sucked, was far more dangerous than Dallas knew, but he had some kind of uncanny good luck. He had never once been mugged, which almost everybody had, even in the rich boroughs of Kerabi, and his car had never been stolen, and that happened to almost everyone who drove as well. Of course, he usually left his car parked in the garage behind his house, and only drove it if he was traveling outside of Kerabi. He usually took the trains or walked, and more often, rode his racing bike, an 18-speed. It was one of the ways he stayed in shape. His house was up for sale now, because he couldn't pay the mortgage anymore, or the bills for such a large place for that matter either. The money he would get for the place, would support him long enough to find a job, he hoped. Dallas glanced away from the newspaper he was reading at Socrates as she interacted with the customers, smiling when the kid demanded the money she owed her. The employment section of the newspaper he was half-ass reading was turned and folded again, and he had read maybe six of the advertisements when that fem but slightly husky voice reached him. He liked girls with deep voices, but not too deep. Socrates' voice was perfect. He had never seen her here before, maybe because he usually came to the place during the early morning shift. The first thing he noticed when she asked him if she could get him anything, were those dark eyes of her. For a moment, all he could do was stare right into them. They were beautiful, and he felt like he was being swallowed into their black depths for a moment. The young man then smiled and shoved the paper aside, then lifted his coffee cup to raise it to her, before he polished the last of it off. "Ahh...You all brew the best coffee this side of Kerabi. I will keep drinking it until I am vibrating," he laughed, and his laughter was honest, and genuine, just like he was. Naive is what he was, although the business had taught him a lot about not trusting people. His father had perhaps raised him too well, and sheltered him too much to protect him from a very frightening and dangerous world. His voice was very pleasant, as were his manners, unless he was pissed off, then he cared less what anyone thought. "The coffee aside, you think you have a job back there you could throw on a plate with one of your delicious cream cheese danishes for me?" he grinned. He did not eat junk food often, but he was rather depressed, and Queen's danishes had a way of making everything seem better, at least while you were eating them. He did not have a gram of fat on him as it was. If he could not swim as well as he could, he would sink like a rock if you threw him into water. The handsome fellow then offered her his hand. "I am Dallas by the way," he introduced himself, his dimples etched by the charismatically warm smile he expressed. Beautiful, he thought. She was beautiful, and had a very appealing way about her. And he had caught that steamy look she had drilled that woman with, when she had threatened her daughter. He had almost laughed, simply because it was so refreshing to see someone who cared. He was tempted to ask her out to see a movie. He liked her the moment he laid his eyes on her.
Alaina Date: Mar 14 Her appearence was, humble to say the least. The time worn black-and-lime converse sneakers she had been keeping in an air tight box for ages it felt, had a strip of grey duck tape around the toe. Probably to keep the feet in. Morning were never her favorite time of day but the sun rises she always woke for to watch, and then flop back face down on whatever, or whomever, she laid on and sleep again. She liked the sun rises in this part of Kerabi, just as much as she liked the sun sets. It was the little silly things like that that brought a faint shimmer to those otherwise black eyes that held the feeling of being lost. More often then nought people really did think she was lost given how she could sit, in a chair, and stare, at absolutely nothing, for a good four hours. Not budging a muscle. Weird? They didn't know the half of it. The inky black bone straight locks were held up in various silver clasps, all of which looked messy and yet purposeful at the same time. As though she were too busy to actually do something with all that healthiness, or maybe she was just plain lazy? One brow rose his voice and the request of a job in the shop. Was it eyeliner she wore? Or were her lashes just that thick and black after all? The notepad that had been tucked into the pocket of her apron was now retreived as she scribbled something down on it while she spoke, in that quiet way with that husky quality, "Oh there's plenty of fiddle faddle that needs doing Luv, question is how hard are you willing to work?" Her tone was a teasing one as she shifted all of her short frame and weight to her other foot while chewing on the end of the pencil. Her shirt was a deep red button up dress shirt with long sleeves she now took to rolling up all the way to just above her elbows.The piece of small triangular paper with a floral print of daises chasing each other with bazokas was held in between and index finger and a middle, offering it to him. "These would be just about everything you would do, if you still want to have a nag of a cook as your shadow and a flake for a manager," she said, giving such a wide grin. On every finger there were silver rings without marks or stone adoring them. Her choice of pants were black, naturally, and skin tight. Obscenly, skin tight. They looked like pleather but one couldn't be too sure these days. "Of course, it's your choice Dallas, weither or not you want to work at all isn't it," she said as an after thought, running the end of the pencil along the corner of her mouth as that nose was wrinkled at something funny in the air. "Aww, don't tell me," she mumbled as she curtised her apologies to Dallas by taking the ends of her shirt before turning and doing an almost inappropriate skip towards the door behind the counter where dishes clattered and the voice of a very disgruntled cook could be heard about missing a bunch of apples for all these pies. "Oh dear," she sighed, knowing what was coming. Just as she passed through the doorway that led to the back end of the shop, a glance of those black pools was thrown over her shoulder to the striking young man with the most preculiar pair of green eyes. He is gorgeous she pondered, idley tugging lightly on the one black curl that fell over her right shoulder, for it always managed to escape the restraints she implied to the rest, be it clamp, tie, wax or other. Dallas he had said his name was. On the piece of paper she had left him with for the moment, it read this: "Mr. Sunshine, only 1 position available. Duties include, being yourself, not punching rude customers, being yourself, and not dressing like a hooker. Some call this waiter/bar tender, I call it freedom. Work whenever you want. P.S.- The danish is on me. ^_^." An argument broke out in the kitchen in the back of the coffee shop as people begun to leave for their daily routines, leaving just a handful behind, including Dallas.
Dallas Date: Mar 16 An adorably corky smile crooked Dallas's lips as Socrates said there was plenty to do. He loved her style! She was absolutely....What? What was she? Fun. Fun is what she was! The young man's crooked smile spread into a grin as she handed him that tab note with instructions on it. "You are an absolute peach...Socrates? Is that what the cook called you?" glancing at the note to see if her name was anywhere on it. His gaze then lifted to lock on her again. "And I pour myself into everything I do, so yeah, I am a hard worker," he assured her honestly. He did in fact, put his heart into any commitment he made. "Oh I want the job. Have to pay the bills, don't I?" He chuckled. His eyes tracked her as she went back to work, and he laughed as she muttered that 'oh dear' as the cook bitched about apples in the back room. Dallas had barely finished half of the fresh cup of coffee and danish, that Socrates had rushed out to him before dashing energetically away again, when a group of young girls came into the cafe and targeted him immediately as a 'star'. Not that he was, far from it, but he had been in a few B movies, and plenty of magazine adds and comercials. The horror flicks were just the kind teens watched, and he had been the lead role in two of the movies. Been killed half way through in the other three. They giggled in a huddle, exchanging whispers, as one of them dug in her purse for a pen and piece of paper, then the shyest shoved the bravest forward, who approached Dallas with pen and paper in hand. Her skirt was two inches too short, barely covering her rump. As she cleared her throat, Dallas looked up from the note he was reading for the third time, just tickled by it. Work when you feel like it...He laughed. A brow rose as his gaze lifted and focused on the rather pretty girl, who covered her achne with makeup. "You're Dallas O'Connor aren't yeh?" She asked, her dialect very cokkney. The young man's lips twitched with amusement. "Yes," he answered, and glanced past her to the other three girls who hugged each other and laughed nervously when he looked their way, his hazel green eyes then bending back on the girl in front of him as she asked if she could have his autograph. It was something Dallas was used to, though it did not happen too often. "Sure...Who do you want me to make it out to?" He asked, as he took the paper and pen from her hand. "Wendy Bingham," she told him with a smile. Dallas scribed his comments and then signed the note, and handed it back to Wendy. "Is Dallas your real name?" the girl asked him as she read the note. 'To my lovely fan Wendy. Thanks for remembering me.' It was an odd things to say, she thought. Who wouldn't remember Dallas? Is what she thought. "Yeah, it's my actual name," he assured her. The girl grinned. "It's a great name for a movie star," she remarked, and Dallas laughed softly. "I never really considered myself a movie star. I have only done five movies, all low budget, and never got any of the roles I really wanted. There is one role I really want, but I have to be in the Met in two months to audition. I can't afford the traveling expense, by plane or boat. It's a vampire movie, maybe the only really good one ever made in the works. The script is awesome," he shared with her like she were an old friend. He was friendly that way, especially to fans. The girl lay a hand on his shoulder and squeezed down. She really was very sweet. Her parents had no idea she was out at night. She had snuck out of her bedroom window and shimmied down a drain pipe. She was adventurous that way. "Ye deserve the role. Ye were awesome in every picture yeh did. Any director who passes yeh up is a bloody fool, Dallas." She then removed her hand and glanced back at her friends as they inched closer in that huddle. Safety in numbers was their idea of feelings safe on the streets at night. "It was dreamy talkin' to yeh, Dallas. Best of luck to yeh, luv." Dallas spent the next twenty minutes sighing autographs for the other three girls, and chatting with them as well, then, when he got rather quiet, they took the hint and left him alone, all four of them thrilled to have met the 'actor' and talked to him. They were all amazed at how laid back and sweet he was. When they had gone, and settled down at table near the kitchen, Dallas looked around for Socrates. His coffee cup was empty again. She had freshened his mug all the while he talked to the teen girls, and had he not had such an attentive eye for her presence, he never would have noticed her, she was that unobtrusive when she wanted to keep out of the way. Dallas was crushing on her badly, which just wasn't something that happened to him. He had been surrounded by plenty of women, models, actresses, agents, most of them very glamorous, and he'd had no interest in them at all. Socrates was different. She had arrested his attention almost immediately. She was the kind of girl he could see himself with. When she got around to bringing that coffee decanter back over, Dallas smiled softly to her, and he lifted his cup to make it easier for her to pour. "Do you like movies, Socrates?" He asked her, working up the nerve to ask her out. She was making Kerabi feel more and more like home. Not that he would give that audition up if he could make it...It was being filmed in the Met and Kerabi anyway.
Things happened fast when you were having fun. Time had its weird way of jumping out the window and sprouting wings from its prosterior. Or so Socrates thought. An eye was spared at any given moment just to look Dallas' way, albeit it was while the cook was beating her over the back of her head with a wooden spoon for forgetting the apples, yet again. "I didn't forget them Grams," she said, not phased one bit by the five foot short elderly woman with a bee hive of a hair doo and glasses that were angled and bigger then her face. The cook scoffed and told her to get her head out of the clouds and stop oggling the young movie star man. "Eh," Socrates huffed as a hand snapped up to catch the wrist swinging the long spoon of wood used to stir potatoes and other various dishes, "You think everyone are movie stars you old ham." A smile pulled at the fire engine red lipsticked lips of the old croon before she took her wrist back, rubbing it for it would bruise soon and hurt something awful. "With a face like that and manners to boot, why shouldn't he be," the cook fumed before she scooted sideways to chop the vegetables while Socrates chopped the big slabs of ribs and other meats, with her right hand while her left reached over the counter to pick up the fresh pot of coffee. Course there was a brow raised when the group of youthful girls clamored into the shop to eyeball Dallas all to hell, which in turn should have sparked jealousy out of her but no such emotion came. Least none that showed. The cook looked from the girls getting their autographs through the IN window as she set a plate of rolls on its ledge, to Socrates who seemed to almost dance in circles around Dallas to give him a fresh cup every time it went empty. "She thinks she has to be invisible all the time," the cook said, laughing to herself a bit before shouting to someone else in the back to check the ovens. As the customers thinned still, most knew what time it was and what was about to begin, although it was rather on the fun side. It wouldn't be long that Dallas was kept waiting that she returned to fill his cup and take a sit in the chair across from him, crossing her legs one over the other, resting her chin in her right hand with the other arm draped across the table. Her nails weren't painted. She wore no make-up whatsoever. She didn't even wear perfume, even though she smelled like jasmines. His question made her think a bit as those black eyes lifted to the ceiling, then went over to the other side of the room before coming back to him with an answer, "Course," she exclaimed with a girlish giggle as a plate was also set on the table and slid his way with the promised danish of goodness on it. Well, there were two because she didn't know what his fancy was. "The horror flicks I live for, although the nag thinks they rot the brain," she said, jerking a thumb behind her at the kitchen, and the very old yet light on her feet cook mucking about, doing orders in the speed that should have been fit for someone more near Dallas' age. It was downright scary how fast the old bat was, much less accurate. She never missed an order or a seaoning of food. Sometimes the customers swore she wasn't human. No tattoos marked Socrates' arms, nor her neck or any other visible part of her body. She was unhealthily pale yes but not deathly so. It threw a contrast against that shiny black flaxen hair, especially the long curl that laid along the left side of her neck, down enough to be just beyond the end of the colar to her red button up shirt. Being just across from the small round table from him, unfortunatley he would get such a better view of just how pupiless her eyes appeared. Like little voids hidden behind a set of thicks lashes that needed no help in curling on their own. None whatsoever. Not even another ring of color if even a faint one, within her eyes was visible. How odd. Or maybe it was the lighting? It was getting so very dark outside, not that it wasn't already. The lamps within the coffee shop were lit by oil, giving it a more cozy warmth then anything else. Socrates might have been old fashioned but she wouldn't let anyone redecorate the place, even if oil lamps didn't go at all with the bright orange couches, the leopard printed stools or the red oak furnished bar top. Even the floor was tiled in black-and-white checkered style. The ceiling however, was a series of arches. Ones that held not so much as a whisp of the warmth that filled the place with the chatter and laugther of the customers. The ceiling was too high, and couldn't be seen even if you stood on a chair. It was like being inside a... cathedral. Over Dallas' right shoulder she spied the fading images of the group of teenage heartbreakers skipping off to whatever delight they did. In that black eye of hers something yawned. It yawned before it coiled over and over until It too, saw these innocents. What fun the day was turning out to be. "Forgive me if I'm a tad on the bold side but," she said as she leaned forward on the table, hands proping up her head by way of being under her chin, "it's tradition. All new employees must celebrate their employment by being at the galla. Hmm, I believe there'll be one tonight too, now that I think about it." An index finger was placed to her chin as a thoughtful expression overcame her. "It's a little party that happens every now and then, you have to come. Oh, no charge of course. My treat," she told him, with a smile as smug as a cat who had, moreorless, gotten its mouse. Abruptly her shorter frame bounced to its feet as she begun to turn away as the last customer waved their goodbyes and said their thanks for the food. A hand went up to wave goodbye as well as she started to walk backwards away from Dallas, his table, and the fresh cup of coffee and danish sitting in front of him. "Closing time, closing time," she murmered as her right hand came up to the side of her face, sighing for it had been another good day for business as well. She was already behind the counter, plucking glass after mug from the coutner top, droping them on their little sides into the bins that would clean them. A rag was taken from a rack and used to wipe off the obscenely long wooden counter top that went from one side of the shop to the other. She paused in mid wipe, looking sideways in Dallas, that is if he choose to stay. Course she hadn't told him to leave now had she? Suprise would indeed be written all over her face if she saw him still sitting in his chair after the neon sign outside had shut off and the cook started rattling off the grocery list for tomorrow for whoever it was that was the Mr. Sunshine at the time. The suprise would be genuine if Dallas remained. Genuine and girlish. The galla was slang for the only place in Kerabi, where if one dared, they could be as free as the birds that use to fly above. So many people knew about it but so very precious few were ever allowed the simple pleasure of getting in. Why? What was such a big deal if it was like any other night club? But it wasn't. Some said satan worshippers gathered there to raise demons. Others declared it a place of higher learning. The intelligent few though, whispered things of sin. What would a human be doing in such a place? There was only one galla that functioned at all anymore. Well in Kerabi at least. Just one. It was even rumored to be in this part of Kerabi. However, they said galla type festivals were suppose to be held in giant stadiums or enormous places like apartment buildings. Nothing that size sat in this side of Kerabi. Nothing except this weird little coffe shop. With its weird little multi-colored decore and friendly staff. The smiling customers, the never ending pastries. For a simple coffee shop, it towered over every other store or house within a ten block radius. For a coffee shop, it was painted black on the outside. For a little old coffee shop, it was oddly out of proportion. Right...?
Dallas was thrilled at the least little bit attention that Socrates spared him. Ever guess she was male? No way. Nothing about her gave her gender away. She was a fem as any female, even without makeup. She could have been dressed like a guy and still appeared perfectly feminine. He loved her fair skin and the way it contrasted with her hair and those dark eyes that were like polished spheres of jet. She was beautiful and had a very engaging personality. How could he not be charmed by her? The thought that she could be something other than human never entered his mind either. He never really thought her eyes were odd, just so dark that her irises swallowed her pupils. He never registered the cathedral-like height of the ceiling, or had a clue that what he perceived as a very normal coffee shop ceiling, with the little squares set between aluminum frames, was what someone wanted him to see. No, like any human entering the place, he was clueless that it anything other than a quaint little coffee shop with its own very pleasant atmosphere and decour. His imagination would never had conceived of the immense place it was really was, behind whatever illusion there was, and which his mind accepted as reality. He had never met an immortal, or supernatural being, and he was not a paranoid person, unlike nine tenths of the rest of the world. He had always been too safe, too lucky, and sheltered by either his father or his lifestyle. His manager had robbed him blind, but he was completely ignorant of the money his agent/manager Bobby had skimmed and extorted from his bank account. Not that Dallas was stupid. Bobby was just slick and knew how to cover what he stole with fabricated expenses. Dallas's eyes lit up when Socrates found the time, or the needed break perhaps, to come to sit with him. The smile which softened his lips to reach his hazel-green eyes, as she settled across from him, was genuine, if not heart felt, revealing the very innocent side of the young man. When she agreed to go out to a movie sometime, and mentioned that horror flicks were her first choice for a flick, he laughed, his eyes arrested by her. "That movie, The Unseen Ones, looks pretty good," he suggested. As horror movies went, it had a solid plot, AND heart gripping terror, if not disturbing content. "Maybe I could pick you up tomarrow after work for the late late show?" he asked, his heart pounding in his chest. Feeling so...well smitten, was such a new experience to him. He had never had a girl make him feel this...giddy. He was an actor though, and a damn good one, so whatever he felt skipping and churning around inside of himself, was only ever betrayed in the shimmer in his eyes, and the blithe expressions on his face. That cup of coffee was lifted and sipped almost idly as she went on to say she was bold. He shook his head and lowered the mug to wave his hands across each other in a gesture of 'nonesense.' "No, not at all. Your manners are very freshing to me. People, strangers, are so afraid to talk to each other, yeh know? It is like they expect everyone to want something from them, or worse, to stab them in the back when they aren't looking. It is really sad, the way I see it. The past is for getting over and learning from, right?" Just a hint of what he might think about the war that had torn the world apart expressed. That said, his eyes remained riveted on her as she invited him to a gala. A slow smile overcame his lips and brightened his eyes, whereat his head ****ed curiously as she explained how the event came together from time to time, and when she said there was one tonight, he grinned. "I would love to come! Sounds fun, and I haven't been to a celebration for quite some time." Months actually, and the social parties he attended for PR purposes were always dull to him. People gossipping about each other behind one another's backs, and going on and on about how good they were in this or that role, or chattering about the newest fad diets and excericise programs, and the way they went on and on about politics very few were actually involved in, just bored him to tears. He always found a reason to leave early. When Socrates announced that it was time close, and got up to go through the motions to close down the shop, his gaze followed her now and again, between sips of coffee and bites of that second danish he allowed himself. It was his dinner and lunch combined after all. He ate healthy most all of the time, and his little sinful splurges were well earned. After watching her for a few minutes, he drank down the rest of the coffee, polished off the danish, and got up to help her. Yes, he not only stuck around, but assisted her in the task of cleaning up. He started by taking his own dishes to the bar, then gathered dishes from the tables and took them to the coffee bar, and even dashed behind the counter to grab a clean dish rag. After running it under the sink's faucet, he returned to the other side of the bar, smiling as she glanced his way. "My treat," he said, and grinned, then went about the task of wiping down the tables, while she took care of the dishes. He also mopped the floors afterwards. When everything was done, with exception of those last details with the register, and whatever vault they had, he sat down at the bar to wait for her, talking to her as he did. "Where is the gala anyway? Should I run home and get dressed or anything? I am not exactly dressed for a party," his arms lifting to draw attention to the way he was dressed. He had on a pair of Hotshots black jeans, that were rather faded, and a black Primal tee-shirt. (He loved the rock band primal). The military surplus boots he wore were his favorite, Nosgard officers boots from the 60s. They were actually very expensive and hard to find, and he had a collection of surplus boots, Sudarian, Noserian, Kemborian, and Far-Eastern. Nosgard were his favorite because they were wickedly cool. The leather jacket he had worn was shoved into the corner of the booth he had been sitting at. If she was content with what he was wearing, he would be satisfied with that. What she thought was all that mattered since she would be his date...or at least he hoped she considered him her date.
Now what the hell was that? she wondered as her eyes spied him wanting to stay when he didn't have to, and moreover begin to help her clean the slightly dusty parts of the shop. He didn't have to. He could have left. He could've just said goodnight and been on his merry way and Socrates wouldn't have thought any less of him. She saw no reason or point in judging people just because of what was in their nature. Just from the little bit of conversation they had had so far, she knew. She just knew Dallas was one of those "good people" that the sad excuse of a world is so in dire need of. Rare breed he was, even for a human. What she found to be even more pleasent was the fact that every single time he opened his mouth and spoke, she stopped whatever she might have been doing at the time to listen. Intently. Her attention was somehow undivided as far as Dallas was concerned. In the middle of his mopping the floor she had perched on an unstable box full of broken dishes from the day to peer over the counter top at the young man that her affections were beginning to cooe for. Well, not that they weren't already. It was just she had a great amount of self control not to drool or some such silliness. Or so she hoped. A flush of scarlet lit up her cheeks like the cleberation the humans use to do at a certain time in the summer when he said it was his treat. He was so... so.. Out of nowhere came the shout, "Stop eyeballing the lad and finish locking up the shop!" Socrates froze and went ridgid all over. As a result, and her not moving from being shocked all to hell, the uneven box begun to tip, and take her with it to the right behind the bar top. In a little waving of the arms, she squeeked before the clamaity occured. The box fell over on its side, spilling the broken pieces of plates and cups all over the once clean tiled floor. A rack of unbusted coffee mugs were hit by her elbow, breaking the screw that held the brass pole in place within the counter top to land in her lap with a clatter. A bin of dirty dish water was bumped by the heel of her right foot while her right shoulder banged the edge of the hot plate which was still very hot. All and all, if she was something other than human either she was severly lacking in the graceful department, or she did such clumsy things to keep up appearences. Oh how annoying it was to be ever vigilant by remembering you not only looked like a human, but that you so desperately wanted to act like one too. Not that she was ungreatful for the life she had, far from it. It was just she knew that there are so many things in the world that humans took for granted, even after the war had met its end but as risen anew and dusted itself off, no matter what creatures inhabbited it. Nature was funny like that she suppoed as she slowly sat up from banging the back of her head on the concrete step that led to the solid steel door, that would be the cooler and freezer. "All I did was look," she mumbled as one hand unconsciously went to pick up the dust pan and the other tuck up the small broom that went with it to begin the short task of sweeping up all the broken kitchen wear. She scowled with her colorless lips pouting horribly and her brows coming together in a most childish display of defince. Fehh. she thought to herself as the bin of dirty dish water had soaked the entire front of her shirt, as well as her forehead. The sudds that drizzled off the end of her nose also took with it the bit of makeup used in between those brows. Dots. Tiny in size, sphereical in shape and the same jet black color of her hair rested just above both brows but in centered in the middle of her forehead, keeping that symetry perhaps. Wiping the back of her hand over her forehead, she huffed a bit as a bit of glass pricked at her fingertips, not in the firey stinging sensation the slivers sent into her hands but at how this delay would prevent her from further being in Dallas' company. "You look fine to me," she called from behind the countertop where she cleaned up the mess she had made, all because she'd been staring at him again when he wasn't looking, of course. "If you fancied yourself, you would attract a crowd of women that would swoon all over you," she laughed. It hadn't occured to her that the bit of makeup used to cover up her markings had come off until she set the pol eof mugs back in place, and thought about it for a moment. "Er.." As quick as lightning she was up with a bounce, stepping over the empty bin to get to the far side of the bar where her purse was so she could do a touch up of sorts. "You don't have a curfew do you," she asked, kneeling down once she had found her purse and rumaged through it. She was teasing him. In a friendly way no doubt but she never teased anyone. Odd. The only thing left to do was count out the days money and stuff it into the vault and that was that. Although she would do anything else till she applied a bit more foundation with a little concealer so those god damn marks didn't show. It was something she was not proud of, to say the least. Some people would kill to be able to get just a glimpse of the shoes she wore. Others would die gladly in feeble attempts to try and fill them. No one knew just how happily she would give away what she was for a chance to be like Dallas. The handsome devil was quite the lucky one it seemed. A grin had been given when he spoke of the movie and a squeel. She'd been wanting to know about that one for awhile but had no one to ask about it. Then again it wasn't like she talked to anyone anyways. Except for the cook. Who was a gentle giant even if she could throw a mean curve ball, vegetable rather. "I'll hold you to it tomorrow," she'd told him. After she finished doing the flight of the bumble bee in covering up the very hard to hide dots in between her brows, she sighed," If it's not too much trouble, do you mind it terribly if we took a detour before going to the galla? You look as dashing as any prince would going to his ball but I, on the other hand, and quite the country bumpkin at." She stood back up and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest, weither to hide just how throughly soaked her shirt was or the fact she was indeed "flat chested" one couldn't be too sure. Neithertheless it was a smile of warmth she gave Dallas from across the room...
Dallas straightened slightly as he glanced Socrates with his hazel eyes when the cook yelled at her from the kitchen, then looked past her towards the kitchen as he noticed her stiffen. Soon he was pushing that mop again, pretending to barely have noticed, because he did not want to embarrass Socrates. He was beaming inside at the very thought that she might be attracted to him enough to watch him. Plenty of woman had been attracted to him, and had ogled him, but not any that he had any interest in...until now. He liked her because she was unique, because she was fun, and because she cared about things. Things like how people treated their kids. It was more than just that though...It was that feeling you got when you knew...when you just knew that something was right. He was just pressing down on that lever which squeezed the water out of the mop, when he heard that loud crash behind the bar, and quickly leaning the mop handle against the wall, he dashed across the floor and behind the bar, to kneel down by her. "Are you alright Socrates?" his hand came beneath her shoulder gently to help her up, and when she had straightened, he began helping her to pick up the various dishes and broken pieces of glass. He noticed the peep of black beneath her makeup, but just figured she was covering a tattoo. A winsome smile swept his lips as she spoke of holding him to his promise for the movie. "That is one promise you do not need to hold me to, Socrates. I wouldn't miss a date with you, and I never go back on a promise," he assured her. With a smile, he swept up the some of the small pieces of glass with a paint brush he had spied under the counter. His gaze pinned her when she cut herself, and taking her hand gently in his own, he picked the small piece of glass from her finger, and flicked it into the dustpan. Her hand was then hiked a little higher, and he suckled the tiny droplets of blood from her finger...and then kissed it with a cheeky smack of his lips, (that is, if she did not pull her hand away) grinning at her afterwards. She tasted good, like nutmeg and cinnamon, he guessed from the pastries she had been putting away. . Once all the mess was picked up, and he was sure she was alright, he went back to work, until he had done everything he could do, at what time he sat himself down at the bar and waited for her to finish up. A shake of his head was given when she commented about the women he should be surrounded with. "Been there, Socrates. The kind of women who crowd around men are just not my type. Nor are the glamorous ones who think more about diets and excercise programs, than who their favorite artist or writer is, or what their favorite movie is, unless they are in it, or of what a small portion of their money could do for starving people. Airy laughter breezed from his lungs when she asked if he minded if they made a detour. "Not at all, girl. My pleasure to accompany you anywhere you want to go," he conveyed happily. Yes, he noticed that she was flat chested, but he liked small breasts. He'd had his fill of women shoving their buxom boobs in his face, or swinging their hips to try and get his attention. He was a 'more than a handful was a waste' kinda guy. No, Socrates knew how to get his attention, without even trying. When the shop was all closed, with exception of the door itself, Dallas got up and beat she and Mabel to the door to open it for them. The cook cracked the smallest smile, appreciating his manners. Once the fresh air washed over them outside, and the door was locked, Dallas started walking along abreast of Socrates as she led the way. "By the way...Is Socrates your real name?" These days, parents gave boys girl names, and girls boy names, until the root, gender and meanings of names just got lost.
It was so refreshing to be in the company of those who bore you no ill will, or didn't want to abuse you as a means to their own ends. How long had it been? She couldn't recall a kind face and it disturbed her quite a bit, bringing a tinge of saddness into those otherwise doe like black eyes for a split second before the obscenely cheerful mood was all over the place again. He didn't have to help with cleaning up the cozy little coffee shop, and he didn't have to stay afterwards to aid in the mess she had made. Yet he did and for that she was greatful. She was blushing but the only bit that got through was the faintest hint of scarlet in her cheeks. She told him she was fine and it was the damn boxes fault for moving around like that as she laughed, nervously with her hand raising to itch the back of her head but that act was foiled when he took her hand to pick out the nurmerous pieces of glass. "It's fine, it happens all the time," she said as her hand begun to ever so slightly tug in his grasp. Her brows came together in angst when he raised her hand to suck away the bit of blood that had gathered other the tops of her fingers. It sent little tingles through her that made her shift all of her weight from one foot to the other. She watched his movements as he tended to her hand, although it was just a flesh wound. She was just struck dumb for a moment as he placed the kiss and smiled like the cheeky monkey he was. Sneak! How sneaky! her brain would retort even though it was lulled by the warmth his body held that oddly, hers did not. Not yet anyway. A bashful smile was given as she pushed lightly at his shoulder, playful like. Mock scowling at him between sticking her tongue out at him as the decent pile of money was stuffed in their respective red or blue bags and then tossed into the vault within the office that was oddly shaped. The office was just inside the kitchen but to the immediant left, a not so tiny room with an oval shape to it. It's chairs were even weirder in that, they looked like they were made out of leggos or some such nonsense. She told him this and that about how at the end of the day, if the tills counted out to more then a hundred, just stick everything in a blue zipper bag, if not it all goes into red bags and the change went into small cylinders inside of the bags. She was tickled pink that he'd choosen to stay after all and even agree to go to the galla, even though he hadn't the slightest clue as to what the hell would happen or if it was just slang to try and get into his pants, which it wasn't. Course she did appreciate the human body and all the pleasures one could derive from it. Her train of thought had been so good up until then, as it begin its enevitible plunge into all that was indecent and obscene for a manager to think of their employee. Correction, a manager to think of their only employee. How the quint little coffee shop was run between a feisty elderly lady and a younger lady that seemed more bent on the common well being of everyone else rather than herself was... yet to be known. Yet they managed just fine. They hadn't been there all that long, that little shop of cozy vibes and friendly people. A place where mothers often left their hooligan children after dark till they could come to pick them up due to the awesomeness that was a single working mother, or the fact that a bum off the street could have a table and a cup of joe just the same as the high class exicutives that often came in just to see if they could sweet talk Mabel and Socrates out of the piece of lot and build whatever idioticy it was they built these days. The last bit of squable was done over weither or not Dallas should do this or be accountable for that and when it was all said and done, the cook was in a right foul mood for the preculiar favoritism Socrates gave over Dallas, that being all he had to do tomorrow was look pretty and wait on tables. If he wanted to. The cook commented on that was exactly why the shop would go to hell with that kind of attitude and Socrates piped in with a pat on the short but stout women's shoulder and said, in a ridiculous cheery tone, "That's why your still here, to keep it afloat." It was a joke in any case, for the cook loved the shop just as much as Socrates did. It was their "baby", so to speak. Her hips held this sway to them when she counted down the tills and finished the paperwork and computer mumbo jumbo in the time it would take to fill a cup of coffe. It wasn't that she was quick like, it was just she knew what the hell she was doing, so it wasn't all that suprising that she humed while she did it. Then everything was done. The lights were turned off, the machines ceased to buzz. The only lighting they had to find their way to the front red oak doors, was the street light outside. But he beat them both to it and it made her smile but turn the harmless perverted thoughts into those of molestation, and then some. She blamed his personality, for looks were looks but they wouldn't get anyone anywhere with her. Some called her a prune because she wouldn't think twice about being taken by the most hedious people in humanity. She was one of those odd ones that only asked for laugther in return for unconditional love. That's all she'd ever ask of anyone. Just a sense of humor and they would be gold. As they walked along the ill light sidewalk and into the street to cross it, the cook waved her goodbyes and said something about not killing the poor boy before his first day. Socrates' brows furrowed at the audacity the old goat had and crossed her arms over her chest as she walked beside Dallas. It would be a moment before she answered him, breathing a bit of a snort at the comment. "It's as good a name as any," was all she told him. A glance was given up at him. She thought her words might come off as offensive and the last thing she wanted in the world was to be an irritation to him. "I mean-er, you can get use to anything if your around it long enough. I actually forgot what my real name is, weird," she said, itching the back of her head with a sheepish grin as her free hand went up to poke him in his side playfuly. She couldn't wait to take him to the party. It was just making her giddy thinking about it. A building that looked like it had seen better days as well as having survived some kind of bomb was what she led him to. The front stairs were made of wood and creaked so horribly one got the sickening feeling that they might break underfoot. Yet no matter the creaks or groans of the floor or rusted out steel beams, nothing broke. Nothing splittered, for now atleast. An elevator was at the end of the long cooridoor she led him down that was littered with sleeping people in newspapers or barrels with fires burning in them to keep the hallway halfway barable. The whole building just reeked of dispair and poverty. It was the type of place the world shuned and would not admit exisisted. It was that nook or crack in the facade people put on to go along to get along. And yet she didn't appear phased that her home would be in such terrible living conditions. Someone mumbled something with a hand out streched, and she never missed a beat to stop in mid sentence in telling Dallas about how there's a large group of church women that come in tomorrow for tea, to give the man sleeping on the floor in a cardboard box with the words "Tri-ilusa Food Inc." over the side, a bowl wrapped in tin foil and a white plastic bag. "Sorry it took so long Bert," she said, now sounding completely different from how she spoke inside the coffee shop. her voice was kind. It was gentle. It was the kind of voice ment to sooth even the most veracious of beasts. The man uttered his incoherent thanks but she shook her head, undoing the tin foil so that the homeless man could eat the bowl of roast beef, potatoes, corn bread and heep of french fries she had made just before closing time. Inside the white plastic bag, she retreived a roll of white bandages and a bottle of iodine. "Put this over your knee and wrap it up tight. Tomorrow we'll go to the doctor and see about the bump on your head okay," she said. It was unnerving how motherly she could become as oppose to the happy-go-lucky manner she usualy had. But it wasn't that big of a shift in character. She wasn't putting on airs. She wasn't trying to win Dallas over by feeding the needy or helping those without. She actually didn't care if Dallas looked down upon what she did now and one more time with someone else just down the hall, a large woman who smelled of booze and burnt plastic. Dallas wouldn't be kept waiting long in that uncomfortably narrow hallway of dirt and grime. "Here, here," she said, motioning him to follow as she took him to the elevator, waiting for him to get inside of it before she pulled the long wooden doors down so it would go to her floor, the second floor. If he asked her why she did the things she did, her reply would have been, "Why the hell not?"
Dallas Date: Mar 27 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dallas paid keen attention to their routine, learning the ropes as it were by observation. Wavey locks of light brown hair was brushed away from his face as he waited for them to till their money, his long fingers drumming quietly on the bar top. He was amused by the banter Socrates and the cook passed back and forth, and it shone in his eyes and the faint tugging at his lips. When they were on the street, and the robust woman parted ways with them, he waved to her and bid her a good night. His eyes locked on Socrates as she answered his inquiry concering her name, to say her name was as good as any. It was a very logical thing to say, he supposed, but also, very unusual. Then again, Socrates was unique, wasn't she? His head canted curiously, his sandy brown eyebrows ****ing, as she went on to say that she had forgotten her actual name. Weird she said...Indeed it was odd. Who forgot their own name? How could such a thing happen? He did not ponder on the possibilities, for it would be like chasing a ghost. He always believed that taking guesses at such things was as foolish as trying to reach for the stars in a literal sense. It was a good way to wind up with a handful of nothing. For the time being, he decided it was better to let it go, and get to know her better before he tried to dig such things out of her. "Socrates it is then," he said, his voice light and clement. A faint smile curled his lips and he wedged his hands down in his front pockets as he walked along beside her. "About those girls who came in the cafe and talked to me earlier...That sort of thing does not happen very often," he assured her. "Such occasions will not interfere with work or anything." He did not really consider that his presence at the shop might actually be good for business. "There is something I need to mention though...There is an audition in the Metropolis, Andar, I have an appointment for in two months. It is for a wonderful movie, a role of a lifetime really, in a movie called The Underground, and if I can just save up the money to make the trip to the Met, I cannot pass it up. It is being filmed in the Met, here in Kerabi, and in other locations in Juvare. But once the filming was done, That is if I get the role," and that was a big if. It was a long shot for any actor to snag such a role, "I would come back to work here...That is, if you can put up with all that coming and going?" It was a 'just in case he got lucky' question. The contract included three sequels, the second filmed in the Metropolis, although the character he was shooting for died in the third movie, early on, so he would only be filming for a couple of months on the second sequel, and appearing in a couple of 'backflash scenes' for the third sequel. Whatever her answer, it would have to wait it seemed, for they arrived at the squalid entrance of her apartment building. It made him a little nervous to tell the truth, the darkness, the disarray of the place, and the way the steps groaned as they climbed them. He was not too sure they would not give way. He actually felt relieved when they reached the top of the stairs. He did not complain to her about the condition of the building. He had no wish to offend her in any way. As they reached the end of the hallway, a soft smile spread over his lips at Socrates kind treatment of the homeless fellow, and the care she showed his banged up knee. He thought how like a saint she was. He felt light hearted just watching her bring that moment of contentment to the fellow she called by name. He smiled to the man, and waved to him, and while standing behind Socrates, he dropped twenty dollars on the floor quite by accident, and on the sly for the man to find, not that he could afford it really, but he was certainly better off than Bert was. Dallas thought to himself that if there were more people in the world like Socrates, there would be far less suffering and privation. She brought a smile to a man who was buried beneath life's ordeals. He could have been Bert...Anyone could have been him. He followed her to the elevator afterwards, and stepped inside, his gaze locked on Socrates as he turned around. If the lift scared him as it creaked and shifted under his weight, he did not show it. "Socrates...Please don't think this is a line, or be embarrassed, but...you have to be the most wonderful human being I have ever met," he was very sincere, and his eyes betrayed how much he admired her. "I am very grateful that I met you," spoken quietly, almost solemnly. Just knowing there was someone like her, made him feel better, lifted his spirits, made him feel there was truly hope for the world. She was amazing, truly amazing.
Alaina Date: Apr 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A hand was waved at the idea of such girls not coming to the shop just to haggle over who would get his autograph and how much it was worth. She wondered briefly if he really was as one of those "good guys" that she kept reading about in books with the happily ever after endings as she took him from the safety of the coffee shop, to the very questionable run down apartment building that looked more like a rebel bunker from all the barbed wire lining one side of it. Her frame was shorter then his yes but her strides were a tad on the quick side that is if she had been in a hurry to get anywhere. Why rush? A tiny bit of her hesitated when they had climbed the steps, thinking he would surely say something to the effect of, "Well damn Socrates, we'll fall through these things!" When he didn't, she felt a flutter in her stomach and it made a smug smile cross those kissable. The whole idea of not helping someone when you could, even if it put you in a bind was... disgusting to her. Maybe she was a hypocrite for it she supposed in a few ways as the "accident" Dallas made behind her when she tended to someone else occurred. She would've squealed had she seen him do such. She might have pounced him and told him he could have the next day or so off, paid of course. No manner of thought was put into the words that came out of her mouth, had the cook been there she would have raised a brow. "Take all the time you need Luv," she said as she peeled off the newspaper covering someone either fast asleep, or dead judging from the horrid stench that came from them even though Socrates didn't seem to mind it one bit, "the shop isn't going anywhere and neither am I." During the rise up in the elevator she plucked lightly at her shirt where she leaned with her back against the wall to his right, by the lever that either made the lift go up or down. The creeks were terrible, much less unwelcome. The place indeed had seen better days. It wouldn't be long that Dallas stood in that all too shaky wooden box, a light as white nearly as her complexion shone from above their heads as they approached her floor. It must have been halogen to be that stark. When the elevator came to a halt, Socrates reached down with her left hand, pulling on the strap of leather to lift the barred frames apart so the light washed over them, almost blinding in its brightness compared to the ill lit lobby half of the building where the homeless slept with just one or two wall lamps that flickered constantly. What lie before Dallas was... odd. "Home sweet home," she said with a sigh as she gestured him to follow her from the saw dust coated elevator, to the cool black-and-white checker board styled floor that was her ridiculously spacious apartment. Furniture that probably still had its price tags somewhere nestled into the corners of the room, making little cozy spots for guests to gather round the flat screens or the fireplace, and yes she had a fireplace in an apartment where it needed none, just because she could. Sculptures that looked like they were made out of ice, when in fact it was glass made a circle in the center of her home. A figure resembling a spirit coming out of the fountain it rested in, female even with her arms draped around the shoulders of a man who seemed either wounded or too tired to go on living. Something not in English was inscribed over the base step of the fountain where the water ran out of the woman’s hands to wash away whatever crimes or hardships the man had, letting them disappear into the pool of water they sat in. It wasn’t so ornate that it took away from the rest of the worldly possessions she had but it certainly drew the eye first what with how the woman’s hair was so long it faded in with the water itself, or least it was suppose to. The ceiling was high enough to allow such a massive piece of art, thankfully. The fountain statue of the man and woman was enormous, and too big to fit through the front door. It didn’t appear to have any way of being disassembled either. To the left was the long bar with bright lime colored fur stools which to sit at while whomever prepared the food. The kitchen was a different color though, as Dallas would find with her entire apartment. Socrates was a sucker for colors. Her kitchen with its steel refrigerator was all steel. Even her center island counter piece where a basket of fruit sat was stainless steel. A chiefs kitchen rather than a simple coffee shop owner, right? Both of her arm stretched over her head as she meandered around the large statue set just a few yards beyond the elevator doors, pass the leopard print loveseat with its matching foot stools towards the kitchen. There was a hallway to Dallas’s immediate right there a few doors on either side and one of them showed a bathroom dressed in cobalt blue and gold trim with a garden deep tub. Another room that held a king sized bed in it; its patterns were different shades of red in its velvet texture. That room was done in nothing but red mind you. Even crimson managed to find its place in the vanity mirror’s frame that hung from a spider web of thin silver wires wrapped around the vine like poles to the lamp fixtures standing in the corners. "Make yourself at home," came that somewhat raspy yet gentle voice of hers. Yet if Dallas took his eyes off her for but a second, she would vanish. It sounded like she must have been somewhere by the kitchen, however that wasn’t the case. Another hallway stretched out beside the kitchen where one could enter it or the hallway. Its walls were painted a deep green color with the look as though the paint was running or had been rained on before it had dried. There was a second floor to the apartment, if you could believe it. The staircase was at the end of the hallway beside the kitchen, and it went upwards and then to the right as the floor was directly over the kitchen. A light was visible but just faintly from that floor. "I don’t have much but help yourself to whatever is in the kitchen," she shouted from upstairs just before there was a loud thud and then a string of curses. Something about a damn closet and shoes? __________________ "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
LOG Date: Apr 3 Socrates Apartment -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dallas: Dallas peered around the door as she opened the way into her apartment once they arrived, and followed her in as she led the way inside. His gaze was caught instantly by the fountain, and he hardly realized the gawk which overcame his expression. He stared wide eyed, and then his gaze slowly meandered upward...high and higher, until his gaze led him to the ceiling with his head rocked back. His eyes slowly decended as he heard Socrate's speak, and tearing his hazel eyes off of the fountain, he focused on Socrates. What did she say...something about not having much, but for him to help himself to whatever there was. He smiled faintly, still so amazed by the fountain that his responses were stunted. "Alright...Socrates? This fountain is amazing..." He was about to ask where she came by it, when she hurried off to get dressed. Blowing a breath, he ventured forward towards the exquisite crystal splendor which dominated her living room...if the living room was what it was. He walked around it, soaking in the details of the two figures. It was so...Socrates in its symbolism, he thought to himself, and so...out of place with the structure surrounding it, he mused on the other. Had it been here for a long time, perhaps? Even before the war? He was so completely amazed by the object, that for awhile, he could not even look around at the rest of the apartment. How on earth did it get here? He asked himself as he ran his hand along its smooth surface. There was not a single seam that he could find. He began to wonder about a lot of things...The muffled sound of something falling drew his attention to the kitchen door that Sorcrates had vanished through, and finally his strides carried him away from the magnifence taking all attention from the rest of the place. He made his way slowly to the kitchen as if his strides were still chained to that fountain, and as he passed the doorway, his gaze fixed on the basket of fruit on the table. Not many had fruit as fresh looking this time of season, unless they were quite wealthy. He felt like he had walked into another world altogether. It gave him a strange feeling, although not an entirely unpleasant one. It was a feeling that made his heart race, and filled his mind with wonder.#
Socrates: A hand felt around in the sea of black locks over the back of her head not to see if there was a knott made by the falling of a box on top of her head, but out of habbit. She did so many things out of habbit, just out of the sheer want to fit in. To be like everyone else. To be normal. She wanted to be something she wasn't of course, this she knew and it ate at her inwardly day in and day out. That something had been taken away from her a very long time ago when the world was even more of a mess then it already was. The memories of the past struck a nasty cord in her, one that made those big black doe like eyes grow glassly with the threatening of tears that burned something fierce. Not a one would fall though. They never did. And they never would she supposed as she stacked the box back into the closet where it belonged with a push of her now bare foot. Peeling off the dirty dish water soaked red button up dress shirt, squirming out of the otherwise skin tight fitted black leather looking pair of pants, Socrates found herself in nothing but her roos as she fished around in the second of the walk-in closets for something decent to wear. Well, it was more like something that Dallas would be glad to stand by her in. She meandered here and there, stretching both hands above her head to get down the "real" black leather pants she'd been keeping sealed away for quite some time now, as well as the obscenely fluffy mink like furr coat she sometimes slept in just because it was so goddamn comfortable and warm. A quater-sleeved shirt of either satin or some such material was shrugged on and buttoned just enough to leave the top two buttons undone. Her underwear was, of course, childish. A pair of undergarments the world probably hasn't seen in ages. A pair of a little boys underwear with someone in a black cape and mask with the word "Batman" written in bright yellow lettering under the photo of the caped crusader of justice. This shirt and these underwear she wandered around her very spacious, perhaps too spacious seeing as how not only did her bed do a good job of making room for possibly twenty people or so, but there was also a loveseat settled in the corner by the ground-to-ceiling windows whose dense curtains were drawn but till let just a sliver of light filter in. Socrates was in the middle of taking down her hair, and wondering just what the hell to do with it now because now she had a reason to care about her appearence. Not that she should have. Her complexion was ghoustly. Her figure would never change no matter how many scars marred her flesh, they had a tricky habbit of disappearing by sun up. Everything in her bedroom was black. From the curtains, to the bed, to the carpet to the walls. Not another color graced even her choice of clothing in her closet, but of course her other closet was the colorful one now wasn't it? She hadn't heard Dallas, nor his approch throughout her apartment. She was too busy trying to look ... what? What was she trying to look like she wondered as her hands tugged those even tighter pair of pants up over her hairless legs, over her rump which gave a little trouble but fit into those pants nonetheless. After a curse or two of course. "Goddamn hamhocks," she murmered, eyeing her ass over her shoulder carefully... Dallas: Dallas was obsessing about that fountain...His logical mind was spun by the extraordinary piece of art. The young man would be asking her a lot of questions about that fountain when she came back. Moving across the floor to the kitchen table, his fingers brushed one of the apples. It was perfect....not a blemish. He had not seen apples like these since....Had he ever, the wax apples in the movies aside. Hey, maybe they were wax! Dallas lifted the apple and smelled it. Eh, it smelled real. He took a bite. It was fresh, crisp, and juicy, as well as perfectly tart. Not one to waste food, he would eat the rest as he began meandering around her apartment. The place was awesome...He had never seen anything quite like it, not even close. He strolled through the kitchen's other door and entered the hallway, his gaze drawn by the light which bathed the floor and wall from the staircase, and decided that had to be the direction Socrates had gone. Most people had their bedrooms upstairs, if they had more than one floor. He was chewing on another bite of that delicious apple as he ascended the staircase. No squeaky, scary ass steps here, nope...as emaculate as the rest of the place. He was freaked out by it all to tell the truth, but he trusted Socrates, and that fact alone kept him from racing out of there. When he met the top of the stairs, he called out, not sure which room she might have gone to, and he certainly had the manners not to walk into a lady person's room when they were dressing! "Socrates?" His strides carried him down the hallway towards the one room which light escaped. "I am really curious about some things," he called out again as he made his way towards the door, and whether cracked open or not, he would pause outside and knock. "You dressed yet?" Well, he would feel foolish if it was not the right room, wouldn't he? But he would get over it and try another door if he were at the wrong one. He took another bite of the apple, whittling it down to the core now. He enjoyed his food, took his time eating, rather than woofing it down, unless he was starved. Then, well, his stomach acted for him. #
Socrates: As funny as it was, Socrates was getting "dressed up" as she liked to call it. Which is something she did for nobody. Not even if it was her own birthday, she would just wander around in blue jeans and a tee with some sassy remark on it. She couldn't figure it out at first but then it hit her as she was pulling all that inky black hair up into a semi messy pair of french braids which ended near the tops of her shoulders. "Good god Soc," she said at the mirror she stood in front of, eyeing her choice of clothing a moment before turning this way and that, "your ass has gotten bigger." A grin spread over her black painted lips before those arms shrugged on that fur coat that she seemed to swim in. Her obscenely glee-full mood was crushed momentarily on the choice of shoes. On one hand she could go with comfort and put on the old torn up shoes she'd worn to work tonight. On the other hand she could be lady like for once and put on the pair of thin steel heeled boots she'd bought not that long ago but had swore at herself just after buying them, where the hell would she wear them to? Indeed, it would seem the fur coat, the pants, the soft feeling shirt were all not bought in vain. She parked on the corner of her bed as one foot was stuffed into one boot, and then the other. Both the tops of the boots were pulled up and the pant legs were pulled down to cover them. Then she decided against it and tucked the pant legs into the boots. Then she changed her mind yet again and untucked them. Finally she settled on tucking the pant legs into the boots but only for now until she had gotten Dallas to the galla where she could cling to him like the leech she felt like and hiss at any manner of females that came near him. Mockingly of course. She wouldn't cling to him though, for she felt he would frown on that, however much she wanted to touch any part of him. She felt a nice warm and fuzzy feeling inwardly at the prospect of him letting her hold his hand. That would make her content. Even just to be in the same room as him and breath the same air, would make her happy. She was in the middle of laying sprawled on that ungodly massive bed of sheets and comforters, with her heels tapping together, her legs dangeling over the side, and the little ray of light that came in from the window being cast over her face. Before Dallas had reached the second floor, she had shut off the light to her bedroom because she'd wanted darkness for a few moments. Oh how comforting that darkness was that washed over the room like a blanket being rolled over a sleeping child. Socrates closed those thick lashed eyes of hers again as she gave a sigh of contemptment. Life was good. Or it was going to be good...
Dallas: Patience was another virtue Dallas had plenty of. In his circle, the guys took as long to dress as the ladies, hehe. It was ashame really, that he could not stop dwelling on that fountain. The rest of the apartment his mind could pass off as very well renovated, and Socrates making a decent enough living off her coffee shop to afford the decore and the repairs. Queen's Coffee Shop was very popular, and the food and drinks reliably 'safe' after all. Come to think of it...The prices were very reasonable as well...Resteraunts were very expensive, for the wealthy actually, So how did she turn a profit, as expensive as supplies, even water, were? Yes, he was beginning to actually question things he had never really thought about before...all because of that fountain...It had been the determining factor which had set the wheels of his mind really turning. The fruit has just kicked the other preponderances into gear. After knocking one more time, and getting no answer, he guessed he had the wrong room, and so meandered further down the hall, calling for Socrates. "Socrates, you up here?" Maybe she had not gone upstairs at all...It was very possible, the place was huge after all. He was sure her apartment took up the top two floors of the building. Her place gave a new name to pent house apartment, heh. When he reached the last door in the hallway, he turned around and looked back down the hall. He was very curious about what was behind those other doors, and indeed, the one he stood just behind. 'Knock knock' he rapped on the door, and if no answer came immediately, he would try the knob and open it to peer inside the dark confines, if it was not locked that is, to call out Socrates name again, only more quietly this time. "Yoo hoo...Socrates, where ahhhhrrr you?" He laughed quietly, as he suddenly felt as if he were playing hide and seek. Damn if he would not start opening every unlocked door looking for her, if he did not locate her and soon!#
Socrates: As luck would have it the last door Dallas opened was indeed her bedroom and the room she laid on the big black bed in. His calling her snapped her out of her day dreams instantly and she sat up with a start. "Dallas? Dallas what's wrong," she shouted, immediantly coming off the bed like someone who clearly was out of the ordinary. Her shorter frame went ridgid as she damn near flew across the room to the door that was being open to yank it open fully and hopefully Dallas wouldn't be yanked with it. She didn't expect he was just calling to know where she was. She thought of the worse case senario always and her senses went on the alert as to any danger there might be for Dallas, even if it was just her apartment. Yet when it was him on the other side of that door and not some monster, she blinked. What? She wondered what she was suppose to do now. Oh, yes, yes, flail around like a fish out of water she thought after remembering that was what girls use to do in books that she had read. So both of her arms went up as she forced herself to stumble backwards, and fall to the floor, landing on her rump with a dull thud. It was like a play. She would see him and then instantly wonder how any normal girl would act around him. Someone he could relate to and not something that she really was. It would never occur to Socrates that Dallas might want to get to know her for her and not because of the human habbits she made herself remember so she could fit in and try to survive like everyone else. There would be much she could avoid. Like the falling of the box or the calamity in the coffee shop. She could evaded such trivial things, had she wanted to. But that would put a crack in the little picture perfect image she so depsertaly was tyring to maintain for the sake of having someone to even talk to. Anyone. She hoped she wouldn't scare Dallas away. His company was very much enjoyed by her. Perhaps more then she wanted to admit from the fierce blush that crept into her cheeks every single time her eyes caught him...
Dallas: It was strange, the relief he felt, when she answered him, although he did wonder why she was in the room with the lights turned off. "Ah, here you are...Wrong?" her alarmed tones startled him a little. "Nothing is wrong...Sorcrates, everything is fine. I did not mean to give you a scare or anything," he assured her, and brushed his fingers delicately across her cheek, just wanting to soothe whatever had shaken her up. A warm smile then parted his lips. "Your place is just so huge, I was not sure where you had run off to, and there is something I am just dying to know about," he laughed, more at himself than anything else. "That fountain....I cannot stop thinking about it..." then down she went on her rump, like she had tripped and fallen over some invisible object. He ****ed a brow and stepped over to her, bending down and straightening with his arm coiled around her, to help her back up. She was acting very...oddly, and his confounded expression gave his thoughts on the matter away. Not that he intended to conceal anything from her, not at all. Dallas was not tactless, but he was honest. "Socrates...What is wrong? You are acting really strange. I just watched you...well it looked like you fell down on purpose. If something is wrong, won't you please tell me? You can trust me with anything, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die," he added to his promise with a grin. First things first...Something had to be bothering her...That first, THEN he would ask about the fountain, which would nag at him ceaselessly until he could explore that subject with her. Dallas did not have a tendancy to obsess or dwell on much of anything, but that fountain had arrested his thoughts. Yes, it was true, although Dallas was an actor, he wanted to know HER, sincerely know her for who SHE was, not for what he thought she should be. That would place her right there with all the other women, and men for that matter, who acted this way, and were another way altogether, just so they could snag someone as a friend or lover. He'd had his share of fake friends and girlfriends. Question to her might be, could she trust him with anything. Fact was, if he knew everything about her, he would freak out, but that did not mean he would abandon her. #
Socrates: Be it as it may, she went to great lengths to make others comfortable, even if she had to be a complete ass, or a total air head to do it. She figured if everyone else was happy then she too, would be so. This was not the case as she found out over the years that people would just demand more of you. So much that there wouldn't be anything left to give. Again the past would tear through her and make those black eyes of hers water for the breifest of moments before those tears were blinked away and she stood with his aid of course. She didn't want him to think she was ungreatful, even if she could stand of her own accord. Both hands were waved away at his question. She wasn't one to complain nor give in to her own misery or issues, or blab about them to someone else and run the risk of ruining their day. "Hmm? Oh everythings fine," she even laughed a bit as she said such, placing one hand on his shoulder while looking up at him. At that point she knew she was too close again. He was holding her and she was even laying her mits on him! For shame the cook might've said Socrates mueled with an inward smile as she wrinkled her nose up at him. "The fountain was a gift," she said and that was that. She didn't say to whom or for what reason but did it matter? It didn't or least she didn't think he would want to know the real history of that goddamn monstrocity sitting in her living room. Her breath caught in her chest and for a the longest of moments all she could do was look up at him. He even smelled delicious she mused as the hand she had laid on his shoulder gathered just a bit of his shirt to hold on to. She begun to.. fidget. Her face became flushed again as her eyes widened even just a tad more as if she were suprised or had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Either way she felt she was being clingy to him and she thought he wouldn't care for such bodily contact...The room was dark, but he could see well enough from the light from the hall to see how awesomely she was dressed, and to observe the very peculiar manner she had staggered and fallen. He really was under-dressed next to her, but
Dallas: it would not bother him too much, if it did not bother her. He just wished he looked nicer for her. To ease any tension, he commented on her outfit. "You look really hot, by the way, Socrates. Sizzling in fact. I can pretend to be a bum you picked up on the street when we get to the bash," he teased, and laughed light-heartedly. Had he seen her eyes misting up, he would have felt terrible, assuming he had upset her, but it was too dark to tell. When she told him that everything was fine, he did not press her further about it. Everyone had their corky moments, and it was not the kind of thing he was tenacious about. That, and he did not feel it was his place to be pushy about sharing her feelings with him. That fountain on the other hand...Well that was another story altogether. The arm curled around her gave her a cuddling squeeze, while his own hand swept up to cover her's as she clasped his shoulder, that human warmth of his bathing her far chillier flesh. Her cool flesh was also easy to explain away, as bad circulation, which was not all that uncommon, even among healthy people, and she did have a pale complexion, if not anemic, again, a common thing, especially in that age. "A gift? That is some kinda gift," he chuckled. "It's just...I did not see, and could not feel a single seam...How on earth was it moved there. And my god, it must weight a ton...I am surprised it does not fall through the floor," he laughed. "Also...It is clear...but there are no pipes or tubes for the water...How is that accomplished?" Well, perhaps he did not want to know the history of the fountain, but he sure as hell wanted to make some kind of logical sense out of it. His life was full of pretending as an actor and model, but he was logical by nature. His father had been a scientist, a botanist and horticulturist, and not only that aspect of the man had worn off on Dallas, but he had sheltered him as well, protected him from the knowledge that monsters lived beside him, from what had caused the war, and even home schooled him, although the mortals had seen to it the 'facts' stayed out of history books. Sure, many immortals could care less about maintaining secrecy, but for the most part, people wanted to pretend vampires did not exist, for much the same reason as Dallas' father had protected him...to make him feel safe and secure. "Please tell me about the fountain...Pleeease, Socrates," he begged her. "Just tell me so we can go to the party, where I can beam like a drunk monkey with a goddess on his arm," he grinned.#
Tell him me about the fountain he says. Tell him the truth, or tell him the truth he could stomach? She thought it over and let her noodle tinker with it as her free arm curled around his neck so that her hand combed through the hair over the back of Dallas's head. "Who said flattery will get you nowhere," she said all grinning like as she invaded his personal space so that she could be closer to him, if he would let her that is. The comment on her attire had not gone unnoticed and her abrupt display of affection was safe to say was the long overdue reward of such compliments. Yet she didn't wish to lie to him about anything pertaining to her unpleasent life thus far. She adored him to the extent that it was suprising, for they'd only just met today. How fetching she thought as her index finger curled a few strands of his hair around her finger as she spoke, resting her chin on the top of his chest cause he was far taller than she, and that was all she could reach, even standing on her tippy toes. "It's magic," she said, all mock mysterious like before her arms squeezed around his neck. She said it as if that was the simple truth of it all and he should be happy with it. She said it almost with a genuine childish glee at him being remotely interested in her life. His last words brought not only the girlish giggles but the rosey color in her cheeks. She bit the front of his shirt and chewed on it for awhile as her fingers tugged idley at the locks of his hair that she had coiled around them. Being one to say how she felt, especialy when it came to those rare souls that could catch her eye, however Dallas was the extreme exception. He hadn't only caught her eye, but her hands, her attention and everything else about her that just cooed when he was near. Perhaps she was rushing things she thought for a moment as she continued to chew on the front of his shirt but her arms slid from around his neck as her eyes took on a sad quality. She didn't want to scare him off but she didn't want him to have any sort of fasle ideas of who she was. Yet no matter how hard she tried to force herself into spilling the beans about said fountain, or anything else for that matter, she couldn't. All she wanted to do was... hold him. Was that so wrong? Would she be damned more so then she already was for it? Her teeth unclamped their hold on his shirt, leaving two small holes in it as she peered up at him, chewing on her lower lip instead so no more havock would be reeked on his shirt. If Dallas so choose to stand there any longer with Socrates' hands going into the pockets of his pants to feel for pocket lint, they very well might never get to the Galla on time, or at all for that matter. Not that it would have bothered her. She would rather have stood there all night just leaning against him and he wouldn't have had to say anything but let her hold him to make her content. Hopeless romantic? Half true. She was indeed, hopeless when it came to most things but she wasn't without common sense. "I want to show you something," she told him and what was that? Did she just get that "dreamers" look in her eyes? Eh? Perhaps she was a bit mushy and even too clingy to Dallas for his liking but damnit, he was adorable! What wasn't to cling about? He had humor in spades. He had a gentle soul, one she wanted to get to know. A soul she wanted to know what made made him tickled pink or what would make his anger leap. It was sutble yes but absolute she now realized as she couldn't quite get her hands out of his pockets in those little moments she had to turn her face upwards just to see his. I am... in love, she thought to her with an inward imploision of confusion, not to mention panic. Why? What! How had it happened?! She questioned her own sanity for a minute or two before giving in to the overwhelming cozy sensation that had begun to spread from her chest cavity outwards. A warmth that was only applified by his touch, of course. She couldn't remember the last time she.. oh.. no. She remembered with bitter taste in her mouth but that aside, she wouldn't let the past ruin the moment of having her black fur covered arms around Dallas. He was just the kind of goodness she needed. Screw the world, goddamnit...
Dallas
Date: Apr 19
His head rocked back to savor the feeling of her fingers in his hair. It's magic, she said. Well that explained everything, didn't it? His thoughts could almost be seen in the weight of his eyes as his gaze hung as her, while those soft fingers of his tenderly stroked her neck, the ends of her white hair brushing against his knuckles. She was as mysterious as she was beautiful, compassionate, and wonderful. She was a combination of things which intrigued his soul and tied his heart around her every desire. When her hands brushed down his sides and then dipped into his pockets, his eyes fell to where he wrists vanished into his pockets, and then his gaze lifted to slide over her body in a lingering rise to lock on her pitch black eyes. His body shifted towards her when she said she wanted to show him something, the desire in him too overpowering to ignore anymore. His arms rose, hands brushing her hips and then grazing her sides and back as he coiled her in his embrace in a lean which carried the inviting suppleness of his full lips against her's. The kiss was deep, urgent, filled with passion and longing. A star crossed lover's kiss. His body melted into that kiss to press against her's with a desire that was dominating in the vividness of his enamor for her. What he felt stirring and burning inside of him was not something he could withdraw from unless she resisted him rather firmly. It had been a very long time since he had touched anyone, and what he felt for her, was so shocking, so pure, and so intense, that he had never wanted anyone so incredibly all his life. His lips met her's in a crushing press of desire which his tongue invaded with glorious strokes and entwines which could not hold a candle to the deep nursing suckles he claimed from her salacious, oral muscle. His palms and fingers explored the curves of her body...Masculine but slender curves. He hardly realized that he was backing her towards the bed, nor truly how desperate he was to feel himself inside of her. His awareness was bewitched by the love which had flooded and spilled over in his heart, and the flaming lusts which made him ache so tremendously for her. The fountain, the magic, all the mystery surrounding her was forgotten, dismissed, for the feelings, the lusts, the riot of need and desire she had stirred in him, quite unwittingly.
Alaina
Date: Apr 22
She wanted to show him something quite possibly more alarming then the fountain. Something he may very well be not only appalled by, but disgusted. The truth as they say would set you free, only to be crucified in the end. Free yes. Murdered because of it, an unlucky side effect that never failed. Those pupil-less looking black eyes grew so terribly wide when his arms went around her, thusly pinning hers to her sides with her hands still in his pockets, feeling his body mesh itself against her own so unexpected. "Wai-," was all that got out before he gave one of those earth shattering kisses you read about in the old romance novels. She remembered they said it made your head swim with dizzy delight and it was true. Her head felt like it was floating away or some such nonsense, still attached to her body by a thin string that was called Dallas by holding her. It was so easy how not because of how forceful his movements were that Socrates bent so that his taller frame over shadowed her own. Her head tipped back immediately as something akin to a whimper slipped out in where the kiss ended and the lust began. Or had the lust always been there, and she was just in denial of even what she herself truly wanted too? The first attempts of getting her hands out of his pockets failed and resulted in whines as he caused her skin to catch fire. There was a tiny part of her that felt it was wrong. A thin piece of her that thought she was trying to deceive Dallas when she wasn’t. Not intentionally. The part of her that hissed the acts they now committed were lies, was heard for a brief moment. Then there was nothing but that kiss. That kiss that was making her knees weak. She couldn’t stand it any longer. The grip of control she held so tightly over herself was slipping the longer his touch remained, if even the lingering ghost of his lips against her own. Eventually after a few more frantic pulls, her hands were freed of his pockets to pry through his arms and curl around his neck as they had done so before, only this time, tightly. Oh how she would cling to him and his body. The right hand tangling itself amongst the hair over the back of his head, giving it little tugs here and there as he backed her towards the bed that the backs of her knees bumped into. She didn’t want to let go of him but she was afraid. The terror that the truth held was something she couldn’t bare yet it was all lost in the touches of need and the desire to be touched. Anywhere. Everywhere. As long as it was him. Her tongue was not one bit shy in its response to coil with Dallas’s yet it did hesitate at first, but that was just from how surprised she was that he did have feelings for her after all. Both of her hands ran over the sides of his face, taking a bit of a firm hold of his head to pull him back a little as she herself leaned away, breaking that kiss that felt so consuming. So completely heated that there was no doubt in her mind she might had died from its sweetness. "Wait," she gasped, her lips moving over his because she could only pull away that little inch or so and no more. Her body wouldn’t allow distance between he and her. Her hold on his head was light but if he continued his advance, her hold would be let go easily enough so he could kill her with his kisses. She ached for him true, that was from the moment she’d caught sight of him. Now she felt it in her body in places she was sure he would not take as kindly to. Her right knee had slid between his knees in a last desperate effort to keep from falling on the bed. Unless that was what he wanted. If he wanted to kiss her, she would have nothing less. If all he wanted was a foot massage, well she could do that too of course. She might have told him to wait, but nothing in her eyes said such. Her thumbs begun to rub small circles over his temples, taking in his scent and how it was slowly but surely driving her mad..
Dallas
Date: Apr 30
Dallas had never wanted anyone so badly in his life, but, he was not pushy when it came to sex. Rape, or anything even close to it, was not in his nature. When she clasped his head between her hands and pushed him away, he did not resist, but let his lips unseal from her's, although his tongue was reluctant to untangle with her's, and his muscle carressed her lips as the kiss was broken. His tongue traced his own supple blooms of flesh, his breath still electrified, as his gaze burned into her's with all the passion she had awakened in him. Her protest ignited a heavy smolder in his eyes, and his fingers played her slender contours like a finely tuned harp he wished to strum a symphony on. "Sorcrates...What is it? Am I...going too fast? I could have sworn you wanted me as desperately as I want you. I promise you...I don't use women. I do not sleep around either. I am not like that," he vowed. He did not assume why she was reluctant, but wanted to assure her of his intentions anyway. There was no telling what her reason was. It could be anything. His body ached for her, and had she not insured his rigidly thick ten inches were not pressed against her own hard mound, she would have known just how much she turned him on. Then again, he might have felt her engorged member as well. "Please tell me what is wrong, Socrates. I am sure, that whatever it is, we can work it out," a soft smile curling his lips, which he pressed against her's for a soft kiss, a tender, soothing kiss. When his lips broke from her inviting buds, his hands clasped her's and he swiveled around to seat himself on the foot of her bed, gently urging her by her hands to sit down beside him. His fingers then wove together with her own, and he squeezed down lovingly as his gaze penetrated her beautiful dark eyes. He could not for the life of him find her pupils in the dark fathoms which he so willingly lost himself in. If she seated herself at his side, his other hand would release her, and his arm would coil around her, his fingers lightly trailing along her side and back. "You can tell me anything, Socrates. You can trust me," he promised regardless of whether she sat down with him or not. He meant it. She could trust him, but just how he would react to whatever she had to say remained to be seen. He was human after all, but, for a human, he was very tolerant, understanding, compassionate, and open minded.
Alaina
Date: May 8
Socrates didn’t want him thinking he had done anything wrong and for him to even feel like he was rushing her was… like being hit in the chest with a baseball bat. Hyperventilating? She had heard of the term and that was what it felt like her body did now when she heard him asked what was the matter. A shake of that glacier white haired head was given , in part due to the sliver of blue light filtering in from the open closet where a tiny blue bulb was on and it gave just enough light to reach the back of her where she still stood for a moment longer beside the bed and in front of him. Those black eyes were not question him, but herself. She knew people were so precious not because they were fragile like so many of her "cousins" would say, but because they were able to do small things out of love. Not great, just small. Wasn’t that all that mattered in the end? To try and do everything out of love, no matter if you succeeded or not? There was something in Dallas she saw that she had been looking for since before she could remember. A certain something that was more then just a little worth protecting she thought as she came to sit beside him on the foot of that big bed after taking his hands. You can trust me. The words made the paranoia in her subside. But what if… No, no more "what if’s." No more assumptions on what a person is going to do just because the majority of humanity isn’t as bad as they make their selves out to be. "Perhaps I am a cad and have misled you in the whole… woman aspect of me," she started but what she really wanted to tell him was that she was not human, not human at all. One issue at a time she would think as she took in a deep breath, reaching to her side to take his hand he had been trying to comfort her with so that she could hold both of his hands in her lap as she said, in that raspy short of way she had, "Dallas there is not a woman that sits before you, but a slightly in denial drag queen who for the most part, had given up hope on ever being able to cook a decent apple pie." A sheepish smile followed as her hold on his hands would tighten or stay light, but that depended on Dallas’s reaction and if he wanted to smack her for not telling him sooner and waiting till she was about to ravish him in the worst way imaginable to say, "Oh honey by the way I’m a guy too but don’t worry, it’ll be fun!" The truth was out now, or part of it anyway and all she could do was hope he wouldn’t fly off the deep end, want to beat her senseless and then leave. She could handle the first two naturally but the last would surely be her undoing. Those big black eyes lowered to his feet almost and then the floor as she braced herself for whatever shout of shock or outburst of loathing he would make to berate her with not telling him from the get go. It wasn’t that she wasn’t going to ever tell him, honestly. She was going to, she really was. She just had a bad habit of being forgetful.. With things that are… really important. On that she said, letting go of his hands, "If you think me wicked and wish nothing more then to part ways, that’s fine. Just so you know I’m unreasonably, insanely, madly in love with you and that there is no hope for anyone else now that you own my heart." In a bounce she stood to turn away towards the door as a faint smile tugged upwards at the corners of her mouth.
Dallas
Date: May 22
Dallas sank slightly into the matress where he sat beside her as she began to share her secret with him. His gaze was locked on her, his expression blank, for the longest while even after she had concluded what she had to say, then his eyes slowly drifted away from her. He never let go of her hands, and when she pulled her's away, his fingers squeezed down against her's before his hands dropped into his lap. His head turned as gradually and dipped into a bow as his moss-green eyes fixed on the lustrous hardwood floor. He was mulling over what she said, trying to figure out how he felt about it. Then his voice broke that almost painful silence as he began to relate some things to her about himself. "In the business I am in...the temptations are...incredible. Everyone is having sex all the time...with everybody. Male, female...does not matter, and so many models use drugs, for all kinds of reasons...To feel more relaxed and uninhibited in front of the camera...to stay thin...to kill the pain of being so insecure...Am I beautiful enough? Will I still be loved tomarrow? So many of us are just used up and tossed away like yesterday's news paper." His gaze lifted on her and pinned her eyes. "I am twenty-six years old and have a weak heart from doing steroids to look like they wanted me to look overnight...I have had two nervous breakdowns because the pressure was so intense. I am a model because I want to be an actor...and it was the best way I had to break into the business. I think...I have been ripped off by my agent, who is also my manager. I should say...I suspect he has robbed me blind. I made so much money...I should be filthy rich by now, but I am broke...My house, my cars, are up for sale. Suddenly I don't have as many friends as I used to have. My manager told me he had a job for me, and I was reading the so called script on my way to your cafe. It was a script for a porn flick. What little dialogue there was, sucked...I burned it. What does that mean when your agent sends you crap like that? It means he thinks you are washed up and used up. I feel like I gave them my soul and got spit out. I once compared the modeling business to being the devil. It stole your soul and phucked you over. The sex, the drugs...I understand why they do it. It gets them by...let's them forget for a little while, that tomarrow the ride might just end, and they won't be loved any more. Beautiful people can be as insecure as anyone else...and models...they just want to be loved. I want to be loved too...By the right person...By someone I love as passionately and wholeheartedly." He was gesturing all the while with his hands and posture, the passion of what he felt rising and falling in his voice as well as beaming in his green eyes. "I saw you...and I knew...I knew I loved you. Now you tell me you are a guy. I can't...turn off what I feel because of that...but...I need time to adjust to what I feel. I have never had sex with a guy, and visualizing it..." He blew a long breath and then flopped back sprawled on her bed with his legs dangling over the foot of the bed. "I cannot lie...it phucking scares me, and forgive me for being blunt...but it...it seems so unclean. Not in a sinful way or anything like that...But...well, hygenically? I mean...I have a pretty good imagination, and have even walked in on guys getting it on...The thought of filth in my mouth, or on my tool?" He just shook his head. "I don't know if I...If I could do that...I mean if it's that way. And...what about the pain? Is it dirty and painful or not? What gets me is...I feel so lost in you that a part of me wants to just...throw all fears aside...Just do what feels natural with you...but...God damn the other side is scared stiff." He threw his hand up in the air and they fell against his gut. Whatever doubts and fears he had he expressed honestly. It was just his way to be honest and open about what he felt. His gaze then locked on her from where he lay. "And one last thing...Is there anything else you need to tell me? Because if you have any more secrets...It is best we get it all out in the open now." He loved her...him...He meant it when he said he could not just turn the love switch off simply because of his gender. He felt what he felt, and he was deeply in love with Socrates, but it did alter his perspective enough to admit all his reservations openly to her. They could not move forward at all unless they had bared themselves naked where it counted the most.
Well now that was easy. The phrase abruptly leapt to the front of her slightly tittering mind before making a mockery of everything she stood for. This wasn’t like her. To be so… So… What? Sincere? No, no that wasn’t it. Something to do with opening up the heart to something other then the neighborhood heathens or stray animals that wandered around behind the café every now and again for food, shelter, or to just be put out of their misery. All of which she provided of course, free of charge. Although on the last bit she would think Dallas wouldn’t take to kindly to seeing someone "put down" when they had no desire to go on living, simply because they lost their job. Poor things people are she sometimes thought. So easily misled. When no shouting or belittling of words came and reason did, it made a tingling sensation run up her spine. He wasn’t… angry. He wasn’t angry with her? Surprise became written so clearly over that unhealthily pale complexioned face, making those big black eyes appear almost… friendly. Childish even. He hadn’t judged. He hadn’t tried to strangle her as she thought he might for not telling him sooner but… what would’ve been the proper time? Over tea? Crumpets? While they did the dishes? The hell she thought as her temper flared but not towards Dallas, but to herself although as he told her of the many unfortunate things that could and most likely would happen to someone when they did the sort of things he did to get by, her temper became a monster. There were many acts people did in the world she did not care for. Abusing someone’s good faith or trust for that matter to weasel money out of them was kinda high up on the shiit list. Of course one had to know what they were getting themselves into when they took a career path like they, didn’t they? On this she would ponder as her black clothed figure would turn about to leave the spot of lightlessness she had sunk into by the door, to come back to him. To stand directly in front of him just after he had flopped backwards to lay on that sinfully comfortable bed. This manager person he spoke of who so wanted to use him in such a manner, brought a glare into her eyes. Sure she could feel a bit peeved at how easily people could get used in that line of business, the one Dallas was currently in, but to think someone or anyone would have the slightest idea at using him just rattled the bars of her cage. It angered her to now know someone would purposely try to break him like so many others have been already. So quick was her temper that she barely heard the talk of how "unclean" anything remotely sexual would be between them and if it was even right. It barely registered that he had considered that at all, much less that he loved her regardless if she was female, male… or an it. Or something far worse of which she had yet to enlighten him about. Why? Why would someone want to abuse Dallas? This question amongst others would not let the joy of hearing those sweet words he spoke of him loving her no matter what, not be known. Yet she had heard him, she didn’t know. Oh yes, how cruel it was the fact that one could listen but they could not hear. How you can taste something yet still starve. Too caught up in this bit of angst over this manager person who clearly was not a good person at all and one who Socrates now wanted to pay a visit to, she unconsciously had begun to pace circles around the bed he now laid on. Mumbling things even her own kind would have trouble hearing, given how much of a bite her words now held. Pain was not something she would willingly deal to another soul. Call her simple minded. Call her a country pumpkin. Whatever you could call her, she would never think it okay to make someone else’s life a living hell just to satisfy your own twisted desires. She knew you couldn’t justify the suffering of one just to save another even out of love. But love was pain after all someone had burned into her a long, long time ago. Perhaps this was what had made it so easy to be misguided from those kind souls like Dallas into the hands of someone who thought the screams of agony were more beautiful then those of pleasure or joy. Everyone had their secrets. Everyone had a past that they weren’t proud to bare and did all they could to hide it. Dallas didn’t though. He didn’t hide anything. He told her of how he had come to be in the situation he was and how it changes people without them even realizing it. A part of her was terribly saddened at this but it couldn’t come to the foremost of her attention, not with that tirade of anger flailing about in her mind, shoving aside all reasoning and the cold hard fact that had this scum bag manager been there right now well… Something awful would occur. Then Dallas would see a side of Socrates that he probably wouldn’t wish to know. Eventually her pacing would grind to a halt at the foot of the bed, just between his knees and there she would sink to the floor to sit with one leg brought up against her chest with the other stretched out along the floor. The head of white hair that was just long enough to fall into her eyes but no longer then the nape of her neck, slowly rested against the inside of his left knee. The black sea of locks she had earlier in the coffee shop was gone. A wig that wasn’t a wig, so to speak. A ruse, if you would. Not one to trick Dallas of course but one that she did during the daylight hours to keep from being stared at. It was a lot to take in wasn’t it? Finding out that the person that you yourself represented the sole affections of, was not what you first thought them to be. And then some. Yet if he could understand this, then surely he could handle more. Right? Be brave she would think as her hands idly plucked at the ends of his pants near the tops of his shoes. Slightly muffled due to pressing her face into the side of his leg, she said, "There are three kinds of people in the world Dallas. The living, the dead and the others. The living are those fortunate souls that bath in the sunlight, like yourself, who are sort of ‘sheltered’ from the ugliness that is the world. There are those unlucky ones who are dead but as funny as this might sound, they just don’t know it yet. Then there’s the others." At this last she paused to decide what terms to use that wouldn’t make him freak out or anything and try to beat her senseless. It would be a few moments before she spoke again and when she did, she was actually terrified. Not because of what it would mean in telling a mortal about the world, the real world where all those fanciful myths of werewolves and vampires really did exist, and that it would be her hide if anyone found out she had told Dallas of such, but her fear came from Dallas’s reaction and how if he rejected her now, or if he were to grow disgusted and leave she would simply cease to be. The fact that she could and probably would be put to death if someone were to find out never even entered her mind. And it never would. She was… forgetful like that. "Sort of an odd time we live in Dallas," she said, turning her face so that he could hear her clearly while holding onto just a little of his pant leg, "we are neither entirely good like you humans are but, we’re not so bad. Once you get to know us. I don’t understand why there can only be black and white. Is there not a grey area? That would be where we would fall into place really. Not so complex like you humans but, not so helpless as everyone else. I know it sounds crazy. Totally insane but believe me when I say there are two men who sit in this room but only one of them is human," at this point a faint laugh left her. It held the weight of the world on it and yet she was smiling. From the floor she would slip, away from where she had settled between his ankles to stand and move towards these ungodly large windows with their thick drapes that could probably smother someone were they to fall on them. Tugging a part of the drape to the right, allowing the moonlight to bath the majority of her room, including that bed and Dallas whom laid on it, her eyes tilted downwards to the city but more towards the movements of those who wouldn’t be so easily see with the naked eye. "Dallas….. I’m a vampire. If you accept this then your way ahead of the game and there is still hope for humanity. Can‘t remember the last time I was human…" but she trailed off as her head turned to the left, watching how the hooker on the corner was getting into the car of a man who looked like he wanted more then just sex given the tattoos over his knuckles and the brown dirt streaks in the back of his pick-up truck. He’ll probably bone her into a coma and then kill her or something horrible Socrates thought, inwardly flinching regardless. "If you don’t believe anything I’ve said thus far, and never will, then believe just this one thing and nothing else," she said, and yet she was no longer by the window. Just like that as the heavy corduroy feeling drape fell back into place she was not there. To Dallas’ right side the bed felt abruptly weighted down just a hair and that was where she was now, looking down at him with her hands resting on her thighs. "I will die before I ever hurt you," she said. It was a promise. A truth. If such a moment were ever to arise, she would not falter either. She meant everything she had said. Desperation had worked its way into her voice as much as she had tried to keep it out. It could be seen in how those clean kept French manicured looking nails dug into the tops of her knees and if she dug anymore, she would tear her pants even though they were suppose to be leather. Her hair had grey tones to it. It would have been platinum had it not been for those darker highlights, however subtle they were. It framed her face in its cut. Now it fell over her eyes as she started to move away from him for what, the third time now? Fourth if we were to keep track perhaps. She would turn as something started to slide down her right cheek. She was certain if he could take all she had told him so far, now he would surely leave. Never to return. Probably gather some of his friends and try to pry more information out of her that she would give him anyways and the list of horrible deeds just continued to grow in her over reacting brain. She had a streak of pessimistic ness in her as wide as a mile. It always led to mistakes and others sorts of annoying circumstances. But she assumed the worse so that she could do her best to make amends. How sick was that? She thought as her body slid to the edge of the bed, about to stand…
Dallas watched her...no, his, mind ramble...He could see the mental journey in his eyes. Funny, it was so hard to think of Socrates as a he. He looked, moved, spoke, even acted like a female...A very attractive and sexy female at that. Maybe he was actually a chick with a guy's plumbing, one of those females who was trapped in a guy's body that he had heard about on TV and in magazine articles? Or maybe it was a choice Socrates with no last name had made. His own mind contemplated on the possibilities. When she confided her second secret to him he chewed on that oh so inviting lower lip. He seemed more confused by her statement than alarmed, scared, or shocked. He did not miss a word in the phrasing of her words. "What do you mean you cannot remember the last time you were human? Aren't vampires...born as vampires, like everything else? How could you have been human?" Vernos vampires were not like other vampires, they had children just like humans, and siring was almost unheard of. He did not know they could sire, hardly knew anything about them in fact. Few ever did sire actually, and the act was even illegal now. Of course Socrates had been sired before it was unlawful. It was simply frowned on then by other vampires. He vaguely remembered learning about vampires in the biology books he studied in his home schooling. He also remembered that they subsisted entirely on blood...and a lot of it. Something like a gallon or more a day? They could live forever, he remembered Abran, another male model saying, the a girl had commented the really olds ones changed...got ugly, she said. Kinda like caterpillars into moths or something? He was not sure in what ways, and would never assume they were ugly when they got old. Maybe the were just different. His biology books had only covered the bear rudiments. Human school books were like that, and they twisted the history to make the vampires look like the bad guys. It occured to him that he never saw Socrates eat or drink anything at the coffee shop. It made sense now in reflection. People food was poison to vampires. Did he sneak blood in the back? Had he fed himself before he got there? Or maybe he was freaking starving right now, compromising his health to conceal what he was from him, until now that is. Was he ashamed of being a vampire? He had never met a vampire and known it, but they hardly hid what they were. Dallas had just never moved in vampiric circles. He had lived in Meridian and Kerabi all his life after. Human countries. He had never been to the Metropolis before, just had plans to go there for the first time. There were as many vampires as humans in the Met. Dallas brushed back his sandy brown locks and met her eyes with his soft green spheres. Curiosity and the fact that he genuinly trusted Socrates did not allow any fear into his heart. "Why...do you hide what you are? Socrates...You are a wonderful person...Why in the world would you feel compelled to conceal what you are? Hide that you are gay, that you are a vampire? You are too awesome a person for people to reject you for your lifestyle and what you are. I never met a vampire until now...I lived in Argoth all my life until I moved here, and I never met any vampires here either...Not that I knew of anyway...But I have been told they are open about what they are." Vampires had to have a special visa to reside in Kerabi, whereas a hundred miles South all the way to the southern, eastern, and western shores, the City of Treverim included, was vampire territory. He could not possibly know that passing herself off as a human was perhaps a good way to hide herself from her past, and the very well respected, wealthy, and dangerously aggressive vampire in it.
Socrates knew what he was telling Dallas could very well lead to his undoing. He was well aware that if Dallas wasn’t the kind and strong soul that he was, he would go to the government, or worse, the police and turn him over to the authorities he had been hiding from under such a simple disguise as being human. Even taking up a coffee shop business unbeknownst to the slaughter house that the vampires who owned the building did below it down in the under levels after hours. Of course when this happened he was long gone and the coffee shop was closed up. For a place to grab a cup of Joe, sit and doodle for a bit or even part take in the colorful conversations that occur in the shop, it brought in just as much of the upper class as it did the middle and sometimes even the lower. It didn’t matter how much gold you had in your mouth or how many holes your shirt had in it and that you had more food on it then in your belly. Everyone was considered and treated the same at the coffee shop. No exceptions. Perhaps this was why people enjoyed it so. Why the atmosphere was so cozy and almost like home? The feeling of being welcomed and it not being artificial like everything else in the world just washed over you the minute your foot stepped through the door way. This feeling of home he had worked relentlessly into the shop so that even a stranger coming in for food wouldn’t feel like they were walking into "just another restaurant." What came out of Dallas’ mouth was so unexpected, it caught him off guard to the point that he blinked, and had to sit down on the floor a few feet from the foot of the bed. He made it a point not to be ignorant of people anymore. To be wry of their nature, their true natures and how to either avoid the ugly side of it, or stay away from them altogether if he couldn‘t help them. Yet Dallas’ nature was not one of malicious intent, or even indifferent. He had an idea but Dallas’ words confirmed his suspicions that the humans really were kept in the dark about everything. Which made sense in the long run because a lot of people just can’t grasp the fact that there are strange and beautiful things in the universe, some of which live in your own, right next door to you and pet your dog as they go to work themselves. Humanity could understand though, this he was sure of cause it wasn’t all that much of a scary thing to accept. Or at least he didn’t think it was. Sitting with his left foot on top of his right knee, Indian style but more in a meditating way, he said, "I use to think that too. They can be born or be sired. They use to do that but that was a long time ago, and it’s illegal now right? I think it is, if I’m not mistaken. Probably some good reason behind it but, I just can’t see it." For a moment his mind strayed to the past he had not only been running from, but had been trying to bury. For a split second he could have sworn he could smell the actual scent of leather and freshly cut grass. It was their scent and it made Socrates’ insides knot up, causing him to place a hand over his stomach, as if trying to hold in what wanted to come out. He hadn’t known that smell in such a long time that it at first puzzled him, before the realization hit home and struck terror somewhere deep down in those black eyes. With a shake of his head he pushed the nagging sensation that the leather and grass brought with it to catch Dallas’ next chain of words and how it made her face catch fire. A smile was given, all cheeky like as he started to laugh, trying to talk at the same type but without much success, "Yeah they are quite open with themselves about what they are. Their a very prideful people like that. You… would like them." It was a lame excess yes, to get beyond the fact Dallas had just complimented him and it was making him feel all weak in the knees again even if he was sitting on the floor. So cute it was how he didn’t hang on Dallas’ every word but held faith in everything he said and did. To make Dallas’ confusion all that much more comical, Socrates couldn’t help but jump back to the hygienic issue he had said earlier tenaciously. Placing both hands flat against the floor so that he could lift himself, he said rather bubbly like for sunrise was quickly approaching, "I don’t know about your bum, but mines squeaky clean, thank you very much." What sass he had that he wrinkled his nose up at Dallas as he held his body a few inches above the carpeted floor. Socrates called those midget push-ups. If this didn’t do anything to ease some of the queasy feelings over anything remotely sexual with someone of the same sex, well Socrates would just had to resort to drastic measures. Like books or some such nonsense to make a point. He was silly like that. Silly and ever the naïve optimist. He wouldn’t push for Dallas’ understanding on it or anything else. He just wanted him to know what was what before things got out of control. After a little while of these midget push-ups, he lowered and then sort of rolled onto his back like a rolly polly, folding his arms over his forehead like one would do when shielding their eyes from light. "I do hope this doesn’t spoil the whole bum and empress outfit we were going to have for the Galla tonight. I just bought these boots and the price tags are still on them dagnabit" he teased.
Dallas paid close attention to everything he said. He had noticed how his hair had changed color, and thought he had been wearing a wig. He could not possibly know that some vampires had the ability to make weaker minds see what they wished, or concocted. It was hard for Dallas, feeling the attraction he did for Socrates. His voice, the way he moved around the room, sat down, those push ups he burned his pent up energy with...He was very appealing to him and Dallas struggled with it. "Does this party provide blood for vampires, Socrates? I mean...you are looking a little pale. Do you have blood here? How about you feed yourself, and then we go?" he suggested, his lips cracking a smile which reflected his gentle nature. He was dying to wrap his arms around him...to be close to him. The handsome fellow blew a breath and slid off of the bed to seat himself on the floor across from him, whereby his arms lifted to drape his shoulders on either side of his neck. "Seriously, Sorcrates...You need to eat...to look after your health. Can you honestly go to this gala without passing out cold?" he challenged him, his hazel green eyes piercing Socrates black pools deeply. Dallas tensed as he heard a voice lift behind him, and his head snapped around to bring the very tall figure into focus, his gaze rising to track the tall and imposing looking creature who had crept into the room as silent as a phantom.
"She never did take care of herself. Still starving yourself, Kaasir? Or should I say Socrates?" Pale green eyes with russet rings had locked on her past Dallas. His auburn hair was partially braided while the rest hung loose on his broad shoulders, which were topped with a pelt of fur like mole skin. This same fur covered his back. Lips curled ever so slightly with a sneering smile which added to his intimidating presence. His face was attractive and strong, his fangs and incisors very mature. His lower lip bore a signature vampiric 'blood split', the claws on his feet concealed by the custom made boots he wore, while the equally imposing claws were covered by gloves of leather to accommodate his bestial hands. The soles of his feet within those boots were padded and leathery, with a gripping texture. Indeed his feet were bat-like to the point of being secondary hands. A very soft pelt of reddish-brown fur, like mole skin, covered his shoulders and back, while the rest of him (his thick mane of auburn locks aside) was hairless. His ears were rather large, bat-like as well, too large for his thick mane of long hair to cover. Adorning his ears were exquisitely crafted, archaic earings, similiar to an ankh made of curving bat wings and a sword, and beneath the armor on his chest were elaborate, tribal tattoos adorning his chest, as well the body ink which sleeved his arms and legs. His legs were particularly long, sinewy and strong, and his unique, bestial appearance was further enhanced by his massive, russet wing span. His clothing was specially made to accommodate his wings, he clad in a leather vest and pants, layered with handsomely arcane breast pads, thigh skirts, knee and calf guards. He was a particularly imposing figure to behold in the perfectly languid strides which carried him forward towards them, and his sinuous stature, nevermind the feral air he emitted by his mere appearance. He acted as though she had never killed him, or been separated from him for over a hundred years. Delavar could tell he made Dallas nervous, which amused and satisfied him naturally. "Finding you was no easy task, Socrates." His gaze lanced Dallas as he spoke.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" his breath rather thin. His hand gripped Socrates' arm and he moved closer to him, crowding himself against him protectively, nevermind the fact that Socrates was far more equipped to protect him than the other way around. "Is he...dangerous to you?" he whispered, but Delavar heard him, his hearing very keen. He had heard everything they said before stealing into the room.
A faint smirk tugged at Delavar's lips. "The door was open. Not that a lock ever stopped me," he replied, his tones almost light with the amusement underlying them. He held Dallas in his focus some moments, the look in his eyes so hollow and unreadable that it made Dallas tremble. The vampire then shifted his gaze back on Socrates. "You left me without saying goodbye, Kaasir, and the manner in which you left me was rather rude, don't you think? Allow me to enlighten you...I am responsible for you, like it or not. I gave you the stars, Kaasir, and you repaid me by attempting to murder me while I was wounded? I had no intention of killing you, you know. Had I wished you dead I never would have sired you in the first place. Why, Kaasir? Why did you wish me dead? For killing my enemies? For killing those who would kill us if I did not get to them first? Tell me, I need to understand." His tones were commanding, but also strained with pain, the injury in his soul reflected in his pale green, sienna ringed eyes as well. The slit pupils were very thin in the low light of the room, which his vision could cut through like a dagger.
Dallas felt like he had gotten caught in the middle of something he should not have...He knew the second that vampire had walked into the room, that he should not be there. At the same time, he would not attempt to leave Socrates alone with the vampire...The first vampire he had seen that was obviously a vampire. Delavar could not conceal what he was even if he wanted to, which he did not. Dallas felt Delavar's eyes on him as lifted his eyes to meet Delavar's gaze. He could swear he stared at him like he was a insect, and he looked away, at what time the vampire's eyes locked dead pan on Socrates again. He intended to take her back home, and as she had a pet now, he would go with them if Socrates wished to keep him around. He seemed...harmless enough, but all humans did until you turned your back and they tried to blow your brains out, or behead you with the sword they had concealed in their coat. Delavar did not trust humans, and he certainly did not like them, though he made occasional exceptions. Kaasir, Socrates, had been one of those rare exceptions, and look where that got him? He should have come to kill him, but he had not. He wanted to understand why she had attempted to slay him...He wanted her back, and he wanted to make her understand him. "Speak up, Kaasir. I will not tolerate silence or having my questions avoided. I have gone through a lot of trouble and expense to find you. Risked coming here, to this human city, where vampires cannot easily tread. And not to kill you, as I know you would expect me to...But to understand why you wanted me dead. If you thought for a moment that you knew me, you didn't, and you don't. I am not a monster...I am a warrior. I wept you wounded me so deeply. I knew you hated my deeds...But I never thought you would kill me...Why?"
Dallas could feel the vampire's pain, and was shocked by his words. He could not imagine Socrates killing anyone. Her sire...So he was the one who had made him...Had he chosen it...Did he force it on him? Why would he starve himself...Neglect his hunger...attempt to kill her maker if he had chosen such a life? Dallas found himself wanting to understand, so he could understand Socrates better...and know what the Hell he had gotten himself into to. He was afraid of the vampire...Could not help that, or help betraying it somewhat, but he was as curious as he was afraid. He was perfectly silent as the two spoke...this vampire who had infiltrated Socrate's home, and the vampire he was falling in love with...Had fallen in love with.
So much ump tucked away in the rather fragile looking limbs connected to an even more light body. Too much like a doll he had been labeled time and time again for his complexion severely lacking in the flaw department. Not one blemish had graced his features. Ever. Not that he didn’t romp in a mud puddle every now and again with the hood rats and forgotten youths in the under belly of civilization. For all the extravagance of his apartment, the style in his choice of apparel, the fact that he found simple joy in mud wrestling in some open field behind an abandoned warehouse building littered with broken bottles and old newspapers just as much fun as any diner and a movie was… not so surprising, was it? It wasn’t that he avoided fights like the plague, it was just he went to great lengths to prevent them if he could help it and if not, then that was another demon altogether. For one who supposedly wore the mask of a cozy little coffee shop that brought in, he did not take for granted the life he had been given. Yes that was how he had thought of it and always would, regardless of how much it had torn him apart inwardly at how that life had shoved aside any hope for what people called "normal." His thoughts kept swaying from Dallas to his past and all that had transpired up until the end, an end he thought would never come. Or shouldn’t. Or perhaps, he hoped would. In any case he wasn’t the slightest relieved when he mentally smacked himself for letting his mood turn sour on account of not being able to just accept the fact he wasn’t the good person they had thought him to be. They. The two vampires where ones name was burned into his heart, and the other had been scared into his soul. He hummed at Dallas when he heard the fabric of his bridges make that little scratching sound all materials did, save Egyptian cotton for that just breathed like air. The thought of that fabric made Socrates smile as his head tilted to the side and downwards, almost shy like as if Dallas had paid him compliments instead of being concerned about his well being. He scoffed at Dallas, wrinkling his nose at him. A hand was held up before his face, looking at the back of it as he studied it for something a moment, then he let it settle in his lap or he would have had it not been for the voice that came out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Something was wrong. No, more precisely, something was about to be wrong is all that prickled the hair he didn’t have on his back but that was it. Nothing more. Were he more in tune with the one who had made it possible for his rebirth into this world then, well he might have even sensed Delavar coming. Or at the very least had felt someone else was close even inside the apartment for Christ’s sake! His eyes didn’t have to turn to be able to see the one he’d thought had passed on long ago in a time where they could have been happy, had it not been for Socrates inability to convey just how very phucked up he knew Delavar’s reasoning in this meaningless war was. It was wrong then. It was wrong now. How many ways can I show you it was evil. Socrates’ mind seemed to fume with the sorrow and anger that he had swore he had buried as deep as he’d thought Delavar would have been when his servants had found him. Or whomever had. Still fresh, after all this time, those emotions which had guided his hands in the murder of his own sire. A bout of insanity? One could say that. It had been more like a moment of calm, a calm in which Socrates had finally realized everything he had hoped to show the cold heart that had not given or shown mercy, would be for not. These terrible aches and so very much more welled up inside of him just after the first string of Delavar’s words that he feared he might go crazy and fling himself out the nearest window and maybe, just maybe he would die tonight and once and for all be able to grasp these ideals wrapped in ice that his sire had shown him, against his will. These words of hate, of killing everyone that wasn’t one of them, of decimating the humans? What was it? Kill them all?! In reality Delavar spoke in that cool, oh so calm and sinisterly collective version he had when addressing something that appeared to be important to him but Socrates believed people did not do the things Delavar had done to him, to the ones they cared about. No. They didn’t. They couldn’t. That was not… love. Or was it? There it was. That murderous second guessing that he had carefully stomped on time after time in the wee morning hours when the coffee shop had closed and he was all alone with nothing but the rain pounding on the roof and the frigid air conditioning in his apartment to keep him company. In those hours, however few they were, was where the torture began. The screaming fits. The breaking of valuables. The holes and broken windows he had to replace every other week now, and even the homeless folk below thought it odd that the only person in the world who gave two shiits about them had moving men carry up new panels of glass all the time, and for what they would ask when Socrates would come down to ask them if they needed anything, he would tell them it had been a stray cat, or a bird had flown into the window and its feathers made the window kinda nappy looking. A curious thing about those men and women that occupied the first floor of the run down apartment building was, they had never once tried to break into Socrates apartment. Nobody so much as took the stairs pass the second landing. Not a whisper of deceit or mugging had filtered through their grime and food covered mouths. It wasn’t loyalty. It wasn’t even friendship, or so Socrates would think. If someone were to ask him why it was he let all these jobless, god forsaken tramps live and stink up the place with their filth and their disease, the only reply they would get would be a swift kick in the A and a, "We don’t allow Squares in here, douche bag!" It was a funky old relationship Socrates had with the homeless people down below, the old cook at the coffee shop, and even the hood rat kids down the street. They could take whatever they wanted from him but he never once, and never would. It didn’t make him a saint. It didn’t lessen the growing self loathing he hid so well behind the smiles and laughter, the treats bought for the pregnant women that came in hordes to the shop when they had chocolate on sale with an extra free cup of herbal tea to wash it all down with. Still he found contentment in doing for other people. All the time. Every single day. If no one needed something, he would literally find someone off the street and just bug them until they either relented and gave into his help, or tried to beat the ever loving shiit out of him. The latter had been known to happen, what with him wearing his leather mini skirts in the wrong part of the city, which was every part but that was besides the point. He felt Dallas moving closer to him when he questioned why Delavar was here, and it tore something inside of him. Something he knew should be as dead as Delavar had been the night he had stood over his sire and felt so… hallow inside. Yes. That’s it he lied to himself. If your hallow, nothing can hurt you. Right? But then if your hallow… "… you can’t feel," he thought aloud in the kind of whisper perhaps Delavar could appreciate. His right hand felt down the back of Dallas’ arm until he found his hand in which he held just his pinky and ring finger as he stood, and not in a slow way either but a short burst that caused the end of the inky black fur coat to bounce enough to expose the bare milky white flesh of his left hip where the shirt did not cover, and those skin tight pants just weren’t even remotely high enough to reach. It would be a long time before an answer was provided. Unfortunately, it might not be the one the cunning one had hoped for. "I made a mistake that night," he said as he slowly tugged but with force, to place Dallas behind him even if it wasn’t what the beauty wanted, "I thought I was stopping the very thing that makes these horrible things you men call ‘war’ from continuing." Socrates felt he had done an alright job on keeping a tight lid on the panic that had almost sent him into a seizure when he had turned to behold what Delavar had become. It just reassured him of what he had felt so long ago when he had attempted to kill him, and failed. Back. This was the direction in which Dallas would find himself abruptly sent in not with just a push, but he was nearly thrown through the open doorway of his bedroom and into the left side of the hallway where the only picture frame in that part of the apartment hung. It was a curious thing. Something with colors and fish and dragons. Very lush in detail but out of place at the same time. It would be this painting of all things that when nudged just to the right, it would cause a crack to form in the wall to separate down the middle beginning at the bottom and going up to form a small door way looking pattern. The matter in which the wall consisted of gave easily, even to Dallas, so as to allow the pretty little thing to tumble through its papered exterior and into the cob web infested hidden room where not even God almighty could reach him. If there was a God. A funny thing about the apartment building Socrates found tedious was the fact it had so many damn holes in its support beams that given the right applications, they could make secret rooms and little tunnels for in case the old girl caught fire and he had to get all the people below out safely. A fire trap about summed up the damn place but Socrates called it home all the same. If Delavar was angry with him, that was fine. If his sire sought vengeance for what he had done to him, Socrates would accept it without any qualms. If Delavar desired Dallas to be included in the form of punishment Socrates knew Delavar should exact, that was not something he would stand for. Or bare. Their affairs were their own. Not Dallas’. The human had done nothing but want to befriend and further a relationship Socrates was tickled pink to have. The poor gender confused soul had wanted Dallas just from the second he’d laid his eyes on him, and nearly bit off his own tongue. The wallpaper was torn true, but a sheet of metal slammed shut in its place to reinforce the fact that whatever or whomever had just went inside, was not going to get out this way. At this point he felt Dallas would hate him for this. Or maybe he would just be pissed off, swear at him and tell him to go to hell and leave. Perhaps but Socrates would rather Dallas hate him, then come into harms way for whatever reason, be it Delavar’s temper, or worse. So much worse. Socrates’ madness. "What I forgot then," he said in a tone that had suddenly become smothered with not just the anger he had had that night, but the sorrow that had broken his heart from the sight he had seen his sire, his beloved sire in. The death of a child. The deaths of many. His form had come to stand in the doorway of his bedroom with both hands placed on the doorframe at either side of his hips, "is you don’t kill Gods." The truth was far uglier than the unfathomable self inflicted wounds Socrates had done over the years. Be it by knife or fire, or whatever other device he could conceive of to make the pain go away if even for a little while. "You were the world," came the shout that wasn’t a shout anymore, but a roar. A roar? How about that. Socrates wasn’t so goddamn fluffy anymore. "Nothing else mattered after.. after he d… died. I became nothing. I was nothing and yet," in the darkness the glitter in his black orbs could not be mistaken for tears, as he laughed, his right hands grip on the doorframe peeled off the hard work and five inches of red oak, "only a God can make something… out of nothing."
It seemed Dallas would not have the chance to understand much, for Socrates had something else in mind. He listened to those broken words which his cross-dressing friend did ramble, as Socrates locked hands with him and pulled him around behind him, his strength surprising. Dallas gnawed on his supple lower lip just before he found himself being crowded towards the wall rather forcefully, their forms shoving that painting aside. "Socrates..." he had barely gotten his name out when he was hurled away, and his back no sooner slammed into a wall when the lights went out in that cob-web ridden corridor he had been thrown into. "Socrates!" he shouted as he placed a step forward and beat his fists on that metal door which shot across the opening, which proved quite ineffective. Whatever was happening on the otherside of that trap door of steel, he was being ignored. With a frustrated kick, his boot struck that unforgiving door, and heaving a breath, he began feeling his way through the darkness. "This is just great," he hissed. He could not see a thing, and the spider webs which he kept meeting with his hands and face were quite unpleasant. He was pissed, that Socrates did not trust him to handle himself, but just because he was pissed did not mean he hated Socrates, or would give up on him. He was pissed off because he was worried as well. He felt in his leather jacket pockets for his zippo, and after finding it, he struck the roller, the sparks igniting a flame which shed 'some' light on his surroundings. Further along, the narrow area between the steel structural beams of the building opened into a larger area kind of like a room. There were some dusty candles on a small table stripped of varnish, and he lit one and continued on his way. He tried shoving against the walls here and there, where it looked like the wall might be weak, but had no luck, and then at the end of another narrow corridor, he found another flight of scary ass looking stairs which took him down through that outside wall to a door on the main floor. It opened into an alleyway where more homeless people slept. Dallas made his way past them as quietly as he could, but the door groaned loudly on its hinges and two men woke to stare at him as he passed. He dropped some more money for them. Making his way back around to the front of the building, he ran back up the first flight of stairs, but when he reached Socrates door, it was locked tight. He pounded on it, shouting at the door for Socrates to let him in, and he heard people shouting at him from downstairs. "Pipe down arshole! People are trying to sleep!" He ignored them and continued pounding on the door and shouting for awhile, but when Socrates did not come to the door, he gave up. With a growl, he kicked her front door one last time, and retreated. Apartment doors slammed as he passed by them, as people returned to their beds. Dallas was steaming within as he hit the streets in his defeat to walk back the way Socrates had led him. His motorcycle was parked in a car park two blocks from the cafe, and six blocks from Socrates apartment.
Delavar, meanwhile, stared at Socrates as she deposited her human pet into the security of the building's walls. He never made any attempt to stop her. He listened as his kindred's riot of emotions came spilling from him, and his eyes intensified on her as she refered to him as a god and then released a small piece of what he had pent up inside of him in a roar. He waited for him to calm enough to reason with him, then spoke. "I am no god, Kaasir. Just a Kaenas. I have a soul. My heart beats with the same emotions which drive you, I just guard what I feel. I have to, else I would become the monster you seem to think I am. I felt Jaami's loss too...and it put a rage in me, a rage that has been built brick by brick for century upon century. How could you stop a war that the humans have waged on my kind since prehistoric times? He was too good to be slain simply for what he was." His gaze shifted as she peeled off that large splinter of wood and cheeks tightened before locking his gaze on Socrates' eyes again. "If you intend to use that piece of wood as a dagger, I advise against it. I was weak the night you tried to murder me. I am fit to easily overpower you now, my sanguine." The vampire then moved towards her. He looked the same as when she had left him, but then, perhaps a hundred years had made her forget just how bestial he looked...That, and the intrigue of innocence had no doubt faded. That infatuation had perhaps made him look different in her eyes then. She had been attracted to him after all. He was very handsome in his own way, if one could get past the velvet soft fur, bat-like ears, claws, large fangs, the blood-split in his lower lips and on his tongue, those long strapping legs of sinew, and the massive wing span. "If I did not care about you...Love you, I would not have gone to the trouble of finding you. Please, Kaasir...Come home with me. You can find happiness with me, I promise you. I still live at the Metropolis Estate, which has long been repaired, and have a place in the country near the mountains as well. It is beautiful there...Peaceful. Your friend...He can visit you whenever he likes, even live with you if you desire. He is clearly not from Kerabi." His language and dialect made that obvious. "The war is over, Kaasir." Well, for most it was. Delavar was always at war, which was a good thing, because so were some very dangerous and serious human factions of vampire slayers. People like him prevented his people from being hunted to extinction. Humans were far more prolific than vampires. He would keep Socrates out of that facet of his life. She never had to know. His position with the Sedition was a secretive one as it was. She only had to see him as the business baron he was. "You have seen my ugly side. Come and get to know the side of me you could love. Please, come home with me, Kaasir. Or do you prefer Socrates now?"
Dallas was almost to the coffee shop when he growled under his breath and turned around. Accepting defeat was just not in his nature. He retraced his steps, but had not reached the apartment halfway, when a dark gray sedan pulled up to the curb beside him, and the window went down. It was that ashhole Bobby Styles. "Dallas my boy...There you are. Get in the car, we need to talk." Dallas leaned to peer in the car at Bobby, his driver's eyes facing forward, while he could not see who was in the back because of the smoked windows. "I don't think so, Bobby. I have had it with you. You're fired, man. Adios, amigo." Dallas launched his strides into motion again, only Bobby lept out of the car and hustled after him. Dallas shot his eyes on him when he grabbed his arm. "Don't be rash, Dallas. I know I phucked up...I had no idea that script was porn until I got home. I have been trying ever since to catch up to you. I really do apologize for that." The handsome young actor's nostrils flared and his gaze hardened on the balding, rotund man. "You are so full of shiit, Styles. You fooled me for awhile, but not any more. Tell me, Bobby...Why I am so broke when I should have at least a phat two-million in my Meridian account?" Bobby laughed, but Dallas picked up the nervous strain therein. "All a thing of the past, my boy. I invested your money for you. That's what I'm for right? The investments bottomed out for awhile, but they paid off, Dallas! You are rich now! Get in the car and I will explain everything." Dallas jerked his arm from Bobby's hand. "You can tell it to my lawyer, Bobby," and with nothing else to say, he continued on his way in brisk strides. The second his back was to Bobby, the overweight man motioned to the car, and four of his goons got out of the back of the limo. Next thing Dallas knew, he was seeing stars then everything went black as he was bludgeoned with a billy-club from behind. The men drug him into the sedan and drove off with him. Bobby had a buyer for Dallas in the Met. He had no intention of going to jail for embezzlement on account of a punk that had no appreciation for all he had done for him.
Space. All of a sudden this was what her apartment was lacking in. How ironic. Where just a day ago she couldn’t get enough of her fellow "roommates" to come to the gluttonous feast she had cooked up on a account of wanting the first floor homeless to get to know the recovering drug addicts who inhabited the second floor and in a nutshell, have a shindig. More then just a few lost souls had wandered their ways into her more then welcoming humble home and still, it was not enough. Now that he was here, all those extra feet seemed to have evaporated unlike the sweat that she could have sworn was trickling down the middle of her back. It was never enough or so it felt. Not enough food. Too little clothing. Not nearly enough hours in the day or years in their mortal life spans she realized when one of the homeless men who constantly rattled on about how he use to be a major league baseball player back in his day, he never touched one scrap of food set in front of him. It unfortunately led the poor fool to his death but he just say it was all in good faith in somebody named Mary? In another time and place, he very well could have been a great baseball player, given the amount of medications he would have been put on. She remembered his name. She knew all their names. How could she forget when she practically was mother hen to them all and pretty much every other broken thing that crossed her path? She was barely aware of how upon reflex that hand that clutched the raw piece of wood as if her life depended on it, was let go so that the light clatter it made against the one section of the floor that wasn’t done up in that killer comfortable sinking like carpet snapped her back to the present and out of all those memories made in a vain attempt to displace the regrets and guilt’s of the past that would never fully be let go. Quite the task to know you had killed someone and no matter how many good deeds you did, it would never amount to half of the sorrow that one act of blind grief would hold. It would be a lie she thought as her feet grew a momentary brain steam of their own and moved her backwards just a few paces until she bumped into the only night stand in the hallway, knocking over the tall vase made out of the smokiest pieces of jade she could get her eager hands on. It hurt inwardly to see him, not because she had failed in her attempt at killing him but, that he would even consider conversing with her let alone voice his desire to have her come home at once. It was beyond her comprehension to grasp why he cared at all for someone that had tried to take his very life away from him. To take away this world that wasn’t as bad as most people let on, or so she would think as the ever optimistic one that she was. The depth of how badly she had not cut him, but herself out of her own misguided hands wasn’t something that could be fixed. Delavar was still her world and after all this time she had not thought any less of him for what she had bared witness to the night she had "lost her head" as she had told an elderly woman who had fallen asleep on a park bench, only to later realize she had been talking to a corpse the entire afternoon. Damn cold weather. It would be a few moments after he had begun that she would respond but it was only when he started to move towards her that something slipped from between those full set of lips that had been painted a light shimmer of lip balm that tasted an awful lot like tart cherries. What was it? Was it a whimper or a cringe? The former was in truth what that faint noise was that escaped her before she could stuff it back down inside next to all the self loathing and anguish that had been festering inside of her for longer than she would care to admit. Once she had been so ready to please, to just do the sort of things to bring a smile to his face even if he might refuse such an expression, it never stopped her from trying. The gentleness, that unconditional kindness that would puzzle anyone lesser appeared to be terrified at the moment. Not because Delavar was what he was but… because the feelings she had for him did not die like the rest of her had. What a mask she wore to hide the ugliness she felt her soul was for just that one act of violence she had done against him all those years ago. She did not believe he deserved what she had done to him, even if she felt it was the only way to make him see that the blood that had been spilt could have been avoided. The deaths. The ambushes. He didn’t have to do the things he had done for the sake of… what? Of their species? Sometimes in the middle of the day when business was high and there wasn’t an empty table to save a life, she would find herself wondering if things would have been better off if she had just beat him over the head with a stick and dragged him off, away from here and all this death that seemed to consume every single thing until all that was left were empty homes and ended bloodlines. At the time what she had done was not what she had wanted for him and for this, she would never forgive herself for being so… damn… weak. A terrible sea of emotions she was and always had been. That vase was adeptly caught with a simple whirl of the body ending in a crouch with the bottom in one hand and the top being held to her chest with the other. "I have wronged you," came those words of discontent as she set the vase back on the night stand but slowly, so as not to spill the chilly water in it. On the outside she appeared as thought she was under some form of heavy drug that was dulling the senses and overall ability to watch where the hell you were going, however on the inside she was breaking. He lived and yet he didn’t hate her. He was alright and still, he loved her? She thought he clearly had forgotten what she had done to him and out of a pure fit of trying to stop him from doing the very thing that maybe, just maybe was the only right thing to do now. Those black pools glittered with the threat of tears from just how much she missed him. It was the honest to goodness truth that she missed him. The very sight of him made her rejoice and despair at the same time. She felt she was no longer worthy of his attentions, not that she wouldn’t give anything to be back in his good graces. This irrational thinking of course steamed strictly from her own self loathing and from how dead set she was to make him see that she had not meant what she had done to him to be something out of malice. It had been a confused horrified rescue attempt at alleviating what had never been his fault to begin with. With all the commotion caused by the flower vase being tipped and nearly broken, if Delavar continued on his move forward then he would no doubt be within a foot or so of her. "Don’t do this… please," she said, in that quiet way she had when she was either very sleepy, or very upset. All of a sudden her body would do that thing she hated most about herself. It would act of its own accord and do what her heart… really wanted. It took every ounce of her will power to stand close to the opposite wall she had deposited Dallas in, with her arms crossed over her chest as she said, "I can bare your hatred. I can even keep your wanting to end what ever this life is. But I cannot bare your happiness." She wanted Delavar to be happy naturally, like every other soul in the world. She wished nothing bad upon anyone, except herself. Every single day she had lived without him, she had died a little more inside. As foolish as it was, she clung to the only thing that kept her from going insane like she surely thought she would if she didn’t. Regret. It was stupid yes she knew to be so set in ones ways when she felt like a hypocrite for always telling others that nothing remained the same and that change wasn’t such a bad thing. After a couple of seconds of this spiraling-out-of-control train of thought that would ultimately lead to a bout of temporary madness, she clamed up. Just like that she stuffed everything back down to where it could build up, smash against the inner walls of her head and die again to repeat the process the next day, the mask had been pulled down to hide just how utterly lost she was. In the blink of an eye Socrates would go from being on the verge of a crying mess, to a one whose feathers were as smoothed down as the fur of the coat she wore. Sleek as could be. "Well, you know your always here. The people here are really nice. Especially those downstairs. I can think of a few people who’d get the warm and fuzzes from your company," she went on in that chipper tone she’d picked up a few years ago from just how bleak life could seem, only when you let it. And yet her back remained to him where she stood by the wall just to the left of the doorway inside the bedroom. She did not turn about to face him, or was it that she couldn’t? Fear was what was seizing her heart and it was what wouldn’t let her look at him. She was terrified he wouldn’t hate her That he wasn’t putting on a ruse just to bring her home so that he could do what he please, which wouldn’t have bothered her in the least… if her heart wasn’t already taken by another. It was the universal joke. To be able to love more than one person at the same time. What in the world was one to do when with that?! A part of her wanted him to leave so that he didn’t have to be bothered with the antics of a less then worthy kin. He had the kind of honor that was as unbreakable as his will, and for this she would not rob him of his pride. And still she wished him to stay. If even for a little while so he could speak how wretched of a creature she was for throwing what life he had given her back in his face at a moment of weakness, and then to leave him to die. Wait, that was not what love was she thought but it had become so blurry this thing called love that she couldn’t tell the difference between that and a double edged blade called lust. The latter was certainly not what she felt for Dallas though, this was one of two things she was sure of. The second being that … what? It was something she dare not speak of for fear of revealing too much and just how messed up she had become without Delavar over the years, despite her best intentions. Then the bedroom suddenly grew cold….
Delavar: The vampire's pale green, sienna ringed, slit pupiled eyes pinned Socrates with a glassy eyed burn as she told him to stop. "Stop what, Kaasir? Doing what is in my heart and soul to do?" his tones were crisp with passion and yet there was that everypresent chill to his voice which came from him guarding his emotions. His eyes thinned on her like shards when she said she could bear his hatred, his desire to kill her, but not his happiness? "You cannot bear my happiness?" he stared at hard at her and then grappled him to jostle him by his shoulders. "What happiness Kaasir? The brief time of joy you and Jaami brought me, until he was killed and I ruined you? Oh yes...I acknowledge that I ruined you. Made you insane, desperate, but for what I could never understand. It is I who wronged you, and I have suffered for it, suffered knowing that you wanted to die, and I see that has not changed. Only once I thought of killing you, but instead, I remade you in my own image...and strove to make you love what you had become, but you only hated me, and being a vampire all the more. Look at you...You still starve yourself. It is a wonder you are even standing. Did you tell your handsome friend Dallas, who seems to genuinely care for you, that you invite death to embrace you frequently, hmm? That life lost all of its flavor the moment you craved blood?" The vampire scoffed a breath hence his gaze lanced her as she gained perfect control of her sense, or so it seemed, until she spoke. Delavar was a plain speaking creature, and her riddles seemed madness to him. "I never meant to break your heart. I do what I do, Kaasir, what I am cannot be helped, but I meant only to love you. You have broken my heart as well, Kassir, and perhaps I am a fool...but I cannot give up on you. I cannot give up the hope that you might find it in yourself to learn to love me, and more than that, even to love yourself." The vampire then embraced him tightly, his tall frame, wings and arms dominating his far more petite and slender figure. "Come home with me, Kaasir. No more hiding..." His lips covered his and he kissed him with feverish passion, his blood groove locking against Socrate's tongue with suctioning pulses with each deep coiling stroke before he broke the kiss and locked his eyes on him. Delavar had only once claimed Kaasir sexually, when he had intended to kill him only to sire him instead. "I...I wronged you as well, Kaasir...I raped you...It was unforgivable. Had I intended for you to live...I never would have...I took ages of loneliness out on you...I am sorry...so sorry...to have made you suffer..." It had happened only once for a reason. She was not supposed to have remembered it. The vampire pressed a chaste but lingering kiss to her lips and then straightened, his eyes glazed with tears of regret. He was a cold blooded killer, snuffed lives without a single regret, but it wounded him deeply to hurt Kaasir. "Bring Dallas with you if you desire...Just come home with me...Let me care for you," his pleas were warm on his ear, passionate, as was the featherlight press of his lips against her temple. His warmth encapsulated her chill, starving body, and as a final act of trust and love, he offered his wrist to her. "Drink of me...Strengthen yourself, and let us go home, where I can make you healthy again." It was easy for the vampire to forget his own passion driven temper. Delavar was capable of being very kind, it was true, but he was also capable of being cruel when his temper was provoked beyond his ability to ignore the causes.
Dallas: He never felt his body being lifted, and then tossed into a small jet-plane as if he was little more than a sack of laundry. When he woke, it was to the hum of the jet's engines, and he struggled against the ropes which bound him and cut into his flesh. He cried out, but was gagged and in the darkness of the cargo hold. He felt sick and dizzy, and his head throbbed with a mild concussion. "Mmm mmmm mmmm!!!!" the gag was so thick and tight that it was the best he could do, but his cries for help would not be answered. In an hours time the jet would land just northeast of the Metropolis where the buyer for Dallas would meet the jet on that patch of level land being used as a private landing strip. Nathan was not the actual buyer, but represented his client and had brought the brief-case of money which would make Dallas's flesh a commodity. The obsessed and profane fan of that sexy body Dallas possessed was a wealthy man, a human, named Argenta Maldante. He was from a small mountain village southwest of Kerabi, ironically, and was one of the Met's most elusive, and wealthiest drug Cartel bosses in Juvare and the Met put together. Argenta knew better than doing the drugs he trafficked, but those he made slaves of he got hooked on the elicit 'mind candy' his network sold, to make it easier to control them. Dallas he wanted healthy...lean, and sexy. No numbing Dallas, no siree.
Delavar: The vampire's pale green, sienna ringed, slit pupiled eyes pinned Socrates with a glassy eyed burn as she told him to stop. "Stop what, Kaasir? Doing what is in my heart and soul to do?" his tones were crisp with passion and yet there was that everypresent chill to his voice which came from him guarding his emotions. His eyes thinned on her like shards when she said she could bear his hatred, his desire to kill her, but not his happiness? "You cannot bear my happiness?" he stared at hard at her and then grappled him to jostle him by his shoulders. "What happiness Kaasir? The brief time of joy you and Jaami brought me, until he was killed and I ruined you? Oh yes...I acknowledge that I ruined you. Made you insane, desperate, but for what I could never understand. It is I who wronged you, and I have suffered for it, suffered knowing that you wanted to die, and I see that has not changed. Only once I thought of killing you, but instead, I remade you in my own image...and strove to make you love what you had become, but you only hated me, and being a vampire all the more. Look at you...You still starve yourself. It is a wonder you are even standing. Did you tell your handsome friend Dallas, who seems to genuinely care for you, that you invite death to embrace you frequently, hmm? That life lost all of its flavor the moment you craved blood?" The vampire scoffed a breath hence his gaze lanced her as she gained perfect control of her sense, or so it seemed, until she spoke. Delavar was a plain speaking creature, and her riddles seemed madness to him. "I never meant to break your heart. I do what I do, Kaasir, what I am cannot be helped, but I meant only to love you. You have broken my heart as well, Kassir, and perhaps I am a fool...but I cannot give up on you. I cannot give up the hope that you might find it in yourself to learn to love me, and more than that, even to love yourself." The vampire then embraced him tightly, his tall frame, wings and arms dominating his far more petite and slender figure. "Come home with me, Kaasir. No more hiding..." His lips covered his and he kissed him with feverish passion, his blood groove locking against Socrate's tongue with suctioning pulses with each deep coiling stroke before he broke the kiss and locked his eyes on him. Delavar had only once claimed Kaasir sexually, when he had intended to kill him only to sire him instead. "I...I wronged you as well, Kaasir...I raped you...It was unforgivable. Had I intended for you to live...I never would have...I took ages of loneliness out on you...I am sorry...so sorry...to have made you suffer..." It had happened only once for a reason. She was not supposed to have remembered it. The vampire pressed a chaste but lingering kiss to her lips and then straightened, his eyes glazed with tears of regret. He was a cold blooded killer, snuffed lives without a single regret, but it wounded him deeply to hurt Kaasir. "Bring Dallas with you if you desire...Just come home with me...Let me care for you," his pleas were warm on his ear, passionate, as was the featherlight press of his lips against her temple. His warmth encapsulated her chill, starving body, and as a final act of trust and love, he offered his wrist to her. "Drink of me...Strengthen yourself, and let us go home, where I can make you healthy again." It was easy for the vampire to forget his own passion driven temper. Delavar was capable of being very kind, it was true, but he was also capable of being cruel when his temper was provoked beyond his ability to ignore the causes.
Dallas: He never felt his body being lifted, and then tossed into a small jet-plane as if he was little more than a sack of laundry. When he woke, it was to the hum of the jet's engines, and he struggled against the ropes which bound him and cut into his flesh. He cried out, but was gagged and in the darkness of the cargo hold. He felt sick and dizzy, and his head throbbed with a mild concussion. "Mmm mmmm mmmm!!!!" the gag was so thick and tight that it was the best he could do, but his cries for help would not be answered. In an hours time the jet would land just northeast of the Metropolis where the buyer for Dallas would meet the jet on that patch of level land being used as a private landing strip. Nathan was not the actual buyer, but represented his client and had brought the brief-case of money which would make Dallas's flesh a commodity. The obsessed and profane fan of that sexy body candy Dallas possessed was a wealthy man, a human, named Argenta Maldante. He was from a small mountain village southwest of Kerabi, ironically, and was one of the Met's most elusive, and wealthiest drug Cartel bosses in Juvare and the Met put together. Argenta knew better than doing the drugs he trafficked, but those he made slaves of he got hooked on the elicit 'candy' his network sold, to make it easier to control them. Dallas he wanted healthy...lean, and sexy. No numbing Dallas, no siree.
By the slightest shift of her body being jostled to the point her noggin became hazed with dizziness not on account of the action, but that he spoke the truth and it hurt more everything. Every single night of bathing away the blood, the aches and horrors. More then these and the ignorance of him never letting her know what she wanted to, but what she needed to know. She knew she was a sad creature to have lived so long, wearing this mask that was the only thing standing between her and oblivion. Not that she was afraid of dying. On the contrary, the detached state she held towards her own life held no value at all. The only time she did feel she was worth a damn, that life was far more precious than people seemed to realize, was when she could help another. Selfless and all that bumble bee goodness, yes she was a hopeless little romantic like that. Had ones that wore their heart on their sleeves long since passed? Heavens no. She may very well be an idiot for all she had done to Delavar, and not have done for him, but she was not a malicious thing. Or so she thought. No amount of apologies could make him stop what he was saying. No matter how little she resisted the urge to shy away from him just so he wouldn’t see this breaking in her eyes. As faint as the tugging to that soft pelt of fur was, her fingers found their way easily back into it to curl strand and strand alike around until she had tangled her hands in his fur well enough that no simple tug would free them. A few times those lips had parted in protest that he did not need to speak his reason or relate the sorrows of the past. There had been a time when she thought that it was this very sorrow that had brought them together but she had immediately felt stupid for thinking such things, and knew better. Jaami. He had brought them all together. Jaami had been the one to show this vampire who had ever right to despise the humans and want nothing more than to see them all burn in Hell, that not everyone was like that. To place every individual in one view was to condemn them to purgatory. Everyone was different and unique in their own way. It was someone’s ability to love that set them apart from the mass of a melting pot. When Delavar said Jaami, Socrates’ felt a deep, blunt pain resonate to the name inside and it would always hurt, this place that held the memories of the youthful face of one who had seen things nobody should ever have to see. That head of white and pale silvers lowered as her eyes cast down to the floor with the forlorn that would not leave her from how torn apart they had both become when Jaami had had his life stolen from him. So lost in this all consuming depression she became momentarily that her sires words would be heard yet she would register them until much, much later. All save for the tid bit where he told her to drink of him. Her response to this of course would be in her head snapping up to give him the look of one who had just saw their own death. Her face became that of fear, the very essence of the emotion itself, if one could imagine it. Those big black eyes would widen until it appeared as though the black might eat the smaller whites of her eyes and give her the look of the monster she had become when the hunger was more than she could bare. Late, late at night when her strength to fight the inner demon to feed was so powerful it didn’t matter where the blood came from. In those rare occasions she would not remember what she did, for her logical side would leave her as sure as a bird would fly higher into the clouds to be rid of the world and its bothersome things. The more primitive side, the animalistic being that hid itself quite well actually, would make an appearance in all its carnage glory. It had happened once or twice, but that had been forty years ago. Now it was happening more frequently and it scared her to wake up in the middle of a field where she was surrounded by dead bodies of people she’d never seen before. Very disconcerting just to happen once, but a three times? With eight different people lying dead each time? Sometimes she entertained the idea someone had hexed her, but then she would get to wondering why someone would waste the time and energy hexing her, when they could be cursing the government or something productive like helping the vegetation to grow faster and hold more nutrients. She wrinkled her nose when he said she couldn’t love herself. "I love myself, just not more than them," she mumbled, like a child would fending sleep. A pout would crease her lips just for a fraction of a second before that blistering kiss was laid against her lips, making her far shorter frame curve instinctively against Delavar with the faintest sound of a whimper. She had forgotten how demanding his affections were. How heated they could become when she would say no, and he would have none of it. It was joy and agony at the same time again. Her fingers yanked downwards on the bit of his fur she still held onto as her head was pushed back to be against either the side of his wing or the top of his arm given how tightly he held her. She still ached for him, after all this time. She had missed him terribly every day and held to the thin shred of hope that she hadn’t murdered him that night, and that he had found peace on that countryside he should have lived in with someone far more tolerable and pleasing to the eye than herself. All it took was one of his kisses, and her insides had twisted into jelly. Just one little kiss had made her squeeze her eyes shut to try and force the overwhelming desires that abruptly howled for Delavar. Was it power he held over her? Or was it fear? In truth it was nothing of either, just love. As fragile and unrelenting as could be, their love may have been odd or distorted, but it was love all the same and it couldn’t be broken by time. She felt herself slipping into that comfort zone, that warmth his body provided, the protectiveness he always showed towards her that made her feel obscenely special in spite of how she might have thought otherwise. Her tongue had not pushed back against his to deny him entry to her mouth but rather, moved aside so that he could do as he pleased. She hadn’t even thought of pushing him away and it made her think. No resistance whatsoever was put up against his affections but the noises she made if however meek, were strained by regret and longing. So wrapped up in him she had become that when he spoke of these terms that he had raped her were caught and the hair over the back of her neck rose on end. He had what? In reality her mind had snapped then, blocking out that and a few other unpleasant parts with him that he had to become violent to make her see that nothing everyone was nice and the world was a very ****ty place so long as these goddamn humans inhabited it. It knotted her up, making her face turn away from his, although her hands remained in that pelt of fur. Those thin heels of her boots were dug into the carpet as she pushed herself backwards to hit the wall with a uncomfortable sounding thump! She was biting her lower lip. A clear sign that she had not fed in awhile, and that the hunger would drive her to maul another unfortunate person to the point they would be an unrecognizable pile of blood and gore on the side of the street or in the corner of some night club, not to be found until broad day light by some unsuspecting soul and ruin their damn day. An all too nervous laugh would be made as she waved away any notion of him offering her his blood when he owed her nothing, or so went the way of her thinking. Warped. Distorted. "Now, Now D," she said as her frame started to move to the right, towards the open space of the hall way, "no need for that. I-I’ll come home. Just h.. a… have to collect a few things, one of them being said kind hearted human and we’ll be on our way." The broken words, the fragmented sentences, why was it again she refused to feed until she blacked out and went into a total blank? A blank minded merciless killer that was as silent as the victims bodies that were slowly lowered to the ground after having their faces ripped off, or some other body part. She could smell his warmth still on her. She could even feel the ghost of Dallas’s lips against her own, as much as she tried not to think about how shiitty of a person she was for excluding him from this entire situation. But she felt it was the safest thing for him. That he know so little about the workings of the her past when he really should. In time she would tell him. Or show him she thought as she felt the two sets of teeth on either side of her two front teeth begin to sharpen and grow just a hair in their short length but enough to prick her tongue, making it bleed profusely inside her mouth. Her right hand would come up to cover her mouth as blood welled up in it, threatening to slip from the corner of it…
