A Clearing in the Preserve, Tuesday After Dark

[gunslingerpose]

This was a stupid idea. Any idea that had Nikolai standing out in the woods in the dark with two ladies, one of whom he didn't even know, and planning to pull off his shades really had to be a stupid idea. There was a reason he wore the damn things, after all. And a reason he hadn't gone back to Hollywood yet, for that matter. You get one blood transfusion from a crazy woman in a foreign country, and before you know it all you can do is come to terms with the fact that you'll never live a normal life again.

... But Nikolai really actually missed his normal life. He loved his job back home, he wasn't terribly keen on continuing to pay rent for his apartment on the other side of the country while being stuck here, and, as much as he appreciated how good he looked in mirrored shades, he kind of missed looking at the world without a gray tint over everything.

He leaned back against a tree, swatting at a mosquito as it buzzed by his ear.

"God, I'm being eaten alive out here," he sighed. "Let's get this over with so that we can get away from the bugs, huh?"

[OOC: For those ladies who know who they are!]

Comments

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

Focused on Nick, Allie hadn't been paying all that much attention to what Eponine was doing. But as the other girl moved forward, Allie turned her head towards her and frowned.

"Eponine?"

[gunslingerpose]

It took Nikolai a moment to realize what the hell was going on. A moment of silence, staring at the girl who had suddenly gone from quiet and attentive to quiet and... nothing. Locked in his gaze, and he could feel the result, like living sparks dancing through his head.

She couldn't look away. He'd locked eyes with her and she couldn't look away. And as a result, he felt so damn alive, more and more every moment...

"Fuck! Catch her!"

He'd gotten lost in it, in the way it felt when someone else's strength came rushing into him, but now he was closing his eyes tightly and turning away and scrambling to pull on his shades again.

[filleauloup]

Éponine wasn't really aware of the words; they were just another piece of the noise and chaos that might have been in her head or might not, she couldn't tell. She was falling, she knew that, because her legs weren't strong enough to hold her up any more.

Then she wasn't falling any more; someone must have caught her, but, well, collapsing onto the ground still seemed like a very good idea.

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

Allie sank down with the other girl, doing her best to support her. "Just rest for a few minutes. You're going to be fine."

The theory she'd had about why she'd been immune to Nick's gaze seemed a lot more like fact now.

"Nick are you okay?"

[gunslingerpose]

Now there was a loaded question. Nick kept his back turned quite resolutely, as he made certain his sunglasses were in their place and not about to move from that spot any time soon.

"Physically, I feel like I could run a marathon right now," he reported. "Cross the finish line two or three times before everyone else, too. I'll be fine. How's she?"

If he had thrown her into a coma or something, this was pretty much the last straw. He was going to move into the woods and become a hermit, damn it.

[filleauloup]

"Alive," Éponine said with a faint chuckle, the sudden fatigue roughening her voice further than usual. "Good lord, I feel like I haven't eaten in two weeks, only my head isn't so funny as it usually gets. And all I did was look --"

Talking seemed like too much effort, and she trailed off there.

[gunslingerpose]

"Look me in the eye," Nikolai finished for her, frowning. "Jesus, Éponine, I'm sorry. I should've been more careful."

So, going back to L.A. any time soon wasn't going to be a thing.

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"We'll get you something sweet at the Perk when we get back into town. That and a good night sleep and you'll be fine in the morning." If only everything else about the situation were so easy to deal with.

"So about that idea I had," Allie said when she turned her attention to Nick. "This just proved it to me."

[gunslingerpose]

"Kind of a shitty way to go about it," Nick sighed, and then finally turned around to look back at them. "So, you want to tell me what that idea was?"

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"Think about it," she prompted. "Eponine and I, we're close in age, close in build, what's the only thing that different between us. It's a pretty big one."

[gunslingerpose]

"... Shit. You're immune. Vampires are immune." A beat. "And fucked-up harpy things, I guess."

Well. Shit.

Though it was good to know, Nick supposed.

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"Supernatural types," Allie agreed. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say monsters but she didn't want Nick to think she was saying he was one. He was a nice guy caught in a bad situation.

"You should try it on the zombies at Caritas if you really want to be sure. And I do know a werewolf."

[gunslingerpose]

"Zombies, werewolf," Nick echoed, trying not to sound too bewildered by what he was hearing. He'd seen the zombies, and it was hard to ignore the howling that went on during the full moons around here, but actually acknowledging that they were what they were really talking about, here...

"Yeah. Yeah, if there's a night that's not crawling with, um, just normal human types, I'll try it on the Caritas zombies. Who's the werewolf?"

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

Zombies, mutants, vampires, and werewolves, oh my....

In other words, welcome to life in Fandom.

"Let me talk to him first. It's not that it's a secret, but he generally doesn't go announcing it about if that makes sense?"

[gunslingerpose]

"Sense enough," Nick allowed, nodding faintly. "I'm not really screaming about this off the rooftops, either."

He gave Éponine another worried look, and then shook his head a little.

"Maybe I should be, at least around here. Slightly less of a chance of anyone getting thrown unexpectedly into a coma or something."

... Because nobody would look at him ever again. Right.

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"It's not the worst idea. In general people around here are pretty accepting." Case in point, the vampire in front of him. "And at least this way they'd know to keep your glasses on if you're ever in a freak rickshaw accident."

[gunslingerpose]

"... There's that."

Nikolai was now hoping to never be in a freak rickshaw accident. Ever.

"I'll be less secretive about it, then. At least while I get get away with it, here on the island." He glanced up to see a squirrel scamper off, and then frowned a little, considered chasing the damn thing down, and then sighed and decided against it. "Back home is a different story."

[filleauloup]

Éponine paused in the process of hauling herself upright to lean against the tree trunk and made a soft huffing sound.

"I've been worse off, goodness knows. Anyhow, it isn't as though you meant to," she said; it was a fairly belated answer, granted, but she was still fairly out of it. "That's different, I think."

She wasn't sure how, exactly, but she had the sense that it was even if she couldn't articulate it. Not like her father or Patron-Minette, always finding ways to get better at hurting people for their own advantage.

[gunslingerpose]

"Hey, now, take it easy," Nick said, moving over to... to offer her a hand or something, he had no idea. "Different or not, it happened. And whether you've felt worse or not, that's not really something you should be dealing with right now, all out of nowhere."

There was a moment's pause, and then he ventured, "What's it feel like, anyhow?"

What? There was no sense in wasting this, was there?

[filleauloup]

It occurred to her that if Montparnasse had that kind of ability, the only thing he'd care about with those sunglasses would be how to take them off so as to stare down victims with the most dramatic flourish. (God, he'd love it, wouldn't he, being able to kill people for their clothes without even having to worry about bloodstains?)

"Like being hit awfully hard," Éponine said after a moment, the odd look she gave him a result of still not being used to people caring what she had to deal with out of nowhere, unasked. "So hard it completely knocked it out of my head, the way my arms and legs ought to work, or the rest of me for that matter, and then I hadn't any strength left. I didn't like that part very much."

[gunslingerpose]

"Yeah, I haven't really figured out how to give that back, unfortunately."

And that was because he was pretty certain he couldn't. Whatever it was he picked up, he tended to burn it off fairly quickly.

"... Here, let's get you out of these woods before the bugs really do finish us off, hm?"

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a good plan," Allie agreed. And if it let Allie avoid talking about what would what it was like dealing with the people in your life from before things changed, all the better. Nick didn't need that level of bitter tonight.

[filleauloup]

"Fine by me," agreed Éponine readily enough. "I don't exactly fancy surviving that only to be some bug's dinner."