Drink the night away (Cosimo Alessi)

[Kit (DELETED 8248)]

Knock. Knock.

Kit jerked at the sound, sloshing more of the liquid out into the puddle forming in the carpet beneath her. She’d passed out, bottle still in her hand, and hadn’t woken up when the bottle had tilted, wasting the precious liquid within. The knocking. That woke her up. It hurt to open her eyes, as if her eyelids had been glued shut and in order to open them she’d had to rip them free. Tiny pebbles of pain lay between her eyes and lids, grating like sand paper each second.

“Lo?” She tried to stand up, hanging onto the wooden chair that was by the desk to try and pull herself up. Her balance left much to be desired, as did the support given by the cheap motel chair. She fell. Crashed to the floor with muttered curses and the smell of liquor increased as the bottle she’d been holding onto slipped completely from her fingertips. Pain flared up in her side. She’d fallen on an empty bottle, breaking it and causing shards of glass to embed in her flesh.

She found this all quite hilarious in her drunken state. The stream of curses breaking away for the laughter that had no place in the current situation, and yet there it was.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

The stench of alcohol was the first thing to hit Cosimo’s senses. It wasn’t the stench of revelry, either, but that of despair. It was the scent of a broken home, not of an open one. It was the scent of a broken person.

At the sound of the voice, Cosimo entered the room properly. It was dim, and yet not too dim for him to be privy to the disaster that Kit had made of herself. She was laughing even while cursing, the scent of fresh blood spiking the scent of alcohol and causing Cosimo to bite the inside of his cheek. Ducking down, Cosimo gently wrapped his fingers around Kit’s upper arm, hefting her from the floor and doing his best to guide her to the couch without touching the glass lodged into her skin. The blood was soaking into her clothing, and the Italian wondered what exactly he had gotten himself into.

”Are you trying to kill yourself?” he asked, exasperated. His tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth, shaking his head as he realised he had asked the wrong question. It had slipped from his mouth without thought. What if that was the reason why she had called him?

”You are not in the right mind…” he said, though he was mostly talking to himself. She was not in the right mind. She was drunk. Drunk people were notorious for doing things they later regretted. How could she be sure the decisions she made were what she really wanted, and not some whim acted on due to severe inebriation? He wanted to help. But he wondered whether she shouldn’t be sober, first.

[Kit (DELETED 8248)]

She let him maneuver her around, not noticing the blood smearing over the couch that would most certainly cause her to lose the deposit that the motel had made her pay. His words confused her, so she squinted at him, but that made her head spin so she closed them and leaned back against the couch instead. That felt much better. Like a cloud. A cloud of awesomeness that could take her away on a magical wind of nothing.

Except he was still here. She peeked one eye open before remembering why she’d closed them, and closed them back up. “Just had a few drinks.” The words were slurred, not that she noticed. There wasn’t anything wrong with drinking, after all, especially when it made everything else go away. She wasn’t trying to kill herself. She was just trying to dull the pain enough that she didn’t want to go jump off a cliff. That was healthy. Not jumping off cliffs. But that wouldn’t matter anymore. He was going to make it all better - that’s what he had promised. In her current state she believed it, all reservations were gone. The alcohol was magical in that way.

“Is it time?” She peeked her eyes open again, trying to take him in. “Taking me to the new life. The better one. Happy one.” The slur in her words was still just as pronounced, with a hint of deep exhaustion tinting them. She yawned, punctuating it further, as she snuggled deeper into her cloud-couch with only a slight wince when a piece of glass was pushed deeper.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Cosimo flinched.

Once, because he worried that Kit was soon going to throw everything up again, and he was trying to stay alert so that he could jump out of the way when she did. He knew that when he was human and when he’d got blind drunk, closing his eyes had always been the worst thing to do. The whole world would spin out of control, and he’d have to open his eyes in order to anchor himself. It was different for everyone, though.

Two, he wasn’t sure he could remember what he’d said at the restaurant, but had he promised happiness? Had he promised a better life? It was probably best to explain, just in case. He didn’t want to lead Kit on, to tell her everything was going to be perfect only to be wrong. If the girl was depressed, there was no saying that vampirism would cure it. In fact, it could just make it ten times worse. Perched on the edge of the coffee table, Cosimo gazed at Kit with a concern that he didn’t even attempt to mask.

”I do not know that I said it would be happier, or better. If I gave that impression it is only because that is how it worked for me. I was at the bottom of rock, and I had nothing to lose. I only could gain. It made me happy because I did gain another life, and it is my opinion that it is a better life. Many do not share my opinion. There are flaws,” he said, chewing on the inside of his lip as he considered baring all. She would think that he was insane. Perhaps that was a good thing.

"You will have eternity, but you will lose sunshine. You will not be able to eat. You will not… be able to get drunk. You will not be able to have a child. You will be capable of things that you have never dreamed of, but you will have urges, too, that might be hard to control. You will have to drink blood to survive,” he said. That was the crux, wasn’t it? Most would balk at the very notion. If there was one thing that Cosimo missed the most, it was the food.

[Kit (DELETED 8248)]

She paid little attention to his words, her eyes nearly glazed over and her mind rigid in its thinking. It was the process of someone who’s logic was overridden. Her mind was set and even physically shaking her would do nothing to loosen her. She looked up at him, though everything she saw and heard at this point was filtered through the reality that she had made.

“You’re here. Can we go now?” There was nothing here she wanted to take with her. She was getting a new life anyway and anything would be a reminder. She debated, momentarily, stripping down so she had literally nothing with her. That seemed a bit far, though, even in her current intoxicated state.

Standing up was hard and she had to reach out and grab onto Cosimo to steady herself. Everything was spinning, but she didn’t care. She wanted to go, so she took a step towards the door and made no moves at all to pick up any of her stuff. Not her phone, laptop or wallet. She was leaving all of that behind, for the new and better life.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Had she even heard a word that he’d said? There were no answers, none. He sighed and rubbed at his temple as he stood and followed after Kit. Sure, they could go. But they’d only be going to some other café, or bar. Somewhere that served coffee; maybe a drug store where they could get some paracetamol and some water.

”Si, we will go. We will go and get you something warm to drink, yes?” he said. Even though he wasn’t sure that she was even listening, or that anything he said was being processed at all, it was still important to keep her aware of what he had planned. The last thing he wanted was some kind of emotional breakdown in the middle of the street because she wasn’t aware. Though honestly, it could happen regardless – especially if she wasn’t listening.

”It is not something that I can just give to you. It is not something that I can do with just a click of my fingers. You need to be sober, and you need to be aware,” he said. There was no tremor to his voice, no room for a changed mind. He was not going to turn someone who was drunk. There was absolutely no way.

He made sure that the door was locked behind them; if Kit didn’t have a key, surely the front desk would be able to let her back in again. There wasn’t anything that she needed straight away that she couldn’t come back for.

[Kit (DELETED 8248)]

Sober. Her eyes narrowed as the soft click of the door closing met her ears. It was strange, not that she noticed, how the mere act of questioning her sobriety effected her so. A shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. It was, of course, the alcohol that allowed the reaction to occur. Had she been sober, or even in a place where she remembered what sober was, she would have found the hilarity in her reaction. She was not sober. She hadn’t been in so long that it was as strange of a concept to her as the thought of not breathing.

She wasn’t always as completely and utterly intoxicated as she was at that particular moment. It was actually an unusual level for her - more death wish than trying to numb the pain. She backed away from him, stumbling enough to knock over one of the decorative potted plants that lined the hotel before catching herself. Her eyes were all fire as they bore into him. Who did he think he was, anyway?

“I am perfectly fine.” The sentence made complete sense in her mind. She was too far gone to hear the way each syllable slurred together with the next. She was too far gone to care about it even if she could hear it. The stench of vodka surrounded her, but it was her natural perfume. Her indignation brought with it a moment of sobering, enough for her to remember the horrendous pain in her side. It didn’t last long, her anger overriding everything.

He had offered her salvation and now he wanted to question her. She’d been drinking when he’d first come to her. She’d been drinking when he walked into her room. Now she needed to sober up? Tears streamed down her face, not that she took any notice of this. She turned on her heel, away from him, and stumbled her way down the walkway muttering under her breath about finding someone else who wouldn’t harp on her for her choices. She didn’t notice the way her path was leaning towards the left, even as she ran into the innocently parked car sending shooting pain through her as pieces of broken glass pushed further into her side.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

There were reasons for Cosimo’s requests. He was offering something that wasn’t just a giveaway. He could already imagine Athena’s reaction, and how would he respond if she asked for all the details? What would she say if he told her he sired a drunk person, who couldn’t reason enough to know what she was getting into? Someone who relied on alcohol as a crutch – giving her immortality and a whole new world wouldn’t be enough. Would she go through withdrawals? Would giving up the alcohol be hard, or would it not even register?

He followed Kit out onto the pavement; she couldn’t talk straight, let along walk straight, and Cosimo was struggling with the choices he had made. But they were his own, and he was not going to walk away from Kit now. On a whim, he threw away all his reason, and all of his common sense. Trotting to catch up with Kit, he lay a hand on her shoulder and turned her. Without preamble, without warning, without saying a damned thing, he brushed the hair from her neck and swooped, sharp canines piercing the skin of her tender neck. Her sweat smelled of alcohol. Her blood, when it pulsed, hot, onto his tongue, tasted of alcohol – alcohol that had stitched itself into her DNA, it had become as much a part of her blood stream as the red and white platelets that kept her alive.

He would turn her. He would give her immortality, and he would hope that the new life given to her would help her in the way that it had helped him. And once his blood had replaced the alcohol in her blood stream, then he would tell her what she had to do. Then, she might listen to him. Then, maybe he could be her crutch, rather than the alcohol she so adored.

He could at least try.

[Kit (DELETED 8248)]

Her reflexes were dulled, reaction time sluggish. The pain filled gasp that followed her skin being punctured was delayed to the point it was almost comical. If it had have been just the alcohol and not the blood loss from the combination of broken bottle and being bitten, she may have been able to fend off an attack, but she was useless in her current condition. Worse than useless. No pleas to stop escaped her lips or even indications of pain after that first delayed gasp.

Drunken stupors were a thing that Kit was familiar with. This was beyond anything she knew. It was almost like she stopped existing, for just a moment, and all the pain that she’d been trying (and failing) to flee from was just gone without a trace. She didn’t feel happy, but that was okay. What wasn’t okay was that the feeling was gone before she could ever fully appreciate it. It left her, leaving her to deal with the pain and shock.

Eyes closed. Breathing slowed. The strength in her muscles disappeared, leaving her as barely more than a flesh sack of muscle and bones. This was how it was going to end. It was almost instinctual for her to lean into that feeling, that knowledge that she would return to that perfect state of nothingness. No pain, no disappointment, no betrayal. A place where nothing could or did hurt her. She floated, gravitated towards it.

No. A last bout of strength coursed through her muscles and her eyes snapped open, leaving in them a fire that she’d thought had been extinguished for good. This wasn’t going to be how her story ended. A broken heart wouldn’t be the death of her - a statement that should have been so melodramatic that it induced vomiting, yet had seemed perfectly acceptable only moments before. It wasn’t now. It wouldn’t ever be again.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

The blood that hit Cosimo’s tastebuds was saturated with alcohol. He could taste the bitterness of it, as if it had mutated to take on the taste of Kit’s feelings. He’d fed on those who were drunk before, but he’d picked those who were happy in their drunken state. Their blood had been robust, sweetened by the alcohol like a fine dessert. This, however, was something off the scale.

Normally, Cosimo didn’t feed to kill. He took only what he needed before sending the dazed and confused humans on their way. The drunk ones were best, sometimes, because they didn’t wake up questioning the blank spot in their mind from the night before, nor the state they woke up, possibly in some place that they didn’t remember going to. They could always assume they got too drunk. Or that someone slipped something in their drink. Regardless, they’d always be happy to have got out of it alive, without losing anything – and that was assuming some other predator didn’t take advantage of them in their wooziness.

This was different. He had to take what was left. He had to do what Elizabeth had done to him – he had to take it all, before giving it back again. He had to push past the point his hunger stopped being an issue. He had to keep swallowing even though he didn’t need to, didn’t even want to. Until he felt Kit’s body grow weak; until he heard her heartbeat slow to near-death. Only then did he release her. There on the sidewalk, in view of whoever might want to walk by – he had to get this done quickly.

Still cradling her body, using the car as extra support, Cosimo reached up and with one sharp nail, tore a ragged wound in his own neck. Crimson blood spilled over his skin, soaked into his shirt.

”You have to trust me, Kit, and you have to drink. Hold on, and take your life back,” he said, tilting his chin upward, arching his neck to give her full access. If she did as he asked, they could look to all the world like two strangers embracing. Humans were too avoidant of things that they did not understand to assume otherwise.

And Athena definitely would not be hearing about the minute details.