Penelope laughed. Not because she was making fun of Rowan’s plight but because, to Penny, life was meant to be surprising. It was meant to be spontaneous. Whether Rowan could still get drunk Penny did not know – everyone was different. But they would not know until she tried.
”The first time I tried to drink after I was sired, I threw it all back up. After figuring out I wasn’t on that path, I just stopped trying. You, though. You know you can drink. So all you gotta do now is drink as much as you can and see if anything happens,” she said, ushering over the bartender so that she could order the Long Island Iced Tea, alongside whatever blood was newest and freshest.
”And if you CAN get drunk, you know you have me. Right here,” she said, offering Rowan the broadest and yet most genuine smile she could offer. ”I’m your forced designated driver because I can’t drink. If you fall over legless I’ll make sure you’re home safe,” she said. And she would, of course, follow through. One – she was trustworthy like that. She liked to have fun but it wasn’t at the expense of anyone else. She liked her fun to be responsible kind of fun. To a point. One could be led astray without straying into dangerous territory (even if danger was more fun). But two – Enzo wouldn’t be very happy if Penelope lured Rowan out then left her to fend for herself.
So Rowan would be the precious cargo. Penelope would not let the other woman out of her sight.
Rowan giggled at the designated driver quip and nodded to Penelope happily. "Alright, let's call tonight an experiment to see if this vampire can get drunk!" She declared, feeling a bit silly but doing it anyway. "I don't actually know what that will feel like, but I'm sure you'll stop me from doing anything TOO outrageous."
A thought occured to her and she paused, looking at her sister a bit mock-suspiciously. "You won't be documenting this or anything, will you? I'm not sure I want Xerxes, Absinthe, or goddess forbid the Papa Dragon to find out what sort of drunk I am, assuming that the alcohol will work on me."
The drinks arrived and Rowan grinned at Penelope, raising her glass to clink it against the other vampire's own glass of what looked like blood. "Cheers! Um... am I supposed to drink all of this in one go? Or is that those little shots that they get?" She looked very interested in her tea and brought it to her nose to inhale the scent. "It's a very deceiving scent; seems like it could pass for plain Iced Tea to a regular human nose. This is the sort of thing that you could get lost drinking, I imagine."
Penelope laughed and shook her head, taking the drink that she would do her best not to swallow all in one go. It would be a bad influence. ”I’d love to see you try to swallow that like a shot,” she said, clearly indicating that the long island iced tea would need to be consumed slowly, one mouthful at a time.
”There will be no documenting. We can be like real actual sisters in cahoots with each other and keeping secrets from…” she stopped. No, no no, even in jest she wasn’t going to refer to Enzo as her father. She shook the image from her head. How had she even started that joke? They were slowly luring her into their ways. She cleared her throat and took a mouthful of her own drink to keep from continuing, another shake of her head given as she changed the subject.
”Absinthe and Xerxes, huh? Have you met them? Do they do us proud? Do we need to haze them?” she asked. Absinthe and Xerxes, despite her efforts, remained names on a computer screen. Though Penelope was not the kind of childe to be jealous of the newcomers. She did not resent them or their presence in her sire’s life. But, as outgoing and welcoming as Penelope was, it saddened her that she had not yet met them. Rowan might be able to fill her in, however. Then when she finally did meet them she could pretend like she’d known them all along.
A snicker escaped Rowan's pale throat when her elder sister cut herself off mid-sentence. She knew that Penelope absolutely detested it when Rowan would claim kinship with her or the rest of the family beyond the vampiric aspects, much less stating explicitly that their sire Enzo was in no way, shape, or form, her father. To each his own... but Rowan knew, rather... believed.... that some day Penelope would refer to him as such, even if it was just to address him to either her or one of the other siblings. Broodmates, as their sire called them.
"Right... No documentation then. I just wonder if the alcohol is enough to affect me. But here goes," she said, taking her first sip of the so-called tea. Licking her lips afterwards, she threw a smile at Penelope. "That actually tastes pretty good." Another sip and yet another followed, Rowan enjoying the way the liquid felt in her mouth.
"Xerxes and Absinthe? Well, I've seen them though haven't been introduced yet. Ran in the Xerxes in the catacombs for training more than once and well... He seemed like a good practice dummy for my own powers. Nothing harmful or painful, mind. Just testing to see how some of them work. As for them doing us proud... I have no idea. I don't even know what their hobbies or specializations are. Do you?"
Penelope grinned as she watched Rowan take one sip, and then another. It was like watching an eighteen-year-old drink their first alcoholic beverage -- though most eighteen-year-olds these days had already had plenty of drinks before this momentous birthday came along. Penelope herself had been an expert drinker by the age of eighteen, able to drink many of her contemporaries beneath the table.
"Nah, I don't know much about them," she replied in reference to their 'siblings'. Eventually, sooner or later, she figured she would, even if it were via a dozen random family gatherings -- though Penelope somehow managed to miss most of those, so it would take quite some time. She had their numbers, or if she didn't she could track them down. She might just organise something on her own terms, just as she had with Rowan. There was no rush, was there? They had eternity.
"I can be a test dummy! I'm kind of intrigued. What kind of powers do you have? And how old are you, anyway?" Penelope asked, just out of the blue. Rowan had one of those faces, it was hard to tell. And some of the things she'd said on the Crownet, it had Penelope wondering.
Rowan made a face at Penelope for her question. "Well, I'm not very strong or anything but I can usually pacify people. It comes in handy in bars when I'm working and trying to calm some patrons down if they have a dispute, I guess. Things like that, mainly..." She was tempted to stick her tongue out at the other vampire for asking about her age in the first place, but she supposed it was a valid question. "I don't really know my exact age, though it's been estimated that I'm about 19. Or... I guess I was 19 when I was turned into a vampire." A shrug punctuated her response and she took another sip of her drink. It was actually enjoyable, she supposed, though of course blood was definitely more nutritious for her. But she wasn't a health buff vampire or whatever so it was a moot point to think of anyways.
"Well that sounds handy," Penelope said. She tried to imagine herself in the same situation. Would she try to pacify people? She snorted and shook her head, answering her own question. Nah. They were more likely to get a foot in the nutsack or the heel of a palm to the nose. The healthy sound of a bone breaking was one of Penelope's favourite things.
"Estimated that you were nineteen? How...? I mean, is that too personal a story? How do you not know how old you are? Do you know when your birthday is?" she asked. She was curious, but it would also be a handy bit of information to file away for a later date.
Not that Penelope was big into her own birthday -- it generally passed without too much fuss, unless she felt like making a fuss. She wasn't bothered either way, and it was always good to have an excuse to party. She could even throw one for Rowan, if she found out when that special day of birth occurred.
Rowan shrugged and looked down into her drink, swirling it slowly in the glass she held. "I don't really know my birthday, no. I grew up by myself, sort of what someone once described as one of the kids falling through the cracks in the system. Kept to myself and everything until I could switch from stealing to live to working in the slums. First time I went to a dentist, they said I was about 18 and that was a year from when I was turned."
She turned a quirky smile onto the other vampire. "I guess that's why I like the idea of family so much. I've never really had anyone or relied on anyone else... coz there was just no one there." She took another long drink of the tea and used the precipitation on the glass to swipe a cool streak across her face. She didn't talk about her life much, but she saw no reason to hold back from Penelope, who had been nothing but kind to her since she had met her.
Penelope didn’t quite know what to say. Rowan spoke of family like it was a good to have people to rely on. Penelope, on the other hand, though her life had not been as difficult as Rowan described hers to be, had never had much of a family herself. But she’d enjoyed it. The freedom it had afforded her moulded the person she had become -- wholly independent, able to do whatever she wanted and unafraid to do it on her own.
It was probably why she wasn’t so great at the whole ‘family’ thing. Able to respect Enzo she hardly regarded him as a ‘father’, and though those in Dragomir were a cool set of people, Penelope had yet to treat them like a ‘family’. It was one of her many flaws. She was too independent for her own good.
Except Rowan, of course. She could see herself growing quite attached to this peculiar woman.
”Right okay, well. Tonight! Eh? Let’s celebrate! You don’t know your birthday, so let’s just pick one. Let’s pick today. What do you think? You might be used to there being no one, but now you’re not. That a good reason to celebrate, yeah?” Penelope was nothing if not enthusiastic, ready to order another round of drinks as soon as the ones they currently cradled were finished.
Rowan was just taking another sip of her drink when Penelope announced that they would count today as her birthday. She spluttered on the liquid, ending up with it dribbling over her chin and into her lungs. When would she ever learn not to breathe anymore, she wondered. A well placed cough drew the liquid out of where it shouldn't be and she laughed, grabbing what tissue she could find on the counter, uncaring who it belonged to.
"Sorry!" she said, laughing as she wiped her face. "It's just... isn't that a bit sudden?" A spreading smile on her face belied her words, clearly liking the idea of having something that she had always wanted and felt envious about. "I mean, I don't mind, obviously, but aren't there... I don't know! Announcements or... or parties or something?" A giggle escaped her lips as she finally got herself cleaned up and tossed the used tissue onto the bar. Her smile stretched from ear to ear by the time she looked up at Penelope, bouncing lightly on her heels.
"Poppy," she asked with a serious tone, totally offset by her blinding smile. "What does one DO on their birthday?"
