▽ ɪɴsɪɢʜᴛ

[Jameson Dade]

On its face, the idea of an allurist being a thief was something of a terrible occupational choice.

Well no. There were some people who were gifted at keeping a person focused on one hand, while their other robbed that person blind. That was the kind of thief allurists would have been naturals at. Or like those televangelists, selling god in little bottles and calling it miracle water. For a hundred or more a pop. Things of that nature would have suited Jameson’s path by and far better than his method, which involved sneaking stealthily into buildings and lifting valuables out of property that wasn’t his own. And what with allurists seeming to have this uncanny ability to draw attention to themselves, it just seemed like a terrible choices. But just because something was a really bad idea had never stopped Jameson in the past.

There had been four guards on duty when he’d broken into the factory. He wore a black hoodie to contain the lustrous blond of his hair, and a ferret mask over his face so that even if someone were to spot him, they wouldn’t be able to identify him before he tossed a knockout bomb in their face. Clad in garments that made it easy to blend into the shadows, he crept along walls. It took a few minutes for him to get from one point to another, but he ended up right in front of a box. The lock was mechanical, and he nearly whistled while he picked it with an expertise that said he had been in the business of criminal activity for quite some time. Most of his life, really. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for him to snatch the chemicals from their hiding spot and then he was meant to be gone.

But no sooner did he take a few steps towards the door and he heard footsteps coming. From. All. Around.

“****.” He whispered.

A smoke bomb was dropped when he realized he had been cornered, and then he darted out with his prize.

The story should have ended there, but he was in the process of tucking his ‘earnings’ into his bag when he spotted a person being attacked by a feral vampire. He had seen one of them when he’d gone to the quarantine zone once. Apparently, this particular one had found its way out.

Well. That wasn’t good.

What had Mora said about not being spotted by humans? Surely a dumb brute of a creature like that was going to draw attention to their kind wasn’t it?

So he slung his pack over his back and ran over to help the man that was screaming. He realized belatedly that the wounds were really too severe for him to help with. There was torn clothing and blood flowing everywhere. There were bits Jameson was pretty sure were meant to be inside that were all over the place. And worst yet, the monster turned its sights on the would be hero.

So naturally Jameson had forgotten to bring any kind of weapon along with him.

The feral vampire descended on him immediately, clawing at him, beating at him. Jameson backed up a step, and the creature grabbed his arm, snapping it at an odd angle so that the bone cracked through the flesh. Blood began to pour. The thief smacked the monster with his bag, and then ran the other way as fast as he could, his hood falling back so that the pale gold of his hair could catch the light as it streaked behind him. Like he was the source of his own illumination, a blur of something shimmering in the night.

Well that had certainly taught him a lesson.

“****.” He said when he got a fair distance away and figured out that his arm was really…wrong. He’d noticed it before, of course, but it was one of those situations where he’d been too busy being afraid and reacting to said fear to really have it sink in.

He got home about ten minutes later, and looked up a tutorial online for setting a fractured bone (the resource material was actually pretty helpful). The wound began to heal over almost immediately. The wonders of vampirism.

Still hurt like a mother ****** though.

He was in dirty, blood covered clothes, and realized that he needed to replenish some of what he had lost. His phone was out a moment later.

‘Hey, Robin. Can you drop by my place? I really need to feed again tonight. Wouldn’t normally do this to you, but it’s urgent. I’ll pay three times my normal rate.’ He added a kissy emote (inside joke), and hit the submit button for the text. Then he slumped to sit on his couch.

**** life.

[Robin Little]

The loss of blood was slowly beginning to take its toll.

Though, the amount Robin lost every night wasn’t really doing him any immediate harm. He was still able to function ordinarily, but he did feel more tired than used to. The lethargy stole over his limbs like an extra weight, and each time he looked in the mirror, it was as if those black circled under his eyes got bigger. Although he’d never been super tan before, now he looked pale. As if he never saw the light of day. It wasn’t just the nightly loss of blood that his skin looking ghostly, but the fact that, over the past couple of weeks, he’d nearly become a night owl. His schedule was beginning to resemble that of a vampire. It had to change.

It had been such a long time since he’d been up at seven in the morning; such a long time since he’d sat outside of one of the more run down coffee shops, to bask in the sun while he drank his coffee and ate… well, probably the cheapest thing they had on offer. Though, now he had the cash to buy something more substantial. Yes, he thought, he needed to eat something substantial.

After leaving Jameson, he’d gone to one of the city’s better restaurants. Not a burger joint. Not somewhere selling old slabs of pizza or kebabs. No, somewhere proper, where the food they offered was fresh. He sat down, at a table for one, and though they brought the menu to him, it didn’t take him long to decide. He ordered one of the more expensive steak dishes, hoping that when the thing was brought to him, it would be massive. Steak, cooked medium rare, with lots and lots of vegetables. Green vegetables. He even specifically requested more green vegetables than anything else.

And while he ate, he consumed a bottle of wine. Not just a glass. A bottle. Because after he’d finished his meal – which wasn’t at all disappointing – he continued to sit in the restaurant. They didn’t look like they were going to close any time soon, and they didn’t mind his business. He just continued to order glass after glass of the Merlot. After his dinner had settled, he even ordered a piece of the mud cake. He didn’t usually like sweet things, but he was craving a bit of mud cake. And while he drank and ate, he read – he’d picked up John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids while he was at work the other night. He was thoroughly enjoying it.

It was as he was stepping out onto the street as he got the text message from Jameson. His lips felt numb due to the amount of wine he had consumed. He was a tiny bit unsteady on his feet. He hadn’t actually travelled all that far from Jameson’s place to begin with. He buttoned his jacket properly, and then paused to send his reply:

Be there in ten.

He didn’t stop to wonder why it was urgent. There was a small amount of curiosity, but he figured he’d find out once he got there. And when he did get there, at least there was a little more colour in his cheeks – due both to the consumption of too much alcohol, and the biting wind outside. He’s smell of chocolate and wine – though with that hint of raw steak lingering on his breath. He didn’t bother to knock. He tested the door’s handle and just walked straight in.

[Jameson Dade]

Jameson had been gradually investing in more and more things for his shitty little apartment. Sure, the paint was still chipped, the ceiling still cracked, and the floorboards a little on the creaky side, but it was home. Home with a hoard of treasures he purchased strewn about without much thought given to organization. In the kitchen there were a blender, microwave, juicer and any number of other gadgets that had caught his fancy. All of them were in their boxes, stacked on the counter just to one side. He had devoted an entire room of his apartment (formerly Bucket’s room) to stashing the stuff he had lifted off the streets. There were piles of goods that just littered the floor in there. He spent his money as quickly as he got it, because…well that was how he had grown up. You had to have spent all your money before you really needed more. Right?

One of his newer purchases was a digital audio system that was more or less (much less) wired into the walls (the chords were hidden behind the couch, and the speakers on either side). He was draped over the couch, his lips pressed against where the bone had broken through his flesh. Like he was kissing where the wound had been. Of course, that wasn’t the case, he was just sprawled out with the same care he gave to his things. Not much at all. Bucket, his golden retriever, was curled up at the other end of the couch, his face tucked as much against Jameson’s back as it could be (the dog had all but tried to wedge itself between the vampire and the back of the couch).

When the door pushed open, the dog shot up like a bolt and then barreled over the arm of the couch he was closest to so that he could run the meager distance to the door and immediately jump at Robin. “God DAMNIT, Bucket. DOWN!” He had been trying to train the dog about how to do certain thing on command, but after having taught him to potty outside, the rest had just seemed rather…unimportant. Oh well. The dog got its owners annoyance though, playful as that emotion was, and then dropped to sit quite literally on Robin’s feet with its tail shoved between the man’s legs, beating back and forth hard enough that it smacked the backs of the humans calves. The pooch looked up as if expecting to get its neck and chest rubbed, tongue lolled out of one side of its mouth.

“Attention whore.” Jameson muttered as he drew himself up and off of his seat. He had changed into something better suited for having a blood doll over (was there social protocol for that?); essentially he’d dressed in thermal pajama bottoms and a TMNT t-shirt. The pajama bottoms were a snug fit, and the t-shirt was just a size or two, too big so that it hung halfway between waist and knees. He had purchased it after reading on CrowNet that one of the members of his bloodline (the Daradasi), was a fan. Their name was Josslin (whoever they were) and he had every intention of showing Mora the shirt next time he saw her so that she understood the reference next time it was made.

He stood in front of Robin just a second later, his hand lifting to push the ethereal blond from his face. “You look handsome as usual.” He murmured whilst using the heel of one foot to scratch at the calf on the opposite leg. He said it every night because…well he probably should have noticed the effect the blood loss was having on Robin, but he didn’t always see things for what they were. And he was falling back into his old, bad habits, only his addiction these days wasn’t one he injected with a hypodermic needle. Robin liked it too, and so Jameson played the role of co-dependent enabler as well.

But he meant the words too.

He rarely said things he didn’t mean.

“I was thinking maybe we could try something new. I’ve been wanting to, but it didn’t seem right until just now. I could use something to calm me down.” Ben Howard’s Oats in the Water played in the background, a soft sound with its instrumental guitar and that soothing masculine voice.

[Robin Little]

Robin didn’t mind the dog. At least, in a neutral kind of way. He smiled down at the creature as if it were a person who could see the smile and recognise it as a non-rude greeting. But he didn’t pat Bucket. Didn’t crouch down to coo and hug and ruffle. It wasn’t that he hated animals, really, but just that he’d never really hung around the much. Had never got to know what it was like to be around them. He treated them much like he treated children. That was, he kept his distance and remained wary, because he always felt like they knew something about him that he didn’t. As if they could see right through him, and were silently laughing at him.

Aside from his shouted administrations to the dog, Jameson was his usual charming self, tossing compliments at Robin that were not dismissed. They were caught and held on to, added to the arsenal of glue that held Robin together. Truthfully, he never did know whether he had self-confidence or not. He floated along, buoyed by the impressions others had of him. And, if good opinions were lost, he moved on. He found new good opinions, claimed them. His own self-confidence lasted only as long as the good opinion of others.

Robin found himself curious. Jameson had said it was urgent. And yet, there he stood – same as usual. Nonchalant, comfortable in his own body – except maybe for the awkward way in which he held his arm. Robin canted his head to the side. Something new, Jameson suggested. Something to help calm him down, and Robin’s curiosity only heightened. He shrugged his shoulders.

”Sure,” he said. Ever since Mora had bitten into his wrist that night on the curb, he’d lost a lot of his wariness. It had become very easy to just jump off the cliff without asking why, or what.

”Though – what’s got you not calm? What’s so urgent?” he asked. He wandered further into the room, glancing around, perhaps trying to find some clue as to the answer that Jameson has not given him yet – or to what this new thing might be.

[Jameson Dade]

Five years ago.

The sky was on fire.

I could feel the lick of the flame against my cheeks as I leaned up towards it, my elbows resting against the hood of Max’s car. My spine curved as back slowly formed an arch, my hips pressed into the metal before a hand reached up to try and touch. I was laughing and I didn’t know why. He was there beside me and I could hear him making sounds, but none of it was language. None of them were words, and not a single one connected with me. The earth felt like it was moving and I was pretty sure someone had started the car, and we were rolling forward. Except it wasn’t forward; it was up. But I never got any closer to the firmament.

I could feel everything right then. I could feel all the pain and the happiness in the world. I could feel every second of pleasure I had ever felt, and I was like the string of some instrument. I kept vibrating faster and faster as someone plucked at me. Light was pouring from under my skin, and under Max’s. Even though I couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me, we looked into each other’s eyes and knew instantaneously what was going to happen next. We moved together until both of us were burning, and then we melted into a million dazzling diamond lights and colours. The last thing I remember about that night was holding on tight, with flesh hot against the cool red paint of the car.

The first time we got into the ‘hard’ stuff.

. . .

When Jameson approached, Bucket couldn’t seem to decide which of the two men was most important so he kept inching towards Jay, and then he would turn his head rapidly and realize that he had left Robin completely alone so he would inch right back to him. And that was effectively what the dog did the entire time the two of them talked until his owner leveled a look that could only ever have been playfully serious. “Can’t you let daddy talk for ten minutes without trying to be the center of attention?” He asked and then took a step back so he could move to pick up one of the golden retriever’s toys. He tossed the thing and Bucket ran after it like his life depended on it. It was one of those that had treats hidden inside that a dog had to work at getting.

Meaning that it was fantastic at distracting Bucket.

Sure enough, he settled down and worked on winning a prize while Jameson’s gaze shifted back to Robin. He held a hand out for the man and then nodded towards the couch. “You. Go be a chair over there.” He didn’t elaborate for the moment, though he did retreat from sight, only to return a minute or so later with a backpack in hand. The object was on the smaller side with longer straps so that it actually fit on an adult. The type that would have been popular in the early 2000’s. It was Hello Kitty, but Jameson had gotten bored at one point or another and heavily modified it. In his version, Kitty was a punk, who wore a lot of black, had glasses in some cases, different coloured hair, and even a few tattoos and piercings.

Fine tipped sharpies were his friend.

He dropped the bag into Robin’s lap and plopped to sit beside him, once again taking up a lot more space than he really needed to. His arm – the formerly injured one – was slung behind his own head, elbow pointing towards the wall. “I met up with something tougher than me earlier. It was hurting someone and I tried to stop it. That didn’t really go so well, and I ended up with a broken arm and some lost blood. Arm is all better, but I need to drink up.” The explanation was very bare bones and matter of fact. He didn’t look horrified or upset. In fact, he was smiling. Maybe he was just in a good mood. He did gesture for Robin to open up the bag though.

[Robin Little]

Be a chair. That was a new one. Robin had no idea what being a chair would entail. Was this the new thing that Jameson had referred to? He had to act like a piece of furniture that Jameson could sit on? He’d heard of people having fetishes, but this one was hit right out of the ballpark. Weird, is what that would be. But Robin soon dismissed the idea, and instead clung to the assumption that to be a chair was merely an expression that Robin himself had never heard before. He was quite happen to take a seat on the couch now that he knew he wasn’t going to be smothered by dog.

Robin inspected the bag that was dropped in his lap. It was so very 90s. Kind of. He remembered this kind of thing being big when he was in high school – so many of the kids ran around with these kinds of back packs. Not Robin, though. He remained apart, with his tan canvas backpack and his Rayban sunglasses. They were probably knock-offs, really. Where had he even gotten them from?

That’s right. He’d pilfered them from the lost property bin at work. Finders keepers, right?

There was an arched brow at Jameson’s story. Vague as it was, it reminded Robin of that one time. ”I wandered somewhere I shouldn’t have last week,” he said, as if comparing stories. Of course, Robin hadn’t come out of that encounter with a mangled arm and needing to boost his own blood supply, so he couldn’t exactly top Jameson’s story. But it was something to say, none the less. He felt like he needed a cigarette.

”Some… castle, in Cherrydale. I think it was Cherrydale? Anyway. *******… vampire and Hunters going at it. ******* slaughterhouse,” Robin said. He had a way of pronouncing his curse words – maybe a bit too properly. He recalled the blood. The maimed bodies. He’d never seen anything like it before. There was a slight tremble in his fingers as he reached for the bag’s zipper. A person couldn’t witness things like that and not suffer a few consequences. For a moment, Robin could smell the blood and the meat, not dead enough to be rotting. Fresh meat. Like in a butchers’, but without the numbing scent of the cold. Maybe that’s why he looked so haggard, too – although he had absolutely no trouble falling asleep, the nightmares woke him up often enough. And he had to get up and swallow a few shots of whiskey.

”Anyway. What is this?” he asked, finally unzipping the bag fully, opening the contents to the light.

[Jameson Dade]

Jameson’s home was not what anyone would have called lavish; it did not look expensive, and his tastes tended to be eclectic enough that people tended to think he was a little wrong in the head. When he had been in high school, he had used posters from his favorite bands as wallpaper. There hadn’t been a single surface not covered in the faces of the different groups he liked. Or characters from his favorite TV shows. Or just things he found funny. Sailor Moon, a cannabis leaf, and Breaking Benjamin. A sample of three, one little corner of his mind. That was how Jameson was though. He might have had this tendency to **** up everything he did, but he did so with his own sense of style. Everything had his signature on it, one only he could print clearly.

So his apartment wasn’t really grand or spectacular, and it especially was not well decorated, but it was comfortable because that was Jameson. He ran away from anxiety and stress. Those things had no place in his life. And yet they were always present, just outside of his little bubble of oblivious narcotic abuse.

“I’ve heard that’s common in some parts of the city, with certain factions. It’s an endless cycle of give a ****.” He murmured as he leaned into the other man, shoulder to shoulder. Jameson was an affectionate creature, and while he could overdo it when it came to certain people – boundaries had been drawn by the human some time before. He abided the proverbial line drawn in the sand. Barely. Everything for him was a blur anyway, so it made sense perhaps that he’d want to be close to one of the few creatures that could realistically give him sustenance. He just never pushed it further than that.

Jameson liked being wanted. He echoed that want in like kind. Robin liked the feel of fangs in skin and the high it brought, so that was what they did, they mirrored each other in this violent little game.

“Vampires here don’t die, usually I guess. Some do, most come back after getting slaughtered. Hunters get killed and their deaths fuel the paranoia and hatred of their brothers. It’s that hatred that brings more people to their cause. Neither side is wrong because neither side matters. It’s a petty little **** show.” His head tipped slowly, the light gold of his hair swaying to brush over Robin’s shoulder when his cheek came to rest there. He pushed his hand into the bag, pulling from it a bag of what looked like some sort of pulverized herb along with a packet of papers and a lighter.

It was pretty…weak on the scale of things Jameson had tried in the past, but he wanted to see if he could even get high anymore. “I’m just happy you’re safe. You could easily have been killed in that situation. There are a few places you should not go. The Quarantine Zone, the Castle. The Caverns just outside of the city are dangerous as well. The catacombs beneath the local mausoleum is not safe either. If you ever run into a problem, please call me. I may be a lover, and not a fighter, but you’re my friend and I won’t leave you high and dry.” But he didn’t have a comment as to the actual event itself. He could have tried to be comforting, but he intended to do that in his own way – when he was watching smoke billow out of the end of a stick filled with pleasure and freedom.

"This is for you. Drink from the cup of my abundance, and get lost with me."

[Robin Little]

Robin had lived in a whole bunch of **** holes in his life. Dens of iniquity, fit only for breeding bad deeds and sour moods. He hadn’t lasted long in those places. They weren’t good for the garnering and flourish of inspiration. But he’d had to live somewhere. He’d had to have a bed, somewhere, or die of the cold out on the streets. He had to take what he could get. The motel he currently stayed in wasn’t all that great – it was the cheapest that he could find. The carpet had stains in it that could have been blood, but could also have been wine. Robin didn’t want to get too close to check. There was an infestation of cockroaches, though the weather seemed to have driven them away. But, hey – they turned a blind eye when Robin smoked indoors, and that was a perk enough.

Jameson’s apartment? It was filled with stuff, but it was obviously stuff that had been gathered and picked due to interest or passion. It wasn’t just a place to sleep, it was a home. Regardless of how new or clean or fresh it might have been, it was still a home. And it was comfortable because of it. Robin didn’t judge. Couldn’t. As a man with no home of his own – being in between homes – whatever other people chose to do with theirs was not his to judge. At least they had a place. Of that they should be proud.

When Jameson pulled the packet from the bag, Robin arched a brow. It wasn’t a dismissive arch. It wasn’t disapproving. Rather, it was a skilled control of his facial features to keep from showing his happiness. It had been a while since he’d got high. He had the money, now, to go chasing after a high. But he had his high. It came with fangs.

Fangs that could die and come back to life, it would seem. If what Jameson was saying was true. Robin’s interest piqued. ”You can come back to life?” he asked. He shook his head – not because he was denying it but because it was hard to believe. It was hard to believe that Jameson could just accept a house full of slaughter. That it was so common, that it had to be accepted. Robin felt the urge to throw up, just thinking about it – just like there’d been the urge to throw up when he was in the midst of it. Just like he had thrown up after he’d gotten out.

Yeah, now was the time to focus on the present Jameson had given him. He took the packet from Jameson’s fingers and started to roll. He didn’t need a solid surface. He was quite skilled at this. He shook away the previous conversation – and the oddness of Jameson’s sincerity in keeping Robin safe - and focused on the here and now. On this new thing that Jameson wanted him to try.

”All of it for me? What about you – you’re not gonna have any?” he asked. He didn’t know how this **** worked for vampires.

[Jameson Dade]

The simple answer to that question was a solid ‘yes’.

Vampires that died, and went to the Shadow Realm had the opportunity to come back. Anyone with access to CrowNet likely had the ability to figure that one out, considering how many times some of the same people had been in the obituaries. Jameson didn’t really consider the website a good means of acquiring information, more often than not, it was dead. From what Jay had gathered over time, it had once been some kind of mystical thing that was only accessible to vampires, but now it was just a normal place on the web, so the vampiric community had largely gone quiet for fear of either revealing their nature to the humans or being hunted by those that enforced the Masquerade. The Allurist wondered what people thought about the obituary though. Wasn’t it the most glaring evidence of immortality? Ironic as it was.

“Can, yes. I think. It’s all a little foggy for me cuz I only ever died the one time, and I don’t really remember what it was like. One moment everything around me was fading into grey and black, the next I was waking up and really really really wanted a cheeseburger.” Apparently most vampires could not eat, but that was beside the point. Jameson could, but it had taken him practice to learn that. The first time, he had lost it all over a brick wall in a back alleyway. His food, that is. From there, he’d gone with small things, like a thing of chip or fries and worked up from that point. Mainly just because the act of eating engaged his senses. It was hollow, in a way, but never left him feeling as such.

He gestured with his hands through the whole explanation, fingers moving about through the air in seemingly random streaks as if to emphasize whatever point he was trying to make one. He didn’t really have any concrete thing he was trying to say, which wasn’t uncommon for Jameson. He took very little in life seriously unless it directly impacted him. He didn’t lack empathy, far from it. He felt for people. If he watched one of those sad commercials with the neglected animals or children, he got all upset each and every time. Refused to watch them for that reason. And if he legitimately saw someone who was in need, he generally tried to help them unless they looked like they could take care of themselves.

He just had a hard time attaching much significance to something like that type of violence. Vampires didn’t die permanently, and hunters…well they had to go into a situation knowing there was a chance they would. Even still, he wasn’t about to feel bad for people who would have just as soon put a bullet in him. The only time he really felt for people was when they were put into a bad position by circumstance and could not get out of it on their own. The true innocents of the world. Those were the people he cared empathized most powerfully with. Everyone else, as far as he was concerned, was just part of the rat race, climbing over each other to try and get to the proverbial top.

“Oh, I plan to enjoy it, but the bag is for you, yes. You don’t have to do it all at once, but feel free to get as stoned as you want. My part will come after.” There was something distinctly voyeuristic about that maybe, enjoying watching someone get lost in something that was terrible for them. It ensured the quality of his own pleasure though, and that was something Jameson was very interested in, even if it did come at the obvious expense of Robin’s health. The human seemed to enjoy it though, and Jay cared about that too. He always had been something of an enabler, and tended to form emotional bonds most strongly with people who did the same for him.

He craved it on some level, people seeing those dark parts of him and accepting them. It was why he didn’t bat an eye lash as far as judgment went when he found out things about people and their lives. Nobody was perfect, and that tended to be what he liked most in a person – their flaws. From that philosophy, he was granted the rare ability to love even the most base parts of a person, every bit of them, all of their disgusting habits and crude, hidden thoughts.

He assumed the other man would want his high through the fastest means possible, so he plucked the bag up so he could begin to painstakingly roll a blunt together.

[Robin Little]

Robin remembered the first time he’d got high.

It was in high school. He didn’t like most people in high school. He kept to himself most days; every now and again he’d go hang with the debating team, but that soon got old, and was far too much work. There was a place out by a tree in the school’s yard. The school’s yard was barely used, and he had it to himself. Until one day he came out to find a bunch of people lounging over and around his table. They had a distinct air of carelessness, and the first thing that Robin wondered was why they even bothered coming to school to begin with.

But then he wondered why he bothered coming to school, and realised that they were his kind of people.

And they wore the same kind of things, too – tight jeans and plaid shirts. The boys growing the stubble on their cheeks and the girls only wearing dresses they’d found at vintage shops. They introduced Robin to the gloriousness that was weed. Of course, he never took any of the responsibility. He never dealt directly with the dealer. He always mooched his high off of others. The others would all get into trouble. Robin skated on by, oblivious.

He remembered that first lunch time that they’d shared their blunt with him. They’d sat around for the forty five minutes, encouraging Robin as he wrote a short story. They all wanted to be a part of the short story, so they all shouted their ideas at him. They all thought, by the end of it, that they’d written the best short story ever. They all went back to class. They all grinned for the rest of the day. Robin read the story when he got home, after he was sober again. It was a piece of ****, but he kept it anyway. It was one of his best memories. When he found his people.

Now here was Jameson. Another person whom he could call one of his own. Robin was about to roll his own blunt, but as he reached for the bag, Jameson took over. Robin watched, waiting. Unsure what to think. Jameson was getting him high. Was infecting his blood with this magical drug, only so that Jameson himself could feel the high, after feeding. Did Robin feel as if he were being used?

Not at all.

Maybe he should have, but Robin was never home to such negative thoughts. It wasn’t that he never thought badly of other people, but he just had lower expectations from everyone. No one was perfect. They all stumbled on in life and sometimes reactions and actions couldn’t be helped.

And besides which. Getting fed from while high? That was something Robin hadn’t experienced yet. His breathing got shallow, as he waited. As he almost grew impatient for the experience. He tried to focus on what Jameson had said earlier.

”Do you feel dead, now? I mean. Is that what you think you are? Dead? Like… an animated corpse that… craves cheeseburgers? What does it feel like, being a vampire?” he asked. And why not? He was a writer. He was curious. He wanted to go home, while high and weak, to write a story about it.