Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Eureka)

[Aaron Hunter]

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[Eureka]

Wearing
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The roof was more home to Eureka than the basement. The basement was a place Chad had lead her to, in the beginning. He’d given it to her. Said she could make it hers, and do what she wanted with it. But in the grand scheme of things, she couldn’t do anything with it. It was situated beneath a casino that chad owned and no one would touch the place without Chad there to give permission. So although Eureka could drag things in and kind of make it comfortable and her own—it didn’t actually feel like her own.

Not that she had the wits or the maturity to own a place of her own, anyway. She’d have no idea what to do with it, and the place would probably stand unoccupied, anyway. She could go back to the basement whenever she wanted, and to begin with she had. It was where she’d taken those progeny of hers that had never really amounted to much. It was the place that she had called home, for a while. But it was the roof that she woke up on every single night. It was the place she was forced to be, regardless of where she fell asleep. So it may as well be the place that she called her own. Even if she hadn’t picked it. If she’d known she’d wake up in the same place she was sired every single night, she’d have made Chad take her somewhere else.

But she made the best of what she had.

Over the months she’d dragged more things up here. It was hard going, sometimes, as she did not have internal access to the building and had to do everything via the fire escape. But she had an old mattress—it had taken a couple of nights to get it situated in the exact spot where she woke up. She had cushions. The only thing was, these items were not secure from the elements. It would rain or snow and she would wake up in a cold soggy mess. As much as she loved waking up to the view of the night sky, glorious with all its pinpricks of blinking, sparkling light—and the moon!—and the sunset, sometimes, with its purplish-red hues on the horizon!—it was practical, she assumed, to try to erect some kind of structure to keep away the rain.

It had been raining lately. A lot. A humid kind of rain that infused the atmosphere with a wet glugginess. But which had also turned Eureka’s makeshift bedding into a sopping mess. Maybe some kind of tarpaulin, right? Something with… with ropes, and a lever, so it could be slid easily away so that she could have her view, it if it wasn’t raining. But something that she could leave erected whenever she left the roof so that if it rained or snowed during the day, her bed would be mostly protected.

It was this, that the man in the apartment below would have heard. Eureka had commandeered a tent from a couple of men who’d been camping just beyond the city limit. A tent! The men’s bodies were mauled as if by a bear, or some other vicious wild creature, their blood seeping into the ground or consumed. The tent was somewhat splattered with the crimson stuff, but this didn’t bother Eureka. She hadn’t known how to pack the thing down again, so it clanked and clamoured against the iron of the fire-escape latter as she climbed, the material and the ropes draped over her shoulders and around her neck.

The noise continued as the redhead tried to re-construct the tent. She had no instructions. She couldn’t remember how she had taken the thing apart. She wondered whether she had broken something in the process. It was a puzzle that she couldn’t quite figure out, but she was determined. As with everything else she did, she was ******* determined.

The shirt she wore had been borrowed from one of the men’s packs. The other clothes she’d been wearing had been covered in blood, so much so that they chafed. And they were too hot, anyway. She wore black underwear beneath the long, too-large shirt, which was white and had holes in it so that it breathed. The perfect thing to wear in this weather, she thought. And allowing her freedom, too. Her fet were bare as she sat on the hard rooftop, wrangling with the tent’s poles, her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she worked. Her hair was matted with dried blood, and piled on the top of her head in a messy bun. Blood clung to her skin, where it hadn’t flaked away. Her mouth and face was mostly clean, though, where she had wiped away the blood and licked it clean from her hands. Her feet were muddy. And her focus was distracted.

[Aaron Hunter]

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[Eureka]

In the beginning, Eureka had not paid any mind to the people who might live in the apartment below her roof. Luckily for them, their spectre hadn’t had any mind to try break in through their window and eat them in their sleep. Not that they would be asleep at sunset, anyway. Maybe she could have had them for dinner while they were having dinner. It had never occurred to her to disrupt the fragile ecosystem of her lonely roof. But nor had it occurred to her that her presence was in any way disruptive. Eureka, in her wild naiveté, thought that she was being quiet. But, like the supposed feline or nesting bird, Eureka was oblivious to any noise that she might make.

Anyway, it wasn’t as if she lived on the roof. She just woke up there every night, and was currently only in the business of trying to make that waking spot a little more comfortable. Even wild animals have their creature comforts, right? Their nests and their hiding holes. She’d wake. She’d stretch. She’d stare at the sky a while, and then she would leave for the night, to wander the city. To hunt, and feed. To stalk amidst the buildings and sewer systems as if the cement and bricks were instead shrubs and trees. It was rare that she came back to her rooftop. Except for tonight, with her stolen tent.

It was the chuckle that alerted her to the presence of a stranger. A stranger, on her roof. The only other time she’d spent with someone else on her roof was when Chad had turned her. Yes, if you asked Eureka, the rooftop was hers. It belonged very thoroughly to her. By the laws of nature, or whatever it was that had her waking up here every single night. It was a contract, in Eureka’s opinion. Anyone who contested it would be at the mercy of her teeth. Or, in this instance, her trusty tent pole. As soon as she caught sight of the guy, she held that tent pole out in front of her, like a sword. She didn’t have her sword with her. Unless she strapped the thing to her when she lay down to sleep through the day, it would not come with her.

The man looked like he should be homeless, what with his long hair and his beard and his general demeanour. He even looked sickly, ill. Eureka’s chin jutted, her nostrils flaring. She was assessing her foe. Could she take him?

Except he didn’t look entirely homeless, did he? He had clean clothes, and though he had a lot of hair, it was mildly tamed. A chosen look, then. A sense of style that Eureka herself did not adhere to, without some kind of push in the right direction. Although Eureka’s shoulders rolled, and although her green eyes narrowed, pupils widening ever so slightly as her body registered some kind of approval at the male’s unkempt look—of course wildness appealed to Eureka—he was still an intruder in her territory.

”What do you want?” she asked.

Sure, yes. He had asked whether she needed any help. But why would a stranger ask that, especially here? The wind pushed from behind Eureka, sending the male’s scent away from her. She could not determine, yet, whether he was human or vampire. She remained, for the moment, defensive, still holding that tent pole out in front of her, jabbing it in the male’s direction. A hint that he should come no closer.

[Aaron Hunter]

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[Eureka]

”No, I don’t have a name!” she said. As if she were a stray cat who could talk; one who’d wandered away from home and given up any name that might have been associated with it. Eureka may as well be that stray with no name. But she did have a name and she was holding it close to her chest. No way she was giving it away to this guy. What kind of stupidity was that?

Even though his hands were raised in unarmed surrender, she still didn’t let him close. The hold on the tent pole relaxed, however, and she rested it over her shoulder. She wouldn’t give it to him. She wouldn’t give this man a weapon to use against her, even if a tent pole was flimsy. There was no way she would trust him. Especially if he lived here.

”Who are you? Do you live here? If you live here, why would you help me? I’m a crazy girl on your roof,” she said. She might have to kill him. That was it, she’d have to kill him. Because this was her roof and she wanted him to leave her alone. Or get him to go away and… and what? Secure it somehow. How? She could figure that out later.

As she shifted, so too did the wind. He caught the scent of the male as it wafted to her on the breeze; she lifted her nose to it, taking in a deep inhale. A stray knew how to hunt. A stray knew how to find its food. And this man was not food. He did not smell hot. He smelled cold. Like a vampire. She turned her ear, she focused. No heartbeat. A slow smirk spread over her lips.

Why this was a better outcome, she didn’t know. Comrades in arms, maybe. Stray cat to stray cat rather than stray cat to… whatever else he could have been. Something about being on equal ground appealed to her more, and the element of surprise had been lost, on his behalf. She shifted on her feet, moving closer to the fire escape with each wary step.

”If I were you I wouldn’t help a crazy girl on my roof. I’d tell her to get the **** off and go pitch a tent somewhere else,” she said. Which was not untrue.

[Aaron Hunter]

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[Eureka]

Eureka scoffed.

”You can call me Fox,” she said. A fox was a wild animal. A wild animal with red hair, and she quite liked the idea of being compared to such a creature. Skittish as they were and not at all graceful, but then, nor was she at the best of times. ”Foxy implies misogyny and a looker like you ought to already know that we women don’t like being judged solely on our looks,” she said, the sentence followed by sharp ‘tsk’, as her tongue clucked against the roof of her mouth. She was slowly finding her groove, even if she was feeling like that skittish fox; one second wanting to take small, curious steps closer and the next, wanting to fly down that fire escape and get as far away as possible. But there was that voice in her head – she could run now, but she’d only be back the next night. And how long until this scheming sweet-talker realised she had no choice but to come back every night? Better to stay, get the lay of the land. Maybe make some kind of deal. Give me your roof and I’ll leave you your privacy.

”I know for a fact that if you threw me from this roof, I’d land on my two feet. I can’t fly, but I can land,” she said with a slow smile. As a killer, she could leap over tall walls. She could push herself from the ground to the roof of this building without the aid of the fire escape, if she so wished. She figured it would work the same on the way down as it did on the way up. Like a cat, she would always land on her feet.

Once again, she lifted her nose to the air to scent the man, as the wind drifted in her direction. Once again, she was reassured of his lack of warmth and his lack of heartbeat. His lack of the usual human sweetness of sweat. The lack of an urge to eat him. She narrowed his eyes in his direction.

”Not being funny, though. I don’t hang out here during the day. So how am I keeping you from your sleep?” she asked. They had precious few hours in a night and were forced to stay indoors and sleep during the day. It filled her with all kinds of incredulity that a vampire would want to sleep at midnight. What a waste! Unless he was ill. He had that gaunt look about him, like he hadn’t fed. Maybe he’d had one of those poisoned humans, and was struggling to keep anything down. For two split seconds, a maternal instinct blossomed inside of Eureka.

Until she remembered that this man was a stranger. And that men in general were disgusting creeps. Maybe that was why she kept her distance from Niklaus. He could be a bit of a pervy creep when he wanted to be, too.

[Aaron Hunter]

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[Eureka]

As soon as the guy turned into a bumbling boy, all of Eureka’s defences dropped. It was clear that he didn’t know her for what she was, and it was clear that he must have no bloody clue what he was, either. The questions he asked were not the questions a man aware of his existence as a vampire would ask. Of course, this led Eureka to feel as if she had the upper hand. Thus, her attention divided between her tent, and the man standing in front of her. Her gaze dropped to the mess of material and metal, finally understanding that the pole she was holding had to be looped through the corners of the tent and threaded across the top, so that it could be bent and attached to the square base, which she had already reconstructed. She dropped to her haunches, thankfully wearing underwear, to gather the tent and find the loops that she needed. Every few seconds, her eyes would return to the male across from her.

When he implied that she could be compared to a cat she levelled him with a stare that clearly was not amused. Not because he had offended her, but because it was the exact reason why she’d made the reference to begin with. She considered herself feline in nature; she often watched the big cats in the hunting grounds, and she did not kill them, because they felt like kin to her. Obviously, she’d told him she always landed on her feet because she thought herself to be, sometimes, one of them.

When he asked his next question, she couldn’t help the sly grin, nor the way her gaze dropped to his pants. The reference was there, and if he could get away with calling her Foxy, even if only the once, she could allow her mind to dip into the gutter. Though, she doubted she erected many tents in that manner. Not if they were human tents. It would probably be quite hard for those humans to erect anything when she was savagely tearing at their necks with her teeth in an attempt to get to the vein.

She didn’t say anything, though. She figured that pointed stare would have been enough, before she laughed away her unspoken joke and answered his question in earnest.

”I sleep during the day like every other vampire, obviously,” she answered, narrowing her green eyes, waiting to see his reaction, and whether she was right to assume that he knew nothing. ”This is the first time I’ve ever tried to…. Erect a tent,” she said, snickering before regaining her composure. ”I don’t normally hang around on the rooftop, either. Just at the beginning of the night. And then I go explore,” she said with a shrug. It was a non-committal answer, but then, she was a non-committal kind of girl. She had nowhere to be and no one who cared enough to seek her out. She had no one she cared too much to find, either. She was free as a bird, and she liked it that way.