x | x | x | x

( Usually, the rain is a welcome change to being layered in a good inch of sunscreen, but today she's wearing crocheted flats and the fabric does not mix with the puddles of dirty water at all. Gloved hands grab at the ends of her oversized hat and Eva makes a break for the nearest awning on the street.

The sun had been beaming down less than thirty minutes ago, but that's just the way of the weather, and the rain leaves streaks through the cheap sunscreen she's lathered her face in. Old habits have Eva casting a glance at a mirror in the window of an antiques shop, only to flinch when all she sees is the hat she's wearing, hovering in mid-air.

...Right.

Apparently making the trek from Swansea to Cornwall doesn't cure Vampirism, who knew?

(She knew. Of course she knew. She only spent every evening of her academic life being drilled on vampire lore and how to kill them.

But a girl can hope. Hope that somehow, her heart will beat when the sun rises, that she can cut back on the sunscreen and countless layers of clothing.

That she can go home without fear of her father's face, crumbling as he fulfils the duty he was too heartbroken to last time.)

The rain only gets worse as she stands there, and the wind picks up until water is practically horizontal, snaking its way under the awning and making her sanctuary useless, the only place left that isn't buried in people with their loud heartbeats this one antiques store.

Well. She can handle one heartbeat. One person. Her hands might be unsteady from weeks without feeding, but she is - she was - a Devereux before she became a monster. She's handled worse.

She does everyday, now. )

Hello?

( A bell rings behind her as the door closes.

And it's quiet.

Deathly quiet. )

... Hi?

( It can't be... can it? )

[Marius has lived here for years, in the small apartment above the antiques store. A declining interest in such places and a lack of repeat customers has meant he has been left in relative peace for some time despite the fact he clearly has not aged since he bought the place two decades ago. It may be just as well that he has no need of the money, and no worries connected to not making a single sale for weeks at a time. He is content here, and that is what matters.

The shop is still and quiet. One wall is lined with bookshelves, stacked high with old books with bent, cracked spines and dog-eared pages. From these shelves the scent of leather and old paper seeps into the entire lower floor, seeming to add to the silence. Everything is clean, and yet it appears that very few things have been moved for months.

At the back of the store is a desk - a wide mahogany affair with several columns of books piled up onto it. It would seem the place is empty - entirely so - until a slender hand comes into view and slides a volume into place atop one of the carefully balanced piles.]

Come in out of the rain, child. [A male voice breaks the silence, finally. Richly accented but with a heavy overlay of what sounds very much like Italian, it hums through the room like the buzz of a plucked violin string, and the man that it belongs to stands up from his seat at the desk.

He's tall, with dark, unruly hair and sharp blue eyes flecked with silver. Strangely, unnaturally blue, as if the contrast were turned up to high in their colouring. He looks at her - stares, even - feeling the very same thing about her that she is undoubtedly feeling about him.

No pulse. No life. No breath.

Another vampire.]

( She removes the hat from her head automatically, the kind of habit anyone should have on walking into a building, fidgeting with the brim as she holds it in front of her. The shop is actually quite beautiful, but antique shops often are, with a desk that reminds her painfully of the one at which her father used to quiz her. The smell of books permeating everything, and it's so, so rare now, for Eva to smell anything but blood that she inhales needlessly and sharply, letting her attentions be drawn over there before-

There is someone. A voice. A voice and a face with too-sharp blue eyes and still... not a sound but those of her footsteps, of his words and nothing else.

She knows what that means. How could she not? But all the same- )

Well.

This is a little strange.

( She laughs and it's forced, awkward, and that? That is an understatement, because Eva has been on the run for months now - since her father told her to go, already, since she packed up her dorm room and gave up her place in the postgraduate course - and she hasn't seen another vampire in all that time. She's avoided them, kept to herself in the way the Devereux do, and now...

Her feet feel glued to the floor, her mind split in two. There are protocol to follow, things she's been trained to do as a hunter upon finding a vampire. Things she can't do to herself because the instinct to survive is just too damn strong.

It's been her life's work to kill monsters, and that's all vampires have ever been. Twenty one years alive and Eva's never seen a vampire sat behind a desk, running a store like a human would. They're things that maul humans, feast on blood without a care in the world for anything beyond their own survival and propagation.

This is a little bit strange, indeed. )

[How long has it been since he last saw another of his kind? Years. Years upon years. So long he's lost count through simply ceasing in keeping track. Perhaps it had been his sire, all those decades, centuries ago? No, he's seen others since, but never stopped to speak with them. It's easier if they keep apart from one another.

And now, standing in the middle of his shop, is a vampire who simply walked in off the street and found him here, by the purest of coincidences. Sometimes he believes that God must be playing tricks on him, to present him with such problems. It would, after all, be exactly what he deserves.]

A little strange... [He echoes her softly, barely audible over the rain beating against the windows. The tip of his tongue pushes briefly against the point of one sharp canine, the gesture clearly a nervous one, and then it is with almost inhuman speed that he crosses the shop to lock the door and quietly turn the sign against the glass to read CLOSED.

Marius stands there for a moment, his fingers resting on the door handle, and speaks without turning.]

How did you find me?

[She must have been looking for him. She had to be. The chances that she could have walked in here by accident are just too infinitesimally small.]

( She's seen many. And, as her family name - the thing she's shed because she can no longer say it aloud when she has no heartbeat; such a thing would be unthinkable - dictates, killed all of them. All of them until the one that turned her, the very reason she's stood here, still in too much sunscreen and soaked by the sudden turn of the weather.

Her fingertips tighten around the brim of her hat when he moves, porcelain pale skin snow white with the tension. Ways to construct magical cages fly through her mind instinctively, drilled in by years of extracurricular lessons. The tang of electric magic metallic on her tongue, a fizz-pop through her veins. It'd be so easy to do what she's always done, what she's been trained to do.

But that name isn't hers, and doing so would only attract attention to her existence. The very thing she's trying to avoid now. Now? Now she's Eva. She has to be. It's too unsafe to be a Devereux, no matter what instinct tells her. She can no longer behave like a hunter. )

I-- ( This will sound ridiculous, she's sure. ) I wanted to get out of the rain.

( She picks at a loose bit of thread on her hat. )

Most places are... a little crowded.

( And filled with heartbeats. )

[She wasn't looking for him? She wasn't... looking for him. He presses his forehead to the cool glass of the door in momentary relief as years of finely honed skills find nothing of deceit in her voice. Though, while she may not be lying about just why she's here, there's certainly a lot more that she is hiding.

But that, arguably, is none of Marius' business.

He turns away from the door and leans on it with a small, reserved smile. Marius has the look about him that all vampires of his advanced age seem to get - the too-bright eyes, the flawless complexion, the way of moving with a kind of unearthly, effortless grace that barely produces the sound of a footfall as they walk.

That smile, though, while small is not stiff or forced. This vampire, despite his age, is still holding on to a great many of the things that once made him human.

They are, aren't they. [He agrees softly. When he approaches her it's slowly, a wary curiosity in his eyes. God, but she's young.]

I... apologise for the abruptness of my reaction. I haven't seen another vampire in at least a hundred years.

( Of all the antique shops in all the world... Her eyes follow him but Eva stands still, confusion flickering through her expression as she watches him. So clearly a vampire, too elegant and too silent to be anything else, but so, so far from any of the ones she'd encountered before. They didn't smile. Didn't care about anything but feeding, or exacting revenge on hunters.

They certainly weren't running antique shops. )

Most of them still have fangs.

( She laughs, and this time it's less awkward. )

[Marius smiles again, still barely there but warm. His own fangs are barely visible now, barely ever needed. He'd look almost human if it wasn't for everything about him that screamed of the supernatural. Most of the mortals who came in here managed to avoid noticing it, or didn't point it out if they did.

How do you tell someone you think they might be a vampire, when vampires obviously don't exist?]

I'm sure they do. [In more was than one, no doubt. He would imagine a good number of them are still fighters, too.]

What's your name? I am called Marius.

( It does help, the secrecy, even for the hunter. People aren't as scared as they should be, which means they're not distracted by hysterical people and false tips. All their research was their own, and when you said "hunter", people just thought of you running around woods looking for deer and pheasants. )

Ah-- ( No, not that. Even if it's still burned at the back of her mind, still the name on her birth certificate (and for a moment, she wonders what her father ever did about all of that? Is he pretending she's dead? Even with that tell-tale red hair of hers?), it isn't the one she can use any more.

And who knew that there would come a time where she was standing, exchanging forms of address with a vampire in a shop like she was making friends?

She's fallen so far from what she was meant to be. )

Eva. My name is Eva.

Work was... well, work. A normal Tuesday for Moira, if one could consider quietly watching a rabbit attempt not to let itself dematerialize into a cloud of black smoke 'normal'.

With Gabriel occupied for the day and in no need of a 'checkup' right now, it was back to basics for the time being. One of these days, she was really going to have to put in for a monkey test subject. Not every experiment could have a human subject, at some point they did sort of become 'non-expendable', and Gabriel was one of those on the 'do not vaporize' list.

With the rabbit rapidly destabilizing into a billion charged particles, another 'x' was scribbled onto the clip board with a sigh.

Now she had to get another one, lord. Her right hand for an assistant so she wouldn't have to keep walking to and from the live test subject containment room.

[Are those... cola crates?]

[They sure are. Quite a few of them, too, and completely unopened. It might not be a year's supply of the stuff but it can't be too far off, right? Hope you enjoy your cola because to get the best out of this 'gift' it's gonna need to be drunk up almost daily. Where did it come from, though? The answer is somewhere inside.]

[A well-dressed Xu Shu has found a console and apparently was tempted enough to settled down to a game; he's logged into his own account, revealing experience he's not let onto, and is currently engrossed in a beat 'em up. Perhaps it's a bit surprising that someone like himself would have any kind of skill at such a genre but the young man is doing well... really well. His brow is furrowed into a serious, focused expression as he unleashes a harsh combo onto his hapless opponent and once they're knocked out he even smiles a little.]

Not bad...

[Time for another online match? Yes; he adjusts his glasses before confirming. Xu Shu's so into what he's doing that he's a little switched off and probably wouldn't hear anybody walking up to him.]

( Well, at least the squad will have plenty to drink while they work, Hana guesses, a smile tinging her expression as she remembers promises shared via text and cracks open a crate, pulling out a can before she pushes open the door. )

Dae-Hyun, are you pla—

( The gentle scolding of her oldest friend and personal mechanic falls silent as she takes in the scene in front of her and realises that the familiar sound of BGM isn't due to Dae-Hyun, but Xu Shu instead.

That's... well.

That just makes her all the happier to see the back of his head, and with quick, bouncing, steps, she crosses the space over to where he's sat, flopping down next to him with no ceremony whatsoever. )

Ranked?

[He didn't hear her first comments so, when she flops down next to him, Xu Shu actually flinches in surprise. His opponent scores a hit which quickly leads into a combo; it's a testament to his skill that he's able to stop it in its tracks before getting knocked out.]

Umm... yes. [A pause, and he adds a genuine:] Sorry.

[Time to grab this match back. Does Xu Shu look a little flustered now? Yup. It doesn't affect his playing ability but this is genuinely the first time he's ever played a game in front of anybody else and it's Hana watching him.]

I was only going to have couple of matches, but when my streak got going I guess I lost track of time.

( Oooh, ouch. Maybe that's the difference between a professional and someone who isn't, Hana wouldn't have reacted to the distraction. She wouldn't have noticed it in the first place, would have been absorbed into the world of fighting to win so wholly that the world around her may as well not exist.

She purses her lips shut, vowing to remain silent until Xu Shu's match is done.

... Which, of course, lasts about half a minute if that. )

Nice combo! ( She doesn't even comment on the apology, already too engrossed in watching him play, and besides, it doesn't matter. The console wants to be played, right? ) — He's wide open! Go for the kill!

( Getting flustered on a basic string of attacks, internet stranger? Your loss. )