Hunger Pangs

[daniel_stacy]

Daniel was starving.

No, really.

If asked, the vampire would swear he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Spending time with Holly was akin to fasting at a dinner table piled with sizzling, juicy steaks. He jogged to his car with the biggest ‘fang boner’ of his life, his face morphing into demonic features and remaining as such for the entirety of the drive into Las Vegas, where he hoped to arrive in time for the casinos to unleash drunken, giddy tourists onto the sidewalk. He parked his car and struck out on foot.

Where, where, where are you going? Get your game face on. Not that one, the pretty one.

Great. Now he talked to himself.

Screw it. He didn’t have the patience for sweet talk. He abandoned the casino plan and swung into a parking garage stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. Sooner or later, a woman who dressed like an extra from Knots Landing would toddle to her car, inebriated and ripe for the sucking. Daniel stopped on level four and meandered between the parked automobiles, in search of one with the hallmarks of womanhood: lipstick tube, emery board, hairbrush. He shielded his eyes and peered into the driver’s side window of a silver Miata.

[Thread: Open to Theresa]

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[daniel_stacy]

Daniel screwed up his face. “Nookie?”

He swung a leg over the wall and straddled it. From this vantage point, he could see up and down the strip. He checked out the line of metered cars below him, the taxis weaving in and out of traffic. Whether she intended to or not, the vampire had struck a nerve; why did the undead always feel the need to call each other out on that? Was it a pissing contest? Social stratification?

“I may be new, but you were, what… seventeen when you were turned? Eternal jail bait.”

He wasn’t going to admit the reason for his hunger and risk ribbing from Punky Brewster.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Eighteen, actually, and thank you."

Theresa gave him her cheekiest smile when she said it, and you'd never have guessed from looking at her that she hadn't wanted to die. She was a realist and knew how to play the hand she'd been dealt, so when she woke up with fangs it seemed pointless to bitch about it for long. And she wasn't that much different now than she had been before.

"This is a good place to dump bodies, so I've heard. Planning to catch and release or finish your dinner?"

[daniel_stacy]

“I don’t think I’ll be releasing anything,” Daniel said, swinging the foot nearest the Lincoln. “I’ve been on a…” He grimaced. “A hunger strike.”

No, wrong phrase. An elimination diet? Either way, hadn’t he just told himself not to share that kind of information? Next thing he knew, Daniel would be spouting it off to Deanna. Which reminded him, he needed to scrub himself of Holly’s scent before coming into contact with his sire, the redheaded bloodhound of Las Vegas.

“A quest is more like it, to see how long I can stand not feeding.”

Daniel pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and scratched his elbow.

Holly…

In a vivid mental image that kept looping, he saw her sitting astride his hips, that soft mane of hair swinging around her shoulders. Halfway to the city, Daniel had considered pulling a wild u-turn and kicking through her motel room door, no invitation required. Several versions of what came after drifted through his head.

He had gripped the steering wheel and stayed the course like some twisted version of a monk.

[tiny_dancer81]

The shorter vampire's eyebrows drew together, and she debated with herself if she cared or not about why Slick was so twitchy. She had a limited tolerance for bullshit, which was why her human self hadn't cared much for Dane until after he put the bite on her, but vampires didn't usually get twitchy unless sunlight or religious symbols were involved. Did she care?

"My name's Theresa, what's yours?"

Fuck it, she had some time to kill before the owner of the Lincoln made what was hopefully a manfully stumbling way back to the car where it was parked. The automobile was big enough that she could assume the position in the backseat if she had to. There were some benefits to being so short.

"We've got an hour or so to hang out, we might as well be on a first name basis."

[daniel_stacy]

So she was staying?

Daniel swallowed on that slightly funky reality. He supposed he could always pull her pigtails if she tried to horn in on his intended meal. He didn’t have a hard-on for fisticuffs, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to put her in a headlock.

“Daniel,” he said. “How long have you been, uh…” He scratched his cheek. “Dead?” Often, a vampire gave away clues in apparel, vocabulary, posture, moxie. He wasn’t getting much of a read off of Theresa, and that told him she was modern. The whiff of cigar smoke came at him again when the air shifted; whose grandpa was she banging?

[tiny_dancer81]

"It'll be my fifth anniversary in December. I was supposed to have graduated from college by now."

It was true, although she'd spent most of her junior and senior years doing blow and hooking to support her habit. She'd been a decent student when she'd bothered to go, it was just that she'd had...other priorities at the time. Since her turning, she'd learned by the seat of her pants.

"You're not even a year old, are you?" she asked, studying Daniel out of the corner of her eye. "You're practically crawling out of your skin with wanting to eat somebody. You're not one of those purists or anything, are you? Like, you have to drink virgin's blood or it doesn't taste right?"

[daniel_stacy]

He paused, his fingers still touching his cheek. “What the fuck, that exists?”

Daniel tried to envision himself giving a rat’s ass whether the person he ate had a sex life. He couldn’t see how it would change the taste, unless there was diseased blood involved, or hormones or something. Talk about cruel: taking a person out before anyone got to home plate? He wasn’t that bereft of humanity.

“My palette’s not that developed. Let’s just say I found myself in a look-but-don’t-touch situation, so I’m famished.”

He wished he had a pen and notepad so he could start jotting down all the quirks of vampirism Deanna hadn’t shared with him. Call him crazy, but he was getting the impression that his sire didn’t expect him to last long. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“Also, I doubt there’s a virgin within a mile of this place.”

[tiny_dancer81]

That made her chuckle, or at least snort, and she uncrossed her legs to let her feet dangle just above the ground. She was wearing low heels since she'd never gotten the hang of stilettos, a knee-length skirt and a tank top. She cultivated the innocent look on purpose.

"Dane used to say there were all kinds of vamps, but the really quirky ones were usually more than a couple of centuries old. The sort who thought Dracula was a biography. Lived in mausoleums, slept in caskets, never kept mirrors around. Weird shit like that."

She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. "And I know all about look-but-don't-touch. One on one with a human is the worst when you know you can't or shouldn't bite."

[daniel_stacy]

“And yet, the pay-off,” he countered, shaking his head. “Way worth it.”

If anything was going to go his way in terms of survival, Daniel reflected, it was going to be forging past the immediate impulse… which was, ironically, a quality Holly claimed not to have. He could be bigger than the monumental oral fixation he’d been saddled with in exchange for endless youth. He didn’t have to chase necks so doggedly that he ran headlong onto the pointy end of a stick.

Suck on that, D.

“I like to have my cake and eat it, too.” He raised a knee up to his chest.

[tiny_dancer81]

Oh. Daniel was one of those.

"What's her name?" Theresa asked with a slight smile, taking a wild stab in the dark because she had a hunch she'd be right. No wonder he smelled like sex. Then again, it meant he didn't do it for money, because women didn't have to pay for it.

"Is she your girlfriend?"