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]

Comments

[tiny_dancer81]

"Dating's a strong word," Theresa said, echoing Daniel's words with a deadpan expression. "Usually I call them clients."

He'd either judge her or he wouldn't. Some vampires made a big whoop out of the hunt, as if she wasn't genuine because she let dinner come to her. She was an opportunistic predator rather than a confrontational one, lacking the combat skills necessary to fight for prey. Not that she liked the stigma attached to the word whore, but when something was true you might as well hold your head up and keep your back straight.

"And I came out here from Hollyweird, where vampirism is practically just another fetish. Girls getting with dead guys isn't as big a deal as you might think." Maybe she's kinky, this unknown lady friend. Theresa managed not to say it. She didn't have to be foul-mouthed all the time.

[daniel_stacy]

An undead hooker. Huh. Daniel gathered both knees into his elbows and looped his arms around. So his sire hadn’t been kidding when she hinted that those vamps who didn’t steal for cash, screwed for it. Theresa didn’t look like any prostitute he’d seen before, but he guessed there was a market for the kinder-whore thing.

He raised a hand.

“Question. How do you—?” He broke off in search of the right phrasing. “How do you do that if they’re… old or they smell weird or are otherwise just grotesque? Doesn’t it make your skin crawl? I mean they’re inside you.” He drove the point home with his hand. "I can't even bite someone if I don't find them marginally appealing and that takes ten seconds."

[tiny_dancer81]

She almost called him 'little boy' at that, because if he knew where she'd been and what she'd been doing before she was a vampire he wouldn't have asked her that question. Her smile had a bit of an edge on it now, just enough to give it away that she was slightly nettled.

"Everyone's old compared to me, hon, at least as far as they know. My cutoff age is sixty, and I judge by the clothes they're wearing, what type of watch they have on, and whether or not they can hold their liquor. You might as well ask them what it's like to screw somebody who looks young enough to be their daughter. By their second wife."

She wished she smoked, but that was one habit she'd never taken up. "Besides, fucking is different than eating. Eating is personal, something only another vampire would understand. Sex is universal."

[daniel_stacy]

Theresa may have edited herself, but Daniel wasn't a complete dolt. He knew from her face and condescending use of the word 'Hon' that he struck a chord. "Hey, no need to get your panties in a wad, sweetheart.You fling that word out there -- 'clients' -- like the undead's worldliest hooker, just daring me to say something, so I do and you're pissed? I could do a lot worse than ask you how you tolerate servicing the life insurance set."

He hopped off the wall and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans.

"As for feeding, yeah. It's different than fucking, but not by much, so far as I can tell. Penetrate, exchange fluids, bam. Somebody's spent."

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa's expression shifted because she was looking inward, flashing back. Dane hadn't been the first one to bite her, so she hadn't realized what he was doing to her at first, and it wasn't until he broke the skin and began to drink her blood that she realized she was in trouble. She'd panicked even in the midst of her comedown, had lifted her knee into his balls to get him off of her, but he'd been too strong for her. When he was finished and offered her his wrist, she'd drunk because he'd said she'd live through it that way. Had he sold her a bill of goods, or had she just been stupid enough to believe him?

"Sometimes it's not so bad," she told Daniel, and there was a new note of honesty in her voice. "They're usually really nice to me because they feel so guilty, and they're so grateful for the sex that it's kind of pathetic. They get what they want and so do I. I've done worse."

Down on the street, someone blew their horn raucously, and the brunette started when the sound echoed in the hollow space of the parking deck. Wow, she'd gone deep for a second there. She'd need some drinks if she wanted to work tonight. She glanced at her watch. One twenty seven.

"So where's your sire?" she asked, her tone getting more conversational as she shook off the last of the reverie. "Mine didn't let me out of his sight for the first nine months, said I had to learn the ropes."

[daniel_stacy]

As he listened to her talk –

’It’s not so bad… they’re usually nice to me…’

– Daniel felt something in his chest quicken. Kind of a burning sensation. He rubbed at his sternum knowing that it couldn’t be indigestion, so what gave? Oh no, he thought, his expression souring. Was she somehow tugging at his heartstrings? What was going on with him?

He cleared his throat. “I uh… well, she’s a piece of work,” he said. “We’re not close. I went down kicking and screaming and I think she’s had second thoughts. But I don’t know. Maybe she’s always like this with her offspring.”

Had Deanna procreated as a human? He had limited knowledge of the life that came before Deanna was a vampire, but based on her personality in death, he hoped she hadn’t. Poor little bastards.

[tiny_dancer81]

"She?"

That made her dart a look in his direction, and then she looked down at the Lincoln's shiny paint job. It shouldn't have surprised her, since male vampires tended to turn girls while women went for the opposite sex, but there was something in Daniel's tone when he talked about his sire that struck a chord. She'd come to at least appreciate Dane, but it was learned behavior because she'd needed him to help her survive. Now that he was gone, she was having to manage on her own again.

"You don't like her very much, do you?" Fuck, she wasn't going to get all squishy, was she? "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

[daniel_stacy]

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Shrugged. “Sometimes I like her a lot,” he said. “I get these pangs. And sometimes I’d rather eat glass than spend an hour with her.” He chewed on his lip. “Y’know, it’s like being a teenager and you’ve got his parent you hate, but at the same time, you’re scrambling for attention.”

[tiny_dancer81]

That made Theresa's smile turn rueful, because she remembered that too. Once she'd come to understand that her sire believed he was saving her, she'd developed an intermittent, grudging fondness for him. Yeah, he'd had the emotional maturity of a cantaloupe, but most vampires did. There were times when she'd wanted to make him proud of her. When it got so late that it was early, sometimes she'd miss him.

This was getting uncomfortably human.

"My sire believed he was doing me a favor. Do you regret that you drank?"

[daniel_stacy]

“I don’t even remember doing it,” he said. “For all I know, she pried my mouth open, pinched my nose and dumped a cup of blood down the drain.” Daniel had a hard time believing that his human self would have sucked blood out of Deanna’s open, gaping wound, no matter how desperate the situation. Hot, yeah; the redhead was smoking hot. But… tasty to human tongues? Dubious.

He braced his knee on the fender of a Dodge.

“Can’t say I’m sorry I’m a vampire instead of being plain old dead, though. You?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Better to be a walking corpse than one buried in the ground."

No, she didn't regret it, at least not at this point. It meant she wouldn't die of an overdose, and it ruled out her contracting some hideous disease. Street kids died young for a multitude of reasons. In a bizarre way, she'd gotten the good end of the deal.

"You're okay, y'know? A little unschooled, maybe, but it takes time to develop a pattern. I had an advantage doing what I do. It taught me how to be a survivor. I just had to adjust that to doing it after the sun went down. You'll learn too."