Criminal Conversation

[tiny_dancer81]

Old habits died hard.

As much as Theresa was thinking about giving up the life, backsliding had probably been inevitable. She'd left The Dive the night before, having missed Maddy backstage, and she'd slept most of the day, waking up just before sundown. Having no job meant she had nothing to do but fart around her apartment, and she flipped channels for two hours while it got later, then clicked off the set because she was restless and bored.

It wasn't that she'd intended to go on the stroll, but she found herself having a margarita in a lounge on the Strip, and a man in an Armani suit and too much product in his hair sat down on the stool next to her. The man had an accent, something kinda-sorta European. Theresa, being from California, realized he didn't speak English very well. She did, however, understand it when he offered her five hundred dollars to join him in his suite at the Skylark.

Yeah, old habits died really hard.

Afterwards, he said she could stay in the suite while he went downstairs to meet someone. He'd been on the phone beforehand, talking rapid-fire in his native language, switching to English every now and then. Theresa was too busy envying the fact that the bathroom was nearly the size of her tiny apartment to pay attention. When he left, she called room service and ordered a pitcher of margaritas, then settled into an overstuffed chair to watch cable.

Comments

[noah_restic]

Noah hated doing damage control, mostly because he didn't mind damage. But his boss' cousin had to behave like a drunken ass, and he was sent, of course, to pick up the pieces. He made his way down the hall, locating the correct suite. He knocked swiftly on the heavy wooden door.

He had an inkling that whomever was on the other side had no idea what was said over the phone. But it was easy money, and more importantly, an easy way for Noah to prove his loyalty. That made it a worthwhile endeavor.

[tiny_dancer81]

The knock on the door meant the booze was here, and Theresa unfolded her legs from beneath her to pad over to the door. The late news had come on, but the news bored the hell out of her, so she'd switched over to some action movie. Televised explosions could be heard as she unlatched the security chain.

The vampire took in the sight of the guy in the hall, and after a second she rolled her eyes. He wasn't from room service. If her last client thought she was in the business of giving away freebies, he really was new around here.

"What?"

[noah_restic]

He pushed past her, crossing the threshold into the suite. It was Noah's turn to roll his eyes when he saw the state of the room, and the television on. They were worried she was a threat?

"Close the door," Noah said, a bored hint to his voice.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Jesus. Rude, much?"

Theresa poked her head out into the hall, saw no one else, then warily closed the door. Whoever this was, he didn't behave like a john. Exactly what did the tenant of this suite do for a living?

"So? The door's closed. Now what?"

[noah_restic]

"I need to know what you heard in this room earlier. Your...client, when he was on the phone." Noah walked further into the room, glancing at the unmade bed.

"I look after him when he gets drunk, but he got away from me." He surveyed the girl, then added, wryly, "I have no idea why."

[tiny_dancer81]

That made the brunette relax a notch, and she shrugged as she walked past him to pick up the remote and turn the television off. She hadn't really been watching the movie anyway. It made her feel weird to have him stare at her like that.

"I don't know what he was talking about," she said honestly. "He could barely get the words out in English when he picked me up in the bar down the street." If Mr. Nosy had the wherewithal to use the word 'client', he knew what she'd been brought up here for. Was he a minder or something?

[noah_restic]

Noah rubbed at his eyes. He had barely gotten any sleep in the past few days, and now he was being sent on a petty errand. "I'm supposed to threaten you. If you say a word, et cetera. You can fill in the rest with your imagination."

There was another knock at the door. "You should look out of the peephole before you answer doors for strangers, by the way." Noah took a seat in one of the armchairs.

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa stared at him. Threaten her? Threaten her? She would have laughed if it hadn't been so fucking ridiculous. On the other hand, she smelled Mafia. The Mob hadn't been a thing in Hollywood, at least not to her knowledge, but Sin City wasn't Hollywood.

She went up on her toes and checked the peephole, then opened the door to the man holding a frosted pitcher and two glasses on a silver tray. The bill was going on her client's credit card, so all she had to do was pay the tip. The door closed, leaving her and Mr. Nosy alone again.

"You want a drink?" she asked sarcastically, noting the way he'd just made himself comfortable. "You look like you could use an IV drip of something."

[noah_restic]

"Why not? Since I'm here." Of course, he could sense her annoyance, but Noah couldn't find it in him to care. The length of his stay inside the suite would add to the authenticity, anyway.

"You're not at all scared." It was a statement, not a question.

[tiny_dancer81]

"I'm a whore, sweetheart. If you're scared on the streets, you shouldn't be out there."

She filled the glasses from the pitcher, but she didn't bring him his. She wasn't a fucking waitress. She sat down on the rumpled bed. The sheets smelled like sex.

"So. Are you a bodyguard or a babysitter?"

[noah_restic]

He snorted, getting up from his spot. He grabbed the glass; he didn't even like tequila, but what the hell. "Neither. Just supremely unlucky, it seems."

Noah reclaimed the seat. "Housekeeping is going to have a great time with this room tomorrow.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Cleaning up someone else's shit in some people's job."

Theresa had settled on the idea that Mr. Nosy didn't want a freebie, which was vaguely unsettling. She knew there were people who didn't go to pros for sex, but there was something kind of...off about this guy's eyes. What if he was a psycho or something?

Then again, she was already dead, so...

The vampire took a drink of her margarita, chewed some slivers of ice. "Your...boss? Whatever he is. He must like them young." And then she let her face change, just for the hell of it. "Or maybe a little cool."

[noah_restic]

And Noah laughed, really laughed, because that was entertaining. "Scary," he said, leaning back in the cushioned chair. "But I've seen scarier."

Did that idiot even realize he had picked up a vampire? A vampire hooker, to boot. That was too much. "So we're doing show and tell?" He looked down at his glass, waving his hand over the top. The surface was suddenly aflame, the alcohol ignited.

Noah blew out the fire, then downed a quarter of the margarita.

[tiny_dancer81]

Well. That was new.

Theresa watched the small fire go out, feeling decidedly nonplussed, and then she crossed her legs and put the fangs away as if nothing had happened. She'd just done it to see what would happen, if that bland expression would change, not to get into a dick-measuring contest.

"Funky."

The drink in her hand was a little light on the tequila, but she took another pull at the contents of the glass anyway. "I guess you have a name. It feels weird to keep calling you Mr. Nosy in my head."

[noah_restic]

"Mr. Nosy? That's the best you could do." He looked at his watch, obviously displeased with the placement of the hands. "It's Noah."

"And you are?"

[tiny_dancer81]

Noah. Nosy Noah. She liked the alliteration of it.

"Theresa."

He was actually pretty enough to be a hustler himself, but it might just have been the long hair. If he was basically a human Zippo, he'd have been more than capable of protecting himself. He didn't smell like a demon, though, at least not from what little experience she had of demons. And she could hear his heart.

"So how long have you been doing...whatever it is that you do?"

[noah_restic]

Theresa.

Maybe this would be more interesting than he had hoped. "Since I can remember," Noah answered. There was no exciting origin story. He was born a freak, and he'd die a freak. At least he could make some money in the interim.

"By the way, Deanna says hi." The redheaded vampire had said nothing of the sort, of course, but he never let an opportunity slip by.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Ooh, really?"

She perked up because she couldn't help it. She liked to think she knew the difference between a fantasy and something that could really happen, but women were tricky. If Deanna even remembered her, there was the off chance that she'd mentioned her. But why would she drop her name to Noah?

'She'll get you staked.' Wasn't that what Rhiannon had said?

"Where did you run into her?"

[noah_restic]

He could see the hope on her face, as plain as the fangs that had rested there not a moment earlier. "That doesn't matter," Noah replied. "But she did talk about you. Said you were, what was the word...fascinating."

Brushing his hair back, he finished the rest of his drink and set the glass on a side table. "Do you know she wants to kill a Slayer?"

[tiny_dancer81]

Fascinating. Noah was fucking with her. He had to be. Theresa was used to not having hopes, and the few hopes she had were small. She pulled away from the possible warmth of the thought, focused on what he was saying.

"She seemed really...ambitious," she told him. The possibility of a dead Slayer was interesting. She wondered if it was like Whack-A-Mole, that you squashed one and another popped up in her place. If you kept killing them, would the supply eventually run out?

"Did she say how she was gonna do it?"

[noah_restic]

"I don't think she has a fucking clue," Noah said, smiling. "I think the chase is what she really wants, anyway."

There was a stretch of silence, and he could hear muffled voices in the hall, a door opening, and then the clicking of a lock.

"What about you, Theresa? What do you want? You don't wear any jewelry. Your clothes, well...what do you do with all the money you make?"

[tiny_dancer81]

What did she want? That was a good question, and she'd only really begun to ask it. Theresa could sense Noah's coldness now.

"I didn't mean to be here tonight."

She wished she could take it back as soon as she said it, because she'd genuinely tried to bond with Holly over their similarities and the human had scalded her over it. You didn't have to hit her in the head with a brick for her to get the picture. If she had few hopes, she had even fewer feelings, but it was possible to hurt the ones she had.

"You get into hooking because it's easy money and you don't have to really do much," the vampire continued. "Eventually it gets to be a habit, one you can't quit.The path of least resistance."

[noah_restic]

"So, laziness then." To Noah, there was no excuse. He didn't think much of vampires, but they did have certain advantages on humans.

He stood, looking down at Theresa. "You can sit here, drinking margaritas and being generally pathetic. Or you could use what you've been given. Either way, I'm done for the night."

Reaching into his pocket, he peeled some bills off of a stack and let them fall on the bed. "I was told to give you this. Have fun."

[tiny_dancer81]

His indifference made her feel better. At least he didn't offer any bullshit sympathy. If she was lazy, it was because no one had ever tried to motivate her to be better, not even Dane. But Dane was a pile of soot back in California, blown to the winds. Maybe it was time she got off her ass and took responsibility for herself.

"Try not to set your own ass on fire," Theresa muttered, scooping up the bills and stuffing them into the pocket of her jeans. Then she drained the rest of her glass. She was going to be out of here before this other guy got back.

Her bed, no matter how small, would be more comfortable than this.