Thomas Raith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
loveconquersdinosaurs) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
undergrounds2016-07-17 12:28 am
loveconquersdinosaurs) wrote in undergrounds2016-07-17 12:28 am
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(no subject)
In a pub (Nancy)
The short nights were getting to him. Well, the short nights as well politics going wild, and it becoming increasingly clear that the Night Council would not be putting up with an insane vampire leader, but the short nights certainly weren't helping. He needed a distraction, and that's why he'd texted Nancy. He wasn't interested in blood or other services, and he made it clear that if she was busy with work he'd perfectly understand if she didn't have time to just hang out. But, it seemed, she was interested enough to message him back, and they'd decided to meet up in a pub.
It was a nice place...well, not that nice, but not a terrible pub, and it was one that was heavily populated by the supernatural community. Somewhere where discretion wouldn't be quite so strictly needed. And so he'd gotten dressed in jeans and an incredibly tight white t-shirt, and of course, carefully applied his now necessary wig, a top of the line human hair and lace piece that looked incredibly natural, though wasn't a perfect match for how his real hair had looked. And now...now he was just looking around, seeing if he could spot Nancy.
In the streets (Open)
Summer was hard for Thomas. Nights were short, giving him less time between when the sun would go down and when people would go to bed for the night. After that, there was only the vast silence of London late at night. Sure, there were some interruptions to that silence, the occasional sound of people or animals, but when someone was up all night every night, it became clear how much emptier it was.
He preferred the winter, when he sun went down before many people had their dinners. When he could eat at restaurants, or easily shop at stores. In short, the summer was getting to him. Sometimes he just went home and watched TV until he drifted off to sleep in the morning, but not tonight. Tonight he sat on the stairs outside the local library, playing games on his phone.
In an alley, later in the month, toward the peak of the fae hunt (Open)
What had come over him, he couldn't say, but lately it felt like the beast within had suddenly risen up, and he could barely contain it. The desire to sink his teeth into tender flesh, to devour. He avoided his usual haunts, and didn't visit his usual donors. With the way he was feeling, he didn't trust himself. Which didn't mean he didn't feed, of course. Instead he stalked the night, not with his usual relaxed and friendly demeanor that put his meals off guard, but with a predatory grace and precision and a hungry look in his eye.
This didn't make it any harder to find his meal for the night, a young man in his twenties lured in by Thomas's strange and mysterious demeanor, though he suspected his looks helped as well.
Normally he'd take his dinner home, relax in bed with them, maybe sleep with them before feeding, and often enough even took them home. It was usually a friendly and fun sort of feeding. Not tonight. Tonight he simply led his prey into a dark alley, and after a few ravenous kisses, sank his teeth in.
For a moment, Thomas almost lost himself in the feeding in a way he hadn't in quite some time.
Thomas was barely able to snap out of it, but once he did he pulled away with a horrified realization. He'd let his control slip.
"Well, fuck."
At least the man looked like he'd be okay, even if he did look incredibly pale.
The short nights were getting to him. Well, the short nights as well politics going wild, and it becoming increasingly clear that the Night Council would not be putting up with an insane vampire leader, but the short nights certainly weren't helping. He needed a distraction, and that's why he'd texted Nancy. He wasn't interested in blood or other services, and he made it clear that if she was busy with work he'd perfectly understand if she didn't have time to just hang out. But, it seemed, she was interested enough to message him back, and they'd decided to meet up in a pub.
It was a nice place...well, not that nice, but not a terrible pub, and it was one that was heavily populated by the supernatural community. Somewhere where discretion wouldn't be quite so strictly needed. And so he'd gotten dressed in jeans and an incredibly tight white t-shirt, and of course, carefully applied his now necessary wig, a top of the line human hair and lace piece that looked incredibly natural, though wasn't a perfect match for how his real hair had looked. And now...now he was just looking around, seeing if he could spot Nancy.
In the streets (Open)
Summer was hard for Thomas. Nights were short, giving him less time between when the sun would go down and when people would go to bed for the night. After that, there was only the vast silence of London late at night. Sure, there were some interruptions to that silence, the occasional sound of people or animals, but when someone was up all night every night, it became clear how much emptier it was.
He preferred the winter, when he sun went down before many people had their dinners. When he could eat at restaurants, or easily shop at stores. In short, the summer was getting to him. Sometimes he just went home and watched TV until he drifted off to sleep in the morning, but not tonight. Tonight he sat on the stairs outside the local library, playing games on his phone.
In an alley, later in the month, toward the peak of the fae hunt (Open)
What had come over him, he couldn't say, but lately it felt like the beast within had suddenly risen up, and he could barely contain it. The desire to sink his teeth into tender flesh, to devour. He avoided his usual haunts, and didn't visit his usual donors. With the way he was feeling, he didn't trust himself. Which didn't mean he didn't feed, of course. Instead he stalked the night, not with his usual relaxed and friendly demeanor that put his meals off guard, but with a predatory grace and precision and a hungry look in his eye.
This didn't make it any harder to find his meal for the night, a young man in his twenties lured in by Thomas's strange and mysterious demeanor, though he suspected his looks helped as well.
Normally he'd take his dinner home, relax in bed with them, maybe sleep with them before feeding, and often enough even took them home. It was usually a friendly and fun sort of feeding. Not tonight. Tonight he simply led his prey into a dark alley, and after a few ravenous kisses, sank his teeth in.
For a moment, Thomas almost lost himself in the feeding in a way he hadn't in quite some time.
Thomas was barely able to snap out of it, but once he did he pulled away with a horrified realization. He'd let his control slip.
"Well, fuck."
At least the man looked like he'd be okay, even if he did look incredibly pale.
In an alley
He'd just finished one of his late night rides and was busy parking his bike for another day when he caught the scent of someone's blood. Immediately, he was drawn to the scene.
Cooper tutted as he looked over Thomas' handiwork, the disapproval clear on his face. "I'm going t'give you the benefit of the doubt 'n assume you didn't mean to do...that." He waves a hand towards Thomas' unfortunate victim. He hadn't assumed the pretty boy was one who took pleasure in draining his victims dry, but he'd been wrong before.
Re: In an alley
Thomas heard a thud behind him. He looked. The man had collapsed.
"Fainted. I'll just give him some of my blood, heal him up. I'll keep an eye on him until my blood's out of his system and he'll be back to normal."
See, Cooper? He had this entirely under control. Well, no, he really didn't, and it scared him a little that he'd lost control when he'd thought he'd gotten past making this sort of mistake, but he didn't want Cooper to know that.
Re: In an alley
Cooper's scowl of disapproval grew even greater when the man sank to the alley floor in a dead faint. This was not good, nope, not a bit. He bent over the man, pressing a pair of cold fingers to his neck to make sure he still had a pulse. If Thomas had killed him, there was nothing left to do but toss the body somewhere. He was relieved to feel a faint beating beneath his fingers. "I'm not your sire--" Perish the thought. "--so I'm not gonna read you the riot act over this. That'd be the pot callin' the kettle black. But you're old enough not t'be making stupid mistakes like this."
He wasn't entirely on board with the plan of letting Thomas give the man his blood. There was always the chance that he'd die with the blood still in his system and that would just open up a whole new can of worms. He'd had to deal with a scared newborn rampaging all over London when that had happened last fall. He was loathe to repeat the experience.
no subject
"I know," Thomas admitted. "I haven't made a mistake like this in a long time. I'm usually careful. I just..."
Cooper probably didn't care about all of that, he realized. Him being extremely careful and meticulous in his feedings for years didn't really matter to this guy. Sure, he had no clue why his aggression was suddenly so much worse, but he needed to get it under control.
"I'll fix this. I'll get him to a hospital." Thomas extended his fangs, biting down on his wrist to draw some blood. Crouching down near the man, he'd put his now bleeding wrist into the man's mouth as long as Cooper didn't move to stop him.
no subject
Cooper grabbed Thomas by the scruff of the neck, pulling him back before he could give the unfortunate meal his blood. "Let's not be hasty in making a decision here. It's all well 'n good for you to say you're gonna keep an eye on him, but you can't watch him every hour of the day. Supposing he checks himself out of the hospital 'n the next thing he does is get hit by a bus? I've seen that actually happen." He'd relate the whole sordid affair of tracking a newborn vampire all over London if he had to.
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"So what should I do, then? Drop him off at the hospital like this? Or I could give him some of my blood, but take him home with me and keep an eye on him there."
And at his home, he really could keep an eye on the man constantly. It ultimately depended on which would do the man more good, the hospital or his blood. Then the man began to groan and stir.
"Look, he's awake," Thomas pointed out, before getting up, grabbing a couple of trash bags and putting one under his feet and a smaller one under the man's head. Then Thomas pulled off his shirt and pressed it against the two small puncture wounds on the man's neck. It may be first aid learned from TV and YouTube surfing, but it was still first aid.
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"I'd say let the hospital take care of him. There'll be more question to be sure, but you're smart enough to deal with 'em. Least I hope you are." He still had his doubts about whether Thomas had a brain in that head of his or not.
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And he really meant that, too. He hated that it happened this time when normally he had his hunger under control, and he was determined not to let it happen again. Moving in closer to the man, Thomas scooped him up, cradling the man in his arms. He heard the man mutter something along the lines of 'what happened', so Thomas decided to go ahead and put the answer in the man's mind.
"You just fell," he said, using his influence to make his words seem more convincing. "A broken beer bottle jabbed you in the neck and you lost a lot of blood, but it's okay. I'm taking you to the hospital."
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Cooper trotted alongside Thomas, hard pressed to keep up as he made his way down to the end of the alley. He wasn't quite done lecturing the younger vampire. "It had better not. Harris might be allowin' vamps t'run wild through this city, but I've got my own code of conduct that needs to be followed. If I catch you at it again, I'm not gonna hesitate to punish you."
It sounded almost laughable the way Cooper said it, but his face made it clear that he was quite serious. He was an Earl and that came with some responsibilities after all, even if the way the nest was currently being run left it in a state of perpetual chaos.
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"Do you think I wanted to do this?" he hissed, rearranging the man in his arms to make sure some pressure stayed on the wound. "I want control. Through all of this stuff going on, Millicent's bloodfest and...this thing Harris is doing," he said, making it clear just how much he disapproved of Harris's thing, "I hadn't drained anyone like this, I hadn't lost control once. Now I'm in a bad mood for a bit, and I screw it all up and this guy has to suffer the consequences? I'm not any happier about this than you are."
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Cooper folded his arms and drew himself up to his full height. Not that it made a whole lot of difference, he was still small no matter what he did. "Good! I'm only telling you this 'cause I know exactly where you're comin' from. It took a good long while for someone to help wrangle me under control. Only wish I had met him sooner so I didn't have so much blood on my name. I know it may not seem like it, but I am trying t'help you out here."
If he really hadn't given a damn or just been interested in chewing the younger vampire out, he would have left Thomas to do what he wanted with his unfortunate victim.
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"I guess I could use what help I can get," he admitted.
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"Stick with me, kid. I'll make sure you live t'see one-hundred." If he didn't end up tossing Thomas into the Thames locked inside a safe sometime before then. The younger vampire could just be so damn aggravating sometimes. Had Cooper been that annoying when he was young? He'd couldn't remember. He'd have to ask Stefan, his old mentor, the next time they spoke.
"You got a plan on what to tell the doctors? I'm not sure they're just gonna accept that falling down and cuttin' himself on a broken bottle story."
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After all, it was very clear that his sire considered his progeny expendable and entirely replaceable. Thomas, however, had no intentions of dying, with or without his sire having his back. Most of what he figured out when it came to control he'd done entirely on his own. Coming up with believable lies, however, was not something he mastered yet.
"I...no. I was just going to go with the broken bottle story."
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"Tch. That's a good way t'get the police involved. Gimme a sec." He thinks for a moment, sifting through the most likely scenarios in his mind before settling on one. "Keep the bit about the bottle, but tell 'em you saw someone go after him with one. Tell 'em--" He lifted the man's wallet out of his pocket and slipped it into his own. It's all about the little details. "--you saw him gettin' mugged. They like it better when they think you're a good Samaritan."
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Of course, a lot of the ones he'd seen were between his sire's other progeny and his sire, who was simply a horrible person who was almost guaranteed to never have a genuinely good relationship with anyone.
Thomas frowned when Cooper took the man's wallet. As if the guy's day wasn't bad enough, but...well, he had a point. After all, while police still might go looking for the mugger, it was better that the lie be convincing so they didn't think Thomas himself was the attacker. After all, they had windows in prison.
"Right. Okay."
The man still was slightly conscious, so Thomas stroked the man's cheek again, amending the story and making sure he didn't remember any of the conversation between Thomas and Cooper. After all, the best lie in the world would do no good if the man said something different.
Then Thomas spotted the hospital up ahead.
"We're almost there."
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"Good. I'll take off and leave you to it then." Simple stories were the easiest to confirm. If Cooper stayed, that would just be one more witness for the doctors and police to question, making the story even more complex.
"I'd say do better next time, but you already know that." He didn't expect much of the young vampire, yet he was still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Don't hesitate t'get me involved if you get yourself into a tight spot, pretty boy." Then he was gone, darting off down the street and disappearing into the night.