kore_logs | if i stay here, trouble will find me

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if i stay here, trouble will find me

WHO: Hal Yorke and yoooooou
WHAT: One very nervous, very cranky vampire just got here and I don't want to subject everyone to another intropost; pls be gentle. (Or don't. Or don't.)
WHEN: Day 73, eveningish
WHERE: In/around the woods, but probably not far enough in to encounter direwolves or tigers unless someone wants that, and lbr it would be pretty great.
NOTES: Warnings for excessive prissiness.

By his own declaration, Hal cannot live anywhere without central heating, carpets, and Radio 4. So why he has decided to begin the investigation of his new and less than voluntary surroundings in the woods would be anyone's guess, except--he can't do this alone. He's almost sure of it. Has to find someone or something familiar, something grounding before he tips over into the inevitable itch in his teeth, the jagged scraping edges revealed when his routines are flipped on their backs.

To all appearances he's just a pale young man in perhaps his mid-twenties, black jeans and short sleeved black shirt, more buttons done than necessary--in fact that's his general ambience, expression on down, he looks buttoned up, and obviously new.

Also obviously not an outdoorsy person at all, given the faint to ...less faint disgust that blotches his features when he's obliged to like, touch a tree or something else repellant and gross. If Tom is to be found anywhere in this Godforsaken wasteland (which to be fair, that tiny corner of South Wales also was, hence its suitability as a hiding place for Hal) it will be in the woods, he suspects. Retreat to what is normal, that's what most people would do. Hal would take refuge in normalcy too, were it to be had, but he doesn't think he can click his pen or spin the trusty domino in his pocket a single time further without going absolutely mad.

Every sound makes him jump; he is not sure whether that's nerves or hope, the latter of which is surely one of God's little jokes.

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Riley had spent the late afternoon hunting; managing to catch a bracer of rabbits along with some kind of medium-sized reptile that was too slow to avoid a boot to the back of the head. She had them tied together and slung over her shoulder, all bodies dressed and ready for cooking. She might not be able to provide a cheesecake, but she could sure put meat on the table when it was needed.

She was walking quietly back through the woods when she picked up the strange scent. Strange because she'd never smelled anything like it before and strange because she wasn't certain what it was? A captor? A new crazy thing in the woods with an appetite for the residents? She slowed her footfalls, coming closer but keeping trees in between her and whoever, or whatever, it was.

The awareness of a new presence on his periphery brought out prickles on the back of Hal's neck at once; for a moment it was familiar enough that his heart attempted to surge into his throat, but--no.

Still, it was a signature he knew, or nearly, at least. He was becoming rapidly and unhappily aware that wherever he was, it was crawling with unknown elements, and he dealt with disruptions to the known about as well as he dealt with cockroaches. Which was to say badly, and wearing elbow-length gloves if possible.

He stopped stock still and cleared his throat. Helpfully. Whatever he could sense wasn't a werewolf, but it wasn't ...not, either, and he knew what their hearing was like.

She paused at the sound, recognizing it for what it was but not quite sure what it meant. Coming closer, she saw a figure and she stopped beside a tree, ready to bolt or climb it if she needed to.

"Can I help you?"

Because he might not be an evil scientist or have any involvement with them being here. It wasn't like new people didn't just crop up all the time.

The sound Hal made in response to that was probably not one fit for polite company, although he recovered after a second with a visible straightening of shoulders and more appropriate posture for talking to a ~lady. Manners. Somewhat hilarious given his general demeanor and affect were probably best described as bitchily awkward, but then the second was still fully in place. He looked about as appropriate in the woods as he would have on the stage in the middle of Swan Lake.

"Possibly," he hazarded, one hand disappearing into a pocket to re-emerge with a single worn domino. It flipped over and over between his fingers without seeming consciousness, although that was deceptive--he was counting; the number of flips had to be even. There were other rules too, that was just the most easily quantifiable. "Are you--you're not a werewolf."

....yes, thank you Hal. His voice and expression weren't hostile, though, just confused. Wistful. "You're something else. I'm a bit out of my depth here."

There was something resembling a laugh there, although it was mostly just another meaningless noise, this one of self-defense. "A bit doesn't begin to cover it."

She glanced up at one of the cameras looming over them, a frown on her face as she came closer. "I don't know what you're talking about." Another pointed look at the camera before she looked back at him. There were hunters in town and the last thing she wanted was to be outed. Even if Brigid had said one was okay, Riley still hadn't met them and she was holding her own judgment for that occasion.

The scent was definitely coming from him, something different than what she was used to. Not human, then. Not if he could pick up on her being something that had fur. So he was familiar with werewolves, but not any cats? Figured. No one was familiar with cats, it seemed.

"Did you just arrive here?" She could pick up the confusion, eyes moving to the flash of something moving in his hand. White and rectangular. Was that a domino?

Hal had managed to completely gloss over the presence of the cameras; as a predator he should have been practiced in details like that, but then he had been trying not to be one for fifty years, and currently had much bigger worries. He glanced up when she did, though, and frowned with what was probably a deeply incongruous expression under the circumstances. The cameras were strange, or frightening, perhaps to most, but Hal met them with an expression like he'd bitten into a peach and discovered it was rotten on the inside. Mild distaste. It was one thing to be kidnapped, apparently, and quite another to be kidnapped into a science fiction film.

"How very gauche," he murmured as if to underscore the point that his priorities were ridiculous, "Should we talk elsewhere? I haven't exactly secured lodgings, I don't intend to stay."

Which was to say yes, he was new. He stopped flipping the domino and just held it tightly in a fist. "You're not in danger from me," he added after a beat, as earnest as a person who wasn't much used to cajoling could be, "you might say I have a vested interest in secrecy myself."

There, that was ...veiled.

He talked strange, like one of the old movies she'd watched with her mom. It wasn't bad, she just wasn't used to it. She hefted her catch up on her shoulder, giving him a pondering look before she nodded. "Why don't you walk with me? I'm heading back to my little temporary totally not home."

The problem with this place is that there wasn't anywhere that didn't have a camera in range. Even the bathrooms had one, which was just creepy.

She picked up on the small hint he'd given, adding that to the strangeness of his scent. "Whether you're a danger or not has yet to be seen, but I think I can handle you." Cocky on her part since she had no idea what he was, but it was better to put forward confidence than make a potential target of yourself. It was all about body language when you didn't have the ability to use words, and she used hers to put across that she wasn't afraid of him. "I'm Riley."

"Yes, well, I'd prefer not to engage in combat all the same." Painfully earnest. She was the only person he'd met so far who read familiar in a way that was anything close to comforting. "My name is Hal. Hal Yorke, but the surname hardly matters, does it?"

Not here, or so he hoped. If anyone called him Lord Harry this particular evening he'd probably scream in frustration.

He matched her steps, but avoided looking at the bracer over her shoulder; his breathing had actually changed subtly to avoid the scent of the blood, but then again his respiratory functions were already so slowed it didn't change much. "Are there others here? I--er. I have a friend. Not unlike yourself."

Or close enough that the feelings of homesickness only amplified; he indulged them, as wallowing was one of his favorite hobbies after cleaning and the harpsichord. They could keep talking in vague terms, he was more than practiced at that.

"Hardly." It was a slight mimicry of his tone, but it was done with a smile. "You're the only Hal here that I know of, and you're the only Hal I've ever met, so you're Hal the First as far as I'm concerned."

She thought about the best way to answer that question. Something was off with him and it was throwing her concentration, but she couldn't quite pick up what it was. Not yet. "There are. Not like me, but I have a feeling you'd be a bit more familiar with them." It figured that no matter what world people came from, werewolves were the standard fare. "I'm not sure if your friend's here, but if they are, you can try reaching them on the communicator."

Whatever his friend was, probably a werewolf, she knew that's one thing he wasn't. Not in any world would a wolf smell like him. He smelled old, like an attic that hadn't been visited in a few generations. There was still something else she was picking up on, but not getting. It was prickling at her in an almost annoying way, like a word on the tip of her tongue.

Hal's laugh was brief and under his breath, a slight edge of unspecified bitterness to it. "Hal the First. We're all better off if there's never another."

...that wasn't ominous at all.

Whether or not Riley wanted to pick up on that little tidbit, her suggestion sent Hal's eye line to the thing on his wrist; he hadn't tried to do anything with it since receiving the world's least helpful welcoming message; as a person who hadn't experienced technology since computers were the size of entire rooms he found it both distasteful and confusing, which meant he had been trying to ignore its presence.

Now, though, he fiddled hesitantly with the few settings available, which meant had there been anyone listening at the time they'd have been treated to a video of ostensibly uh, nothing. Hal's Condition (capitals audible) meant he had no reflection and couldn't be seen on film. Thanks, the Devil!

Having absolutely no idea what he was doing, rather than use the communicator like a person, say, accustomed to a cell phone, he moved his wrist close to his mouth and spoke into it as if he were using a walkie-talkie. "Tom? Tom, this is Hal, are you there?"

Unsurprisingly, this yielded ...no satisfying results. Perhaps Riley could congratulate herself on having identified what was apparently a Luddite in the wild.

She watched him fidget with the communicator, heard the call for someone named Tom and the subsequent silence as a reply. She almost reached out to pat him consolingly on the shoulder, but she caught herself in time. "He might not be here yet. I see people come and go here all the time. Sometimes people come here alone and sometimes they come with a friend. Or that friend could join them later."

To her, it was kind of a crap shoot. Sure, you'd have someone you knew here with you, but that meant they were stuck here too. Not exactly a warm fuzzy thought to tide you over at night.

Hal's eyes cut toward the aborted movement, blinking rapidly. He wouldn't have protested if she'd touched him, just stepped as neatly as possible out of the way. Having met met all sorts he preferred those who gave another's personal space the berth it deserved. If nothing else it was a distraction from the fresh disappointment of his failure to raise Tom; he could have tried Annie too, he supposed, but the likelihood of her ability to use such devices seemed ...small.

"Ah." Acknowledgement, transparently for the sake of politeness. Hope was not actually a strategy for continuing not to eat people, but it might work to tell himself that if one of his friends were to show, their disappointment would be crushing. (And m...ight result in staking!) "No discernible pattern to or timeline for that sort of thing?"

Of course not, Hal.

"Not that I've seen. I've heard others talk about different timelines and coming from all different times, not to mention worlds, so really, it's one huge giant lottery and you've got a one in four hundred billion chance of it landing on your number."

She wasn't going to mention the fact that they might have used their chance or luck or whatever it was up in being 'chosen' in the first place, not that she'd attribute anything towards being here in the same category as luck unless it had another word in front of it that would get her a dirty look from her mother for using.

"When my number came up I'd rather assumed it would be at the end of something a bit pointier and more wooden."

He nearly smiled at that, the statement definitively lacking the bitterness or fear another person might employ when casually outline the circumstances of what he expected for his own death. At home there was no one who checked the times he burst into suicidal ideation with the frequency and cheerfulness a Disney princess burst into song--it wasn't that his flatmates didn't care, that was largely just Hal, and what Hal was like. He knew the things he'd done.

So if Riley had been trying to suss out exactly what he was, that was uh, probably kind of a clue. The whole. Death by staking thing. Meanwhile, the mention of different worlds and times more piqued his interest than phased him; he'd been told of not unsimilar (totally insane) circumstances back in Barry, though he hadn't witnessed himself. The future was, to summarize greatly, definitely not bright enough for anyone to bother wearing shades, including the vampires now running things. Horrifyingly.

She frowns when he says that, looking over at him as she takes a moment to actually listen to his heartbeat. Oh. Oh wow. Was he... was he a...? Holy crap. Was he?

Riley had an overwhelming urge to poke at him to see if he was real, but she kept her hands to herself. He seemed remarkably skittish for a vampire, if that's what he was, and she didn't want him turning into a bat and flying away. Haha, a bat. Really? Maybe. She'd read all sorts of stories about vampires, and Dracula could turn into a bat and a wolf, right? Who knows what kind he was? Dracula could also go out in the sun and Hal didn't look like he was a shining disco ball or like he was bursting into flames.

She'd never actually met a vampire before. They were as much myths to her kind as her kind were to humans. Maybe they did exist in her world, but if that was the case, she'd never met them. Have a werecat giving you a look, Hal. It was full of awe and curiosity and made her look about five.

Of the looks that Hal was familiar with receiving regarding his status of being, that ...wasn't one of them. Humans, rightly, when they really understood what he was had generally been directly on the other end of his teeth, and he'd relished the absolute terror they felt. In its own way it was as satisfying as blood. Weres, of course, who could hold their own, looked with revulsion, and these days Hal generally agreed with them. At home he'd been holding onto the idea of prophecy, that baby Ever really was the child of legend who would bring an end to all vampires.

So what he did with a look like that, he wasn't sure. He was marginally distracted by freezing up and then allowing a modicum relaxation when she didn't poke him, but not distracted enough not to respond. "Have I said something funny?"

Not funny-haha, although of course his brilliant joke could have been that.

"What? Oh, no. No, not, um..." She blushed when she realized she'd been staring, head dropping down to watch her feet as they walked over grass and dead leaves. "I just, um, I'm surprised."

That was putting it mildly. She'd never even heard of vampires being real before, but she supposed she should be used to that here. New creatures, different worlds. If angels could be real, why not vampires?

"You're my first."

Oh boy. That came out wrong.

"I'm your--"

It was impossible for him to miss the unintentional connotation, given that in his last life (and several before that) he'd been uh, a connoisseur of virgins. All kinds. "Well."

Right, he could focus on the implication that rested on pure fact, although he did it staring fiercely at the closest tree as if it were about to sprout an escape route. "I'm sorry to hear that, you could--"

Really. "No, it would be a misnomer to say you could have done better." Just. Because frankly Hal had only ever met one other vampire so bold as to call himself one of the 'good guys', and that gentleman had been an unmitigated mess.

Edited 2013-06-02 07:40 (UTC)

What made it more embarrassing for Riley was that it could just as easily fall into that category as well. Flirting was not her forte and she'd been surrounded by family up until recently, leaving little to no time for any late night trysts. Not that she's found anyone she'd been interested in trysting with or anything.

Not that she found him trystable. Oh god, this was all going so horribly wrong in her head. Her cheeks flamed redder.

She looked up when he spoke, trying to will the red away. "I don't think I could have done anything. It's not like either of us had a choice here, right? I guess I'm just glad you're not the kind that bursts into flame or likes to rip heads off for no reason."

At the moment Hal might actually have been the least trystable person on the entire Cape, although he would have been pleased to hear a person at least use the word. So much more elegant than many of the other terms available.

He looked with great concentration away from her blush. His instincts understood that her blood would kill him the same way certain other predators knew to stay away from poisonous butterflies, but blood was blood. It threw him off at the best of times, and tonight was not ...the best of times. Frankly speaking.

The laugh he jittered back was brittle at the edges. "I don't," he began, somewhere between incredulous and lame, "burst into flame, no." After a pause. "Or rip off heads as a general rule."

....There had been exceptions. "If we're exchanging impossibilities now, you don't seem like--" he waved, vague, "any of your sort that I've ever met. Although it does explain why you didn't declare us mortal enemies at first glance."

She shrugged, glad to have the topic changed, even in her head, from trysting and who or who wasn't trystable. She so didn't need to go there right now.

"Good. I mean, about the head ripping and non-flamey parts." Her lips pressed in a thin line as she gave a half shrug this time. "There's a lot of 'my kind'. A lot of different types. At least, there are where I come from. But it's kind of just my kind. Nothing like you." That she knew of, anyway. But it made her curious that he knew of her kind, period.

"You, um, have others like, uh, me?"

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if i stay here, trouble will find me

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i am REALLY BAD at past tense fair warning, i'll try not to lapse into present <3

If you slip into present, I'll match it. I'm just used to writing past.

I shall do my best!

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