Easy on the Eyes

[Saiketsu]

"Fuck it," the youth hissed under his breath as time passed by at an irritatingly sluggish pace. "I\'m done with him! Done with every single one of them! Pricks!" The pen in his hand pushed over the sketch paper more furiously, darkly outlining the curves of his precious Jean-Luc\'s face more so than was necessary. The lines around the figure\'s face grew darker as Nikolai Armani set his anger in motion.

Pierre Jean-Luc had stood him up again, preferring to do business for his Commander and Maker, Damien, over the company Nikolai offered. The two were supposed to go out feeding together -- Nikolai hadn\'t fed from live blood in two nights and he was simply famished, even if Pierre wasn\'t. But there was no Pierre. He was always doing business for Damien and the jealousy made the darker half in Nikolai surge through the pen, onto the paper, into an image that now contained too much shadow.

Nikolai sighed as he looked up from his portrait, his made-up green eyes almost sad as they peered through the darkness of nine o\'clock at the large oak tree across the path from the bench where Nikolai found himself this night. He had done his make-up for Pierre. He had sold off a majority of his cocaine for Pierre. He had painted his nails a clear color for Pierre. And now there was no Pierre.

What could he possibly be doing for Damien that is so fucking important? Why can\'t it wait! Judas churned blackly as his thoughts raced to conclusions between Pierre and Damien that could never be. His blood ran colder nonetheless.

No. I\'m so done with men. Fuck them all! The vampire turned his attention back to the sketch pad, flipping the page over in order to start anew. He slipped his hair behind his ear in order to see exactly what he was doing on the paper, allowing Judas to take over his arm and the pen. Well-crafted hands rose from a bloody earth as Nikolai lost himself in his own drawing, letting his guard drop. More shadows. More gore. More hands. More fingers. More blood.

His veins pulsed dryly, reminding Nikolai to Feed, fueling his anger and rage towards his precious Jean-Luc. The one night when Nikolai actually wanted his company to interrupt him, Pierre was a no-show. Now he had no idea what to even do with himself. Good thing he had brought his sketch book...

[sagedistorm]

Sage found himself walking through the park, one of the rare nights where he actually left Kit at home. After a long day of doing practically nothing, this would be his most demanding act in about 36 hours. Walking. Well, his videogames were actually pretty taxing. His thumbs would have been swollen had he been a newbie. But he wasn\'t.

His mother said something about it, but he dismissed it. He was a cat-ninja. Cat-ninjas didn\'t go doing ninja stuff all the time. They had to take some time out to be cats. He wondered if he would ever \'grow out of the phase\' like his mother said he would. Nope. Never.

Under the well-lit path, he found that there was a soft enough padding of woodchips and grass to practice his handstands. He dove straight into it, standing perfectly upside down on his hands. From this view, he could see the underside of everything. The trees that housed birds that seemed to vanish at night (he made a note to never let Kit do handstands), the park lamps that seemed to be so much brighter, the god-awful sight of the gum under the seats, and certainly not least, the person sitting on the bench.

Sage quickly rolled out of his handstand and into a more conventional stance, that meaning standing straight like a normal person should (and that was pushing it for his level of weirdness). "Hey!" he called out.

[Saiketsu]

The vampire flinched involunteerily as a noise broke through his concentration. The pen bled into the paper in a line incorrectly formed do to his shaken hand. The young man looked up with icy green eyes towards the voice in the night, his face set with unnesecary resentment. He had been so completely enrapt in the sketching and cross-hatching before him that Nikolai never noticed anyone else in the general area.

His eyes landed on a young man, a teenager with an unsual sense of charm that Nikolai may have found enchanting if it had been any other night; fresh blood and naive to boot. He looked good. But he was too young, anyway.

Nikolai didn\'t even cap the pen as he remembered his resolution: No boys. "Yeah, what do you want?" His eyes shifted back down to the paper again, barely allowing his hunger to rise. Personally, the vampire didn\'t like to feed on youths unless he had to. Or unless they were practically useless to society. And girls were different than boys anyway; the girls were more heartless and fewer of them were actually worth his time.

[sagedistorm]

Sage stood there for a second. There felt like nothing he could do other than that. He focused his eyes for a better look at the male who spoke. He wore clothes resembling the scenesters of the city and had hair to match. Sage always liked the look, he just understood that it personally wasn\'t for him. It worked on the other guy though. The other\'s question was direct and did not allow for anything other than a direct answer. What did he want? Didn\'t he know better to call out to random people by now?

"I don\'t know... But it\'s pretty boring around here. What\'s up with you?"

Generic and friendly enough. The more he thought on it though, the more he realized that the city was not as friendly as he was being right now. But that didn\'t mean that the person sitting down was necessarily a part of that. No harm. He\'d just watch out better next time.

[Saiketsu]

He looked up now, finally capping the pen and mentally noting that the piece in his hands was another one ready for the scrap pile. The thought made him extremely angry at the little boy who had startled him and the little ones made him even angrier. The last thing Nikolai wanted was some wanna-be teenage little boy hanging over his shoulder all night.

A little fright never hurt anyone. Nikolai\'s eyes gazed directly into the younger boy\'s eyes. He stood only feet from him and the openness about him was still somehow refreshing. Without meaning to, Nikolai\'s eyes traced the boy\'s frame, resting on specific parts he didn\'t exactly want to.

"Look, boy. Are you even aware of how dangerous it could be out here? Alone?" His eyes lifted to the other\'s, poised for an answer with electricity behind them.

[sagedistorm]

"Look, boy..."

It was sharp and not very fitting of the way he sized the boy up to be. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention and prickle down his spine, but he was slowly figuring out that he\'d made a mistake. He didnt know what it was, but tingles passed up and down his legs and arms. Nervousness.

"I\'m aware," Sage said slowly. I just didn\'t give it any thought or any time of day at all. Because I\'m so dumb... But he wasn\'t going to say that. "I can take care of myself pretty good."

[Saiketsu]

Nikolai snorted arrogantly, flipping the sketchbook shut without looking at it. "Yeah? That\'s what all of you guys say. That\'s what I said when I was your age. Now look where it\'s gotten me! I\'m a drug dealer waiting for some junkies. Are you a junkie, kid?"

Of course Nikolai was bluffing. He didn\'t have any significant amount of drugs on him and he actually could take care of himself now.

The vampire smiled just enough to make the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes appear, yet without his elongated canines showing. He may as well play with this fine specimen of a human for the time being. And while Judas inside told him to feed, Nikolai knew better than to feed on youths who weren\'t sickly or delinquent anyway. Trouble follows the good and popular kids.

[sagedistorm]

"N-no," Sage said, taken aback by the sudden outburst. To say \'I dont do drugs; never have, never will\' seemed way beyond stupid. The male\'s smile disarmed him though. In fact, it looked downright scary. But just because something looked scary didn\'t mean that it was.

He found himself staring at the older male\'s face. The smile did something to it, made it more entrancing in a way. He found himself staring too hard (a bad habit when it came to interesting people) and lowered his eyes to the guy\'s Converse\'d feet. "I really can take care of myself, though..."

If Kit were here, Sage could lie and say he had to get cat food or something...

[Saiketsu]

He didn\'t particularly like the way the other was looking at him; the smile faded and Nikolai ran his tongue over his teeth. The remains of his malicious smile lingered on his face as he addressed the boy again. "Can you really, now?" The older man laughed forcefully revealing his fangs to the outside world for the first time in the hopes that this young man would run out of fear back to the cradle of his warm home. "Do you honestly think that there\'s nothing stronger than you crawling in the deepest shadows of the world?"

His irratability was picking up as the minutes dragged by and Nikolai found himself missing the familiar feeling of scratching and blleding writing utensils against course sketch paper. He was missing Pierre and the taste of blood too. But no, he was stuck with an adorable pip-squeak of a kid instead of anything else. No blood. No sex. No happiness whatsoever. Judas began turning all his anger onto the boy before him.

"Oh, I don\'t think you have any idea what you\'ve gotten yourself into, you precious little thing." This evil smirk was laced with fangs. He had not yet even decided whether he would let the boy without harm, but as the moments dragged by, the boy\'s opportunity for escape dwindled steadily.

[sagedistorm]

Sage\'s guard dropped completely and he began to laugh a bit as the young man revealed a mouth-full of stage-fangs.

"You almost had me going there," he huffed, letting the laughter come in and out as it pleased. "I thought you were going to, like, shoot me or something..." he sighed out his last bit of laughter and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. There were tingles still going down his leg, but he didn\'t know what from. The guy was joking with him. And he was what, in his early or mid twenties? He was most likely just bored and wanted to screw around with some kid\'s head.

He regained his little bit of composure, the laughs of earlier given way to an odd contentness. "What have I gotten myself into?" he asked, wishing the inner-shivers in his legs would just stop. Maybe the guy would tell him that he was a werewolf or something. But staring ever-closer, the guy\'s teeth didn\'t look like most fakes. Must have been ceramic caps or something.

[Saiketsu]

Nikolai\'s eyes rolled as he played along with the boy. Unbelievable, he thought to himself. Judas smiled inwardly at the fish in his net. He laughed fakely before abruptly shifting the emotion, as if nothing had ever been funny. Let\'s fuck around with this kid for a little while. "What\'s so funny, kid? Haven\'t you ever seen a monster before?" He flashed another toothy grin.

He shifted his legs the slightest amount and put the sketchbook on the bench next to him. The vampire stood up slowly, sizing the boy up. He was basically as tall as Nikolai which gave the vampire no opportunity to look down upon him. Regardless, Nikolai put his hands into his pants pockets extremely casually. He would have loved to hack into the younger boys mind, but his ability was drained for the time being and neither Nikolai nor Judas was in the mood for a killer headache. "Well?"

[sagedistorm]

"Of course," Sage chuckled. "AVP, Halo, Naruto, DragonCon... One time, I think I saw a wolfman walking down my street; no lie! But it was dark and only the moon was out--plus my actual house is pretty far away from the street itself, so it might have just been a homeless guy..." The older guy must have been feeling pretty lame having to subject himself to talking with someone Sage\'s age.

"Do you really think you\'re a monster though? I mean, I saw internet cults and stuff where the people buy fangs and join together with other people so they could get blood and stuff..." By now, any fear that was left in his mind was ignored, as the shivering in his leg. The man was just a man. A radically cool one with tattoo sleeves--but just a normal guy.

[Saiketsu]

Judas snarled inside of him, turning Nikolai black with hatred and indignation. To be compared with such... posers! was an insult to everything that Nikolai was. There was nothing worse to him than groupie vampires.

"Pussies. The lot of them," he retorted bitterly. Any other night, this boy\'s innocence to the situation may have been ridiculously cute, but Nikolai wasn\'t in the mood for playing games. "Those aren\'t monsters. Those are figments of someone\'s imagination after whacking-off lost its charm. And those \'cults\' as you call them, well, they\'re nothing but the followers of the forty-year-old pediphiles who whack off while drawing up cartoon characters. They find it fashionable to drink blood from each other, like it\'s the new \'in-thing\'."

Nikolai stepped closer to the boy, finding himself positioned not three feet from him. "I mean real monsters. Do you have any idea what the fuck is actually in this city? Waiting for an adorable little boy like yourself to walk alone in a park one night. While there\'s no one around..."

[sagedistorm]

"Oh," he nodded. This guy was just a little bit nuts, Sage decided. Or maybe he was still funning with him. As he learned in drama class: A good actor always stays in character. If the guy was playing vampire, of course he would scoff at others who played the same game. It was only natural.

"There are rapists and murderers--" he stopped, alomst having said \'drug-dealers\'. He didn\'t know whether the guy sold or toked, but he wasn\'t going to bring that up again--joking or not. "You\'re not a rapist-killer, are you?" he asked.

Even though most people questioned it, Sage had the slightest bit of common sense, or rather his body did. He back up a few paces. He regretted it seconds later when he was further in the grassy area and the overhead lights grew dimmer by the step. He still had a mean right-leg though, and it was just shivering with energy should he need it.

[Saiketsu]

Judas smiled openly at his ridiculous question approaching him faster than the boy could make the distance wider between them. There was still the debate as to what he was going to do with the little boy. Thirst pulled at him, but if he killed the boy someone might come looking for him. Yet there was no one around and the thought made the teenager\'s blood more alluring to Nikolai.

No. He decided silently but firmly behind green eyes staring down on the young lad. No more boys. You said you were through with them. Find a nice, tight, little bimbo later. Girls are more stupid than boys are anyway, and this kid\'s nowhere near the best option. Damien will be on your tail faster than you can blink if it caused even the slightest stirring in the government. His smile never faded.

"For all you know, honey," he added the pet name in hopes for a bit of fright, "I very well might be." He was such a pretty, little thing, this boy.