Reviving Thursday Traditions

[Saiketsu]

Quinn had just finished sipping his toast when Rachel asked him to explain the very topic he was dreading most. He hadn't even put the glass down and took another chug of his drink with an eye roll. The flute clacked down onto the table shortly thereafter.

"Oh that." He blushed a soft pink as he tried to recall everything that had happened. It took him a minute to find a proper beginning. "I've only messed around with one... guy... since moving into the city. Up until about a year or two ago, I was strictly... normal guys... even though I knew they existed." He dropped his voice to guard against eavesdroppers. God only knew who was immortal nowadays - especially in this city. "They're everywhere! It's like you turn around and there's another one! And they're all... down with the cause, if you get my meaning." It was Quinn's way of talking about sexuality without alerting the straights in the area to change their opinions of the people they were around. It was funny to Quinn how finding out that a guy likes sucking cok changes some people's opinions of the guy. He had seen it too often and refused to talk about gay shit unless there was a safe environment for it. In a cafe in the middle of the morning was hardly a safe space. "It's like nothing I've ever seen!

"Is Damien...?" He waggled his eyebrows at Rachel suggestively and took a sip of his coffee.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel paid close attention to the eye roll and blush, listening with a smile on her face as he spoke.  While she knew that the city had an abnormally high concentration of vampires and other such creatures, she didn't know it was so gay-friendly!  When Quinn asked about Damien, Rachel let out a guffaw.  Now that was a funny thought.

"No, he's miserably straight,"  she snickered.  "Sorry to disappoint."  Not that he was homophobic by any means--at least not that she was aware of.  And if he was, well, she'd definitely be changing his mind about that.  Fast.

"Tell me about this guy."  She leaned forward on her elbows, folding her hands and resting her head on top of them.

[Saiketsu]

"Very disappointing," Quinn said with a dramatic touch of disappointment for the humor of it. Damien was cute, but too young looking for him. He preferred his men older and less conservative. Which brought him back to Jerry...

"Ugh," he said in response to her push. Where to even begin?

"Well, I suppose I should tell you what I actually do for a living, now that Damien isn't hovering so close.

"I was a dancer for a while. Like, a stripper. There was this gentleman's club called the Pompeii, I don't know if you happen to remember it - not that there would be a reason for you to. It was a fairly classy place as far as strip joints go. I really liked it, too. I did that for a few years. We'd have all sorts of clientele come in - that's how I started to learn about... well, you know.

"We had this one regular," Quinn continued, debating in the back of his head what was TMI and what wasn't. This was Rachel, after all. Did they ever do too much info to each other? "Jeremiah Peterson. Jerry. He's the kind of guy you'd typically find at a strip joint: arrogant, thinks he's the shit, tries to get all the dancers in bed with him - it was kind of a silent competition to see who could refrain from sleeping with him because, well, Jerry is... you know." Quinn looked around at the restaurant and pointed at his canines while doing so, trying to be nonchalant about telling her that Jerry is a vampire.

"Anyway, I was up to my usual, dating shitbag men who either cheated on me or tried to control me, telling me I couldn't dance, I couldn't work at the Pompeii. Yeah, just normal things," he waved dismissively at her expression of concern and anger. "And then along came John.

"John was not an asshole. In fact, John was very nice. Too nice. We dated for like three, four months, maybe? He ended up proposing to me, wanting me to meet his parents and his siblings. He was trying to be like some kind of saviour figure in my life and he knew, like, nothing about what it meant to be broke, depressed, and not accepted for the person you are." There was a large amount of bitterness in his voice and he took that opportunity to take a sip of his coffee, forgetting that he was probably talking a mile a minute trying to catch her up on his life.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel mostly let Quinn talk, inserting a few comments or noises here and there.  Like an "Ooh!" in response to his previous job, a laugh while he described this Jerry character, and an angry scoff at his shitty dating history.  The longer he went on the easier it was for her to forget about literally everything and fall back into who she was.  It was just them again, talking about shit like they always had.  A warm and comfortable feeling overshadowed any nerves she had previously, but there was still that undercurrent of sadness lurking beneath the surface.

"Ugh, gross."  She said after he took a break from talking about John.  Her expression showed sympathy.  "I'm sorry."  She wanted to ask if he loved this John guy, but from the context and tone in his voice, she guessed probably not.  Sipping delicately at her drink, she waited for him to continue.

[Saiketsu]

"Well, at the time Jerry was..." He began, and then clammed up when he realized what he was about to admit. "Jerry was actually kind of supportive throughout the whole thing. And by that I mean he actually listened to me bitch about it all - and you know what that does for me." Quinn gestured to himself coyly with a self-deprecating flutter of eyelashes. He was notorious for letting any small symbol of affection from a companion be the thing that made him think he was in love. Or something like that. Rachel had been through too many of his relationships to not understand his self-mockery - five year would never change that fact.

"So he was being all nice to me, letting me vent, getting me drunk like a true gentleman and..." Quinn was quickly turning red, no longer looking at her, "... I almost took him home with me... while John and I were still together. Like, Rachel, we were in the fucking doorway of my apartment building tugging at each others clothes."  He was embarrassed to admit it; as someone who had been cheated on multiple times, he had sworn that he would never do such a thing to someone else, no matter what. Quinn might have been a hoe, but he was a hoe with standards and rules - no fucking around while in a relationship. He gave her a moment to react and then dove right back into the story.

"I ended up breaking up with John a week or two after. He took it really badly at first, but we ended things actually pretty amicably.

"And then like a week or two later, I fucked Jerry." He finished his explanation just as the waitress rounded the corner with their food. His face was still bright red as the waitress dropped off their food. He glanced up at Rachel to see her reaction.

[The Cedar Witch]

She gasped dramatically "Ugh!  Quinn!" and grinned at his scandalous drunk almost-sex with Jerry.  Rachel was a no-judgments kind of person when it came to sex, but being in a monogamous relationship made it a bit in the grey area.  Even though John sounded like a jerk and they were going to break up anyway.

Rachel let out a sharp laugh in response and was about to say something when the waitress came back with their food.  Her stomach growled audibly.  She waited for the waitress to be out of earshot before replying.

"So was it good?  Tell me you didn't regret it after."  She leaned forward in her seat and reached for her fork without looking away from Quinn.

[Saiketsu]

He liked the act of catching up with her. There was a pleasant giddy feeling in him as he told her about the past few years, a joy that kept a smile not far from his face. He forgot how much he needed moments like these, how important Rachel had been in his life.

Quinn picked up his fork and knife and dug in as he explained, waiting for an appropriate moment to shove food into his mouth. Fuck, he was hungry. He made a face halfway between a grimace and a smile, something laced with a sheepish, naughty guilt. "Well, he serves his purpose. I definitely didn't regret waiting to fuck him, and I definitely didn't regret sleeping with him when I finally did... mostly." He smiled and regarded his food with reverence for a few moments.

"We were kind of just... sleeping together for a little while, but I was only sleeping with him." Quinn dropped his voice lower and dipped his head unconsciously to relay his next message to her. "He was my first bite. He bit me the first night and oh my god, Rachel. I fucking melted. I have never wanted to be killed more than I did that night." Quinn blushed as he remembered the night, bucking his hips as Jerry's teeth slid into his skin, the twinge of pain, the rush of pleasure that pushed him over the edge as Jerry continued thrusting into him. The memory made his body begin its inappropriate reaction, though he felt no shame in it. There were many nights they had discussed their sexual ventures together.

"What about you?" Quinn asked, taking a sip of mimosa. "Has dear, sweet Damien ever bitten you?" A devilish smirk lined his lips as swirled the boozey juice.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel poured a healthy amount of syrup onto her waffles until they were saturated.  Eating while Quinn talked, she tried to pace herself as best as she could so she didn't look like a wild animal.  But she was wicked hungry and the waffles were delicious.  She watched him avidly as he gave her the juicy details.  Definitely wasn't TMI--they had talked about way more personal stuff before (and even compared dick pic photos they had both received).

It felt just like old times.

When he asked her about Damien she nearly choked on her food.  Images of the first night he (finally) bit her filled her mind in vivid detail.  Her face was crimson as she put down her fork and took a sip of coffee.

"Yes," she finally said after she had cleared her throat of sticky waffle.  "But not the first time we slept together."  While she wasn't unaccustomed to sharing these sorts of stories with Quinn, it was weird to talk about Damien because he was, well, Damien.  "And same--melting, take it all, kill-me-now."  She leaned back in her chair and let out a little laugh.  "Ahhh, God."

She wasn't about to admit that it was basically how last night went for her.  Not this second anyway.  Unconsciously she rubbed the tender bruised part of her collarbone that was obscured by her shirt before taking a sip of her mimosa.

[Saiketsu]

He laughed heartily at her display, relating too well to it, and clasped his hand over his mouth to avoid getting too loud. "Oh man, it's awful, isn't it? Like, we should be totally afraid of this shit. Now they have dedicated clubs, a subcategory of government, and even a fucking dating app dedicated to finding a human snack." Quinn took a bite of food and squirrelled it into the side of his mouth to talk quickly, his hand covering his mouth, lest Rachel see his mashed food. "I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, you know? But it's weird to me that there are still people in this city that don't know what's going on.

"Oh!" Quinn exclaimed, remembering what he was saying before. His fatigue was fading the more he ate and laughed. He finished his bite quickly and wiped his hands on a napkin. "That's right. So back to fucking Jerry: I made a habit of sleeping with him and I'd be over there, you know, several times a week. To me, if someone wants to see me that much, they'd be down with dating me, right?" He licked his top gums behind closed lips. "Nope. Not fucking Jerry. Which started out as no big deal, funny even. He like down-right refused to go out anywhere with me unless I fucked him first, and just refused to be any kind of social creature outside of his usual haunts. Like getting him to go on a fucking date with me was a nightmare. He was like stuffy and stupid the entire time, refusing to do anything but joke around. That happened like once or twice.

"So I gave up on that venture and just kinda settled with the fact that he wasn't there to date me, only sleep with me. But then he'd like be supportive if something was happening in my life, like more than a friend. Like, he helped me move a friend out of a bad situation, and he took care of me the night I got fired from the Pompeii - that's a long story, trust me. So like, there were good qualities there. Like he wasn't an asshole the entire time. But... just emotionally vacant, you know? Which makes me sad because I think I actually really like him." His accent slipped in and out of his words as he ran through them without any poise, his hands making appropriate gestures of frustration, ticking off the incidents, waving her concern off dismissively, clapping the back of one hand rapidly in his palm. He gave a frustrated sigh and skewered his french toast a bit too passionately.

"I approached him about it like a month ago finally and I was like 'why won't you date me? You don't mind fucking me. You haven't minded for the past like, two years..' And he was like 'you know I don't do that. You knew that going in.' " He paused looking at the look on Rachel's face. "Yeah. Two fucking years, Rache. Over his place like almost every other day for two fucking years." He held up two fingers to show his point - more for the catharsis than for Rachel's benefit.

[The Cedar Witch]

Jerry sounded like a total fuckboy.  And she really wished that Quinn didn't like him.

"Quinn!  What the fuck!  You deserve better!" She jumped in as he took a bite of food.  It wasn't quite scolding, but her voice carried the same tone of concern/pity.  She sighed in frustration on his behalf before digging into her waffle again.  Her eyes widened when Quinn continued, and she made an angry noise through her mouthful.

"That's wicked shitty!"  She followed Quinn with slipping into a more Massachusetts speech pattern.  Quietly, while fiddling around with a bite on her plate, she repeated the word "wicked" a couple of times, emphasizing the accent, and laughed at herself.

"Wait a second--there's an app?"  She put down her fork and leaned forward, face the picture of disbelief.  "Christ, they really do have an app for everything."

[Saiketsu]

"Girl, you don't even know. Wait until I show you this shit." He dug in his pocket for his phone, ignoring her admonishing of him. Yes, he knew two years was too much and too long to wait for someone like Jeremiah Peterson, but wasn't it so like him to get hung up on a boy that was a disappointment? "Like there were times where I purposely wouldn't go and see him for like weeks at a time, and still he would hit me up like nothing had happened. Fucking bullshit." Distracted by his phone, Quinn unlocked and scrolled through his apps.

"So like, okay," he said looking down at his phone trying to find the Lovebite app. "So we had that conversation like a few weeks ago. And then I overhear that one of the fucking dancers from the Rabbit where I work and where Jerry has his gigs, has been sleeping with him! Like multiple times since Jerry and I had that conversation, less than a month ago.

"Obviously now I'm ripped-shit and so I say something. Like hello!" Quinn seethed with another angry (cathartic) hand gesture. "Like am I going crazy? That's shitty, right? I was like 'hey Jerry, what the fuck? Like, I don't care that you fuck other people because clearly you aren't interested in anything other than sex, but why the fuck would you fuck Freddy of all people?' Like this is my fucking boss, Rachel. Now he's going around talking about how Jerry is leading me on and some other bullshit drama - because that's who Freddy is, and dancers are just like a bunch of chicks - no offense. And then the kicker is that Jerry doesn't see anything wrong with it!

"He was like," and Quinn made a poor, bitter imitation of Jerry's voice, deepening his own and adding an appropriate amount of sleaze, " 'Oh, what do you care? There was an opportunity and I took it.'

"Oh Rachel, I was beyond pissed." Quinn downed the rest of his mimosa, remembering the need to drink himself into oblivion that night. "I was like 'Oh. Ok. Cool. Well, have fun with that, you son of a bitch.' And I haven't been talking to him since.

Quinn laughed bitterly, as he found what he was looking for on his phone. "So then I found this," he handed her the phone, with an app the looked very much like a dating profile open and a picture of Jeremiah Peterson displaying his crotch to the world. "He made this three weeks ago." Another stab at his toast, now soggy with syrup, but half eaten. Quinn cut off a piece too big for his mouth and shoved it in anyway.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel stared at him, mouth agape, for the majority of the time he talked.  Every now and then she would overlap him with "Are you fucking kidding me?" and "What the fuck!" along with other similar sounds of anger and disbelief.  Already she wanted to murder this guy.

She took the phone when he handed it to her, and her eyes went huge.  "Here for fun with no strings attached," She read, voice angrier toward the end "Are you fucking serious?"  The whole thing was too infuriating for her to want to go through and look at the app.  Handing the phone back to Quinn, she took a sip of her neglected coffee. 

"Quinn, and I mean no offense, but this guy sounds like a total sleaze."  She sighed angrily and took another mouthful of food, speaking with it tucked into her cheek.  "I am so fucking sorry you're dealing with this."

[Saiketsu]

"Oh I know he is," he said with raised eyebrows and high energy behind his voice, chewing on his toast. "He absolutely is a sleaze. I was just the idiot who decided to try to make something worthwhile with him." He took the phone back and padded through a few buttons. "So just to be a bitch, I'm on there now too. But I only posted mine this past Monday." He held the phone aloft to show Rachel his profile.

"So that's whatever. Like what can I do about it, you know? Besides, he's got a super hot best friend, I'll just fuck him instead to get back at him." Quinn blushed at the mere mention of sleeping with Malakai. He was gorgeous, alluring, older (he always had a thing for the older ones...), and had more talent than anyone could shake a stick at. Besides that, he was actually nice. Too bad he was way out of Quinn's league. "Even his best friend reached out to me about the whole thing! He was really sweet, apologizing and shit for Jerry. At least he was nice to me. Apparently they even had an argument about it." Quinn clicked his phone closed after she had looked through it and put it on the table between them. Calling defeat, he put his fork down and finished his last mouthful of french toast, having barely touched his eggs (the bacon had obviously been devoured within the first couple of minutes of it arriving in front of him).

[The Cedar Witch]

"Uhhhmm, hello!  Yes!  Fucking do that!"  She had finished about half of her food before putting down her fork in favor of nursing the coffee.  "Like, what's stopping you?  Ya know?"  If this Jerry guy could fuck around then so could Quinn!

"Tell me about the hotbestfriend."  She said the phrase as if it were all one word.

[Saiketsu]

"What do you mean, do what?" Just one more bite, he decided. Quinn found a particularly crunchy-looking piece of crispy french toast to shove into his mouth as Rachel responded. He was beyond full, but the texture wouldn't be right when he went to microwave the meal later, and he felt guilty about leaving so much food uneaten - even though he had every intention of taking it home. "You mean fuck Mal? No, no nonononono." His eyebrows were as high up on his forehead as they could get.

"You don't understand," he said forgivingly. "Malakai is, like, the cool kid in the band, okay? He's the one that's like always busy and super talented and has his whole life put together, okay? He's also much older than Jerry. There's a reason he's the lead singer. He's too well-composed for someone like this." He made a circular gesture around his own face as he chewed. "Following that road is only going to lead to more emotional exhaustion and burnout. And I need recovery time."

Her words had nonetheless coaxed a hint of blush out of him. More than once he imagined what it would be like to be pressed against Mal in the kitchen of his condo, lips moving over each other. That smile of his pressed into Quinn's shoulder or his neck. When things with Jerry were decent, there was once or twice where his twisted brain did the ol' switcheroo and imagined Malakai in Jerry's place. The fit was never proper, but it did give him some fun. Afterwards, Quinn reminded himself that that wasn't cool to either Jerry or his friendship with Mal. Too many times the human was left with the embarrassment of having Jerry's scent on him as he interacted with Mal at parties and events. In those moments, he wished he didn't. Quinn sighed through his nose and looked off into the rest of the restaurant, casually taking in the sights of different customers.