Breaking the Ice

[Saiketsu]

His throat was tight, but he kept an amused smile on his face for the sake of appearances as he helped Rachel to the bedroom, holding her waist as they went. "I'll be back," he cooed to Rachel with a tinge of annoyance. "You get into bed." She made some kind of murmur at him as he left the room, closing the door behind him as he left.

"Well now, sorry about that," Damien smiled at Jake stiffly, purposely avoiding eye contact with Pierre. He didn't exactly know what to say in that moment, the inertia of Rachel's drunkenness stealing the propriety from the room. "I do hope she wasn't too much trouble, Lisa-Joe. She can be quite a handful when she finds someone she likes." He almost told them that it didn't happen often, but decided that it would be best to leave that little detail quiet for the time being, lest he come off as too controlling. Damien allowed his gaze to shift to Pierre, the anger written deep under his smirk.

---

In the moment that Damien shifted his attention onto him, Pierre stiffened, thankful - not for the first time - that he was telepathically dumb. Of course he would hear about it later, but there was a bit of relief when Damien turned back to the others without addressing him calmly in a foreign language, pretending to talk about something amusing as he chewed him out so the others wouldn't suspect. Pierre stepped closer to Lisa-Joe hoping the proximity would ease the eventual wrath as Damien calmed down. Thank fuck for his cool head!

"Aw, and we were having so much fun too!" He weaved an arm through Lisa-Joe's as soon as she stood, holding her elbow close to him. "It's not our fault that Rachel is terrible at pool. Besides, when's the last time you let her party? She's still a damn kid, for Christ's sake! She deserves to have fun sometimes, unlike some people."

Damien's finger rose and the smirk on his face deepened, though Pierre couldn't tell if Damien was playing along with the jest or honestly threatening him. "You're digging your own grave, you know. I made you; I can un-make you very easily." He then turned back around and descended the stairs he had just come up, apparently deciding that pool time was officially done. "You just wait until they leave."

"Oh no, I'm leaving with them." Pierre called after Damien confidently as the elder descended the stairs. "I won't let you yell at me."

"Jean-Luc..." Damien warned lowly, emphasizing his annoyance by using his human name.

"Guillaume..." Pierre parried with a grin and ducked as Damien shot back a fiery glare that would have scalded the hair from his eyebrows had he caught it. Instead, Pierre waggled his eyebrows at Jake and Lisa-Joe, following his sire at a safe distance.

[Black Philip]

"Not at all Damien," Lisa-Joe replied. "You have a treasure there, but I can tell you already know that."

Jake decided to take Damien's advice and say nothing  as this all played out between him and Pierre. Lisa-Joe was laughing and took Pierre's arm, and it made Jake wonder if maybe they were really joking. He let out a nervous laugh. Lisa-Joe walked with Pierre, and followed Damien downstairs, whispering into his ear, "They look the same angry. Honestly I couldn't tell them apart up there."

She'd be seeing Rachel again, and while she didn't often feel sorry for people, she felt sorry for Rachel. She also wondered why she had to stay in doors all the time, on the off chance that this Laurent character would show. Jake and she had people wanting to kill them all the time. Lisa-Joe had forgotten how frail a human could be, and that Pierre had been attacked. She'd had possibly the best night of anyone, and was flying high as she went downstairs. She almost levitated as she walked. Pierre was strangely a gentleman, in an unorthodox and cowboy sort of way. Lisa-Joe didn't mind either.

Jake took up the rear of the group, deciding that Lisa-Joe had been projecting on him during the ride over. It was clearly she who had a crush on someone in this house. She looked borderline like a school girl. He smiled at that actually. He didn't know Pierre personally, but Lisa-Joe hated most guys, but she sure kept coming back to him. Jake decided that was all he needed to like Damien's fledge. He already had very confusing feelings about Damien, and tried not to think about them.

[Saiketsu]

Pierre began to laugh at Lisa-Joe's comment when Damien turned and gave him a hard glare; the laugh got stuck in his throat and came out like a cough instead. He stepped down onto the kitchen floor and crossed to the corner cabinets where he lifted himself carefully and painfully into a sitting position on the kitchen counter, his feet dangling and bumping into the cabinet doors beneath. He winced once, biting his lip as the burn folded onto itself. "I'd just like to remind you that you invited me here tonight. And I'm not feeling very welcome here."

"Oh, well then maybe you should leave," Damien said with a small smirk, leaning down to retrieve a chilled bag of blood from the back of the refrigerator. He picked up the baggy and threw it to his fledge faster than he could catch it. The sack of blood hit pierre square in the chest and slipped down onto his lap, forcing a groan from him. Pierre he remained smiling, his wound untouched. Damien was much too careful to do something that could accidentally hurt him and the jest was more appreciated than any cooing from any caretaker.

---

"You see for some reason," Damien began, leaning against the island as he spoke to Lisa-Joe and Jake, "I allow Pierre here to operate as my right hand in my lineage. Believe it or not, he is irreplaceable to me." He looked over at Jake amused, a smile pushing the dimples deeper into his face. "And this is how he repays me for his immortality, command, and access to resources."

Pierre guffawed and ripped into the bag of chilled blood, sucking it slowly without bothering to get a glass in the cabinet near his head. "In return," he said, lips bloodied, "I have to deal with this miserable little shit. You two met him when he's social." Pierre gestured at Jake and Lisa-Joe. "Before he and Rachel started sleeping together, he was a lot more prissy than this." Pierre made a dismissive gesture with the bag of blood before returning it to his mouth with a widening smile.

Damien flushed with the blood that he had just drank, his face and throat flashing hot with embarrassment for having his sexlife spoken about. Reflexively, Damien reached for the cabinet door next to Pierre's face with his mind, flicking it open into his son's face faster than he could recognize. An electric twinge ran through Damien's eye into the back of his head, but the point had been made; Pierre exclaimed a groan and knocked his head back into the cabinet behind him upon impact. As he realized what had happened, he started to laugh. The elder vampire picked up his glass of blood and took a long sip, smiling widely at Jake and Lisa-Joe.

"Forgive me. I've been waiting for that moment to come up for a very long time.

"Now, what were we discussing?" Once again, he leaned against the kitchen island with a charming smile.

[Black Philip]

Lisa-Joe was able to use this moment to connect a bit better with Damien. She saw him as an older, more boring, Jake. Pierre had a similar energy to herself, or she felt anyway. She saw the connections. She smiled warmly at him, and let all the sass out of her voice... for once.

"You're both very lucky to have one another," she said, looking between them, and then at Jake. "Can you take him off my hands though? He annoys me."

Jake's little storm cloud formed, and he frowned deeply, crossing his arms over his chest, and looking away. Lisa-Joe crept up beside the pouty Ventrue, and began to poke him in the side with her fingers.

"Come on," she said like a mother trying to feed him. "Do it."

"No. Fuck you," Jake said, refusing to give in and swating at her hand.

"Do it," she said louder, poking him harder, and now starting to whistle at him like he was a dog.

"You're a total bitch, you know that right," Jake said, finally turning to her in a huff.

"Prissy little shit," she snapped back. There was a long pause. Jake was clearly trying to stifle a smile.

"Come on, let it out you squishy little nerve. You're going to blow otherwise."

Then Jake did something Damien and Pierre had never seen him do. He laughed. It was high pitched, and full of life, and there was something very human about him currently. He was just a sixteen year old boy for a moment. Lisa-Joe hugged him.

"I hate you so much," he winned.

"I know sweetie. I know."

She turned to Damien, as Jake pulled away. "We weren't discussing anything, but tell me of France. I haven't been back since a brief stint in the twenties, and that was for Anarch business."

"You were in France in the thirties," Jake corrected. "You were with me in the twenties in New York."

"Who remembers decades anymore," Lisa-Joe said, shrugging at her own error.

[Saiketsu]

Damien chuckled at Lisa-Joe's first comment, appreciating the comment deeply. Pierre had always been more than a fledgling to him. He was a brother, a son, a sounding board, a rock that kept him tethered to the earth when his grief threatened to consume him. He had been there through it all and Damien had always been thankful for the night that he spotted the young blacksmith in Calais almost 700 years ago. There had been tension between them, of course, but they had always understood each other. When Damien was mad with grief over losing Lucretia and his fledglings, attacking humans indiscriminately, it was Pierre who restrained him, forced him back to reason. When Damien had gone to Ground, it was Pierre who had slit a sheep's throat and Awoken him. They had parted as brothers, knowing their time would come again to meet.

And when Nadia resurfaced in his life, Damien could do nothing but keep whatever external forces that could stand between Pierre and his happiness out of his way. Even if it meant withholding his mistrust and anger towards Nadia.

But as Lisa-Joe turned on Jake and attacked him, Damien couldn't help but see himself in Jake, Pierre in Lisa-Joe. He remembered the times that Pierre, drunk and jolly, wrapped his thick arm around Damien's neck and pulled him to the ground, wrestling with him in an ill-humored attempt at making Damien feel better. So when Jake McCloud smiled and laughed, so did Damien, remembering and enjoying the childish display. That pulse of humanity that echoed in Jake's laugh passed over him as well and for the briefest of moments, he forgot about the weight of his age, the wars he survived, and the burdens he bore and just... stood there in the kitchen. He was present, inhabiting his skin instead of his thoughts, a feat that he thought himself capable of only with Rachel.

"Then I'd hate to tell you, my dear," he said to Lisa-Joe, his tone reflecting his ease, "but you've been to France much more recently than I have. The last time I was there, it was shortly after my sire and our lineage had been hunted." He spoke casually, for the information was now simply part of his and Pierre's history. "I was last in Paris in..." Damien looked at Pierre questioningly, as if he didn't trust his own recollection, "... the mid-1600's?" Pierre nodded, finishing the blood in the pouch and rubbing his sore nose. "We lived in Paris for a short time with Nadia Dominik and Sonya Turkevich. Do you know them? They live here in the city now. I fear Sonya may have made a bit of a name for herself." Damien paused, realizing that he may not want to bring about the wrong attention to the Ancient. "She used to throw extremely elaborate Masquerade parties every Halloween and New Year's."

[Black Philip]

"A shame," she said, hating when someone couldn't go their homeland. She knew she came from England, but for her South Carolina was truly home. She'd traveled to her old lands, and estates. They were now all broken up into developments and condos, and only a tiny portion of her old home was preserved by the historians. Jake had no place he wanted to go back to. The city was home. That was all he knew anymore. He listened as Damien talked about losing his sire and lineage. He decided to tell him something big.

"I never had a sire," he said. "Well, I mean, I obviously had one. She was just killed by the Camarilla less than a year after I was made. It's why I avoid London."

He matched Damien's matter of fact tone about his history. He had no lineage to speak off. He was banned from his clan, and wouldn't have wanted to return to them anyway. Lisa-Joe seemed to realize the road Jake might go down if not stopped.

"Well, my sire is a total cunt, and I only see her like once a decade for a month or so at a time. It's enough for us. I'm glad you have so many of your family with you," she said to Damien, pointing to Pierre, and including Rachel as family. "And I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them. Do they live in Central?"

Jake found Delilah lurking in the hallway. He didn't want to scare her again, and so he sat down on the floor and called softly to her in French.

[Saiketsu]

"We're scattered all over the place," Pierre responded to Lisa-Joe's questions of his fledglings. "A few of us live in South District. I own the Riverfront Lofts and my fledges Finny and Monique live there. Jenella and a few of Monique's fledges live in Central. Finny's three live in Northwest, and... a couple more live right at the border of the East. Mostly because the rent is way too expensive out here. Only Damien can afford it out here." He smiled cockily at Damien, who said nothing and drank deep from his glass.

"Everyone else is outside of the city. I have a couple fledges and theirs living in New York, one living in L.A., another in Omaha." He hopped down off of the cabinet, cringing moderately as he did so. "There's about..." Pierre threw his hands on Damien's shoulders roughly, throwing him off balance for the briefest of moments, forcing the elder to drop his folded foot and steadying himself firmly with both feet, "...thirty of us now? And they're all mine and of mine. You see Damien here hasn't made a fledge in almost four hundred years. He relies on me and mine to grow the lineage."

The elder vampire turned and looked at Pierre with an annoyed expression. "Have I ever told you that you talk to much?"

Pierre smirked and tilted his head at his sire. "All the time," Pierre responded, fixing his voice so it came out as an imitation of Damien's timbre and annoyance. Pierre smiled as it resulted in Damien sucking in on his teeth sharply and turning to ignore him.

"Tell me of your sire, Jake. I am sorry to hear of her passing. I can't even imagine what it must be like to lose a sire so early soon after death."

[Black Philip]

Lisa-Joe moved herself behind Jake, letting out a playful laugh, before aggressively cutting her throat with her finger. Her eyes seemed to warn them both, and if they needed anything more she shook her head no. Jake saw none of this. He was busy watching Delilah slowly, and cautiously approach. He stretched out a hand, and this time she sniffed it. The wet feeling of her nose made Jake feel ticklish, and she licked the tips of Jake's fingers, before sitting politely within petting distance. The message was clear.

We've made progress, but you're still new.

Jake began to lightly run a hand down her back, surprised by how soft she was. The Ventrue heard Damien's question and turned his head, looking up at him. He decided not to say much. It wasn't a happy topic, and they were having such a nice time, but he'd asked, and so Jake decided to share.

"Her name was Sophie DuBeck, and her sire was Alexander of Paris. He ruled the city from about 1,000 to 1250. Sophie was his last child. She was very kind and very beautiful. She said she had big plans for me, although I don't know what for. I was made without permission so the Camarilla of London executed her. I was... placed with a clan elder for supervision. Then I met Lisa-Joe."

It was brief, and bullet pointed, but somehow he thought Damien would prefer that to a long drawn out thing. Lisa-Joe looked surprised and relieved that Jake was talking about it so easily, and she looked at Damien for a moment with just a tinge of jealousy.

[Saiketsu]

Damien listened and watched Jake pet Delilah, pleased that he was respectful of her caution. He never trusted anyone unless dogs did too - that was something he learned as a human. Delilah, as silly and dramatic as she could be, was his daytime protector and alarm. She had been with him since she was a puppy and they had spent many days asleep in bed together before Rachel came to take her place. He trusted Delilah with his life and could read her expressions and behavior and take them as truth. She trusted Jake - or would come to, given a cookie or two - and that was enough for him.

As Jake spoke, Damien took a mental note of his sire. It wasn't much and he was clearly uncomfortable, but the more he knew about Jake, the better. Tonight, it would be the easy things. Soon, the harder discussions would be had. But for now, Damien nodded when appropriate at Jake's recounting. "I'm sorry that you lost her so soon. One of these nights you're both going to have to tell me about these Camarilla fools you're always mentioning. With everything else, I admit I haven't had the time to do my research." He took a last mouthful of blood, draining the glass. "Our lineage under Lucretia kept very much to ourselves. Lucretia preferred it that way. We lived and moved as a collective, travelling all over Turkey, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe." Damien placed the cup on the counter near the sink.

[Black Philip]

Jake nodded. Damien needed to understand the threat people like the Camarilla posed. The Oligarchy had known it, and one of the reasons Jake agreed to work for them was their strict no Camarilla policy. Hell, even Ben knew to fear them, even though he would've made a perfect little prince. Jake would've scoffed but now was not the time to think about Ben!

"I'm very surprised you never came across them. A lot of the states of the Holy Roman Empire, although I know it wasn't called that then, were puppet states for them. They lost hold of France sometime after 1500, but held London until only a few months ago. Your sire must have been very clever to avoid their claws."

Jake was comfortable with this subject. Hating the Camarilla was an actual hobby for him. He seemed enthused, but serious. He thought of people like Mithras, who would've looked at Damien and seen someone less than just because he didn't have a clan. That sort of xenophobia was common on both sides of the vampire race. Catiff didn't trust the clans of Cain, and vice versa. The city was the only place he'd been that was different, and even here it was a fragile peace.

Lisa-Joe interrupted. "Short version, their a bunch of fascist racial purists, who are old as fuck and got lots of resources. They make up tons of rules that benefit their leaders and the old. They use the young to fight their wars for them and then act astonished when their children want a better life."

Lisa-Joe looked at Damien intensely, although not unkindly. She was making a point. She didn't trust a part of Damien, precisely because he did feel Camarilla in ways. If they were going to work together, she needed to know he had respect for the contributions of the young. Otherwise, she and Jake were going to have a little chat.

[Saiketsu]

Neither Damien nor Pierre made the connection between themselves and the actions of the Camarilla. "Wars? You mean there's still infighting?" Pierre asked, his face screwed up with judgement. Of course there had been minor infighting within Lucretia's lineage; Pierre himself had been forced to end a vicious fledge belonging to one of Damien's brothers. But that was ancient news under ancient regimes. Everything was savage back then.

"I think we met a few vampires and shifters when Lucretia was alive," Pierre wondered aloud. "But other than that Odessa and Nadia were the first vampires we had really interacted with in any depth who weren't from the Aquillia line."

"It wasn't really until I moved to live in major cities that I even noticed other immortals." Damien mused. "I think I saw my first werewolf in Montreal."

"No, Seattle."

"Ah yes, Seattle. You're right."

"It's part of the reason I chose the city for us to settle in." Pierre said, hanging his arm off of Damien's shoulder again. "There were just so many of us that there would always be some kind of protection."

[Black Philip]

Jake hadn't really thought much of the question, or the answer, and nodded attentively as Damien and Pierre discussed their isolation from other supernatruals. This city was really an outlier. Most places were controlled by A type of supernatural, and most often it was vampires. Only here, were beings mixing so constantly, so daily. A werewolf, nymph, vampire and fire demon could easily be on the same bus, or train, or waiting in the same line at the store. It was one of the things about the city Jake loved, and also one of the reasons it was so hard to lead.

"My people came here looking for freedom," Jake said honestly. "We got kicked out of LA by the Camarilla. Surprise, surprise I wasn't playing very nice with them. We got greeted with suspicion, distrust and frankly hostility. A bunch of young, mostly Canite, vampires showing up and making noise didn't sit too well with the city at the time."

Lisa-Joe watched with an uneasy expression. Her feelings about Damien and Pierre's answer was different from Jake. On the one hand, it did ease some of her concerns about them. They seemed no lovers of violence, but there was something almost privileged about it. Yes, that was it. Most supernaturals were born into a cruel world, and vampires more than most in her opinion. If you weren't playing out some weird mommy transference with your sire, then you were normally part of some conflict or oppression. The Anarchs were murdered, beat, handled with nothing like duo process, lived in fear and constantly had to move, and when they did, they were more often than not treated with hostility and suspicion. It wasn't only them either. Werewolves had it worst than anyone, and fey were being hunted like vermin. Even the demons had suffered without a leader. She didn't know his personal life, or life struggles, but she now looked at him and understood that what was happening to Rachael really was the most terrible thing that had happened to him. Even Pierre's wound seemed small to the amount of friends she'd seen butchered because they were in the way, or the wrong clan, or accidentally offended some prince. It's not that she didn't care, and it's not that she thought Damien and Pierre came from a bad place. They were just... out of touch. Yes, that was it.

"But we achieved a lot since then," she chimed in. "I know Jake is everybody's leader, but it's us who run the district together. We're a team."

Jake nodded. "I wouldn't know what the fuck to do without them," he said shrugging in an almost dopey fashion. Lisa-Joe smiled at the pair, curtly.

[Saiketsu]

Damien sensed something from Lisa-Joe as Jake spoke, though he couldn't be quite sure what it was. Her ensuing comment on the Anarch solidarity, while not openly aggressive or pointed, felt mildly defensive. He took a mental note, but assumed it had more to do with strong feelings towards the Camarilla than toward him or his lineage, shrugging it off to comment on what Jake had said instead.

"But Jake, you are Ventrue, yes? And Lisa-Joe, you are... Brujah?" He looked at both of them for their respective answers, a quizzical though amused expression on his face. It was all so very confusing, these Cainite vampires, though he had been getting better over the past couple of years. Damien didn't know why they hadn't encountered any of them before moving into the city - maybe they were just very good at remaining under the radar of other immortals. He suspected that Lucretia may have known better than to tangle with large bodies of vampires, preferring her own reign and dominance to giving it up to someone else. Not that Damien minded, considering the amount of fighting there seemed to be. "So how is it that you are able to lead the Anarchs? Or do I have that wrong?" He proceeded with a cautious voice, lest he provoke any of Lisa-Joe's annoyance with his ignorance.

[Black Philip]

Jake nodded, as Damien named his clan. He couldn't suppress a smile. Damien had much to teach him. Jake knew this, but Damien didn't know the community Jake was serving as well as he did. People's clans mattered to them, and up until this point it wasn't clear that Damien knew that. He also knew enough to know that Jake being a Ventrue and an Anarch was odd. He must've done his homework.

"Yep," Jake replied. "There's a term for someone who goes against their clan; Antitribu. A long time ago I did something that had me labeled as a traitor to my clan. The Anarchs took me in."

Lisa-Joe nodded, her curt look fading back into her more friendly one. "Jake gave us access to money, power, and organized us better than we had been. His clan isn't held against him, because his actions have always supported us. Besides, if we want to be different than our ancient foes we have to prove we really are different. The clans still matter here, but not as much. We all work together, and Jake has the unfortunate task of leading us. I wouldn't want to do it. I already have too much influence in this city. I just wanted to own a bar and have a home for the Brujah, but if you want to keep something nice you gotta do the work."

Jake nodded. "Don't get me wrong. I like being in control. I don't really do well with being told what to do." He smiled cheekily at Damien. "But there are times I wouldn't mind having what you have here boys," he said to both men. "It's worth protecting."

They talked well into the morning, and around 3:00AM, Jake and Lisa-Joe decided it was time to head back to the White Rabbit. They'd both had a marvelous time, and Jake especially looked like he couldn't wait to come back. Lisa-Joe said to give Rachael her regards, and to call her soon. She left her number with whoever would accept it.