Hello freaky darlings! Saw the Lost Boys as an adult for the first time yesterday, and it brought back all sorts of youthful memories of campy terror and fashion lust. My favorite was of course, the single earring worn by all the vamps in the gang (I currently have a bronze feather dangling from my right ear that my mom's been screaming at me to take out for three days) and I found myself wondering how that little touchstone came to be. This is a study of our favorite undead family, and there will be four chapters, one for each Lost Boy, focusing on their relationship with Star.
Please read and review, or I'll sick the sparkly Twilight fairies on you and keep the real vamps for myself. Enjoy ;)
It had been an afterthought, a fleeting act of defiance. She had jammed the hot needle rebelliously through her earlobe the night she had taken up with her new family, banishing memories of the old. Her daddy, the mortal one who's company she had been subjected to for countless years, had forbidden her from ever getting her ears pierced, much less anything else. But that was before she ran away. Before the twisted oblivion of immortality beckoning to her. Before David.
She had known what was coming, known what the Boys were long before she made the choice to become one of them. But she didn't care; she chose only to see the beguiling romanticism in the scenario, effectively ignoring the darkness leering at her from blood-stained shadows. So it was no great surprise to anyone involved the night she drank of David's blood and was joined to them. Besides, she had been singled out early on, and not as dinner, surprisingly.
Max had felt like he was losing control of the Boys to David, that they were hitting some sort of rebellious streak (If any more rebellion was possible at this point). Paul, Dwayne, even stubborn little Marco would, if it came down to it, ally themselves with their charismatic brother and against their sire. What the Boys needed, Max decided, was a mother. His mind was made up for him the day he saw pretty Star sashaying outside the shop, stooping low to ask a grimy youth where his parents were. A natural protector, already enfolding waifs into her loving arms. The literary quality didn't escape him either. A motherly Wendy to corral his Lost Boys, maybe even challenge the rule of his sullen Peter…How perfect.
He should have known better.
The plan wasn't necessarily a bad one, and in retrospect, executed quite nicely. He had merely pushed her in the Boy's direction, made some thinly veiled suggestions, and they had done the rest. Paul had put her at ease with his good-natured flirting, Marco had smiled re-assuringly, and Dwayne had behaved himself perfectly, even gave her little street urchin a ride on his bike. But David, oh David had sold it. His quietly assured charisma had drawn her in like a moth to the flame, and he had treated her to the best of his heart-breaking charm, which people usually didn't realize was poisonous until he was tearing their throats out.
She had come willingly, and despite the Boy's initial suspicion of the outsider in their midst, she had been assimilated unnaturally fast. They all liked her. They listened to her. She even managed to talk them out of a few unnecessarily (more than usual) foolhardy ideas. But as usual, the unaccounted-for variable, the corrupting factor, was David.
He had seen Max's game coming a mile away, and bored and annoyed by such a mortal notion, had toyed with the idea of "accidentally" breaking the new toy given to them by their surrogate father. But there was something in her gypsy smile and sultry eyes that he liked, wanted to bottle up and keep in a jar by the window. So he kept her, but not without first making sure she was no threat to his operation. He had with a few light touches, murmured words, and withering glances gently goaded her into submission, wrapped her tightly around his finger. She enjoyed being his favorite, his Star of David, as the introspectively inclined Dwayne would often mutter to an otherwise uninterested Paul. She would not for the world challenge this beautiful creature who's acceptance she so craved.
But despite this (and the immanent threat of David's understatedly terrifying wrath should they cross him) the other three vampires remained somewhat loyal to Star. The girl had no backbone, but she was coy and good-natured and quite pretty besides. She was a flowed plucked and pressed into a book in the flush of youth, and even the most jaded of the group recognized her wilting enthusiasm at an undying eternity of darkness. The initial shock was understandable.
They all had their little ways of showing her she was accepted, of trying to ease the transition without coming across as pansies or pissing off David. Plus, if he ever got tired of her or if she ever managed to shake off his spell, the three others wanted to assure her that they were there to offer her whatever 'comfort' she may require. As stated above, she was quite pretty.
The simplest of these little nudges were the earrings. It had started, as usual, with Paul and a fight. In his defense, Marco had swung first, but he had been asking for it. Star had just secured the dangling string of beads and feathers in her right ear when she heard the ruckus and jumped to her feet, yanking back the curtains from her bed. They had been a gift from David in one of his more affectionate moments, something feminine that doubled as a barrier between what little space was hers and the rest of the cave.
Star padded silently across the rock floor of the cave, sprinting over to the bonfire and preparing her to scream at whoever was making trouble to take it outside. But by the time she got there, the fight was already over. Marco and Paul were swearing at each-other good-naturedly over beers, and Dwayne stood off to the side with a subtle smile on his face, grateful he didn't have to break anything up. David was laughing, head thrown back, incisors glinting in the firelight.
"What happened?" She asked, baffled.
David smirked at her. "The usual. Something about a girl and a guitar. C'mere, Star."
She dutifully obliged, letting him wrap an arm around her and snuggling down in the familiar warmth of his greatcoat. He smelled like cigarette smoke, leather, blood, and old lace. I settled her stomach. She hated it when the boys fought. They could of course go at each other all day and hardly leave a dent, but she was new to the whole 'invincible' thing.
About ten minuets passed without incident, but then Paul fell silent, staring intently at Star. The open want in his eyes unnerved her, but David was too busy daring Marco to go jump off Hudson's Bluff to notice.
"What?" She demanded finally.
"I want one," He muttered, half to himself.
David did hear this and glanced over, still grinning. "Huh?"
Paul gestured sloppily (and unwisely) to all of Star. "I want one. Just like that."
The grin disappeared in an instant. The head vampire released Star, taking two small steps towards Paul. They were the deathly silent ones he used while hunting, calculating and predatory. Star shot a pleading glance to Dwayne, who had tiredly fallen into the role of referee over the years, breaking up any squabble the broke out. Any one he wasn't involved in, that was. The quiet vampire sighed heavily. He had just pulled Marco off of Paul, and that was no small feat, but David was harder to restrain by far.
Against his instincts, David gave Paul a chance to redeem himself.
"You wanna run that one by me again?"
Paul, oblivious to the death threat looming over him in a tricked-out trench coat, took a moment to blearily battle his lack of sobriety and form a cognitive sentence.
"You know," He slurred, gesticulating to no avail. "One of the things, with the piercing and the chain and whatever…"
"An earring?" Star asked, incredulous. "You want an earring?"
"That's the one!" Paul beamed.
Marco nearly died laughing. David made an exasperated noise, swatting Paul in the arm. He had been hoping for a reason to start a fight. He hadn't been in a decent rumble in what seemed like ages.
"You're drunk, Paul. I thought we agreed you would stop making life choices while impaired."
"Am not!"
"Oh yeah? C'mon, you're wasted and it's light out. You're not stabbing anything through your ear tonight. Go to bed."
The blonde vampire shook his head firmly, scrambling to his feet. "I'm not gonna do it, Star will!"
"I will?"
"You don't have to, sister," Dwayne said, bemused. "He'll pass out in a few minuets anyway."
"Pleeeeeeeeeeease?" Paul begged.
"All I have is my other earring," Star shrugged. "I never got to finish."
"It's cool, I just want the one. I'll swap it out when I find a better one."
Star, as she usually did when making any sort of decision, glanced to David. He waved her away with a gloved hand, that unreadable smirk playing at his lips.
"Whatever. I'm going to bed, and I'm not going to be the one to drag your sorry asses out of the cave tomorrow. Don't kill him, Star."
Paul whooped triumphantly and flopped down on her bed, grinning like a child on Christmas. Star smiled absently, wrapping her shawl tighter around her. Paul was insane, but he brought a sort of light to the cave. He was the only one of her brothers that didn't fall into week-long brooding spells for no apparent reason. Or lived perpetually in a sort of bi-polar ambiguity, like David.
Star retrieved a needle from her sewing bow and heated it over the flame of one of her many candles. Paul squirmed and wouldn't shut up about if it was going to hurt of not, but she finally managed to secure the earring in his ear without incident. Utterly pleased with himself, Paul skipped out to meet Marco and Dwayne, grinning like a self-satisfied schoolboy.
Suddenly the idea of pierced ear didn't seem so laughable to Marco, and his face fell into envy.
"Aw…." The curly-headed blonde vampire whined, "I want one!"
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