The neon green streak in Toni's bobbing ponytail winks through the dark spill of hair as she cants into a jog up the narrow, dingy stairs of Hanna's apartment building. This prompts a question concerning the designer working for Toni's band, the inquiry pulled out past Conrad's throat in the abrupt attempt to make up for the awkward silence of the cab ride - when he'd been lost in self-inflicted terror over whether or not it was actually okay to be outside, in public, on the whole not biting people front.

"I'm the designer," Tony dimples over her shoulder as they round the first floor platform. "We play mostly night gigs, which mostly happen at clubs, so yeah." A small flourishing bow at the top of the stairs, "Custom club-wear. Ta-da. Sometimes we open for another band and need to switch up the look, but, you know how it is. Ars gratia artis!"

"Good balance of color in your, ah, stage costumes, is all." Conrad delivers a tight-lipped nod as they round the stairwell platform to Hanna's hallway, because ugh smalltalk. "Unsolicited advice? Put your tall blonde friend in the middle, and keep her in warm neons - pink and orange if she doesn't like the black for contrast. None of that brown and taupe, no neutrals."

"And you say you do this for a living?" Toni knocks on Hanna's door, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear - preening.

Conrad catches himself doing much the same, brushing at non-existent lint, and curls his hands up in exasperation. "Not exactly fashion, no." Scratching at the bite-scar under the high collar of his button-up, he pauses and tugs his hand back down to his pocket, "I'm an illustrator - sometimes mascot and logo design, mostly just conceptual layouts for magazine photo spreads and helping clients make soup cans look like Andy Warhol soup cans but not like Andy Warhol soup cans at all because that would be too obvious."

Toni laughs, ushering Conrad into the apartment as Victor/Grigori/Zach answers the door. "So, you're in advertising! I should get Mae to hire you for a poster gig - "

The door closes on the amenable conversation, and the voices beyond commence rising and falling as greetings are made, situations clarified, and answers sought. After a time, the pizza arrives, and Conrad steps out with an excuse about the garlic in the sauce bothering him, though in truth the garlic in anything never actually bothered him. Not the garlic, no, but too many happy people in a small (cluttered) apartment with probing questions and weighted looks, as if they hadn't just been discussing murderous fauna like normal people might discuss the weather. Cloudy with a chance of evisceration.

That, and all the people, ever, recently, seemed to be looking at Conrad. Not the usual glance-and-move-on, which he was used to - dressing as snappily as he did and having the Achenleck family 'presence' (which was really just good posture smacked into Conrad's early learning with a hard-edged ruler). He was used to the glances. Used to ignoring them. What he was not used to, however, were lingering gazes. A moue of awe had occupied Hanna's expression the first half of the night and even the zombie had raised his eyebrows just a midge higher than usual. Conrad hadn't spent so much time in Toni's company previously to notice any change in her behavior - perhaps she was just warmer to him for the clothing loan and the shoulder-to-complain-on, who knew - but it was still rare that a woman ever made such open conversation with Conrad. Most just noticed he had better taste in scarves than they did and moved on.

And Conrad had to escape that; the approval-seeking and the friendly banter and the horrifying-but-unrecognized-as-such mission planning. Because perhaps that kind of thing was par for Hanna, who involved himself in danger as the course of his profession, or even Toni - who belonged to a 'species' inherently violent and territorial; but it just wasn't something Conrad could stomach with open acceptance, and he was tired of being the dissenting voice of worry backed only by a calm-eyed dead man.

So, Conrad had excused himself to leave the apartment on an unannounced errand, took a brisk walk to the (seedy, brightly lit) corner store, responding to Hanna's concerned text with the reassurance that he was just 'lorrying around the petrol queue for a pack of fags', smirking fondly down at the garbled reply - as Hanna apparently thought the slang was English for something dastardly. Conrad had smoked half the pack of cigarettes on the lingering walk back to Hanna's; the old habit soothed his nerves even if the smoke didn't particularly affect him in any direct way. No coughing, no nicotine jitters. There was an undeniable spike in worry each time he pulled a wilting cardboard match to life, and he held the brand carefully away from himself whenever he was ashing the cherry, wondering idly where this new apprehension of open flame had come from and laughing bitterly because of course vampirism would come with its own set of neuroses.

But the cigarettes had always helped, when the clomipramine was low or when an all-nighter had to be pulled at the studio, or hell, even as just an excuse to get him out of the house during the family shabbat dinners. The cigarettes had always been something he could focus on; a ritual to soothe his compulsions, a burnt sacrifice to appease the demons of anxiety.

Conrad lingered outside the narrow apartment door in a hallway of narrow apartment doors, legs crossed at the ankles and back flat against the peeling paint of the wall, arm draped loose around his waist while he crammed another cigarette down, pulling a drag with every breath in like some sort of automaton billowing its exhaust. He did feel calmer, even if it was just a psycho-somatic Pavlovian type thing, even if the cigarette smoke (fragrant, expensive, sweet tobacco with an oaky undercurrent) would linger in his clothes and in his hair and stain his condo's walls if he really got back into the habit. Not to mention his teeth, his poor teeth, so painstakingly whitened against every cup of coffee and -

The avalanche of inner-fussiness drew to a grinding halt as a quiet figure loomed up from the top of the stairs, Doc Worth staring down at the hallway linoleum with some grumbling preoccupation, hands shoved in the pockets of his fur-lined doctor's coat as he approached. Conrad could hear the slosh of a blood bag in Worth's possession, putting two and two together - Hanna was the only person they had in common, Doc Worth didn't have Conrad's contact information (thank FUCK) and didn't know where he lived (thank ALL THE FUCKS).

The doctor himself was looking only a little worse for the wear of the night previous - pale, gaunt, the usual. A bit more listless, an ugly burnt gash down the side of his stubbled birdy neck where he'd had to cauterize the bite wound. "Shove over, mac." Worth glared through Conrad, hardly sparing him a second glance as he crowded in at Hanna's door, knocking and grumbling. "No buyers here. Scram."

Conrad made a noise in the back of his throat, eying Worth doubtfully and taking solace in another puff from the cigarette because he was not going to engage in more weirdness. He could hear Hanna's bright voice approach through the thin door, felt the warm whoosh as the apartment was opened and the aroma of food and friendship traded places with the hallway's cold halo of cat piss.

"Hey yo, Doc! I thought you were Connie."

Conrad shrivels from the door, hastily spitting smoke and waving it away from Hanna's apartment, feeling like a husband caught out by the wife and what the hell.

"Oh, is someone - ?" Hanna's head pokes out at the same time Worth glances over the sharp hill of his shoulder. Hanna frowns. "Hey Conman. Thought you ditched us."

Worth, meanwhile, takes a heartbeat to return the bloodpack to his pocket, 'just here to drop somefin' off' buried under Hanna's revelation. Worth single-handedly shoves at Hanna's stomach and leans in to grasp the doorknob, closing Hanna's protest out with the reassurance that the adults were just going to have a talk. The door clicks shut over 'no fighting in the hall!' and Worth steps sideways to plant his shoulder against the wall as if to block Conrad's view of escape.

Conrad is forcibly suspicious, mouth small in its frown and eyes narrow. "Did you just mistake me for a drug dealer."

Worth makes the contemplative noise in the back of his throat that always has Conrad prepared to see the man scratch his own balls or spit on the floor or slap a passing waitress' ass or something equally and obnoxiously 'manly'. If Worth was anything, he was expressive, and right then a message was written on the planes of his eyebrows and the hill of his jutting jaw, bruised eyelids half sunk over a (surprisingly, always) sharp, piercing stare. Worth leans in, shoulder flat against the wall in a loud scuff, one arm draped mid-air as if to point out anything specific but failing to land on any one aspect of Conrad's person. He makes the noise again, softer this time, and Conrad flinches.

"If you do not lean back out of my personal space, I am going to stab you in the eye with this fag-end." The cigarette that Conrad had shielded from Hanna's doorway was wielded vaguely in the direction of Doc Worth's face-area, Conrad inching away from his target because on his list of errands that night 'grievous bodily injury to another' was bottom-tier. Worth did not shrink from the threat, however, and even leaned in closer. With a leer. "I'm not kidding," Conrad hissed in protest, steadying his hand, lip curling in a silent snarl.

Worth took another head-to-toe inventory of the vampire in front of him, grin at odds with the situation - a light grin, a friendly grin. An easy grin. Dry like so much alleyway cardboard. He crosses his arms, does Doc Worth, craning his neck to bring himself eye-to-eye with the cigarette, winking slowly to knock the ash free with his lashes, a sooty tumble down the front of a sharp cheek.

Conrad isn't breathing, isn't moving. He's a bit stupefied by his own motor control, by the steadiness of the brand so close to such a sensitive part of a body; Worth does eventually wince and pull back - proving he was somewhat human, rubbing a bony knuckle under the corner of his watering eye.

" 'Ey," Every noise out of the hollow of the doctor's chest is akin to a waking grunt, intimate and low and it makes Conrad feel as embarrassed as if he'd walked in on something private.

"What."

Doc Worth shakes his head, smile open-mouthed and toothy, then tilts his chin up. "Here I was keepin' an eye out fer a mouse an' f'rgot ta look up fer a bat. Hah."

If Conrad's eyes could narrow any further they'd be completely shut, so he blinks hard instead and rubs the bridge of his nose with the back of his thumb, cigarette pinched between fore and middle finger. "I'm the mouse, am I." The smile is small and bitter and wry. Conrad got it, sort of. He looked different. People were looking at him differently. "Go on and fuck off, then. I'm sure Hanna wants to bend your ear about something or another." The dismissal lacks a certain nasal whine, and Conrad holds the cigarette down and out for inspection, wondering if the smoke really did change his voice a bit. Bottom it out. Sand it down.

There is a conspicuous silence from the shoulder against the wall; no rude come-back, no ribald compliment. Conrad doesn't want to look over, doesn't want to give Doc Worth the gratification of his attention, but the silence builds up on a knot in a too-full stomach and Conrad risks a quick glance, eyes flickering dark and red behind the thick black frame of his glasses.

The noise happens again, a small vociferous breath, and Doc Worth looks as if he's struggling to keep the smile from his face - like a stubbly condor attempting to wrangle a snake in its beak. "C'mon peaches, give us a drag first," Worth wheedles, palm open between them, fingers splayed.

Without even really thinking about it, Conrad takes one last pull from the cigarette and smushes it into Worth's hand, twisting the butt thoroughly to extinguish the cherry against Worth's palm. Normally this would be a pretty clear assault, a thorough 'fuck off and go away' if ever there was one. But oh, how Lucian Worth did not even flinch, how he had in fact held his hand out in no fit way to actually receive a cigarette, laying the pale and slightly clammy temptation flat out, fingers curling and breath guttering as the cigarette died without so much as a hiss.

Worse than the guilt that would have followed after actually impairing a doctor's grip, Conrad's stomach jumps in sudden and vicious recall - Hanna's voice floating up through his memory like a dead leaf from the bottom of a puddle 'hekindagetsoffonit'. Worth's hand lays between them like a dead spider, and Conrad snatches his own hand back, elbow thumping against the wall with an absent 'ow' following it, the cigarette left crumpled in the cage of Worth's fingers as he draws to the side. Worth shoves his injured hand in his pocket and turns his grin down a degree as Hanna peers through the opening door.

"Okay. No really. The little old Ukranian woman down the hall likes to call the cops at like, the drop of a pin. No fighting in my hallway, dudes."

X x XxX xXx X xX

Thank you for continued interest in this story. I'm not
going to abandon it (I usually update after a SLEW of
edits, because reasons), so no worries. What you don't
see are alerts to when a chapter is revised, which I do
often and which keeps much of my writing in the fore-
front despite the lack of actual chaptered updates.

/derps