There were a lot of reasons to go hungry; reasons that Conrad hadn't, up until this point, ever experienced. Poverty was foremost, as exampled by Hanna's brand of hunger - or more to the point the kind of hunger that struck entire nations to their knees, not just skinny underfed self-employed weirdos. But Conrad had lived a comfortable upper-middle class life, and a slightly less comfortable middle-class unlife, and never run out of groceries.

The second reason to go hungry, and the one more closely related to Conrad's predicament, was availability of foodstuffs. Vampirism had rendered Conrad permanently allergic to real food - he couldn't choke it back, no matter how rare the steak was it still just tasted like so much dead cow.

Not as if there wasn't enough blood to go around, though, which brings us to Conrad's actual brush with starvation; when food was available, and money was had, but the consumer was simply too mortified or otherwise emotionally compromised to partake. This, perhaps, was the stupidest reason to go hungry, ever. Eating disorders aside (and man had he ever had a bunch of THOSE growing up), Conrad was simply too neurotic to put his mouth on a stranger in any fashion – hell, he could barely stand simple physical contact with the people insane enough to call themselves his friends.

Starvation By Embarrassment; perhaps the worst way to go. He couldn't go to Worth's clinic for the usual freebie, having, in a fit of spite, outed the man. He might have felt more comfortable if he were at least paying for the blood, but as it stood Conrad nearly felt like he owed Doc Worth and nothing made his insides squirm more than the feeling that he was beholden to someone. The fact that Doc Worth was as good as contractually obligated to like him (via stupid cherub hoodoo fuckery) only made matters worse.

In fact, the last time someone had admitted to liking Conrad, never mind loving, Conrad had broken out in hives so severe as to land him in hospital, canceling his first and last ever date with a girl.

Too proud / anxious / denial-struck to ask someone else to fetch the blood, Conrad starved for the better half of the month. He believed himself better than all this undead nonsense, and what was the point of living forever if he couldn't draw his appetite out and unravel it to an economic, bare-minimum, emergency-only proviso? It wouldn't have been a problem; it shouldn't have been a problem, and only became a problem when Veser Hatch showed up at Conrad's condo with a split lip and an overnight bag.

Veser's father had been found and accused of the murder of Lee Falun, but as Hanna was not a real police officer and did not possess any hard evidence, Mr. Hatch had more or less been returned to his daily life unchanged (if not a little drunker and shades more miserable, lacking both his wife as well as his best friend). Veser was old enough to live apart from his father, but... Well, there was a lot of 'but' involved in Veser's life, into which Conrad never pried.

This time, though, Conrad couldn't just open his door and let the kid walk in and order the usual take-out and browse the usual telly. Because Veser was bleeding. Conrad unlocked his door, yelled an incoherent excuse as he was clambering out his livingroom window, and fled down his own fire escape. He had smelled it through the door, salty like the ocean and tangy like a silver spoon. The overwhelming urge to - whatever - had run him out of his own home, and the resonant disgust over the fantasy of closing his mouth over Veser's wounded lip and just – and UGH WHAT. Gross on so many levels; gross enough of a recall that Conrad actually gagged a little once his Doc-Martens hit the sidewalk.

The emotion to follow, of course, was anger. Dissonant begrudging fueled Conrad's march across the streets of downtown as much as his hunger propelled him on, like an overproud hobo to the soup line, mulish about how easily he'd given in to Hanna's request in sheltering the walking domestic-abuse case as often as he did. Conrad kicked a trash bin over with a satisfying clang, then rounded the alley corner to pound (angrily) on the back-alley clinic's door.

Of course, Conrad only knocked this time around at the behest of his own fears - that Worth might actually have a patient that evening, someone who might have been bleeding, and well. Conrad just didn't want to risk it. A gunshot wound on a thug, or some babushka brat with a scraped knee, or a dock worker with an open soldering wound – things Conrad would have never before grouped in the category 'appetizing'. He knocked again, a little calmer after having so thoroughly unsettled himself but all the hungrier and further confused. Doc Worth's clinic was always open, even if that meant finding the ungainly unwashed sprawl of limbs napping at the plyboard desk.

Conrad cautiously tried the door handle. It wasn't as if the place was a residency - and what were the rules behind that, the difference between invitation-only homes and otherwise free-for-all public offices? To equally powerful relief and apprehension, the door gave way. Peeking around the jamb, Conrad stepped into the clinic's front office without a breath. It was required to inhale to speak, of course, and at first Conrad mistook the aroma in the air for the blood laying placid in its sterile baggies in the confines of the mini-fridge. Upon inspection, this was not the source, everything in that fridge cold and clammy and unappetizing.

There were four doors in the reception room of the clinic, the first leading outside of course and to the immediate right was the door to the unisex public lavatory (a sad array of leaking faculties from some lop-sided era of exposed copper piping). The more important door to the left led to the operating room, but that place smelled of nothing more appealing than disinfectant.

The door on the far wall, however, which tucked itself in the corner behind a stack of old magazines and the mini-fridge on its filing cabinet, revealed a narrow flight of stairs. It was from this unexplored second floor that the smell was coming, and Conrad's first dreadful thought was that Worth had owed money to some gangsters and they'd killed him. Or Worth himself had killed someone, maybe the gangsters to which he owed money (Conrad's imagination rife with reasons why Worth should have just taken his fucking cheques). Despite the growing knot of horror lodged in his throat, Conrad claimed each stair silently and methodically.

The scent in the air settled in the back of his brain and put a thick layer of thirst in the back of his throat, the burning kind of thirst one gets from a hangover; Conrad was positive he had opened the fridge and claimed the bag of blood he so very desperately needed, yet his hands remained empty, fingers gone sharp in a loose curl against his palms.

Distracted by his own imagination, Conrad could not pull his attention away from what might be waiting just a few more stairs ahead, the small brown stairwell close and stuffy and the carpet underfoot worn soft. The door opened under his slow push as if he were moving underwater, revealing a tidy windowless apartment with second-hand furniture and a bizarre assortment of small-game taxidermy mounted on the walls. It felt like walking into a different reality, all those glass eyes and frozen snarls, and just under the fresh tang of blood lay subtler, more sinister aromas like dust and grandmotherly furniture and a carton of milk that had gone off in the fridge.

Past the cluttered sprawl of dun-brown livingroom and just inside what Conrad assumed was a bedroom door a thin rectangle of light spread up from the carpet like a gold banner. What Conrad was actually seeing was the bathroom door being cracked open to let out the steam of Worth's shower. This also let out that godawfulamazing smell in a thick, damp wave of heat and wet and bright light and if Conrad had never known what hunger was, then it had just introduced itself with all the demand of the newly born - a grasping, screaming thing deep inside that pulled his eyes narrow.

Transfixed, some small tenacious part of Conrad's neuroses kept him frozen at the cracked door. The first thought to surface through the haze was that Worth had, indeed, been injured somehow. Conrad took a step back, anchoring this thought with a shiver of revulsion. The peek of naked ribs as Worth bent to the sink was enough to send Conrad flailing back in sudden realization of just how creepy this all was, and what the fuck was he even doing. The thud of his retreating footfall was loud and clumsy and nothing at all like the stalking, silent pace that had brought him that far.

Armed with a straight-razor, Doc Worth stepped out in nothing but a threadbare towel to challenge the poor burglar come to steal what little his uncle had left him.

'I knocked,' Conrad wanted to explain. 'You probably didn't hear that over the running of the shower', he wished to continue. Conrad could say none of this, however, because Worth's domestic weapon of choice was already dripping with blood, neat little rows of the reddest welts Conrad had ever seen lining the taut ridge of Worth's arm.

Worth's glare of challenge and cold violence had melted to something like surprise, but recovered quickly into a sharp derision, green eyes going flat and reptilian. "When's the last time you ate, cupcake?"

Conrad shook his head, throat shut tight. He sank gracelessly to his knees, fingers digging into the balding carpet to keep himself from doing the unspeakable. Worth took a step forward and everything within Conrad recoiled. After a pause, Worth turned on heel and disappeared into the bright damp of the bathroom. Conrad slapped himself, snatching his glasses off to scrub at his face. Nothing could relieve the hot rock in his gut that rooted him to the spot, though, and everything was very wrong like being drunk but it was also all very pleasant like being drunk and holy hell he was never skipping another meal again if it meant fighting tooth and nail not to eviscerate everyone he knew and what the fuck was Worth doing, cutting himself up like that?!

Worth reappeared in a pair of dingy jeans, and this was such a relief that Conrad exhaled, then inhaled again because he was crap at self-control.

"Hey," Worth grinned over the task of bandaging his arm. "Mate, you look like someone stole yer crack pipe and then ran over yer kitten."

Conrad had indeed taken on the expression of immense disappointment as the vibrant wounds on Worth's forearm disappeared behind sterile bandage. Worth waved his injured arm and Conrad's eyes followed it like a concussed dog might follow the laser dot. To the right... to the left. Up, down, in a circle.

"You want this?"

Terrified, Conrad nodded.

Worth grunted to himself, one hand slung into his back pocket as he worried his bottom lip with his teeth. "Promise not to fukken kill me?"

Conrad still possessed the state of mind to cop offense to this, to the whole ridiculous ordeal in fact, and the one word he managed to grit through a flash of teeth came out in a long hiss (but sounded something like 'promise'). He didn't know up from down, and though the theory had run, that, with the cuts wrapped up he might regain some of his senses, instead a low fog had descended on his brain and it scared him so badly to lose so much of himself that he would have done anything to regain some fucking perspective. Starving. Starving was so not good, it was never good and it never would be good and he'd learned his lesson please god let there be no blowjobs involved in the next twenty minutes how do vampires even kill themselves anyway would he have to chain himself out in the sun or could he just bury himself alive and never have to face the outside world ag –

"I mean it; no take-backsies," Worth drawls, thumbing at the edge of the bandage clips before freeing them of their snag. "I got a cross unner the bed there if ya get too cute; an' you get your head straight and you figger you wanna, what, choke me out over this, in yer weird issue with folks helping you or sommat? Jus' don't; mkay darlin'?" The bandage fell to an easy unravel, perfectly spaced lines of blood staining the pristine white with fat red streaks and Conrad was content to just sit there and breathe it all in, the sluggish welling of salt and skin and everything that was life thump-thudding in Worth's abused veins.

The darkness flared up from the pit of Conrad's core and spread with returned vengeance, and it wasn't until he'd been burned half down his face by the (what) cross that he realized what he'd done. Conrad wasn't hungry anymore, sprawled out on Worth's bedroom carpet with a belly full of singing blood; but he was very, very empty.

Worth had survived the attack, grumbling (as he stepped over the crap vampire laid out in his livingroom) what this would cost in transfusion stock. Hand pressed strategically over the wound to save his carpet, Worth disappeared back down the stairs to fix himself up before the blood-loss caught up to him.

Conrad, see...

Conrad had gone for the throat.

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