Si Waylen (lovelikeblood) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-12-12 17:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | jd cartwright, john abbott |
What’s for Dinner?
Who: John, JD
What: Discovering a Swap
Where: Angus, a Steakhouse in Las Vegas
When: Present, Evening
Warnings: Low
John couldn’t decide what he wanted to eat. Bacon-wrapped filet mignon? North Atlantic salmon topped with garlic dill butter? Barbecued pork ribs smothered in the restaurant’s signature sauce? The menu offered a veritable orgy of flavors, each vying for his personal attention as he scoured the list, searching for just the right combination to celebrate the occasion.
“For starters, I’ll have the French onion soup. Then… the filet mignon with pan roasted fingerling potatoes and sauteed vegetables. For dessert, the blackberry cobbler. And I’ll take a basket of bread for the table. I’m famished,” he told the server, who took his menu with a pleasant look of surprise. John lifted his glass of cabernet sauvignon in gratitude.
It was a hallucination, to be sure. And if not that, then a cosmic fluke, and who knew how long it would last? All John knew was that he’d woken up like any other day, taken a shower, and nearly passed out in the glass enclosure because he’d forgotten to breathe. As he slid to a noisy stop on the tiles with his heart in his throat, John knew, for the first time in a century and a half, what it felt like to be alive.
Alive and hungry! So he’d brushed his hair into some semblance of order, blown off the prospect of shaving, gotten dressed, and followed his nose and watering mouth to Angus, one of the finer steakhouses in Las Vegas. Here he sat, eagerly searching his surroundings for someone to share in his joy.
JD felt like celebrating, and the Angus was a place he knew did excellent steaks. And tonight he wanted to savour one. And one that was dripping. It puzzled him, having been one who'd enjoyed a rare steak, that tonight he was going to order it blue. As he entered the restaurant he again noticed the noise, wincing a little as a champagne bottle opened and only his experience prevented him from reaching for his service pistol. Even at that volume he was able to tell the difference but it hadn't stopped him flinching at the sound. He looked around, waiting for one of the staff to show him to a table.
John put a pat of butter on his saucer, then tore a piece of his dinner roll and slathered his knife with the creamy substance. As a vampire, he could eat human food, but it didn’t have the same appeal, either in texture or in flavor. A mild flavor such as butter had been lost on him, but it was delicious now and his stomach rumbled in anticipation of the bread he was chewing. “It’s quite good,” he told a fellow diner, one who was both bemused and perplexed by John’s reaction to the mundane appetizer. No matter. He brushed crumbs onto the small, round dish and briefly took out his phone.
He didn’t do so often in restaurants – it felt tacky – but he made an exception to compose a brief text to Shelly… then reconsidered and deleted it before sending’ He didn’t know why but he hesitated to tell her he was an ordinary, thirty-six year old man. As he stowed the device, John frowned, then cleared the expression with a shake of his head. Nothing would shake him of this mood, not an uncharacteristic moment of self-doubt, or the sight of a familiar detective’s face near the entrance.
In fact…
“Detective Cartwright,” he called, barely above the hum of other conversations. “Would you like to join me?”
JD's head turned at the sound of his name, his eyes narrowing when he saw the source. John. His steps carried him to the table and his nose sniffed at the scents assaulting it. Like his hearing his sense of smell was intensified to levels beyond anything he'd ever experienced. "Don't mind if I do," he replied, taking the seat opposite.
He eyed the man opposite, wondering if it was his or the other man's pulse he could hear. "You looking for a good steak dinner too?"
“I am. I’ve just ordered but we should be able to get the server back…” He craned his neck in search of the person who’d relayed his dining needs to the kitchen. “Ah!” Having made eye contact, John raised a polite hand at the server, who was more than happy to return, as it favored a larger amount of gratuity tacked onto the bill. A menu, silverware, and wine glass were added to the table, along with an ice cold glass of water.
John studied the detective, who looked a bit paler than he remembered, but outside the summer months that wasn’t the most unusual thing. He imagined cops who worked in homicide didn’t see as much daylight as their colleagues. “It’s been a while since we last saw one another,” he said. John was pleased to note that he didn’t think he’d killed anyone in the interceding time.
It had been a strange encounter, when the detective had met John in the diner. He'd just had the target of his investigations into Doherty's murder, and the key into the web of corruption that lay entangled behind it, hand himself over to JD in exchange for amnesty. And JD was still quietly working away on the digging, not wanting to put his colleague in NYPD at risk of falling foul of the people behind it. So in the end he didn't need Miss Harmon's help, something which had appeared to piss her off. He was still beyond caring, his focus on not just bigger fish, but the great whites of their world.
JD tugged at his ear, his eyes darting around the restaurant as the waiter laid his place and waited for the order. The detective had been inhaling the aromas, but despite his hunger all he could think of was the blood running from a rare steak. He ordered it, ensuring the order clearly stated ‘blue’, then added a beer. As the waiter left to make his way through to add the order to the one already placed JD looked across at John, recalling what it was he knew about him, and his world, realising it was the first time he’d knowingly joined a vampire for dinner.
In a restaurant?
“Well I can say this is a first for the books,” he said quietly, his voice low and only audible to his dinner companion. “Heard of Diaries of a Vampire, but not Restaurants, or Dinners with one. This is a little outside your normal diet, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes traveling to other tables and moving from the different dishes back to John’s face.
“Somewhat,” allowed John. It was his habit to lean closer to a dinner mate for conversation, but perhaps he should allow JD space. He picked up his wine glass instead and took a sip. “Vampires do eat,” he murmured, not wanting to rouse suspicions. “Rather, we can, but it’s not the same experience. Foods have flavor, of course… scent. Some are even good, but it’s like craving lobster and settling for crayfish.” He gave the detective a rueful smile. “It’s not satiating, either. Imagine having a full stomach and still being ravenous.”
He looked around at the room’s rustic-chic decor. All of that had done nothing to rationalize his presence, John realized. “I like the atmosphere of restaurants. Would it surprise you to know that a vampire can be a people person?”
“It’s like saying you have a dog that’s good with chickens,” the detective returned. “Given they’re your source of food, that is,” he added as his beer was placed in front of him. He lifted the glass, raised it to John and gave him a grin, saying, “cheers, and here’s to the dogs who can guard the unsuspecting chickens.”
It was hard to break John’s generally amiable attitude towards others, but occasionally a rude comment would do the trick. “Welcome to my table, JD. Do think of another animal you can compare me with before the evening’s out.” He finished his glass of wine. The bottle sat at center table, but who knew how much tolerance he had to alcohol at the moment? Best to practice temperance.
“I’m sure you’ve seen that vampires are nuanced,” John said. “Even those of us who feed on human blood are not without what you might call ‘humanity.’ We might share a few things in common with the people the police put behind bars. None of us, no criminal, no thirsty arsehole like me, started out this way. Fangs and a taste for blood are things that happened to us. They’ll keep happening to us, night after night, for hundreds of years! Imagine.” He rested his chin in his palm, then added, “I’ve gone years without killing a ‘chicken,’ but I’ll admit, it does get dull. Sooner or later, you find yourself entranced by a pulse fluttering in a woman’s neck, or-or… the bluish hue of a vein in her wrist, my god! No pornographic video will evercome close to that sight. Ah! Here’s my soup.”
He sat up straighter as a bowl was placed before him.
JD was silently amused that he’d found the ‘button’ for John so quickly. It was an old habit, one that had been honed and sharpened on the steel of finding the truth from a suspect, whether they were a killer or the victim of circumstance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the police thinking they had their man. It was why he was often called into an interview room.
“I happen to like our canine companions, and would’ve gone into the dog squad if I hadn’t ended up in homicide, so I’m sorry you see them as a lowly part of life. Personally there are a lot of dogs I’d call my friend and depend on before a lot of people.” He took a sip from his beer and frowned, the mouthful falling somewhat short of what he’d expected. Thinking it was just a case of washing away the dust of the day he took another one, the frown forming on his face becoming deeper as again the taste was distinctly below the par the brew usually delivered.
As he looked into the side of the glass he looked around for the server, wondering if there was a problem with his beer. “Maybe you prefer the English version, a fox in a henhouse?” he suggested, wincing a little at the clatter that came from the next table as a man seemingly dropped his cutlery on his plate from a height, or at least that’s what it sounded like to JD, when in fact he was simply setting them down for a moment’s respite while taking a sip of his wine.
“No one said a dog was lowly,” John said, keeping a measured tone. “But they are not capable of the cognitive complexity of humans, vampires, Weres… a fact of which you’re well aware, and if you’d claim now to be innocent in using that comparison, then I’m afraid I’ll have to employ a phrase I learned in America. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I’m not about to be manipulated or made to question my reality by a man whose default expression is smug.”
John ate a mouthful of his soup. It was hot but the subtleties of its flavor were incredible. “Mm… This is amazing. You should have ordered an appetizer. You don’t seem all that impressed by the beer. Do you want some wine?” He held up the bottle in offering.
A final glance showed JD the server was still attending another table so he lowered his beer and nodded, thanking the vampire as he moved the wine glass into position.”The beer tastes a little strange.” Internally he sighed and decided that if he was to remain there he best just shut up and talk about the weather as nothing he said seemed to do anything but piss the vampire off.
“Nice weather we’re having,” he said in response, making it fairly clear he was not interested in getting into any arguments, and wondering whether he should just go and find another table.
After pouring, John set the wine bottle down and extended his hand for the beer, forgetting for the moment that his nose wasn’t up to its usual tricks and might not pick up on a subtle change in the beer. Still… “Smells normal to me,” he offered. There was another consideration, one that might explain the detective’s unusual pallor this evening. “Are you feeling well? You look pale. If you’ve picked up a bug, it might have messed with your sense of taste.”
The darker-haired man frowned. It occurred to him, belatedly, that if JD had a flu or cold, he could be breathing it into their shared space right now. He set down the wine bottle and wondered if there was a socially acceptable way to veer away from one’s dining partner.
JD shook his head. “I’m fine,” he responded, “had a break-through in a big case this evening, and was feeling like celebrating with a good steak,” he continued, looking at the beer a little oddly and somewhat confused after John had given it the tick of approval. He rubbed at his jaw, the day’s stubble sounding particularly loud in his head, again making him frown. “Usually if I’m crook the first thing to go is the appetite, but nothing wrong with that.”
He spied the additional bread that had been brought with his place setting and reached for the roll, breaking a piece off and biting into it. After a few chews he looked at the roll and again frowned. He’d always loved fresh bread, and even more so fresh crusty rolls. Especially after a hard training session at the pool, he’d love coming home to find his mother had baked a fresh batch that afternoon. He’d demolish at least 2 without any butter or spreads, and they in a way always reminded him of her being there with him.
But this one tasted odd, like cardboard, and he knew the restaurant was known for its quality of food. “Now tell me the bread tastes ok to you,” he said to John as he eyed the rest of the roll on his plate.
“Better than I’ve had in ages, though I’m hardly the best judge of that.” John watched the detective with a mounting sense of curiosity: Pale, a large appetite but food and drink tasted off, an order for a steak lightly seared on the outside but virtually raw in the center. “Forgive the question, but you haven’t gone and gotten bitten by anything, have you?” he asked, giving the man a smile. Of course he hadn’t. JD wouldn’t be here ordering dinner, if he had. “If yes, I’m relieved you’ve asked for steak and not cervelle de veau!”
“Serve what?” the detective asked, looking down at his hands and trying to think if he had been bitten by something. He knew what the vampire had said was French, but he was a little distracted and trying to piece together what John had said and what he was experiencing. “And no, I haven’t been bitten by anything,” he added, still frowning.
“Calf’s brains,” he answered, having eaten another spoonful of onion soup. “I’d rather be seated across from a vampire than a zombie. Do you know, I’ve never come across one of those? Not here, not in Europe…” John swept a casual hand to indicate the lack of the truly undead in his history. “I’d better knock on wood. This would be the worst possible time for it.”
While his confusion was still running rampant, and the dealing with the acute hearing and dulled sense of taste, JD still retained his attention for details in other people’s statements. To a degree.
“Why’s that?” he asked, eyeing John and noticing the man still looked a little ‘healthier’ than when they’d last met in the diner. A quick calculation of lighting in the two establishments confirmed in his head that it wasn’t the different lighting and he eyed John a little more closely.
And given what he’d gone through just a few weeks earlier, which his toxicology report on the blood samples he’d had taken the next day confirmed was not chemically induced, nor was he losing his mind, he started to hear noises that were not from outside his eardrums, but inside his head - pieces falling into some semblance of place. A few were askew, not at the right angle, but the nonchalance of the vampire across from him, and a number of other factors, and the detective filed away the main case he’d kept at the forefront of his mind for the past few months, and started looking more closely at things he’d always left for others to deal with.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice now a low rumble as his eyes fixed on John’s face.
The black-haired man wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin and set it on his lap. He used the intervening time to reset and bring the tone of the conversation, and his posture, more in keeping with JD’s demeanor. He gave the other man a level look. “If you’re in the frame of mind to hear it, I’ll tell you,” John said. “Or I can show you. Actually, that’s more easily done, as I haven’t the slightest idea why it happened in the first place.”
John rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and offered JD an upturned wrist. “This isn’t an offer to smell my cologne. Take my pulse. Go on.”
JD had had some strange requests made of him over the years, and this was nowhere near making it into the top 100 so he reached out and placed his fingers on the other man’s wrist. Most times he’d done this he’d felt nothing, moving to the throat to confirm a victim was in fact a case for his team if they’d arrived before the medical examiner.
And in this case it was definitely not nothing. There was a strong and steady pulse, which if he was honest he was also able to hear.
He withdrew his hand, the beat still audible in his ears. “What the hell has happened?” he asked, his fingers going to his other wrist and discovering what his whirlwind mind had deduced might be the case given everything else that had started to form a picture. It wasn’t a picture he was at all comfortable with, and he shifted in his chair as his fingers confirmed there was no discernible pulse in his wrist.
“How … what’s happening?” He frowned as he let go of his wrist and ran his tongue across his teeth. The look on his face was enough to tell John what might have been felt.
John watched JD take his own pulse and then the slight bulge of his tongue within his upper lip, finding a pair of sharp teeth hidden amongst the others. “I think the what’s clear. It’s the how I’m unsure of.” He waited for a diner to skirt the periphery of their table before continuing on. “When I went to sleep late this morning, all was well. I woke up this afternoon and got halfway through a shower before I realized I needed to breathe… and not just to talk. I watched the sunset on purpose. It was brilliant, pink and orange.”
JD listened as images of his own day, and in particular evening swam into view. He’d been at home working on the final pieces of the case to blow the ring inside NYPD sky high. The lines of connections and corruption were becoming clearer and he’d kept all that under lock and key in his spare room at home. When he’d finally come into headquarters it had been loud, louder than usual, but he’d hurried through to his office and closed the door behind him to check a few things in his files in private. Even with the door closed it had sounded like it wasn’t, but he’d put it down to him being determined to get this circle of evidence closed, and not wanting to be interrupted before he was finished. And it had worked, he’d finished, and then they’d asked him to help with the interrogation.
“The suspect I was interviewing, I’d worked on him for a while, and finally I just sat down and asked him to confess, and he did. What was that??”
John’s eyebrows went up. This was a piece he hadn’t been expecting. “That depends. If you made a casual question of it and he answered in kind, then it’s nothing I can explain. But if you made steady eye contact with him as you talked, or,” he thought of options, ''touched his arm in a particular way, or drew out your sentences while you told him what you wanted, then it’s possible your suspect is highly susceptible and you inherited a side of mesmerism with your fangs… and in that case, cheers, mate. We’ve swapped places. But you may want to check that an innocent man didn’t confess simply because you told him to.”
The almost perpetual frown was replaced momentarily with a scowl and the detective shook his head. “Plenty of circumstantial evidence, and plenty of form so it’s not likely,” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his neck to relieve the tight muscles there. “Plus it will only be a matter of time and we’ll turn up the missing link,” he added. He picked up the glass of wine and sniffed lightly at it before taking a mouthful. And as he’d now expected, there was little flavour, just a liquid substance sliding down his throat, not particularly satisfying. He slowly replaced the glass on the table and again glanced around as a waiter made their way past with three dinner plates balanced precariously along their arms followed by another with two.
“So I guess this is where you tell me that The Rabbit Hole is the watering hole of choice for someone like…” He stopped, hardly able to believe what he was saying, but plowing on anyway. “... like us… or me… or whatever.” It was all a little surreal. Yesterday he’d been a simple cop, homicide detective, with some basic understanding of what went on in a place where it wasn’t just humans who walked and talked. And now?
“And that nothing is going to taste like anything except…” Now he did stop. There wasn’t any real point in saying it, they both knew what he meant. “I can’t … how do you survive if you don’t?”
John felt a pang of sympathy. Once upon a time, he’d woken up dead, too. Dropping the distance between them, he leaned in to continue. “Finding blood won’t be the challenge it seems. The Rabbit Hole charges by the glass, but there are alternatives, black market blood banks, butcher shops, even living donors… and that’s to say nothing of strays. I know a vampire who feeds on alley cats,” he said, visibly uncomfortable with the idea.
He was getting off track. John shook his head. “The point I’m trying to make is that supply is only part of the problem. Forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know. I have no idea what a homicide detective in Las Vegas knows of my kind,” he explained, “But… there’s a shadow… a demonic aspect to the undead. It follows us back from the grave. It links us to the other side. That part of you will want to hunt, and it will want to feed from a living person. If you bite someone, it will be difficult to stop. When that happens, you can’t let it consume you. You can try not to do it again, and you may have some success, but new vampires are not known for self-control.”
Having imparted that sorry news, John gave JD space as the server placed a collection of plates on the table and murmured to, “Enjoy the meal,” before departing. Just before she left their sight, the server took a small bottle from her pocket and pumped sanitizer into her palm.
John saw it. He picked up his fork and knife. “I may need a crash course in germ theory. If I catch the flu, do me a favor and tear my throat out.”
Head still reeling from what John had just imparted, the detective stared down at the steak on the plate in front of him. His tongue, of its own volition, again ran across his top teeth, toying with the new additions. But when John suggested JD do him a favour and tear his throat out the detective’s head jerked up and his eyes widened a little as he stared across the table. The actual concept was so far beyond his normal sensibilities but was suddenly, and disconcertingly, sounding quite interesting. An internal struggle began and the detective won, a short sharp shake of his head rejecting the concept.
He cleared his throat, which also felt odd, again shifting in his chair as his eyes quickly darted around the restaurant before returning to his plate.
“I’m serious,” John said. He took a bite of his filet mignon and chewed it before explaining himself. “I’m an immortal who’s found himself in the peculiar position of being vulnerable. I could slip on a bathmat and die while we’re figuring this out! It occurred to me on the way over… what if I had a disease before I was turned and I never knew it? I could be on the doorstep of death by Typhoid fever. I’m not in love with the idea of you as a sire but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, given the alternative.
And right there it hit JD fair square in the chest. What if this was permanent? “You mean… you, a vampire who’s suddenly a human again, would want me, a human who’s suddenly a vampire for no known reason, to …. Do whatever it is to turn you back into being … “ He paused and reworded the rest of that sentence as someone walked close by their table. “... one again, rather than die like normal? You think this is permanent??”
John set his utensils down. “I don’t know if it’s permanent, but I’m not interested in an accidental death while we figure that out. I’m sorry if that seems inconsequential to you.” He frowned. “And what is that word, ‘normal’? Supernatural beings are not as rare as you might think. Like you, I have interests, work that I love doing, people I care about. I’d like to see this through… that’s what I meant. For all we know, both of us have to survive in order to reverse it.”
At risk of being accused of perpetual scowling JD considered the suggestion that they both needed to survive to ensure any chance of reversal. And he reached the conclusion he didn't want to consider the alternative anyway.
"So if you catch cold, I turn you back, got it," he said, lying in the last part of that statement. He still didn't get it but figured he would eventually. "And in the meantime I…" He paused as he looked down at his steak. His knife started slicing into the tender piece and the blood ran out of the lightly seared sirloin. As he now expected the pleasure he anticipated from the steak itself was negligible, but the taste of the blood was almost enough to send him into raptures.
“In the meantime, find a supplier and stay out of the sun,” John suggested. Other details, such as the need to exchange contact information and reach out to people who might know what happened, could wait a few minutes longer. He turned his attention to the feast laid before him.
He’d better get to work; he hadn’t had a decent meal in ages.