Sammy the Flamingo Who: Phanuel/Derek What: Mutual Aid Where: Searchlight, Phanuel's Trailer When: Present Ratings/Warnings: Language, substance use, dad jokes
When in doubt, go to Searchlight. That seemed to be Derek’s motto of late. He wasn’t sure what it was about the town that equal parts annoyed him and drew him closer. It had become a second home to him, ever since he made good on the promise to Ronnie to look after his mother. The vampire wondered what lovely, God-fearing Rosie would think if she were alive and knew a real life Angel had taken up residence not too far from her own home.
It was at Phanuel’s trailer now that he knelt down and said hello to the pink flamingo. It gave him a wave of nostalgia to do so. Back when he was little, he used to talk to the neighbor’s lawn ornaments, imagining they had secret little lives. That hadn’t been too long before some well-meaning guidance counselor had gotten a doctor to pour Ritalin down his throat.
Ah, memories.
It was better thinking of those, instead of Penny. Derek straightened and knocked on the screen door.
“Goddammit!”
The timing was purely coincidental.
Phanuel shook her iPhone in exasperation. Celeste said it was intuitive, that she’d pick it up in minutes. Fast forward seven hours, no sleep, too much alcohol later, and she was ready to pack the fucking thing up and take it back to the dealer.
The knock on her screen door distracted the Angel, and prevented her from throwing the phone against the trailer wall.
She got out of her chair and stormed to the entrance, surprised to see a familiar face. The blonde threw the door open.
“Derek,” she sighed. “Do you know anything about iPhones? I can’t get the fucking thing to unlock.”
The door swung open abruptly, leaving him blinking in the light pouring out from the trailer. “I know how to break them,” he offered. “I go through one every, like, six months.” He gestured past the doorway, peeking around Phanuel to see the device and the box. “If you let me in, I’ll help you. You just have to teach it how to recognize your face.”
Derek stood there and waited, a sad smile on his face. He didn’t mean to do the whole puppy dog eye thing, it just kind of happened that way.
“Henry didn’t say anything about faces. Or maybe she did. I don’t remember. All I know is, this is proving to be a pain in my ass.”
Phanuel took a few steps back and allowed space for the vampire. “Yeah, c’mon in.” She turned back towards the kitchen and waved a hand. “Find a place to park your ass. Feel like a drink?”
The blonde, not waiting for an answer, dug out a bottle of vodka from the freezer. This one was flavored. The label said birthday cake. All Phanuel knew was, it tasted sweet and took some of the sting out of its bite.
She retrieved two glasses and returned to the living room, setting the pieces down on top of a stack of magazines resting on the coffee table.
“Been meaning to thank you for Sammy.” She nodded her head towards the flamingo outside the double-wide. “Make sure you thank Penny for me as well.”
At the mention of Penny, he grabbed the glass and the frosted-cold bottle and poured indiscriminately before upending the vodka into his mouth and drinking deeply. Not having to breathe was an advantage there. Ignoring the burn, he kept going without pause until the vessel was empty, and poured some more before handing the bottle back. “This is good,” Derek remarked, wiping his mouth. “And you’ll have to thank Penny separately, I’m afraid.”
He nodded his chin at the device. “Now, let’s see about this...this...phone.” The vampire blinked hard. Derek usually didn’t do hard liquor, and not that quickly.
“You looking to keep pace with me? Can vampires do that? ‘Cuz damn, that was impressive.”
Phanuel walked back into the kitchen and retrieved another bottle, this time coffee-flavored. “Why would I have to thank her separately? I mean, isn’t that what marrieds do? Pass along best wishes and shit like that? Has there been a societal shift I’m not aware of?”
He looked at the label of the new bottle. “We should mix the coffee and the cake one together. Those two things are good, right? But together…” Derek shook his head. “Things are better together.” What the hell was he saying?
“Penny and I are separated now. I don’t know if it’s permanent. I had a problem with her, you know, eating people. Felt bad about it. She ate our next door neighbors,” the vampire admitted. “Please don’t smite her. She needs to eat people to survive. I just don’t know if I can handle that.”
“Well. Fuck.” Phanuel unscrewed the cap and poured two liberal shots into the glasses. “And I made you swear not to kill anymore.” She took a gulp of the vodka. Yup, definitely coffee-flavored. A hint of Starbucks dark roast, if she wasn’t mistaken. “I’m so sorry, Mitchell.”
“A promise that I made to save her from Elfleda’s influence,” he confirmed, taking the shot. “I didn’t miss the irony.” He set the glass down, realizing he needed to pace himself or he’d be staggering and crawling to Ronnie’s trailer to hunker down for the day. “But it became more than just a promise. I like feeling closer to how it was when I was a human. And if I could have any wish, it would be that both Penny and I could be human, normal, have a life and kids.”
The vampire fell silent, leaning forward slightly as a rush of emotion overtook him. “I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, when I was human. But I always knew I wanted kids, and to be a good dad, and not be a hard-ass like mine.”
“We’ve got that in common,” the Angel commiserated. “I’d be a lousy mother. Not that I can have kids. I’m not… equipped. Part of His grand design.”
She finished her glass and poured out another shot for herself, and topped up Derek’s.
On one hand, that distracted him from his troubles. On the other, it caused him to imagine things he otherwise might not have. He looked at Phanuel briefly, then away as he took the second shot to wash the mental image away, half-expecting to be struck down by a godly lightning bolt at that very moment.
“Well, I know I would have done good,” he told her. “That’s one of my few areas of confidence. I’d be Fun Dad. I can even do the jokes. Like...what kind of shoes do ninjas wear?” Derek waited for her to respond.
“I haven’t the first clue.” She took a shot. The burn felt good. “Slippers?”
The Angel snorted. “You’d definitely be the fun dad. And who knows? You may still be. Don’t give up on the dream.”
She looked out through the screen door. “You know why I called the flamingo Sammy? ‘Cuz he’s got a glass eye.”
“That’s a Vegas flamingo, alright,” Derek nodded. He picked up the new phone, examining it. “Did the person at the shop set you up with this? Because it might just be a matter of…” The vampire stood up and walked over to Phanuel. He held up the screen toward her face, and after a second, it unlocked.
“Yep, the government has your face. Congratulations, you’re now officially an American.” He handed the device to her.
“Well, they can’t have it. It’s my face.” That seemed like a reasonable statement. Still, the phone was now lit up with several -- what did Henry call them? right -- icons.
“So you wanna be in my phone? Your number I mean.” Phanuel slightly slurred the ‘n’ in ‘number’. “Seems I’m getting involved in things, and I suppose I should have people’s contact information.” She paused. “And Penny’s too. Maybe if I talked with her, she’d come around to seeing things the way you do?”
“I do want to be in your phone,” he replied. “I’ll even take a selfie with you.” At the mention of Penny, again, a shadow crossed over his face. He took the seat next to her. “But if she changes, it’ll be because of me. Not because she thinks it’s right.” The vampire shook his head.
“And then I feel like a hypocrite, talking about what’s right and wrong. After the people I’ve killed…Maybe you should have smote me. Smited me. Smit me.”
“Too late for that, Mitchell,” Phanuel smiled wanly. “You said it yourself. You like how it feels, and that makes you a little more human. If anyone can get through to Penny, it’s you.”
The Angel took a swig from her glass, finishing the contents. “What is a selfie, anyway? I was apparently in one with a hunter. What do you do with them?”
He didn’t quite agree, but left it at that. The point was moot, after all. If she didn’t eat, she died, and it wasn’t like she could ask strangers for just an arm or a few fingers. It was his luck that after over 10 years of singleness, he had fallen in love with a siren. And then shortly after, broke the killing habit. “You don’t really do anything with selfies. I mean, you can show them to other people, and they’ll pretend to care, usually by gifting you with a little heart icon. Or, well…”
Derek deliberated internally if he should warn her about dick pics. Maybe once she was used to her phone. “Anyway, you take the phone like this…” He demonstrated with his own, opening the front-facing camera while tilting his head toward the Angel’s. “And click.”
Phanuel stared a long moment at the picture of her and the vampire. So… it’s like a polaroid camera?” She took hold of his camera momentarily, and gave it a shake. “Where does the image come out?”
“It doesn’t. It stays inside the phone, until you delete it. But I think it never really gets deleted, someone somewhere has all the pictures I’ve ever taken.” Derek set his phone down. There was a lot to explain, he realized, that he had simply taken for granted since he had grown up with technology. He was lucky for a vampire, not too old to feel out of touch with modern times. He’d have been 31 if he hadn’t been turned.
“You know, you’re actually pretty cool,” he told her, randomly. “Like when you knocked me on the ground that first time, I was like, oh, there might not be a sense of humor there. But you’re deceptively cool.”
While the prospect of having photos that didn’t age and yellow was appealing, the thought of ’someone somewhere’ having her photos was disheartening. “I wonder what my Father would think of selfies. Is He aware? Would He assume a form and pose for them?” Phanuel wasn’t quite drunk enough to continue this line of thought. Instead, she turned to Mitchell’s next comment.
“No one’s called me deceptively cool before. I know that’s a compliment. Maybe I could get it printed on business cards. ‘Phanuel. Angel. Deceptively Cool.’” She grinned.
“You’re not so bad either.”
Derek chuckled, which nearly turned into a hiccup. He didn’t even know that vampires could hiccup. Maybe more vodka would help. “Hey, I’ll take that.” He poured equal parts of cake and coffee flavored liquors in the larger glass and took an exploratory sip. “This tastes like...like...not that good.” The vampire polished it off anyway.
“I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Phanuel,” he told her with a grin. “Because I don’t age, and I’m going to be bugging you for a long, long time. Angel friend.”
“I’ve seen so many come and go over the ages, Mitchell. It’d be… nice to have someone hanging around. Which means, don’t go getting yourself staked.” She decided to try his experiment to see how bad it was. The face she made spoke volumes.
“Not planning on it.” He rubbed his eyes. Derek had started seeing double of everything in the trailer. “Speaking of hanging around, I have to split if I’m gonna make it in one piece to my friend’s place. Don’t wanna do any sun salutations, especially wasted.”
The vampire began to stand up and fell promptly back in his seat. “Any second now.”
Phanuel chuckled. “Do you burn up in the sun? Or does it give you a bad case of the hives? I never could tell fact from fiction.”
Derek leaned back in the chair, his head lolling slightly. “I just get really tired and weak, and the longer I’m in it, the worse it gets. But I won’t die...I think. I’ve never tested it out for more than a couple of hours, and that wasn’t an intentional experiment.” Finally, he heaved himself to his feet.
“Thanks for the company and vodka, Phanny.” He gave the two of her a little wave.
“Call me ‘Phanny’ again and I’ll give you a lightshow to rival the sun.”
She was about to let him out the door when she called out, “Wait! I need to put in your phone number.”
The combination of drunkenness and her calling out made him smack his head into the top of the doorframe. “Fuck.” Rubbing his forehead, he turned around slowly and deliberately, and walked back over to Phanuel. He took the phone from her and put in his number, pressing each digit carefully with a jab of his fingertip, squinting down at the screen. “There ya go,” he drawled, handing it back to her.
“Gonna go sleep now.” With that, Derek managed the exit on take two.