Professionalism In Chains It had been a long shift. A really long shift. Doctor Jennifer Lowe had a headache to rival all headaches and people were just calling her name left, right and center. She kept glancing at the clock and wishing the hands would move faster. It was the middle of the night, she’d been at the hospital since eleven that morning and it was now just gone 1 in the morning.
She rubbed a hand over her eyes and wished that she smoked just so that she had an excuse to go outside and get away from the craziness for a moment. She made a soft sound of distress as someone nearby had a panic attack, their thoughts spiking and Jenny’s knees buckled. Today everyone had been so charged that getting through the hospital was like wading through treacle that talked back to you and tried to stab its way into your brain. She rubbed at her temples and blew out a breath, catching a nearby nurse by the wrist.
“I’m just gonna' take my break,” she announced, “Just need ten minutes to shift this headache. I’m not feeling great.”
“I wouldn’t be either if I were you,” the nurse sympathised with a smile, “You’ve been on your feet all day and it’s totally above and beyond the call of duty, shouldn’t you be at home by now?”
“Probably with this headache.” Jenny muttered with a wry smile, feeling the pressure build up behind her eyes again. She must have looked pale because the nurse just nodded his head in concern, a hand on her lower back.
“Go outside, get some fresh air and something to drink. Come back once you’ve taken some painkillers, or go home. No one’ll blame you for it, they can get someone in to cover you.”
“We’ll see. I’ll go take some paracetamol and then I’ll be back. But that’s definitely a possibility.” That pressure behind her eyes was increasing and she bid the nurse a quick goodbye before she moved out of the floor towards the stairs and down the hallway.
Once she hit the outside air, she felt sick, pressing the flat of one hand against the brick wall and she groaned, leaning forward like she was going to throw up and for a moment tears burned in her eyes as her throat felt like acid was crawling up it, but she didn’t.
Rubbing her hand over her face again, Jenny turned and leaned her back against the wall, lifting a tissue from her pocket when she felt the tell-tale signs of a nosebleed. Tilting her head back and pinching the bridge of her nose, Jenny felt the pressure easing as the silence curled around her mind.
Of course, it didn’t last. Things like that never did.
Before she knew what was going on, she heard a whooshing sound and something silver attached itself to her wrist. She was tugged aside, nearly dropping her tissue and letting out a surprised yelp as she was pulled a little way along the wall at the back of the hospital towards the alleyway at the side of it near the front door. Struggling to fight against it failed when she ended up colliding with someone, feeling the chain closing tight around her wrist, cool metal and she scrambled to her feet, staring at her wrist, well aware that she’d lost her tissue somewhere - very unhygenic - and her nose was still bleeding.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” she muttered, lifting her arm to press it against her nose as she tried to step back and away from whoever it was she crashed into. She needed to stop bumping into random people, it was beginning to become a habit.
Hospitals... Places where the sick and injured came for help. The potentially very bloodily injured, with a large supply of plasma kept in storage. Places which could also be fairly chaotic, which made them easy targets for vampires.
Victoria Foxworth didn't find it vital to go there, but they did help to take the edge off, every now and then. Sex games weren't the only reason she kept a nurse's uniform around and security precautions were often woefully inadequate in public buildings, providing you looked the part and acted like there was an important task at hand.
"No problem!" She smiled, attempting to avert attention, before failing to carry on her way with an unexpected tug of shoulder at the wrist.
Stopping, the more undead of the two brunettes looked down at where she was now attached, blinked in confusion and then levelled gaze back up at the stranger.
"Um... Is this your way of telling me you're in the mood for something kinky?" She asked, genuinely confused. "'Cause there are more subtle ways of going about it..."
Jenny looked at the woman and frowned, "No, you've-" she tugged her arm and the chain between them tightened, apparently it had no give. "Got totally the wrong idea. It..." She glanced at her sleeve, would need to get a new coat when she got into the hospital again.
She swallowed and hooked a finger underneath the chain around her left wrist. She pulled a little and it didn't move, didn't loosen or anything. She frowned. "Definitely got the wrong idea. I'm not- Crazy as this sounds, it kind of came out of nowhere." She ran her sleeve underneath her nose again in the hopes that her nose had stopped bleeding. At least the roar in her head was dulled to a buzz.
She gave the woman a half smile. "So, let's just get this off so I can go back to work."
Victoria gave her a sceptical look, complete with raise of eyebrow, because why would anyone seriously cuff themselves to a random stranger? At least, one who they were passing on the street? It had to be a sex thing, because nobody was placing her under arrest and, if they hadn't figured out she wasn't a legitimate nurse yet, then that wasn't the motivation.
Still, if they were having second thoughts, far be it from her to question their motives, right?
"Look, um... I don't care why you did this, but you're the one with the key, so... Y'know. Whenever you're ready, lady!"
Vicky stood there with a polite enough smile, but the smile was forced. As pretty a neck as Doctor Lowe had, 'Nurse Foxworth' wanted to get to those human blood supplies and the more time she remained here, the more likely it was that someone might discover she didn't actually work there.
"Seriously," she urged, dipping head. "I'm kind of on my way, here. I haven't got time for this."
"Oh, because I'm just about to go and handcuff myself to someone in the middle of a shift." Jenny said, irritated because she was tired and her head hurt and she tugged on the chain again, even taking a couple of steps backwards like the distance would help. It just pulled tight. It wasn't giving.
Glancing back at the hospital, Jenny tried to angle her wrist towards the light, looking for a clasp that could hold a key. She frowned when there was no clasp, at least not on her half of the chain. She slid her hand along and grabbed the other woman's wrist, turning it over and looking for a clasp on her side too.
Confusion flickered over her features. "What the fu- What's going on here?" she asked, suddenly suspicious. She wasn't one to do this, at all and since the other woman clearly had some experience with this... Kind of thing, maybe it was her fault.
"I've seen stranger," Vicky had retorted, now on the verge of tapping her foot in expectation of a punch line. Maybe it was a joke? But if so, it was in poor taste.
But as time went on and the other woman clearly seemed amiss for any way to part them, Victoria frowned with an aggravated sigh and gave a slight twist of the wrist for her own benefit, looking the bondage over. She could do a lot of things her human self wouldn't have been capable of, but casually tearing metal apart generally wasn't one of them. Maybe with a lot of effort... It wasn't really something she had needed to try.
"Well, it's not my fault!" Argued the vampiress, frowning as she looked for so much as a lock, yet failed to locate one. "This is... This is ridiculous. You seriously don't know how this happened?"
"No. I came out here to get some fresh air since I've been at work for the better part of 14 hours," Jenny paused to consider that, there had to be some kind of law against working so long but she had promised to cover for someone who was off sick anyway and then it had just kind of gotten away from her and out of her control and before she knew it was one in the morning and she was only an hour away from being able to go home and crawl into bed when something stupid like this happened. "And then, whoosh."
She waved her other hand in a sweeping motion as if that would indicate how the chain had just kind of come out of nowhere. "And then I crashed into you." She paused, "Yeah, it is ridiculous."
"Silver-plated?" The vampiress mused, lookiing the links over. "I mean, even if it's not pure, that's gotta' be at least a little expensive... Somebody doesn't just give this away."
The reasons for it seemed to be somewhat secondary now, though. Victoria's primary interest was in removing it and she looked around.
"Don't yo - I mean, don't we have some kind of... I don't know... Bolt cutters for if someone gets... Oh, wait, that's the fire brigade, isn't it? Damn it... Well, I don't know! You know somewhere with a garage?"
"A garage?" Jenny repeated a little stupidly before she frowned, running through the layout of the city, trying to work out just where to go. She looked at the chain again, lifting her wrist to the light. "Uh, there's probably one not too far from here. I mean, I don't- I've got to get back to work. My break's only supposed to be ten minutes."
She looked back at the building and then at the woman helplessly. "Jenny," she said, holding out her other hand to shake. They might as well know each other's names. She motioned to the stethascope around her neck, "Doctor Lowe, I guess you'd know me as. What floor do you work on...?" She asked, trailing off in the hopes that the woman would give her name.
A short pause was made as Victoria mentally flustered. It had to be now, didn't it? Argh! And here she was with literally no way to escape. It even made the last resort of biting an improbability, because she would be stuck with a corpse to haul around for the duration of bondaged captivity.
"Well, I... That's..." Fuck! Next time, do some research, Vicky! In fact, next time, try and avoid getting too near anyone you might find yourself spontaneously handcuffed to without consent. "I mean, I'm..." Think! Think! Think! "I transferred. From... Los... Angeles... Yeah."
She almost said 'Miami', but there was a good chance the other woman might, herself, have come from there.
"A-a-and that's besides the point!" She misdirected with a flail of free hand. "We're not exactly reporting for duty like this! We need, um... OK! Garage! Let's go! Which direction? You do know where it is, right?"
Jenny frowned, "But you're on duty, right?" She asked, "I am. I can't- I can't just walk away." Tiredness was pulling at her with the increased oxygen and she blew out a breath. "We just need to go in and tell them I'm going home, at least, I already said that I might be- it's just-" She raked both her hands through his hair, frustration clear in her movements.
"It's that way," she pointed and lifted her chin a little in the direction of the garage. "Are you new then? Walking out isn't gonna be a good start. And I didn't get your name." She curled her lips into a small smile and then lifted her wrist. "If I'm gonna be seeing you around work, or at least, you know, can't get out of this tonight, we might as well know names."
Unbeknownst to Victoria, the mental image of temptation to just push Jenny up against a wall in the shadows and feed on her to death, hand clamped over mouth, simply to prevent more questions being asked than she was comfortable with, was probably being picked up on by the psychic. It was a flash and little more, but in danger of her real identify as an interloper being revealed, the more undead of the two brunettes felt a tinge of cornered animal syndrome going on under her emotional skin.
"Victoria," she said, more perfunctory than anything else. Ultimately, though, feeling hurried and wanting to get this over with. "And I'd really, really, really just like to get... Unhitched. No offence."
The image assaulted Jenny rather rapidly and she stumbled over her feet a little as they started to move, a half-yelp escaping her as she stared at Victoria - thankful to have a name to put to a face now - and she swallowed, trying to push it aside but finding herself unable. The image played in front of her eyes in glorious technicolour, her own imagination adding in the feeling of a brick wall against her back.
"None taken."
Her heartbeat picked up speed as she eyed the woman - vampire, her brain corrected, with a new panic gripping her - and decided that they definitely needed to get this damn chain off them as soon as possible because she was in no mood to be eaten.
"Y-yeah," she agreed, "I've never been one for hitching." She looked back at the hospital before she just nodded decisively and started walking away, keeping the chain as taut as she could to keep distance between herself and the vampire. The vampire. Of all the people to be magically chained to-
Well, that could explain it. Magic.
The startled noise puzzled Victoria and she frowned, head rearing back a little in confusion. She was picking up signs of sudden agitation, even fear. A trait which often assisted her seductive hunting technique, for it allowed one to gauge the most applicable potential victim for purposes of attraction and, out in the open, an accelerated pulse and scents of fear were a lot more obvious.
But why were they showing up...?
In a self-conscious moment, Victoria made for a discrete brush of hair back, making sure to use subtlety for the purposes of checking forehead, but... Nope. No obvious vampirism. It could happen, sometimes, in the heat of a passionate or angry moment, without realising. Thankfully, though, no obvious visual clues were being given away.
A look behind her being quickly stolen. Because that was how these things sometimes worked, right? A person caught a glimpse of something you couldn't see, causing them to run away.
Yet, there was nothing.
"Are you... Feeling OK?"
"Fine," Jenny lied, tension in her voice. "I just- I really wanna' get this chain off and go home. I could do with sleeping for a month and-" Putting on a cross or something, finding a wooden stake, stepping out into the sunlight? She caught herself a second later, the vampire had just thought about killing her and only briefly. Not like she was putting a whole lot of weight onto the thought.
Pull yourself together, Jennifer.
"It's just been a long day, you know?" She tried for an easy smile. "Jumping at shadows." Rubbing the back of her neck, she tilted her head, "Come on, the garage is this way."
"Right..." Victoria answered, although, wasn't about to disagree. "Look, we'll... Take a cab. Get there quicker," she suggested and looked around the hospital parking lot to locate one. A place notorious, much like train stations, for drivers wanting to get an easy fare.
With a muttering of needing to hide the link, so as to prevent any weird questions, Vicky was wagering that if they didn't bring attention to it, themselves, then both of them getting in the back wouldn't be a target for... Bringing up in conversation, because she didn't have a clue of how best to explain it. Not without declaring they were lovers and trying to stick her tongue down Jenny's throat, but even that would be so ridiculously over the top, that it would most likely attract attention, not divert it.
Thankfully, the ride wasn't long - even if fishing for money was a tad difficult, but not impossible. With that done, Victoria made a straight line for the nearest mechanic cleared her throat and decided to go for gold by simply holding out her wrist.
"A little help, please?"
"Uh..." The guy looked the pair of them over with a confused expression. Greasy rag sticking out of overalls to complete the picture. "You girls playing dress-up and it go wrong or what?"
The thoughts running through the mechanic's mind - and what he was doing working at this time of night Jenny didn't want to know - were less than polite. Her cheeks went scarlet as his eyes slid between the two brunettes, imagining just what they were getting up to by being chained together and she shifted uncomfortably.
"I gotta' say, your outfits are convincing," he said, wiping his hands on said rag before he got to his feet. There was a little attention on the pair now from the few others that clearly had nothing better to do with their time than hang around at work (not that she could talk considering) and the flush on Jenny's cheeks didn't go away. If anything, it just got worse.
"Can't you just help us get it off?" she asked, not making eye contact with the man, knowing all too well that if she did, she'd get a direct line into whatever creepy lesbian fantasy he was concocting. If only he knew she was a vampire. In fact, that would probably make it hotter for him. "It's... We... Please?"
"Leave the key in your other purse, cutie?" one of the others called and Jenny turned her head, shooting him a withering look, not that it worked all too well considering the flush on her cheeks.
Victoria twisted mouth, jaw clenching. She could have found it amusing, but could pick up on the other woman's feelings. "It's, um..." Ahem! "This whole big... Fancy dress thing. Y'know - emergency services theme? And the police guy thought it'd be funny to... Well, do this. 'Cept they didn't have a... Key."
Or lock, for that matter.
Which, Victoria knew, from the man's, "Uh-huh," was none too convincing.
"Alright, let's see what we can see..."
Elated to just get the difficult portion of the discussion over with, Vicky breathed a sigh of relief and prepared for the attempt to release them. Or maybe the second attempt. No? Well, how about the third?
By the time they got to the seventh, with absolutely no impact on the actual chain, whatsoever, Victoria was starting to lose heart.
"I think you need to get back in touch with your, um... 'Friend'. This thing ain't budgin'."
"Oh, God... We're stuck, aren't we?"
"Lady, short of blowing that thing apart with dynamite, I haven't got a friggin' clue how to get you two apart. Can't even melt it through with the blowtorch!"
Jenny let out a small sound, having been made more and more uncomfortable as they'd approached the chain with bigger objects and then the blowtorch and she chewed her lower lip. "We're stuck," she conceded.
Moving a little closer to the vampire, never mind that she was a vampire right now, Jenny touched Victoria's arm. "We should probably... Get out of here. Go home? It's gonna take a while to get in touch with that cop." She looked at the time. Ages until sunrise, but she didn't know what to do about it when the sun did come up.
She looked at the chain again, it had stayed cool to the touch, after being attacked by the blow torch. There was magic involved, there had to be.
Putting on a forced smile and affecting polite nod to the mechanic, Victoria really wanted to know what the apparently delicate little chain links could be made out of to prevent it being sawed through, melted or crushed by industrial-strength tools of the trade. "Home, right," she agreed, doing her best to shuffle out of there. Money wasn't an issue. She would have gladly paid!
By the time they were out of earshot, though, the vampiress muttered, "Well, we can't go back to the hospital now! It's not like you'd be able to do your - we'd be able to do our jobs now... Where's your place?"
That was the second slip and by now Jenny was positive that Victoria didn't actually work at the hospital. She rubbed her hand over her face. "Drop the act, I know you're not actually a nurse at the hospital. What you're doing in a uniform and hanging around outside the hospital I don't want to know," she said before she sighed. "My place? It's - it's a few blocks from here."
And that wasn't a lie. But she knew enough about vampires that once she'd invited her in, that would be it, the vampiress could come in whenever she wanted to. There was a moment's hesitation, her heartbeat racing briefly again before she caught herself, taking a couple of deep breaths to keep herself calm. "It's... Are you sure you wanna' come back to mine? Where do you live?"
Had Jenny attempted to walk, she would have been yanked right back, for Victoria's feet were now rooted firmly to the sidewalk. Her bluff had been called. No threats of alerting anyone... But it was making her wonder just how healthy this enforced arrangement was.
And there was that speeding heart rate, again...
"What else do you... Think you know about me? C'mon... You keep, like, dancing around me as if I'm a cactus or something."
It was a solid demand. One she was making before physically moving on anywhere.
Jenny swallowed, taking a couple of steps back. The chain caught her wrist stopping her from moving any further away from Victoria. The tone of her voice made Jenny's stomach twist and her heart skitter a little. She had to be so careful with what she was going to say next, though she was well aware that if she got too freaked out, Victoria would be able to smell the lie.
"I don't- I'm not sure what you're talking about," Jenny lied, "And to be honest, I'm not exactly happy about this arrangement, I'm supposed to be at work and if we can't get this chain off tonight I'm going to be stuck to you for God knows how long and I can't take the time off work, I have patients and I have-" she ran a hand through her hair. "Besides, how're we gonna' shower? Or sleep? And I don't wanna' be wearing these clothes for however long we're stuck together. How're we gonna' get changed?!"
She hoped that her miniature freak-out drew the subject away from the question considering she hadn't actually asked it.
Fluster... Heh. It tickled Victoria and she gave a coy little smile, then bunching up of shoulders into a shrug.
"Well... Y'know. Guess we'll just have to make like we're Siamese, huh?"
Not that she had any problem with sharing her personal space with a pretty face, but... 'Doctor Jennifer Lowe'? According to the name tag, anyway. Yeah, she might.
Fishing out her mobile, Victoria offered it the other brunette's way.
"Better call up work and let 'em know you're... However you wanna' explain it, I guess! As for my place, that all depends on how much you've got a thing for the undead... I'm quite the collector."
"Collector's one way to put it," Jenny muttered to herself, finding that she tugged the collar of her work coat up a little like that would protect her neck, as if Victoria suddenly got hungry. She wet her lower lip and caught the phone as it was thrown at her.
After a brief conversation with her boss, claiming sickness and her headache blindsiding her, she hung up and said she'd call when she was better, after all, she was owed time off and she'd been doing a ridiculous amount of overtime anyway. Tossing the phone back to Victoria, she put her hands on her hips.
"So what now? If we're going to my place, what do we do?"
"I'm probably not who you should ask a question like that," replied 'Nurse Foxworth' with a smirk. this might be the most unfortunate case of a game of 'tag' gone wrong, in world history, but she was confident enough in her sexuality to make light of it. "But if this thing isn't coming off one way, then it's coming off another. Maybe... Hand cream? Some kind of lotion..."
A beat.
"What d'you mean, 'one way to put it'?"
Jenny tipped her head and thought about the idea of creams to slide the chain off. She touched her thumb to her little finger, trying to make her hand as thin as possible and tried to slide the chain up her wrist a little further, but she could get it to just underneath her thumb and then that was it. No matter how hard she tried, it wasn't going to go up any further.
"Hm?"
"I said I collect vampire stuff and you said... You know what you said!"
Former suspicions were starting to cement into something else and, really, what if the girl was a Slayer? Hmm, no... If she was, then this would have gone another way. But there were hints of prior knowledge at play.
Which, in a way, was having the effect of making Vicky reconsider how they came to be so closely entwined together.
"Are you sure you didn't do this...?"
"I'm sure," Jenny said a little shortly. She just wanted to go home - without her new vampiric attachment - and go to sleep considering she had managed to get herself some time off work, granted through it wasn't technically honest time off, it was still time off.
Rubbing her hand over her face again, she looked at Victoria. "The last thing I'd do, if I was going to secure time off, would be to handcuff myself to a va- you! Or anyone, for that matter."
More avoiding the issue. Grr... Victoria was having trouble figuring out if it was deliberate obfuscation of just the result of a scatterbrained mind. Considering the other brunette's profession, she was betting more of the former than the latter.
But then, there it came! There it was! An admission!
"Hah!" Victoria accused, free hand making a pointed gesture with index finger. "There it is! Oh yeah! Uh-huh! You know! See! You knew all this time! And-and-and you're some kind of, like, sorceress who wants to put me in her cauldron or something! I'm totally onto you!"
"What?!" Jenny exclaimed, the mental growling putting her even more on edge. "That's ridiculous!" Her voice lifted in volume. "That's the stupidest thing I've heard all evening and considering a magical chain came out of nowhere and sent me flying into the nearest person, that's pretty stupid!"
She frowned, "Don't point at me," she huffed, folding her arms and ignoring how the action tugged on the chain. "I'm not a sorceress." Looking around, she tugged on the chain again. "How about we get out of the street? God, could this night get worse?" She paused and looked at Victoria again, "Don't answer that, I don't want to know."
"Fine," muttered what was, by now, a very put out Victoria. OK, so... Maybe they weren't some kind of practitioner of magic seeking to entrap a vampire into their latest incantation. But that still left some unanswered questions. "But we're going back to mine," she resolved and led off, not at all feeling trustful towards this new and mysterious... Whatever she was. Vicky just didn't feel comfortable putting herself at risk of going to an unfamiliar location.
"And I still wanna' know how you figured it out..."
"And where exactly is 'yours'?" Jenny asked, tugging on the chain to make Victoria stop walking away because until Jenny knew that there was a bed and warmth and not a coffin and drippy black wax candles and sacrificed virgins or something equally disturbing and gothic horror movie-esque waiting for her she was going nowhere. She wasn't about to put herself at risk either.
Her eyes narrowed a little. "Figured what out? That you're a vampire?" It was the first time she'd said it aloud, the word alone creeped her out because she was all too aware of how fragile she was in comparison to Victoria.
"Walking distance," Victoria answered, but Jenny's expression was mirrored as the vampiress felt rarely-used temper wanting to surface. Whatever the reason for detecting her otherworldly nature, Doctor Lowe seemed not to want to speak of it.
So, with a sudden shift of muscle, bone and sharpening of calcium form blunt to sharpened teeth, one Victoria Foxworth decided to force the issue into the open by declaring it in no uncertain terms. A viciously serpentine aesthetic, in some ways seductive, when she was in the mood. Predatory, no matter once.
And also a way of trying to shift their dynamic in her favour.
"See... Now, while I could eat you... While I'd like to eat you... For all I know, even if I'm vindictive enough to do that and saw your arm off, for all I know, this thing could just keep reattaching to different parts of you. So... I won't. But if we're being forced together for whatever the duration of this is? I wanna' know how you figured it out. So, seeing as how I'm being honest with you... And not doing the obvious... How about you level with me, hmm?"
Jenny moved backwards so fast that she almost lost her balance and came colliding with a nearby lamppost. She hit it with a dull thud, spine and skull coming into contact with it sharply. The sudden shift had scared her and obviously so. There was a difference between knowing about vampires and actually seeing them in the flesh, as it were.
She leaned against the cold metal like that would protect her and she just stood there for a moment, staring. Her mouth moved soundlessly before she pulled herself together, visibly pushing her fear aside though her heart was still hammering and she was sure that Victoria could smell her fear, or whatever it was that vampires could smell. If they could even smell fear. Could they smell fear? Was that possible?
"I- I'm psychic," she said finally. "Telepathic, I guess." She swallowed again, hoping to God that that was a good enough answer. It was the truth. "In the alley way, you- you thought about pushing me up against the wall and killing me so I'd stop asking you questions."
Yes, they could smell fear... And Victoria certainly was. She knew who had the upper hand now and that playful, even flirtatious nature crept nearer to the surface as she smiled in realisation of what was now spoken about.
"I see..."
A smile of very sharp fangs, indeed. A gaze now of yellow hue, which perhaps moved down Doctor Lowe's neck for a few seconds on purpose, just to get a reaction. Such things seemed to amuse most predators.
"Well, Jennifer... Jenny. Can I call you that?" She asked, trailing fingertip down from collar to name tag, testing it for a moment. Nail running over 'Doctor Lowe', before returning attention back to the woman's face. "I promise not to eat you, if you promise to play nice with me, deal?"
Eyes closed and Victoria shook head a little from side to side, feeling the change back to humanity's visage melt firmly back into place. Relaxation. Confidence.
"I might be undead, but... Magic, dragons - all that 'occult' stuff; I've always found quite the compulsion, y'know? So, being psychic? If that's what you really are? Nothing to be ashamed of. And if it is true, then you're probably picking up on me telling the truth about not hurting you, correct?"
Jenny's shoulders lifted and when she was touched, she leaned further back against the post, swallowing and she watched Victoria very carefully, eyes meeting the yellow ones of the vampire in front of her. She nodded, muttering hastily, "Deal," though how she could play dirty with a vampire she didn't quite know, unless that involved going out in sunlight, showering in holy water or having a sudden lapse in her atheism and wearing a cross.
She tipped her head in curiosity as Victoria continued talking, relaxing as the woman shifted back to looking like a human and her fingers twitched at her sides, almost like she wanted to touch the woman's forehead, feel the difference between the human face and the vampiric one. Her medical mind wanted to know the technicalities of a shift like that, what would it entail? Require? A genetic shift? Something that only happened after death? Did the bones move? Was it purely a visual thing or was it the demon inside that perpetrated the change?
"Yeah," she answered, "And I'm not ashamed of it, I just don't tell people. Mostly because they wouldn't believe me." If she told them, she knew there would always be worry about whether or not she was reading their mind, fiddling with their minds and so on, conversely, if they didn't believe her she might be locked up again and that would put a dent in her medical career.
"You must have quite the talent... Most people hardly even guess a playing card right. And, seeing as we're on the same level, I can probably say I'm thinking this thing's compounded by some kind of spell."
Gesturing with an uplift of wrist at the inadvertent bracelet, Victoria twisted wrist within it. It really was starting to seem like the only option. For something so apparently fragile, it sure had a way of resisting just about every known physical effort to dismantle it.
"PS: My place in Key West... Well, it's kind of average. And temporary. Most of my stuff's still in LA, but... Yeah. It's not a dungeon or anything. If you feel better going back to yours, I won't argue. And, um... All sit outside the door if you need to go to the bathroom, before you ask!"
"It's a pain in the ass," Jenny groused, "I mean, I couldn't control it at all when I was a kid and now it's tentative at best, but it's enough that I can work." And she was damn good at her job, she'd studied and worked so hard to be there. She wet her lower lip. "Magic? Yeah, I thought as much, the chain kind of came out of nowhere, so I'm gonna' guess it's random? First person it touched or something..." She shrugged and looked at it again.
It was tough, for something so thin and she huffed out a breath, "Gotta be the only explanation, since it was blowtorch proof."
She paused as Victoria told her about her place and she nodded, "I'm gonna' hazard a guess that your place is far more... Sunlight-proof than mine. I'd just need to let my housemates know what was going on so they don't worry. Figure we can't go back at the moment like this..." She lifted her wrist. "Long as you've got a bathroom at yours, I think we can work with that."
In truth, it was probably somewhere the vampiress had taken over after draining the person who last owned it. But Jenny had a point; it was prepared for someone with nocturnal requirements and there wasn't much chance of Doctor Lowe getting up in secret to try and expose the other brunette to sunlight, with them linked at wrist.
Plus, there were blood supplies in the freezer. They were running down, which was the whole point of going to the hospital, but that was where the last batch had originated from.
"Ladies' night, it is!" Vicky summoned with a pleasant smile. "Make a nice change, having someone to watch a movie with..."