cullen edwards. (twivamp) wrote in rulethenight, @ 2011-08-23 21:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, cullen edwards, danny swanson |
log: cullen edwards and danny swanson
Who: Cullen and Danny. Edward and Jacob?
What: Waiting for his shift replacement to get there so that he can meet with Yasmina and finally get his papers (and get the hell out of Boston), Cullen encounters a cute guy coming into the gas station. Needless to say, he did not make it to the meeting. And not for the fun reasons that someone with actual good luck might have.
When/Where: Tuesday night, Cullen's work.
CULLEN: Working the graveyard shift at a gas station was a largely uneventful thing. Not many people came by if it wasn't a Friday or Saturday night, and those that did tended to just pay at the pump and go. It was the whole reason that he was able to get this job, really; it was boring and didn't require much, so the manager was fine with giving it to someone whose credentials he couldn't really count on. Not to mention, Cullen's lack of papers meant that he was being paid under the table -- and a good deal less than what the normal employees were. But, it worked two ways, really. His job was easy, he wasn't asked questions, and he was able to pay for his apartment (barely) without worrying that someone might track him somehow. He wasn't even really sure how all of that tracking stuff worked, honestly, but he knew that it was possible to, if someone was using their real social security number and all of that. Plus there was a television that got a couple of stations that actually played reruns of shows that could be pretty entertaining with nothing else to do. And he was getting a shocking amount of reading done. And his boss really didn't care how attentive he was or wasn't to customers as long as no one stole anything. All in all, it was a pretty sweet deal, considering the circumstances. He was in the middle of reading again tonight, as he sat behind the counter. Some kind of history text (he'd found himself on a non-fiction kick recently, as most fiction seemed either completely geared to females and/or dealt with the supernatural -- which he decidedly did not want to read about, at the moment), halfway through it. Too bad he wasn't in school anymore, his grades would've been even better with all of this time open to study. If he weren't so busy watching the clock, that was -- he was supposed to meet up soon for 'dinner' and a chance to get those illusive faked papers, as soon as his replacement got here. Someone he would owe for letting him go for a few hours, but it was well worth it. Once he had those papers, he was out of here. He could actually try and start some kind of new life, wouldn't have to worry about looking over his shoulder. Which he'd been doing more and more of recently, feeling paranoid and like someone was watching him. Given his history, he wasn't about to overlook that as just coincidence, so the sooner he could leave, the better.
DANNY: The past few days hadn't been so uneventful for Danny. Nights of endless road stretched out before their headlights as they covered distance eastward, and then passing out into a deep unconsciousness during the hours when the sun was above the horizon -- he wasn't a vampire, and yet he was living on a vampire's schedule, keeping her hours so that they could cover as much ground as possible while she was able. She wore him out. Even if he'd wanted to take advantage of the daylight to protect himself in an attempted escape, he wasn't capable of it at this point, when no amount of coffee or energy drinks could give him enough power to drag himself through the motel room door and out into the unknown world. He'd never been this far away from home. He'd never hitchhiked. And he'd known the whole way that if he somehow managed to break out of the motel rooms she rented, if he somehow managed to find someone willing to drive him back west, if he somehow scrounged enough money for food or a bus ticket or clothes that didn't stink of her, then he wouldn't have anywhere to go. He couldn't go back to the res. He couldn't go back home. She'd turned him into a monster, twisted the anger inside of him into something that was truly terrifying, and he didn't feel safe anymore. People around him would get hurt; he couldn't do that to his family. She fucking owned him now, and she'd proved it. He wasn't sure how things were going to change once she brought him to a new house in Boston, but it was obvious that she was up to something, of course. When she'd given him this mission, he'd balked -- no fucking way, he wasn't going to go spy on some random guy for her, what the hell was this all about -- and as he walked into the gas station that night, he carried his left arm close to his chest to protect his newly broken fingers. She'd promised that she would set them properly and take care of him when he came back. The faster he got this over with, the better. There only seemed to be one person in the place, a guy hanging out behind the counter with his nose in some book, and Danny got a good look at him as he approached. A shock of light brown hair falling into his eyes, pale skin, young and handsome -- the kind of boy he'd expect to see running track or holding records on the swim team, not working nights at a seedy convenience store that probably only saw drunk teenagers trying to buy cigarettes and truckers picking up beer and beef jerky. He fit the description that she'd given Danny, and he felt his stomach tightening, his heart beating a little faster. What was worse was that he recognized the scent -- that dry, papery coolness that he'd come to realize meant vampire. His good hand snagged a bag of Combos and Lays from a shelf -- he wasn't really looking to see what he'd grabbed -- and he dropped them down on the counter in front of the cashier, trying not to look as conspicuous as he felt. "You got American Spirits?" He hadn't had a cigarette since she'd taken him, and he really fucking needed one right about now.
CULLEN: The cursory glance he'd given the guy as he'd walked in was more out of habit than necessity. Bella had never really gone hugely in-depth with him as far as what he was capable of went. She showed him how fast he could move, taught him how to sort through the different scent-tastes that assaulted him as a vampire (especially when blood was involved), showed him the right ways to bite. But she'd never trained him, really, and things still too him by surprise sometimes, unexpectedly. Like that he could look up and see a person grabbing chips and realize that he'd known they were there already, had picked up on their distinctive scent and felt how they displaced the air in the room as they moved through it. It was like an odd sense of deja vu to realize visually as well that they were there. His eyes lingered for a moment on him, taking stock of his height, his build, his hair, his face, before looking back down to his book. This wasn't exactly the place to scope guys, cute though this one may have been, and he'd shied away from all of that in large part, anyway. It just felt too tiring, after everything that had happened. But he looked up again as Danny came toward him, before the other had spoken. Something smelled different about him. It wasn't even the lycanthrope scent that he was noticing, so much as the presence of blood somewhere around him. Not overbearing, not like he had some kind of gaping wound, but more distinctive than if everything was alright with him. He was distracted, not looking at the chips that were dropped to the counter, eyes instead scanning a bit, trying to figure out the cause of that scent, even as he shoved half of his brain into answering the question. "....Yeah." He pushed back from the chair, pausing for a moment as he finally caught sight of Danny's injured hand. That was it. His injured fingers, blood rising just beneath the surface of the skin. Mystery solved, he glanced back to Danny's face before turning to get the cigarettes. "ID?" ….ID? Wow, he'd really just carded the cute guy thanks to being distracted. Oh well. Turning back, he glanced to the guy's fingers once more. "You need anything for that?" Combos were good but they weren't exactly a painkiller.
DANNY: ...Well, fuck. He didn't even have his wallet on him. She'd taken that, and honestly, he didn't even know if she still had it. Because his ID said Danny Swanson on it, not Jacob Black. Because it said he was eighteen on it, not sixteen. And because why would he need his own money, anyway? Bella made sure she had everything that he needed. She was the older woman in the relationship, and he was doing enough for her just by being there and being her friend -- being more than her friend, as she sometimes had to patiently remind him -- so really it was of no object for her to look out for him. Which meant that he had twenty bucks in his pocket and not nearly enough to manage any kind of escape attempt, if he could even make it far enough with his damaged hand to use that money. "Damn, I think I left my ID at home," he mumbled though a small grimace of embarrassment, feeling for all the world like those teenagers who tried to take advantage of the bored night clerk to pass for eighteen when they didn't even have a fake to flash. "Forget it." And he'd really wanted those damn cigarettes. It took him a moment to escape his own self-consciousness to even become aware of the fact that the guy was referring to his hand, asking him if he needed anything to fix that. He really didn't need this guy asking questions about it. Like he could even possibly explain what had really happened. "Nah, it's stupid. Just a dumb fight. I have stuff at the house, I'll fix it up later." Gingerly, Danny let his hand fall back down to his side, though his arm muscles screamed in protest. They'd cramped up from the pain and it took all of his breath just to stop himself from cursing wildly. He breathed through his nose once or twice until the sensation began to fade, then spread the twenty he'd been given to pay for his purchase on the counter next to those inconsequential bags of junk food. He had a few more things to accomplish before he could get out of there. "Figures I'd get in a fight my first week in town," he managed a dry little laugh. "You move somewhere new but some things never change." Danny had never been all that good at small talk to begin with, but he didn't have a choice. He had to try to engage the guy a bit. Act friendly.
CULLEN: Cullen, meanwhile, was feeling utterly stupid over the same situation, albeit for different reasons. Had he really just busted this cute guy? It wasn't like he was hoping for an invitation to the school dance or anything, but that was vaguely mortifying no matter how much you planned to not see the person ever again. At least there were the fingers to distract him from his fall down the ladder of non-moronic teenaged behavior. Not that his drawing attention to the fact that this guy had apparently been hurt in a fight was a whole lot better, but what the hell. He'd gotten rusty with the whole acting-like-a-normal-person thing. He could tell that the hand hurt worse than he was letting on or willing to admit; Cullen had broken a few bones himself over the course of his life, but it was his senses that again let him know about those things that his human self wouldn't have picked up on. "Yeah? Where're you from?" He sounded vaguely distracted, mentally identifying that odd new scent that flashed past and flavored things slightly -- pain, from that injury, that blood. Once noted though, he could pull away mentally again, reaching for the chips to scan. The total flashed in green as Cullen put them into a bag for the guy, not wanting to make him have to do that, considering. He turned and got a pack of the cigarettes that Danny had asked for earlier, and put them into the bag too, before handing it back over like there was nothing out of the ordinary. His boss never checked the cameras anyway.
DANNY: Woah, really? He couldn't help but eye the guy for a long moment, not entirely trusting that gesture of generosity. People didn't just give things away for free, against the law, for no reason. And people usually didn't just give him anything. He didn't see what the catch could possibly be, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there had to be something he was missing, something that was slipping past him right now. Like an ulterior motive. ...Maybe werewolves were deathly allergic to cigarette smoke and he just didn't know it yet. That would be so uncool. At last, however, he reached for the bag and his change, sliding it all off the counter and holding it against his chest for a moment so that he could rummage in and grab the pack. "Seattle." And maybe he could've said more about it, or offered up some more information about why he moved here, but he couldn't honestly think of much of a story or an explanation or even a lie that could adequately sum up why he'd made the long trek cross-country while editing out the unbelievable parts. He just shrugged. But it was proving to be a lot harder to open up the pack of cigarettes with just one hand and his forearm, and after a few efforts at getting the outer wrapper off, he made a sound of frustration and tried to tear it off with his teeth. Fine, that was taken care of. But matches? There was no way in hell he was going to be able to work a pack of matches, and he realized miserably that he didn't have a fucking lighter either. He'd really thought this through, huh. "Fuck. Can you give me a hand with this?" He'd have to go outside to light up, but it wasn't like there was anyone around at this time of night. Probably it wouldn't be a big deal for him to leave the register unattended for a minute, either.
CULLEN: Well, Cullen was WASPy enough that he wasn't raised near any reservations, and his hometown didn't really house many of the more downtrodden. He was pretty open and didn't have many prejudices, although that was admittedly stemming largely from the fact that he didn't have a lot of diversity in his experiences growing up. Sorry Danny, he was pretty much assuming you're a generic middle-class Caucasian guy. Maybe part Hispanic? Project what you know, etc. That really was going to just play more into his downfall, seeing as between that, Danny's level of attractiveness, the lack of anything happening at the gas station, and Cullen generally missing being able to interact with people his own age, he didn't even stop to think of the dangers of going outside with someone. Plus, he was a vampire, it wasn't like he couldn't defend himself. And this guy's hand was legitimately hurt, so it also wasn't as though this was some fake-injury ruse. Which was why he didn't just give him a fifty-cent lighter, but moved from behind the counter, to the door a few steps away. "Sure." He pushed the door open and held it for Danny before going out as well. "So why did you --" He didn't have a chance to finish his question, or even get the matches from Danny, before the hair at the back of his neck stood up. Even later, with time to think over the situation in its entirety, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint what it was that had suddenly tipped something in him off to something being very wrong. He didn't have time to turn around to look or react when he suddenly heard the female voice crying out -- "Edward!" His already-cold blood felt like it had suddenly frozen in his veins, and a look that could only be described as pure terror flashed across his eyes as he looked at Danny. But then he was stumbling slightly, as Bella slammed into him from behind, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist. He stayed frozen for a half second before his muscles shifted and he looked like he was trying to yank away, wanting to run. But she was much stronger than he was, and it didn't actually accomplish much. She moved though, arms staying around him as she turned them so that she was now facing him, between him and Danny, smiling up to him and saying something about having thought she'd lost him forever before hugging him close. Cullen thought he might pass out.
DANNY: Whatever Danny was expecting, it wasn't that. He had no idea why this guy was so important, or what Bella wanted with him. He didn't even know who Edward was. Bella had never mentioned the name before. He really couldn't be blamed. But when he heard that voice cutting through the night air, his mistake dawned on him, and he paused where he stood. The look in the other boy's eyes was unmistakable. A cold, queasy mix of guilt and shame and discomforting self-consciousness ran through his body, and he forced himself to look away before any of it showed on his face. He almost wanted to throw up. Fuck, he muttered to himself mentally to distract himself from the real problem, so much for my fucking cigarette. As though it was important anymore, with Bella back and this new guy now...well, from all appearances, trapped by her web of pure insanity as well. Staring pointedly at the ground, he shoved the cigarette pack back in his jeans and cleared his throat hard, loud enough to interrupt the huggy moment. "So while it's great that you two are having your whole reunion or whatever, how about I leave and you two can catch up or whatever." Maybe it was cowardly of him to try to split and leave 'Edward' in her crazy clutches, but he was desperate to get away, and although the guy had been nice to him for a moment back there, he wasn't so grateful that he would try to rescue him. He'd already had half his fingers broken. He couldn't spare the other hand. Bella didn't respond to him at first, clearly deep in her moment with 'Edward' -- she kept murmuring his name over and over again like it was some kind of talismanic phrase -- but the moment that he started to sidle in the opposite direction, she seemed to magically sense it. Pulling back at last, she threw a stern look at him and admonished him not to be jealous. Which, he felt like saying, was the furthest fucking thing from the truth. But she was thrusting her car keys at him, telling him that he was going to drive them back to the house, and he only hesitated for a moment before he took them. His shoulders hunched and he ducked his head as he lead the way back to where he knew the car was parked, and he took the driver's seat silently. He should've made a run for it while she was distracted. He should've just tried.
CULLEN: Cullen moved numbly when Bella shifted again, guiding him to the car as she walked with one arm around his waist, her head leaning against his shoulder. He didn't even remember getting into the car, honestly, left with about 30% of him screaming internally and the other 70% just...off. Shut down, silent, numb. Watching everything from a distance, able to feel tinges of fear and regret but nothing strong enough to really break through. He found himself focusing on the gas station, oddly enough, looking at its quiet emptiness through the windshield and thinking suddenly that he wasn't going to be able to finish his book. There was a slight feeling of panic at that though, a need to go in and get it so that he could, but it was washed away easily enough as well. It wasn't until the car started that he snapped out of it suddenly, and was instantly in motion. He shoved Bella away from himself, hard, scrambling to turn around and open the doors -- whose ability to open from the inside she had apparently dismantled. He hit it with a hand in frustration before hitting the window and breaking it, reaching down to the outside handle instead to open it that way. He had only just released it when she grabbed him by his shoulder, turning him around. His mouth opened and he actually hissed, fangs out and bared as a threat, eyes panicked and violent. He tried to shove backwards against the door again, before turning once more to just try and go out the damned window, but she just yanked him back, hard. His head hit the metal frame of the door -- most likely by her design -- hard enough that his body slumped. She finished pulling him back, resting his unconscious form against her own as she hugged him again and kissed his hair affectionately. And then looked at Danny through the rearview mirror, eyes dark. "Drive."
DANNY: His foot was poised over the gas and his hand turning the key in the ignition when all the commotion started in the back seat, and it was all Danny could do not to jerk, startled, as the window burst outward with the force of the vampire's desperation to get away. He glanced up at the mirror to see what was going on -- and immediately wished he hadn't, as the boy fought to put distance between himself and Bella, struggled to free himself for all that he was worth, only to be abruptly silenced by an unsettling clunk as his forehead collided with the car door. For a moment he just sat there, staring at them both, watching as Bella drew him into her arms with all the protective love of an anaconda wrapping itself around its prey. Then her eyes locked onto his, and he felt a shiver tear down his spine that he couldn't control anymore. He hated this. Every single goddamn moment of it. No bitch should be able to inspire this sort of fear in him, and yet his hand throbbed as he rested it awkwardly against the edge of the steering wheel to balance it, a reminder of why he didn't try to help, of what happened when he gave into his instincts and let that hatred mingle with his fear. There was only one thing for him to do, and as he placed his gaze firmly on the dark street ahead of them, he took a deep breath so that he could put the couple behind him out of his mind. Just drive. He had no idea what was going to come next, but whatever it was, he knew without needing to be told that it wasn't going to be good.