..... (burningdown) wrote in the_dome, @ 2013-08-12 09:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | 04-07-2017, justin, justin and zania, zania |
Ridiculous
Who: Justin and Zania
When: Late afternoon
Where: Eatzy’s
Warnings: Some language
For once Justin was kind of thankful for the rain. It had slowed business down some, giving Justin time to catch up on things that had been put off while he’d been in the hospital. His leg was feeling better, and his limp was less noticeable as he moved around the diner. His mood wasn’t as sour as it had been the last few days, although he was still having trouble where his senses were concerned. He had no intention of going back to the hospital to get checked out, though, and after taking inventory, Justin hid himself away in the small office near the back of the diner to go over the schedule. He could still hear the cook talking to a customer, could hear the sizzle of the grill, and even smell the meat cooking. But at least it wasn’t as pronounced as it had been when he was up front. He was getting tired of the permanent headache.
Zania was beginning to love rainy days. If it was pouring down rain, then the sun wasn’t out, which meant she could leave the house before sunset. She took the opportunity to run down to city hall, then joyously hurried over to the diner. She was soaking wet when she arrived, but didn’t seem to mind, grinning as she slid into the back room where her brother had to be. She knocked as she opened the door. “I got the club!” She had to hold herself back from bouncing, the key to her new establishment still in her hand.
Glancing up from his work, Justin straightened at the sight of Zania. He pushed his hair back from his face, noting that she was soaked from rain. He almost got up to get her a towel or something to dry off from, but then he wondered if she was cold or uncomfortable at all, given what she was. “The club,” Justin repeated slowly, trying to catch up now that he was paying more attention. “You’re still going to do that?”
“Where have you been? Of course!” Zania said, plopping herself down in the chair across from him. Had he missed the part where she’d been spending all her money on lighting and sound equipment? She’d been working on this for months and finally had what she needed to get it up and running. Well, almost. She needed to do some work on the inside of the building, but that could be accomplished with a little help from friends. “I’ve even the got the key,” she said, dangling it from her finger. “So how’re you feeling? You look better.”
“So becoming a vampire hasn’t slowed you done much,” Justin replied dryly as he set his pencil down. He wasn’t terribly surprised. Zania had always been stubborn and determined, and he supposed he should have known she would still forge ahead with the club. “I feel fine,” he said. “More than fine, actually. Leg’s healing pretty fast. I only have a few lingering side effects, I guess, and they’re annoying as fuck all, but nothin’ I can’t handle.”
“Why would it?” she asked. “I think the dome could use it and I aspire to do more than be a waitress the rest of my life, which may now be longer than it was before. Hard to tell.” She supposed she’d have to wait a while to see if she was going to stop aging. There wasn’t exactly anyone she could ask. “What kind of side effects? Your stitches aren’t infected or anything, are they?”
“Hey, waitressing is a very respectable profession,” Justin protested, though his lips twitched into a small smile. “You leaving just means I have to try to find someone else in to take your place.” Zania’s club was inconvenient to him, only because he hated hiring new employees. “Stitches are fine. They’re actually starting to come out a bit... “ He shrugged, feeling mildly embarrassed by the shit he’d been going through over the past couple of days. “It’s been my senses, actually. Everything’s fucking loud, and I can smell... well, seems like everything, which isn’t a blessing, let me tell you that.” There was more too, but some of it was hard to explain. “I can hear the cook opening up a package of beef right now, actually.”
“Don’t write me out of the schedule just yet. All I have is the space. I still need to set it up.” And that would take some time. She couldn’t go without an income and her sewing work wasn’t enough to sustain her. “Wait, what?” she asked, rising from her seat to come around his desk, though his stitches were currently covered by his pants. “Your stitches shouldn’t be ready to come out. And if you can smell and hear like that, then something’s wrong.” She could smell and hear far too much herself, but she was a vampire. Justin shouldn’t have the same problem.
“Stay as long as you want to stay,” Justin said, and he meant that. The longer he could put off having to find and hire someone new, not to mention train them and put up with them, the better. He watched as she stood and rounded the desk, though he didn’t move back, or lift his pant leg to show her. “Why’s something wrong?” he asked, though he knew, instinctively, that she was right. “It’s not painful beyond the occasional headache it causes.”
“Close your eyes and tell me what you hear,” Zania said as she knelt beside him and tugged up his pant leg to examine the stitches. They were healing well. Incredibly well. She might even say faster than usual, and definitely well enough that she shouldn’t be worrying about his leg. Instead, her focus turned to what he could hear with his eyes closed, and if it was normal.
Justin nearly batted her hand away from his pants, growing a little impatient with her concern. He felt fine beyond what he had already told her about, and Justin wasn't sure he wanted to consider what could really be wrong. But he sighed and closed his eyes, because he was sure if he didn't, she would nag him about it. "I hear the freezer box humming. People talking out front. The rain." Justin paused for a moment. "I can hear the clock ticking." The clock that was hanging on the wall out front, above the door. Something he shouldn't have been able to hear, even if he was behind the counter himself.
Zania stood and sighed. None of that seemed out of the ordinary. She could hear it all herself, but she was a vampire, so that made it hard for her to compare. Maybe she was overreacting. When he started hearing heartbeats, then she’d be concerned. “Okay. I guess that’s nothing, really. Those are all normal sounds, so-- wait, where’s the clock?” she said, looking around his office. She’d assumed it was there in the room with them, but was unable to spot it while looking around the room.
Justin nodded, because he hadn’t thought there was anything to worry about either. Whatever the fuck was going on inside of his body would balance itself out eventually and shit would return to normal. He straightened in his chair and reached for the pencil again before pausing, his eyes lifting to her face. “Above the door. Out front. Where it’s been since I opened the place.” That was the one thing he knew would be weird. He shouldn’t have been able to hear it, not in the back office, away from the chatter of patrons, the sound of the grill and rain above them. But the tick-tock was as loud in his ears as anything else. It should have been enough to drive him crazy, and while he had a low throbbing in his temple, Justin had been trying to block it out.
“That’s not normal, Justin,” Zania said, returning to the other side of the desk to take a seat. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You smell weird.” She didn’t know how else to describe it. He still smelled like her brother, but now he smelt like something else as well. Something dangerous, but that she couldn’t put a name to. Zania knew it was odd to tell someone how they smelled, but she was hoping Justin would understand this was different.
Justin's expression was completely deadpan as he stared at her. "Really, Zan? I smell weird? What, are you ten years old again?" He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that he sensed something off about her too. It was something he hadn't picked up before, but now he did, only he couldn't exactly put his finger on what it was. Without really giving it much thought, Justin's brows drew together as he studied his sister's face. "It's fucking weird, not being able to hear your heart beating..." And he had never been able to hear it before. But now? Now he was aware that it was missing.
“You’re going to pick on me for thinking you smell weird right before you make an announcement like that?” Zania said, eyes wide as she leaned forward in her chair. “Normal people can’t hear hearts beating. I can, but I’m not normal, so what the hell is going on with you?” She didn’t like that he was trying to brush this off when she had the feeling it was something much more serious. Something was happening to him, that was the only explanation, but she couldn’t put her finger on what.
"I don't fucking know," Justin snapped before reining himself in and pinching the bridge of his nose before he sighed. "Sorry, Z. I'm just... I don't fucking know," he said again, wearily this time. "It started when I got bit. My senses amped up, I healed a hell of a lot faster than I should have, and you... I don't know what it is, but the second you walked in the door, I felt... tense. Not like I usually do when you're around," Justin added dryly. "But more so. Like I gotta watch everything you do." Like he knew somehow, that she was a predator in her own right. He couldn't say that to her though, for fear of offending her somehow. Not that Justin usually cared what he said, and how, but now didn't seem like the right time to piss off his sister.
“Like I’m a threat,” Zania said, since she knew the feeling. It was easier to ignore with Justin, but she’d felt it around other people, possibly others that had been bitten. It was hard to say with them, but in this case she knew Justin had been. “Like you don’t want to put your back to me, even though you know you’re safe with me. I feel that too, but you’re not a vampire, which begs the question... What are you?” She had a feeling she knew, but was she going to say it? Hell no. She’d wait and see if Justin would draw the same conclusion.
A threat was probably the best way to put it. And Justin had never viewed Zania as a threat before. Not even when she had become a vampire. He knew she would never hurt him, and he liked to believe he would never hurt her, but it felt as if that had shifted somehow. Justin leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk before running his hands through his shaggy hair. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I know, but it sounds fucking crazy." He looked up at her and scrubbed a hand over his mouth briefly. "What did you think when you became a vampire?"
“Well, I sprouted fangs, then when I ran into the bathroom to hide I realized I didn’t have a reflection,” Zania said, making a face. “It was kind of hard to argue with the fangs.” That, combined with her lack of reflection, made her pretty sure she was a vampire. When her hand burnt almost instantly in the sun, she didn’t have to guess any further. “If this was a B-movie, I’d guess that you might be turning into a werewolf,” she sighed, knowing how ridiculous that sounded. “I just don’t know how to test something like that without a full moon. That, and it sounds stupid. But if it’s true, then we’ve got a hell of a lot of werewolves in town now.”
He hadn’t sprouted fangs. He hadn’t sprouted anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed to be internal. Justin lifted a brow and sat back again, not wanting to admit that the thought of being a werewolf had crossed his mind already, but it just sounded so outlandish and crazy to be a real possibility. Then again, he had never imagined his sister becoming a vampire, so who the hell knew what was crazy in here and what wasn’t anymore. “Being a werewolf sounds stupid, but becoming a vampire doesn’t?” Justin asked incredulously. He stood from the desk, needing to move. He paused thoughtfully, eyes still locked on her face. “If this was a B-movie, wouldn’t there be something werewolves were adverse to? I don’t know anything about that shit beyond silver bullets killing them, but I imagine you shoot anyone with a silver bullet, it’s probably going to kill them.”
“Being a vampire sounds just as stupid,” Zania said, rolling her eyes as she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms across her chest. “I just can’t argue with it at this point.” If she hadn’t been the one to turn, Zania wasn’t sure she would have believed it was possible. Now that she was no longer human, it was easier to believe there was more out there. But that didn’t make her brother being a werewolf any easier to swallow. “Do you have to be shot with it? Or are werewolves just adverse to silver in general?” she paused, trying to remember what she’d seen in movies. “Do you think there’s wolfsbane down at the greenhouse?”
Justin shrugged and ran his hand through his hair again. "I don't know, Zania. I'm not well versed on werewolves. Wolfsbane though... that's, uh, aconitum, right? I'm not looking to poison myself anytime soon." He looked around, wondering if he had anything silver laying about. "This has got to be the most ridiculous conversation I think I've had since you told me you were a vampire." Ridiculous and a little disturbing, in all honesty. "You got any silver jewelry on you?"
“The ridiculousness of it doesn’t make it any less possible,” she pointed out. She had to think through all the jewelry she was wearing, some of it steel, some of it silver plated, but she was almost certain the pendant around her neck was pure silver. “I’m pretty sure this is,” she said, reaching behind her neck to unclasp the necklace. “It’s worth trying, right?” she said as she held it out to him.
He knew that much, because there was a lot of real shit out there that he found ridiculous on a daily basis. Justin sighed inwardly as he watched his sister take off the necklace around her neck. Maybe he had completely lost his mind. Maybe that wolf had actually mauled him to death and this was all some kind of ghostly denial of his death, thinking he was actually a werewolf now. Justin reached out to wrap his fingers around the necklace. The moment his fingers actually touched the chain, he pulled his hand back immediately, dropping the necklace to the desk. Releasing a few choice, rather graphic, obscenities, Justin gripped his hand and stumbled back a step. His fingers were red, as if he had been burned. It looked as if his skin had started to blister as well, despite the fact that he had barely touched the damn necklace. "Fuck," Justin hissed, fighting through the pain that shot through his hand.
Zania’s eyebrows raised as her brother dropped her necklace and she waited till he was finished to reach across the desk and pick it up. “Well, you either developed a severe allergy to silver, or I think you’re a werewolf.” They both knew which was more likely, even if it might have been the opposite a few weeks ago. This was batshit crazy, but she had to believe it. There was too much proof not to. “Are you okay?” she asked, leaning forward in an attempt to see the wound. She’d seen Justin lose his temper plenty of times, but never over something that seemed so small.
"I'm fine," Justin muttered, glancing down at his fingers again. "Feels like a fucking chemical burn, almost. Christ." He shook his hand, though he knew that wouldn't do much good. "Gonna run some cold water over it." Sighing loudly, Justin finally shifted his gaze to his sister again. "So what's that mean, exactly... next full moon I become some rabid wolf and try to slaughter people?" And with people like Serge out hunting? That sounded pretty damn ominous for him.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, rising so she could follow him to the sink. “I guess that’s possible, in which case we might want to see about locking you in a basement or something.” If he was anything like the wolves that had taken over town a few nights back, he could easily kill anyone that crossed his path. Those things had been a bitch to kill, though it was possible. “People are hunting wolves. You don’t want to be out, roaming the streets.” She was sure that was a ‘no shit’ kind of statement, but it needed to be said.
Flipping on the taps, Justin lowered his hand underneath the cool water before glancing at Zania. "Are they hunting wolves, or people? Do they know for sure it's just an animal? What if they're werewolves on the loose?" Wasn't a werewolf created by the bite of another werewolf? Shit, he didn't know. It wasn't as if he watched horror movies as a kid and took down notes in case it ever happened to him.
“They’re hunting wolves because the wolves were attacking people,” Zania said, leaning back against the counter. “Do you really think anyone stopped to think ‘hey, maybe these are werewolves’? I killed three wolves and I sure as hell hope I didn’t kill three people. And if you kill a werewolf, do they stay a wolf when they die? Or do they become human again? There’s a lot we don’t know.” And she knew Justin didn’t have the answers. They’d have to wait till the first full moon to really understand what they were dealing with.
"No, I know that," Justin said with an air of exasperation. "I don't think anyone would be hunting wolves if they thought they were werewolves. It sounds fucking crazy. Can't assume those people know vampires are real either." He shrugged and watched the water flowing over his hand. "It'll be fine," he muttered. "Guess it'd be smart to find out who got bit and survived. Last thing the dome needs is a bunch of unaware werewolves set loose on the next full moon, right?"
“True,” Zania said, though she wasn’t sure how to go about telling people. Justin already knew there was more out there because of what she was, but to go up to someone and tell them they might be a werewolf just didn’t sound like it would be a good plan. They’d think she was crazy, at the very least. “I’ll try and find out who was bitten, but I don’t know how to go about warning them without sounding like a nut. You might have better luck, being that you were bitten, too.” Then again, they’d know something was up with her if they couldn’t hear her heartbeating.
Justin licked his lip and then reached over to turn the water off before turning to face his sister. He didn't want to deal with people, especially to try and convince them they were probably a mythical, supernatural creature now. Or what had been mythical before all of this. There would be questions he wouldn't know how to answer, nor would he want to answer them. Zania was the outgoing one, the social butterfly. He disliked interacting with most people when it was about small, insignificant things like what they wanted on their sandwich. This was ten times worse. Justin released a long, aggrieved sigh. "Fine. If you can find out who was bit, I'll try to talk to them. I wasn't in the hospital long enough to really see anyone in the same position as me."
“I can do that,” Zania said with a little smile. She knew this wasn’t Justin’s thing, but she still felt it needed to be done. The only person she knew for sure was Jack, but she could talk to him herself. Of all the people that might figure it out on their own, Jack was probably in the best place, seeing as how his brother was also a vampire. “Start thinking of what you’ll do on the full moon,” she said, rising to her feet. “You might need your door reinforced or something. I think Mickey could help you out, if need be.” And he wouldn’t ask too many questions.
"Mickey? The one whose nose I offered to break for you?" Justin asked, cocking a brow curiously. "Think it's wise to send him my way?" He could reinforce his own door just fine. It was weird, planning for a full moon and not truly understanding what could happen to him. How many others were there? What would happen if people found out? Hunters, especially. He had too many questions and absolutely no answers beyond silver burned like a fiery bitch.
“Don’t break his nose,” Zania sighed. “He’s a good guy and he knows what I am. I just thought if you need to build something, he’s good at things like that.” And last she checked, Justin wasn’t, but he could have learned. She also knew how adverse he was to letting anyone remotely close to him. He could do with a friend or two, though maybe Mickey wasn’t a good recommendation for that. “I’m just trying to help.”
"So am I," Justin pointed out before thinking maybe he ought to wrap his hand up in something for a few days. "Send him along if you think it'll help. As long as he's not fucking around with you, I'll keep my fists to myself." He wasn't going to apologize for wanting to look out for his sister, especially around guys who might end up hurting her. Justin had more often than not despised Dorian, her boyfriend, and had almost come to blows with the guy a few times in the past. He knew guys could be dicks, given he was usually one himself, and he didn't want to see Zania hurt.
“I’ll do that,” Zania said, deciding to keep her thoughts on Mickey to herself in this instance. She knew he wasn’t trying to hurt her, but she kept letting him do it. If she could just move past him, really think of him as nothing more than a friend, things would be so much easier. “I’m gonna go check out my new place. Catch you later?” It was still pouring down rain out, but that hadn’t stopped her from going out in the first place and wasn’t going to stop her now.
Justin glanced at her then chuckled briefly. He had just figured out he might be, or was a werewolf and Zania was ready to flounce off to her new club. But that was his sister, and he didn't begrudge her anything. He would have been more annoyed had she stayed and tried to coddle. "Yeah, catch you later," he said with a nod. "Be careful out there, yeah?"
Zania would’ve stayed longer, but there wasn’t much she could do at this point. Yes, it was a huge revelation, but it felt like all they could do was wait. And while some people would’ve been outwardly dealing with the emotional effects of such a change, she didn’t think Justin was one of them. It felt more natural to leave him be and have him call her if he needed anything. “Of course,” she smiled, then headed out the door.