bitten_notshy | Room 222, Monday Evening

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Room 222, Monday Evening

When Jack decided he was going to do something, he usually made it happen, and the sheer perversity of technology be damned. And so it was that he came to spend Monday night relaxed on his bed, Count Orlok playing on a portable DVD player propped on a pillow in front of him.

It wasn't so different from the films he'd seen at home, really. Just .... longer. Longer and darker and who could possibly think vampires looked like that? But the plot was easy enough to follow once he recognized Stoker's novel. A tad ridiculous, but still easy to follow, and not much like Darkest Night at all.

He idly scratched notes on a tablet as he watched. He might claim they were for Mitchell or for Sebastien, but mostly they were for himself. The door was cracked so he could see people coming and going in the hallway, even though he had no reason to expect visitors.

[OOC: Open room post, yep. Nosferatu being out of copyright is WIN -- unless you're one of Murnau's heirs, of course.]

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The unexpected reaction made Jack laugh.

"He's over a thousand," he said, once he'd recovered. "He often does know better than I do."

Not a bad liar at all, but he wasn't lying.

"A thousand?" That wasn't a 'you're a moron' laugh, so Emma stuck out her tongue at him. "I think your guardian beats my friends for strangeness," she returned. "I don't think we have vampires."

Still, she sent out just the barest brush of power. He'd invited her to peek, and considering how badly it had gone last time, Emma was perfectly happy to show that she could usually control her talent, and only look where she wanted.

She kept the touch light and brief, not bothering to hide it, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. Well. That was interesting. "Hence your interest in the genre, I suppose."

"Hence," Jack agreed, swallowing any reaction to the brush of power. If he knew what she was doing, he could accept it. "Mostly to see how ridiculous the fictions are. He's not a killer and he doesn't turn into a bat or sleep in a coffin."

"Well if he was being so tacky as to sleep in a coffin, we might have to stage an intervention," Emma quipped. "What else do they get wrong? Hopefully the horrible accent."

She wasn't quite sure how you could be a vampire and not kill anyone, but asking at this point would be rude.

"When he's traveling sometimes he has to stay in one to keep the light away, but other than that, no. He doesn't sleep," Jack quickly explained, not thrilled with the word choice 'tacky.' "His accent is ... well, no one speaks his first language anymore -- some dialect of Latin, I can't quite pin it down -- and he's passing as a Spaniard."

Which, in Jack-speak, meant he didn't think Sebastien's accent was flawless, not like his own English one, but it seemed to stand up to most scrutiny.

"Having a real accent is one thing, but over-done fake ones for effect are another," she giggled.

Then her eyes widened as the first part of what he said sunk in. "Wait, he doesn't sleep, and he has to..." She didn't have to fake the shudder. "God, that must be horrible."

Emma had slept in her fair share of small, cramped places over the last year - they made the best hiding spots - but to be awake and trapped in a box? She wouldn't make it an hour without screaming her head off.

"I can't say anything about fake accents," Jack said, letting himself slip into his native cadences. After a decade of speaking mostly English and Spanish, his Czech accent wasn't especially innate anyhow.

He narrowed his brows, resting a hand on her back. "I suppose so. It doesn't happen terribly often and -- I never thought of it that way."

"I suppose if he's gotten to be this old, then he's well-practiced at avoiding things like that," she mused, giving him a small smile. "Or maybe he doesn't mind, and just takes a book along."

This was... nice. An odd topic, perhaps, but still nice. Emma shifted into his hand slightly, making a pleased sound. "Tell me about your vampire, then?"

"He tries to avoid it. He doesn't like the cliché," Jack said, keeping his hand precisely where it was. "And there's no light to read by."

"Sebastien?" he asked, a kind of fond impatience in his tone as he considered the question. "He's a detective -- you know that. Intelligent, but, more than that, he's had the time and the leisure to read about everything that interests him; sometimes it was a bit like being raised by an encyclopedia. Observant. Given to being ridiculously morose sometimes. Very good at keeping secrets."

Someone had a bit of a crush, and Emma didn't even need her telepathy to notice it.

"A thousand years old, and has read everything," she repeated, a note of jealousy in her voice. "It's no wonder he's drawn to detective work, then, with all its puzzle bits and things to discover."

It went beyond a bit of a crush; someone was in love, though he'd never say it.

"I think it's one of the few things that never bores him," Jack said, not free of jealousy himself. "And he's good at it. The enhanced senses can make a difference."

He tilted his head to catch Emma's eye. "Who did you live with before you came here?"

"Myself, mostly," Emma answered with a shrug. "I met Hank a few months ago, but before that I was on my own."

"Hank is... different," she continued slowly. "Brilliant, but something happened to him, and he's very scattered. He's like a puppy that can solve quadratic equations, but can't put them in context."

"How did you manage?"

Whether Jack meant on her own, or with Hank, was unclear even to him. It was hard either way.

"I learned how to use my powers very, very quickly," Emma replied, keeping her tone bright. "Sneaking into parties with free food is pretty easy if you can make the bouncer think you're on the approved list." Or to steal from the hot dog stand, which was still Emma's main source of food when she was broke, or just wanted the challenge.

"With Hank, well, we compliment each other. He looks out for me, and I take care of him and run his errands on the surface."

"Eyes and ears in the daylight, as Tony's program would have it?" Jack asked.

He ... was a touch obsessed with that phrase.

"And now we're both here."

"There's a program?" she laughed, raising her eyebrows in surprise. "Do we have a club for those that go about collecting people who can't show their faces in the sunshine?"

"Now we're both here." Emma leaned over to nudge him with her shoulder, still grinning. "And you get to experience the joys of inaccurate vampire movies."

"There might be a club, but I meant his television program. He works on something called Darkest Night. It's awful."

He grinned back at her. "Do you know Tony, then?"

Emma shook her head. "I think I've chatted with him once or twice," she said, "But I don't actually know him that well. He works in television, then? That must be quite interesting."

Considering how one of those nights was their ill-advised 'walk', Emma didn't recall much of what she and Tony had discussed.

"We're friends," Jack said. "He's a production assistant for the show. It's a bit like what he does for the play -- stage managing -- but different in spots."

"His birthday's tomorrow. Dinah's throwing him a party."

"A party?" Emma hummed to herself, tapping her fingers against the bedspread. "It wouldn't do to miss a classmate's birthday, of course. Do you know if he has a favorite wine?"

You didn't need a fake ID to buy alcohol when you were a telepath.

"At Chilly Boulder, tomorrow evening," Jack said. "And I don't know that I've ever seen him drink."

Which didn't mean much; Jack didn't drink terribly often himself, unless good cognac was being offered. He liked being in full possession of his senses.

"If you were going anyhow, I could walk with you."

It wasn't a date. Jack wasn't mad enough to take a date to his lover's birthday party; that would be tacky. But if Emma didn't mind the company...

Emma wasn't looking, but she wasn't actively shielding against Jack either, so bits and pieces of his inner-monologue flitted past her like fragmented butterflies.

Oh hell, she'd been hitting on Jack while sitting next to one of his special friends. Tacky, Emma.

"I was going to see if I could convince Karla to part with one of her bottles - that girl has some wicked wine - but if the party is at the ice cream parlour, that wouldn't be appropriate," she laughed. "We got in enough trouble the last time we cracked one of those open. I think I recall something about trying to find people to teach us dirty songs."

"An escort, however, would be appreciated," Emma continued. "Since I'm not quite sure where the shop is."

He'd been hitting on her right back; it was part of why he got twitchy enough to suggest the ill-fated walk. He might have gone out of his way to make Sebastien jealous, but Tony was not Sebastien.

"I don't know," he said, mock-thoughtfully. "Tony might like a good dirty song or three for his birthday. And I've been to the shop -- I can certainly escort you."

Emma's grin widened. "In that case, I shall have to figure out if Karla and I can sing in harmony," she decided. "And find out if we did manage to learn any; most everything from that night is rather fuzzy from that point onward."

"I know plenty of dirty jokes, but sadly the drinking song has fallen out-of-favor."

Jack laughed. "It is terribly sad," he agreed, putting on a mock-solemn expression. "We'll have to discuss this again sometime."

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Room 222, Monday Evening

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