strangers // solo
Summary: About a year before the Leventis clan moved to Tartartus, Augustus ran away from home. A few years later, he made it to the island and rejoined his family. The years in between he hardly remembers.
TW: blood mention, drug mention, alcohol mention
Song: Menswear by The 1975
Word Count: 965
On his immortal life, Augustus had no idea how he made it to this spot.
He was sitting in a bar somewhere in London, surrounded by bodies and noise and rhyming slang. It all blended into a dull roar that encased him in his own bubble. He was alone. He pressed his bleary eyes shut, gripping an empty mug and breathing in all the smells of the room. Humans, mostly, scattered with supernaturals lost in the crowded euphoria. And blood. There was blood on him.
What time was it? What day? What century?
Someone floated into his vision and replaced his glass, giving him a new one filled with beer. They leaned in to speak over the noise: it sounded muffled and far away, a melodic sound that blended in with the music of the bar. Augustus squinted at them, but nodded anyway. And then the bartender disappeared back into the cloud of smoke and people. The drink smelled bitter. He stared at the foam brimming at the lip, then picked it up and gulped it down.
—
The last clear memory he had involved screaming. He had been screaming at someone, they had been screaming back. He forgot who he was screaming at, but that hardly mattered. He had left after that, and then... nothing. And then he was here. And his shirt was bloody underneath his suit jacket.
There was someone sitting next to him, back turned to the vampire. He was talking to a woman who was staring at her hands. Augustus gripped the man’s shoulder and spoke. He didn’t hear his own voice, but he was fairly certain he asked him the date. And thirty seconds later, he didn’t remember the man replying, but his mind clung to the one piece of information he really needed. Well over a month had passed, and he remembered none of it.
But he was calm. Very calm. Augustus Leventis was hardly this peaceful— even when everything was going his way. He realized that he should be concerned, about his memory and his behavior, but he felt nothing. He couldn’t even try to care: any emotions died under the weight of his numbness. He was too bleary, too warm, too wrapped up in the clouds of whatever drugs he was on to feel anything.
He might have sat there for another minute or hour, and slowly the scene started to make more sense. He had stumbled into a celebration of sorts, or so it seemed. At some point, he left his spot at the bar and ended up in a crowd of drunks who welcomed him into their circle with a cheer. Someone pinched the shoulder of his jacket and called him a toff. Someone else pointed to him and slurred, “He looks just like me, but 6 foot 3, so I reckon you could knock him out.” They all laughed, including him.
—
“Are you alright?” someone from the group asked him loudly. Maybe five minutes had passed, and now he was sitting on a couch that he would normally avoid at all costs. He just nodded, and they seemed satisfied with that. “Do y’know the bride or the groom?”
“Neither.” And they didn’t care. They gave him a drink. “You’re having a wedding reception here?”
“Welcome to our ends, mate. We’re not all of us some rich toffs like you. They jus’ went and made it official and now all us buds are off getting pissed like always. That’s all you need, mate.”
Augustus nodded, suddenly feeling nauseous. The drugs were starting to wear off, and with it his comfort. Memories started to float back to the surface, and his chest started to constrict. He started to remember every moment of the last month that was like this: when he started to come down and everything came back to him all at once. All the hurt and jealousy and anger clawed back up to the surface and held him in a chokehold. What was wrong with him? Why did he care so deeply? Why, after hundreds and hundreds of years, was he still so miserable?
Because Augustus Leventis was always alone, but he never felt lonely until now. Until he realized that he would always be a stranger to the rest of the world, even his family. That was why he left. That was why he spent nearly two months so high he couldn’t even remember what he did or why there was blood on his shirt or what day it was.
“Mate, what’s your name?” He told them something that wasn’t his name, and they handed him another drink. He told them that he needed something stronger. He didn’t tell them that he was desperate for anything to launch him back into the haze of numbness. So he bought the whole bar a round of their most expensive gin, and after that, everyone wanted to shake his hand. Eventually he found the person supplying the reception with something stronger than alcohol.
—
It was twenty minutes later, maybe, and he was numb again. Someone stood up on a table and shouted, “Well, I think I'll say a couple of words if you don't mind...”
The man on the table rambled and rambled and Augustus wasn’t listening. He was drinking with someone. She was dressed in white and putting off crying. But she looked happy.
This bar really was disgusting, but Augustus, for once, didn’t care. Gods above, how would he ever manage to come down from this? How could he go back home?
Maybe he didn’t have to. But he would think about it another time. He asked what time it was. Someone told him it was five past three in the morning. He shrugged and ordered more gin.
Augustus didn’t remember anything after that.
