Cedar let the young woman fret a bit, patiently hearing her out. All in all, this was not the worst encounter with a distressed and overwhelmed spectator she’d had. It was unfortunately common to find someone made ill or panicky by the violence on display to the point of making a true mess.
That could change quickly, of course. Especially after Cedar glanced up where the woman had been sitting before and couldn’t see the man she, assumed, was the brother she spoke about. Maybe she remembered wrong? “Ah…where were you sitting?”
"Oh, we were sitting in row E! He’s...hm.”
Olive turned to point out the teal-haired goth that was her sibling, only for her finger to fall once she realized that wherever Blixa was, it sure wasn’t where she left him. A look of puzzlement came over her face. Did he realize she got up and went looking for her? Maybe but in these sort of situations, he usually called instead of wasting time roaming around.
“Um. Well. I guess Blixa probably got up for a sec but he’s goth? Blue haired? He’s the one with the yellow glasses.”
But no, Blixa could, in fact, zoom off at the speed of light in the right circumstances, and as it should happen, the right circumstances involved a burly Sicilian and finding a private enough spot for ten to fifteen minutes.
“Yeah…uh, not a lot of great places to walk ‘round here, sadly.” Cedar could tell Olive was uncomfortable, and was trying to be very careful about not being the source of it. While a cute young woman looking like a fish out of water wasn’t always who they appeared to be, Cedar would bet she was a vampire (and not some other pointy-eared, humanoid species), and also actually, truly out of her depth.
If she turned out the fool for it, so be it. This was still her job.
“You need to find the exit? Get walked to your car or anythin’?”
Elsewhere in the place, another brown-haired woman sat down next to the Mnemoset. Blixa would have probably realized it wasn’t Olive in other situations -he might be legally blind but he still had some time to go before losing the rest of his vision- but there were three major roadblocks in place: one, the light was throwing him off; two, he pre-gamed on rum and absolutely continued drinking; and last and most importantly, all of his attention was focused on the handsome Sicilian fighter in the ring (he wasn’t sure if they were serious but he did know that he had absolutely no intention on introducing him to his sister because the last thing anyone needed was word finding its way back to their father and Oberyn calling him sobbing in the middle of the night because he was seeing a fighter and while he genuinely loved his father and had empathy for the trauma vaporvolphs went through on Vampiru, Blixa Bagni just wanted to get laid in peace) whose touring schedule rarely matched up with his touring schedule.
The match ended. Blixa mumbled an excuse of needing to visit the restroom and he might be gone long but they’d leave after. The woman next to him understood absolutely nothing of this because she didn’t speak German. There was no way Olive would panic later because she couldn’t find Blixa or vice versa later.
Meanwhile, back to Olive.
“Yeah, I suppose not.”
Was she fiddling with her hair too much? She felt like she was fiddling with her hair too much. The thing is, she also didn’t know what to do with her hands when she wasn’t adjusting her hair or playing with a ring or otherwise messing around with an article of clothing. Olive didn’t know why she was so nervous -well, other than the fact that she was feeling the emotions of a hundred people at once in a place that she didn’t really want to be at- but nevertheless, here she was.
“Oh, oh no, thank you, I took a Fuber here. Thank you though!” she said. “Um. I have to make sure my brother gets back okay, I guess? He’s not really as familiar with the city as he thinks he is...”
Olive had concluded that Blixa (grown, adult, 30 year old man) did not really need his little sister chaperoning him but the fear that every single one of her family would fuck up and run into trouble if she didn’t look out for them won out almost every time. This was not really an unfounded fear considering Aphelion’s various arrests for completely stupid reasons and Blixa’s not-so-legal rebel misadventures and the twins’ natural swan aggression and the fact that her father was a man capable and willing to cause a scene in an ice cream shop.
“Told ya.” One of Cedar’s cousins clapped her on the back as the pair of them watched the young woman exit the stands. “Good thing you didn’t take that bet.”
“Fuck off, Pine,” Cedar huffed, though it didn’t have any bite to it. He was still speaking to her despite his mother’s disapproval, after all. She was grateful for it.
The burly brux snorted. “Well? Ya gonna go over and check on her, or what? Before someone else does?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Cedar knew he was teasing, but he was also right. Cute young woman isolating herself at one of these events (or, to be distressingly honest, any event) while looking out of sorts was like a beacon for the worst kind of sleaze. She needed to make sure that didn’t happen to anyone just by virtue of being responsible for the establishment.
Cedar cut in front of a hunched, lizard-like man who missed his shot by idling too long among his friends as they elbowed and nudged him, warning the whole lot of them off with one inky-black eye. They scarpered, though she earned dirty looks in return. Would’ve been nice if they started something, she thought, because she felt too itchy in her own skin lately.
“Hey, miss, you okay?” Cedar asked, trying to keep both professional distance and attitude, trying somehow to switch from the imposing bouncer who sent a gaggle of ne’er-do-wells running to the kind that made sure a woman got walked to her car safely. It was nuanced, but Cedar had practice.
Maybe she should just leave. What was she trying to prove? Blixa hadn’t invited her to come in the first place, hadn’t wanted her to be here, could manage well enough on his own...most of the time, anyway. Besides, her father always told her places like this were wretched and to stay far away from them, which is probably why her brothers liked catching fights so much.
(Most of the time left too much room for doubt. She just wanted everything to go smoothly and to have a nice visit where nothing bad happened at al for once in her life.)
Olive remained oblivious to any reptilian-looking men who might have checked her out but she startled out of her doubt at Cedar’s approach. Oh. Oh wow. Tall. Were those fangs? She looked so cool. Olive’s gaze might have lingered a second or two too long before she realized she was staring blankly like some kind of weirdo and she should probably say something.
“Great! I’m great. Thank you for asking, that’s really sweet,” she said a little too brightly, tucking an errant strand of hair behind one pointed ear out of nervous habit. “Um. Just taking a little walk. You know. For the sake of my legs.”
"You two were going where? A fight club? Where they beat each other up?" Olive asked, aghast. "Well, I guess he missed his flight, so no bloodsports tonight. Ew."
This really shouldn't be shocking given Aphelion's always going on about MMA and UFC and a lot of other three letter acronyms and Blixa's so into underground scenes that you might as well call him subterranean, but even still, watching people fight for real? Not play fights? Real fights? How so totally morbid!
"I make my plans not around the whims of the unreliable but the desires of mine own heart. Sorry, strawberry, I'm still going. It's only a few hours I'll be gone, never fear," Blixa said as he polished off the last of the rum. "Some musicians find their inspiration in beautiful women and some in a bottle but mine comes from other places."
Cool, her brother who has been pregaming -Blixa, who has half a dozen stories involving less-than-legal things regs might not like- is going to a shady and maybe illegal place on his own in a city he's unfamiliar that's absolutely crawling with regs and weird vampire politics that she didn't understand. Olive freely admitted she was naive but even she could see the potential for this to turn out badly.
"Okay, well, I'll just take Aphelion's ticket or whatever and go with you," Olive said as she tried to put on a brave face. "Don't go places alone! You'll get serial-murdered! That's not allowed on my watch! We are using the buddy system here."
Her brother put his glass down an ew, he poured his blood and rum into one of her good teacups, there's no way that wouldn't stain.
"Olive, I may be blind but I am not in need of a babysitter," he said. "I'm not throwing myself into the ring. I am absorbing the atmosphere. I am basking in hidden worlds. I am rubbing my hands over every surface I can find to steal their secrets for my own. Stay at home and do something fun, won't you? No blood for you, no bruises to see. We can watch Suspiria when I return from my little excursion."
"It's not about that. I'm not...Blixa, what if you lose your phone and you don't know how to find the way back? What if you get drunk and you forget how to speak English again? What if someone has bad vibes? What if there's a devil there and you accidentally sell your soul? I'm going with you. You're just going to have to deal with that."
"Please, my label owns that old thing. They'll have to fight Death Records for my soul," he replied. "No. You would abhor every minute of it. You do not need to come with me. I cannot emphasize enough there is fighting and blood and things you do not care to see."
Anyway, long story short, Olive insisted on going with him despite all of Blixa's repeated protests that she would hate it and should go home, and guess what: she hated every second of being here.
She tried to dress for the occasion in her toughest outfit -which mostly meant that she wore her one pair of black boots and a leather jacket so you couldn't see the hearts embroidered on the front of her dress- but it was clear to anyone who gave her a single glance that this fish was so far out of water she might as well be in a desert. Wow, those guys really were beating the tar out of each other, weren't they? She figured it was super illegal to fight to the death and it was probably like WWE or something, but even still, oh, oh no, wow, that looked painful, ouch. She felt like everyone was staring at her, even if they probably weren’t. More than that, she felt the emotion in the room like a wild rock concert: loud and overpowering and just so, so much. Everyone was excited or angry or hurting or wanting and everyone was as loud as the next.
She needed air. Actually, what she really needed was to go home but she didn't quite want to admit that her brother was right, he neither wanted nor needed her there, and nothing terrible would happen if he watched the fights by himself. Olive did not think she was a prideful person but it was still embarrassing to admit that you were wrong. She slipped away when he was too busy soaking in the ambiance to pay attention. Should she go back to the bar area? But what if someone scary talked to her? Maybe she could just hide out in the bathrooms instead? What if they were gross? She was awash with indecision.
Olive did not like Fight Club or actual fight clubs, it turns out.
My family missed their flight because my brother got into a territorial fight in an Applebee's bathroom and I am going to kill him! But only in my mind, not for real, that would be super terrible. Why fight over who "owns" an airport restaurant? It's Applebee's! Just eat some mozzarella sticks! Or whatever they have! I don't know. Why was he even at an Applebee's? He probably went there on purpose just to yell at someone. Why can't you go to the lounge and have a martini like a normal person? Do you need to pay someone to babysit you? He's really lucky he didn't get arrested or something. My sis used to spray him with a squirt bottle when he acted like an asshole. I don't have a spray bottle but I have perfume I don't like, so you better be prepared to get the spritz, jerkface. D:<
He was going to go with my other brother to this bar tonight, so now I have to put an outfit together so I don't look silly because I am not letting him go alone because he's probably going to get into a fight or run off with someone really shady again if I don't. Bad vampire! You have bad taste! Special Agent Olive is onto you, buddy, so get prepared to be watched.
Olive knows that peeking out of the window every few minutes isn't going to make him arrive any quicker but even still, she darts to the window every time there's an ad break to see if maybe there's a taxi cab letting her brother out. Nothing. She settles back down to watch her video (what a fantastic method of applying foundation!) and then nearly jumps out of her skin at the sudden sound of the buzzer.
"Oh my gosh, hiiii," she says over the intercom. "I am so sorry, I just realized I never gave you my apartment number, I was going to text you, but you found it! I guess Dad gave it to you? Do you want me to go down and get you? I'm all the way up on the fourteenth floor except it's really the thirteenth floor, so if you're listening for the dings, it's thirteen and not fourteen."
"Fear not, intergalactic space traveler. It is with great joy that I announce that I can, in fact, use an elevator," Blixa replies. "Also, no, no, I have been pressing every button until reaching you. Your neighbors hate me now."
He could simply pull the memory from the intercom system if he took off his gloves. Blixa won't.
A few minutes later and Olive's putting his suitcases away and lamenting the dampness of his poor velvet coat ("Mother Nature battled me and sorrowfully, I did not emerge triumphant") and fretting over the fact that he smells like he's smoking again and making tea for them both with four sugar cubes and cookies with the most darling star-shaped sprinkles on the side.
Olive's world is full of rosy pinks and soft cream, everything light and airy and sugary sweet, a creature of lace and charming antique buttons and delicate little handbags that can fit her phone and not much else, everything her brother has soundly rejected in favor of chipped black polish and steel-toed boots and black lipstick drawn on sharp and angular like an old German movie. He says he's not goth because he doesn't listen to gothic rock but Olive's pretty sure all the black and deep purple has to count for something.
"I love what you've done with your hair!" she exclaims brightly as she adds another sugar cube to her tea. It just wasn't sweet enough. Olive rarely likes anything she can taste strongly (she takes her blood in pill form because otherwise it's all she can taste for the next couple of hours) but she does like sweets as long as they aren't also sour.
"Thank you, thank you. It is a wig! A cunning disguise. I would take it off to show you what has been done to my actual hair but it's pinned in place. You must use your imagination instead. Conjure up something interesting."
Blixa stirs his tea languidly, takes an experimental sip, then grabs his flask and pours a measure of something that is probably (maybe?) just blood into it. Is carrying around a flask of blood safe? Won't you get food poisoning if it gets too warm?
"Rum? I have come all the way from Vegas bearing libations for the upcoming celebration of your advancement into the world of...I don't know a pretentious way to word 'college graduation' in English. I must do my best to find better wordage ere Aphelion arrives because this shit annoys every bit of fuck out of him."
"Oh, oh gosh, thank you but I'm good," Olive says with a little wave. "Isn't it kind of early for that? Even Dad doesn't drink before ten. I mean, besides Bloody Marys with brunch but I don't know if that counts. I feel like all the vegetables make it healthy, maybe?"
"Fear not for the sake of my liver, dear sister. This is mostly blood and ice. I'm not going to tell you how much wine I drink or else your little heart will burst with sorrow," he replies. "Your morning is my night. Forgive me of my little vices. If you traveled all across this accursed country in a bus with no one for company but a pack of idiots (and also my sweet and lovely Tea, foremost among all women, if only I was a lesbian, alas), well, little bat, you'd do worse than a little pick-me-up. Have I ever told you how much I hate Italians?"
Olive drops another sugar cube into her tea. There's too much sugar in this for it too fully dissolve, so it makes a layer of sugar sludge on the bottom. This is how she likes tea. This is the proper way of making tea.
"You're Italian," she says and Blixa groans, collapsing dramatically against a rose-embroidered pillow.
"Yes, yes, so don't you understand how much it pains me to spend all my days in everlasting sorrow? I take the band on this grand voyage so that we may find a single drop of inspiration and what do I receive in return? Nothing but complaints! I do not want to hear anymore about how much you hate the food in America, how much you hate the wine, how much you hate the coffee. Trite, trite, overdone, I have heard all these complaints too many times, I shall scream if I hear another."
Wouldn't it be nice if this had some honey? Then again, maybe she should stop right here. Too much sugar's bad for your teeth.
"But you hate the wine and coffee. And anyway, weren't you going to take the band to Olive Garden on all your restaurant-picking days to bug them?"
"Ugh, yes, and it would have been so funny but they ruined it by picking out the most obvious tourist traps to eat at and then having the audacity to complain that it's like we don't have our share of mediocre restaurants for the sake of the English tourists, who we all know lack taste and reason. And the other tourists too, of course. Their sins are many. I didn't even want to take them to Olive Garden anymore after three days of listening to such endless complaints. What nonsense. I plotted something much more evil."
Olive does not mention that their father is, in fact, English but then again, he's not a tourist and he's spent the last thirty years mostly between America and Italy. Also, he's an alien.
"Oh, did you take them to Taco Hell instead?"
"I took them to restaurants so good that they couldn't possibly complain about a single thing," Blixa exclaims with fiendish glee. "We ate opulently. We ate with decadence. Fucking Luca couldn't complain about a single fucking thing, pigshit-for-brains. The best revenge is eating duck, Olive."
"I'll keep that in mind if I ever make an enemy," she says. "What are they up to while you're here? Oh, did they come with? I just love Tea. I mean, the person, not the beverage. I mean, lowercase tea is okay, I'm drinking it, but I meant her. She said she'd show me her theremin!"
"It's much more exciting when you're not a little bat. Why do you think she named herself that, hm? My sweet darling has fallen fast and hard for some bartender in Philadelphia, so we'll see how that goes. As for the rest, they're journeying to Florida and you won't catch me dead there. It is a place full of pestilence and woe."
The more Olive tries to convince herself that honey would be too much for the tea, the more she wants it.
"Oh, I don't know, Universal Orlando has a horror makeup show you'd like. They teach you how to make fake blood."
"What?! Those sons of bitches didn't tell me that!"
At last, the tea is finished, a little drop of honey added because she couldn't resist the temptation.
"So, you said Aphelion's coming? Do you know if Syz is or...well, I guess she probably isn't. I sent an invite but I didn't hear anything back, but it's okay! I know she's really busy."
"Probably not. Sorry."
She nibbles on a cookie and pretends not to be disappointed.
"It's okay! John's not coming to the ceremony because Dad's there but we're going out for ice cream after! Maybe you could come?"
Blixa raises an eyebrow.
"You talk to John?"
She doesn't need to be an empath to feel his surprise but it doesn't hurt.
"Oh, is that...is that bad?"
"No, no, of course not, it's just that...I have only talked to him once in my entire life and it is only because a friend took me to a concert of his. I don't even know where he lives."
Their family's dynamic is complicated. John keeps a chasm of distance between him and everyone else, the swans only care about their own families, Syzygy resents their father's remarriage, Aphelion's just here to party as much as a fox can, Blixa also resents their father's remarriage but for entirely different reasons, and Olive just wishes everyone got along and maybe they can go to her graduation if they want.
"Oh, he's kind of grumpy but he's nice! I like him a lot! I think we're going to be really good friends! Maybe we could go over there together? But we'd have to take a Fuber or a taxi or maybe he could pick us up because I don't have a car. He lives near the city but you have to drive because it's only near the city, not in it. I kind of just kept showing up at his house with pies until he let me in. One of his fans posted his address online, so...oh no, that's pretty creepy, isn't it?"
The eyebrow goes even higher.
"Yes, just a little bit. I...think it would be very interesting indeed to meet him properly. Just don't do anything like invite Dad, alright?"
"Oh, I know he doesn't really talk to him. So I'm not doing that. I'll send him an email later. He doesn't really do texting," Olive says, fidgeting with her tea cup because people not getting along is unpleasant and she doesn't do unpleasant. The whole point of life is to have fun and maybe eat strawberry cake! Everything else just gets in the way of that.
"Is it okay if we don't go to a place for vampires?" Olive asks, dipping into a whisper on the last word out of habit. It's not that it's a dirty word and she knows that volphs and vampires don't usually get along (which makes sense because Blixa's made her watch a lot of horror movies, so it tracks with Underworld logic) but it's not like Oberyn's ever made her feel bad for not being 100% human and it's not like her dad's even here for it to even be an issue, but there are certain words it's just better to dance around. The collar's not the best at distinguishing what he says from what other people say.
(That's another thing getting in the pursuit of having a lot of fun and eating strawberry cake.)
"I can manage with a less than sanguinary dessert now and then, yes," Blixa replies.
"Oh, great! You'll have to manage twice because I'm taking Dad to just the cutest little tea house. They have these blueberry scones that are so good and the sweetest, most darling little shortbreads and the teeniest little cucumber sandwiches. Don't you feel so fancy eating a cucumber sandwich?"
"I've never eaten a cucumber sandwich in my life."
Olive doesn't cook for him because she's too worried about messing something up in front of other people and she gets the impression that Blixa's sense of taste is stronger than hers (he has sharply defined opinions on the pros and cons of different varieties of asparagus and meanwhile she's not really sure if he's just making that all up or not), so he probably wouldn't like her cooking anyway because she's really not sure what's the right amount of salt and garlic to use. The cookbooks always say to taste but whose taste is that supposed to be? Instead, she orders sandwiches and coffee from the cute little cafe that makes her lemon-lavender lattes with the cute gold sparkles and Blixa doesn't even complain that his macchiato isn't actually a macchiato.
"I'm really glad Dad is coming! He's been really busy lately with the new album but I guess it was silly to even think about him not coming. He likes parties a lot more than work," Olive says as she finishes off her sandwich. "It'll be really nice to spend time with him without his manager around."
It was bad enough that Mr. Blakewell moved in when he had his own house he could have stayed in.
"Hm? Charles is coming," Blixa says, ruining all of her hopes and dreams. "There's no way our father can figure out an airport without him."
"What?!" she exclaims and then winces internally because showing disappointment isn't really graceful. "Everyone forgets to tell me things like this. Why does he have to come? Aphelion's going with him, so Dad doesn't need an escort."
"Aphelion? Don't be facetious. The whole point of having an escort is to guide him away from trouble, not drag him off to deface his ex's Lambo, which, while still very funny and I am personally a very big fan of the charming phallic designs they drew on it -a bold artistic statement against Aphelion's appalling taste in the masculine gender- could've ended in a messy legal situation," says Blixa.
"Like it or not, our father pays him a fortune to tell him no. I've seen the papers. A very impressive salary. By my estimation, he'd save a fortune were they wed in that blessèd state of matrimony but alas, alack, it is a damn certainty they don't do marriage in Hell, so I'm certain dear Dad is only being respectful of his background."
Blixa likes to joke that their father's manager is the famous devil that went down to Georgia but the thing is, what if he's a devil? Are those even real? Olive's given it serious consideration but lately she's given the unseelie theory more merit.
"I daresay Dad has other reasons for wanting him around," Blixa says and nope, nope, Olive doesn't like that implication, they aren't a thing, Charles is just Dad's manager who lives with him and has dinner at the table, that's all, that's a normal thing, they aren't having this discussion, she is shutting this down.
"Oh! I just remembered something I've been dying to ask you because you know so many genres. Could you explain shoegaze to me? I'm just not sure what it actually is."
I'm so excited! My brother (I have three of them) is coming tomorrow for my graduation (that's not tomorrow but he's coming here tomorrow) and it's going to be so much fun! He's usually not in the city long enough to do a ton of fun things because he's just passing through, so I'm so, so excited to show him cool things. If you were showing off Maroa, where would you go? What restaurants (not Italian) would you go to? It doesn't matter if they're vampire restaurants or not. Most of the places I go to are places for Finstagram and he wouldn't like that very much, I don't think. He's kind of goth (he says he's not but he's lying!) and intense, so I don't know if Maroa has goth things or not. I don't really pay attention to that sort of scene. I like disco instead! You can dance to it!
I'm graduating really soon! Watch out world, here I am! They had to push back commencement a little because of the snowstorm earlier this year, which almost never happens, I guess: pushing back, not snow. It was soooo scary! I tried to make soup to cheer me up but I accidentally put in blood sausage from when my brother/sister visited (I hope he didn't sneak in sausage from Berlin, that probably breaks a lot of import laws...) and then it just tasted like sausage and I'm still sad about that.
I don't know who's coming yet, so I guess it'll be a surprise! Surprises can be a lot of fun. Most of my siblings are pretty busy with their own families, so I totally get if they don't come! Flying with little kids is probably really hard. I don't know how I would manage if I had to fly with a baby. Bad, I guess. But my big brother lives around here and he said he would take me to get ice cream after, so that's a win for me! Success! I'm going to be his best friend whether he likes it or not.
I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. I don't know what jobs people do. I guess maybe I should've thought about that more but it's really complicated! People say you can't make a career out of doll customization but it's a lot of fun. People also say you can't make a career out of selling ice cream sandwiches but they're wrong because I bought an ice cream sandwich the other day from my fave ice cream truck and it was shaped like a pupper and was strawberry-green tea flavor! I've seen people selling alcoholic ice cream too but I don't drink. I bet it's nice for the people who like that sort of thing though! I think it'd be really fun to own your own ice cream stand because you could just give ice cream to people all day and they'd be happy and you'd be happy too.
I know you have to throw your cap at the end but what if my hair gets messed up? What if I pick up someone else's cap by mistake? Maybe I can pretend to throw my cap but really I don't actually throw it. I don't want other people's hair germs. Gross!!
