#padraic-tow

[annarper-tow]

padraic-tow liked your post:Hello, the dash?

An Angel! How-do, entity friend? <3

[frankie-tow]

"Me? Overdo it? I'll try to take your advice, scout's honor, but I'm doing the second part of a full back tattoo tomorrow. After that," he paused, "We'll see." He paused for a moment, night settling in, pulling them apart by their shirt sleeves. "Hey--thanks." And he finally took a step back. "As long as it means you're getting sleep too." He finally lifted a hand in a wave. "See you 'round."

Wincing in what was an attempt at sympathy, Frankie gave Padraic two thumbs up and backed away as well. The spell was broken. The fog was forcing them to find their ways back where they came from: separate worlds shoved onto one spit of land in the last breath of the cold Atlantic. He was bound for the beach or the woods, depending on whether or not he was intercepted by Sig Whatshisface and his band of UnMerry Men [and maybe Women?]. His lips twitched, and Frankie shook his head, turning to disappear into the velvet gloom before the rising of the sun came to burn away its vague psuedo-form of peace.

“Don’t mention it,” was his response, to most things always, but especially this.

[frankie-tow]

"I picked up someone else's shift, on top of doing the first session of what's going to be--" He shook his head, "A very big tattoo." However Frankie meant the words, it sat just well with Padraic. For once, they weren't coated in venom. And for once, his weren't dipped in sarcasm. "Thanks," he returned rather easily, "You too. Looks like it's been a long day for the both of us."

“...Don’t--” Frankie hesitated. The fuck did he care? Why bother saying anything to this--guy anyway? It wasn’t as though it mattered, or he mattered. Just because he acted domestic didn’t mean he was. His father’s words still rattled around in his skull, learned shrapnel from a home more front line than bedtime, where chores were dismantling and cleaning guns instead of cleaning floors.

“...Overdo it,” he finished blankly, his gaze moving away once more, shoulders rising and falling in a roll meant to relieve tension rather than dismiss the conversation. “Anyway--see you around, or somethin’.” Now it was a dismissal.

“In your dreams, probably,” he added--more playful than intended, so much so that it stopped him briefly. 

His words or Padraic’s?

[frankie-tow]

It was still, at least for the moment; even Padraic felt like he could breathe. The twisting turns of time abated, left to stand as nothing more than ticks and tocks on a clock - like it should be. The vampire shook his head. "I just got off of a twelve hour shift. I don't plan on doing much for the next six or so hours. But that's just me." He looked again at Frankie, not a glance or a dart, just a look. Eye to eye, nothing hidden behind it. Maybe that was part of just existing too.

“Twelve hours? Shit, dude,” Frankie softly whistled, shaking his head. “That’s a freakin’ long time to be inking people up.” He ran a hand through his hair, making a note to himself to buzz it first chance he got; again--the darkness was fading, white-gold roots were threatening to show, muddied by dyes and lack of proper care. He hummed in the back of his throat, squinting at the vampire. “You should, I dunno--crack open a cold one. Start a new Netflix thing.” He was just talking, now, to fill the silence--wasn’t sure why, so he let the words run their course before falling into a lull once more.

After a long moment of nothing, he ground down once more on the cigarette underfoot and shrugged vaguely.

“Or sleep or--I dunno. You do you.” He met Padraic’s gaze; wary. He hoped it’d been a plain exchange..

Nothing up either of their sleeves.

[frankie-tow]

Padraic shook his head, echoing the words back as little more than a faint murmur - the meaning resonating a little deeper than he let on. He averted his eyes finally, staring off into the fog as the last of the smoke evaporated in its clutches. "What's next?" he asked. The question could have meant a lot of things, but he turned his head to look at Frankie and added, "For tonight. Got any plans?" He snorted softly. "You don't have to spell them out if you do."

When the cigarette finally bit his lips with its angry head of cinders, Frankie doused it in the cracks between the cobbles; under a duct-taped combat boot and into the damp, dark places nobody looked. He guttered the fire and smoke underfoot and shoved his hands into his pockets, squinting at the thinning mist and the growing haze, the two of which collided--down from the mountains and up from the thawing earth. Everything seemed at a standstill, no grander or better than any other twilight hour. It simply was.

And maybe that was the weird part: the feeling of existence. Of being in a moment. 

For the briefest pause, he wasn’t backwards or forwards.

He simply was.

“...no plans,” Frankie admitted, shaking his head slowly, eyes shifting back to Padraic. “What about you?”

[frankie-tow]

"Of course we aren't. Never have been." He exhaled again, letting the smoke roll from his mouth in billows that soon got lost in the fog. He let the end of the cigarette drop, extinguishing it with a quiet touch of his boot. "And--lemme guess--" Blue eyes darted back to Frankie, looking him over quickly. "Never will be." Hands slipped back into his pockets, ignoring a slight chill that shouldn't have done as much as it did to a vampire. "Sound about right?"

“Semper fi.” The words slipped out without a trace of sarcasm or desire to be stopped, the hunter-like-a-hand-grenade [small and full of explosive energy and forever waiting for the pin to drop] lifting one fist half-heartedly into the air.

“Ooh-rah,” he concluded dully, and the hand dropped back to his side, then behind himself, clutched by the hand opposite. He was letting the cigarette burn out between his lips,  he knew, but he didn’t care--he was checking in with himself; with his pulse, with the lines of his forearm and wrist, giving himself something to grip. 

“Just--we don’t quit, I figured,” he said lamely, lifting a shoulder. “You, me--same ilk that way. Don’t stop till we drop.” Though in Pads’s case, Frankie assumed that’d be never.

He didn’t have that luxury, however. 

[frankie-tow]

He could see the scars, see the new marks. It wasn't a secret what kind of life Frankie lived, and Padraic knew it only too well. He used to have similar marks that faded to silver before the day was done, and then disappeared entirely. A facade of perfection; he'd ruined it with tattoos - and he'd done it on purpose. He cast a feigned look of indifference at his arms, which he lifted slightly. But Frankie had seen the nearly full extent in dreams, hadn't he? "It took a lot of work."

Frankie nodded, unsure of what to say. What could he say? They weren’t friends. A few thirsty fantasies did not a friendship build, anymore than a few awkward encounters in a bar, on the street, or otherwise did. He simply feigned interest, right? Know thy enemy, and all that. The hunter in him wanted to have the upper hand, and the soldier wanted to stay on the low-low. He turned the cigarette between his lips with absent, steady fingers, eyes finally drifting away from Padraic toward the foggy streets of pre-dawn, when the shadows were thickest and the air damp with dew. The streetlamps were still shining. Everything glimmered, and he had to wonder if this was a dream, too.

“Yeah well,” he said finally, shrugging both brows, “guys like us--we ain’t slackers.”

[frankie-tow]

He let out a laugh at that, nodding as he did. "But the money wasn't, and so I had to." The phone slipped easily back into his pocket, along with Padraic's hand, the other rising to pull the cigarette away so the vampire could let loose a long show of smoke. "I take pictures of every new tattoo I do. I've got stories that' make you sit down and weep for the direction of those inks." He shook his head with a sigh.

“Makes me glad I keep’em simple,” said Frankie wryly, nodding to the ones on his knuckles--the butchered ones Pads had saved, the ones that had, since last they spoke, collected more scars. Padraic had not, after all, seen his tally marks [other than in a few scattered dreams that had left Frankie dry-throated and shaky come morning]. But scars--those Padraic could probably see, for the most part. No hiding all of those.

He was battered, especially in the hands and face, though his arms and shoulders and back fared little better. As of now, he was healing from a bruised set of ribs and a sprained ankle, but those were minimal concerns in his line of work when he wasn’t in imminent danger. 

That sidebar aside, Frankie blew smoke through his nose and cocked his head to one side, eyeing Padraic once more.

“Yours’re pretty intricate, though,” he noted, chin jutting out in Pads’ direction.