//okay but really now... I'm going to sleep, it's missing bits because phone drafting means missing bits but I will care later, take it I need to sleep//
Where was about two blocks down and twelve floors up to a highrise apartment snuggled between the glowing tracks of criss-crossing hovertrains.
The elevator ride up provided needed quiet, extra for magnetic couplings and cordless design, to ask questions.
Questions like, "How did you know?"
"What you are?" Roz asked with a smile, bending to do so, certain the leather corset she wore over a gauzy black blouse cut calculatingly low did its job.
Rel choked and looked away. "Yes. That."
She wasn't usually so shy. One doesn't survive alone in alleys and under bridges being shy. She just wasn't used to women so...tall.
That's it, she lied, it's the height is all. It's throwing me off. Get it together before you get your ass sold.
Roz was still smiling. Hungrily she smiled. But she stood up, leaned on the wall and dug an odd cigarette out of an inside pocket. It had a holder, long and thin, and the filter was longer than the paper.
Snapping fingers decidedly not made of skin, for they shined as gold, Roz lit her fingertip on fire.
Earning a gasp from her eager audience.
Shaking the fire out, after it served its purpose, she took a drag of the cigarette and savored the burn in her throat.
"I know a lot of things... kitten," she told the shocked little face staring up at her.
A face older than it appeared but younger than it would admit to. Rel was thirty-two, said her implant but she falsified that shortly after getting kicked out of her home. Really she was twenty-five and had been on her own since...well...she didn't want to talk about it.
What she did want to talk about was Roz. "But...about vampires, how do you know about them." Letting her hands help the words, Rel also took to pacing in the small space. "I mean I thought they were myths until I got eaten behind an incinerator and woke up in a cemetery."
While Roz had been smiling and watching the pacing thing, she stilled for the confession. "They left you in a cemetery?"
"Yeah. Out behind the big church down on Blake. I spent all morning trying to remember how I got there." More hands, frantically flailing as she paced faster. "Found out the sun just makes me sleepy so I slept more but I wasn't even buried. I thought they buried vampires but I didn't even get a fune--"
"Kitten." Interrupting the rant, Roz had put out and returned a spent cigarette to her coat and bent to hold Rel's shoulders. "Do you remember what they looked like?"
The elevator dinged, doors slid smooth and silently open and Rel choked.
For the sincere expression waiting for her to speak, after a hand shot out to hold the door.
"Pale, pretty, dirty old clothes though and they didn't say much."
Nodding, Roz ushered her out and asked more, "Were they white pale? Hair and skin and eyes?"
"Yeah...is that important? Do those kind leave people in cemeteries?"
"You're not exactly people anymore, are you?"
"Well--I--"
"We're here."
"...is this your apartment?"
"It is."
"And I'm... invited inside?"
"If you can behave. Can you...behave, kitten?"
Rel had more questions. So many more questions. About herself, about Roz, but right then, for all the smarm in that tone she just had the one, "Can you?"
And it caught Roz off guard, throwing her to deeper, richer laughter as she scanned her palm on the door and it slid open.
"I suppose there's a first time for everything," she answered on the way in, having to stop and turn when she wasn't followed. "Come inside, kitten. You're allowed."
"I--I know, you said." Rel wasn't sure what was happening and finally found enough sense to consider it. "When did you know... what I am, I mean?"
Taking her coat off, Roz hung it in a closet beside the door and slid boots off before she answered, "I saw you celebrating on the church windowsill." While Rel's eyes grew too big, Roz reached for her arms and yanked her inside, shoving her into the door after it slid closed. Where she slapped a hand beside her head and leaned close enough to feel hot breath on cool cheeks. "It was adorable...but not so much as you climbing up to that cross. Braving all its silver burn for... what? Why were you up there?"
Rel hoped her newfound undead situation meant she couldn't blush. Unfortunately, having eaten so recently, her tan little cheeks were a deep rose. But she answered, "I... wanted to stand on the cross...in front of the moon. Thought it would look cool."
Roz didn't laugh so much as giggle with resonance. And it was there Rel was allowed to see all of Roz's face.
The elevator and hallway offered only shadows and the rich dark color of her skin. In the apartment, lights soft and warm and perfectly placed...she saw sharp features but softly curved lips and a smattering of dark freckles unhidden by any makeup.
Though Roz did have gold on her eyelids and in her lashes, matching the metal of her left arm, shoulder and a few intricate piercings dangling from her ears.
Gold beautifully matching her eyes.
Biting a plum colored lip Rel assumed natural, Roz shook the giggles and shoved back.
"I'm guessing that implant's hacked then?"
Mesmerized by buttons Rel didn't know she had, she missed the insinuation until Roz was in the kitchen clattering in cupboards.
But she caught it and stomped after, slamming palms onto a black and gold counter. "You scanned me!"
"Mm-hmm." Setting two glasses down, Roz popped the top off a bottle too worn to see the label of.
As she poured the amber liquid into the glasses Rel know what it was and wondered if she could even drink it.
Then she realized why it was being poured and huffed, "I'm legal. Old enough for your back alley bourbon too."
"Are you?" Roz asked as she swirled hers, sipping before asking more, "Give me a number."
Rel snatched the other glass up and gulped half of it down, noting how it didn't burn like it should have. Glaring at a smarmy smile, she set the glass down, hopped onto the counter, grabbed Roz by her gauzy shirt and fed her an old enough tongue.
Which was taken with a swoon before another tap of glass to counter and a guiding of legs around waist deepened the kiss.
So warm she was, and without the lure of hunger Rel was able to appreciate it. To wrap arms around neck, legs around waist and tangle her cool tongue with the heat begging for it.
Pulling away, if slowly, Roz was even warmer but she stopped Rel from chasing. Another taste though, quick, sweet and she cupped her cheek.
"Waiting for that number, kitten."
Rel laughed and gave it, "Twenty-five." Tugging on arms and half-climbing to reach an ear, she added in a whisper, "Am I old enough to ride?"
