kermitted-cause - Tumblr blog

kermitted-cause · 9 days ago

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WoD Meetcute Event!!!

Hi everyone, this is my writing to mirror @naughty-elf-fun's wonderful artwork of Red and Adrian!

The banner is by the brilliant @diableriedoll!

Adrian’s blinker clicked sharply and in regular intervals. He kept his hands level on the steering wheel, and gently rolled his tongue along the butt of his cigarette. It shifted slightly to a more comfortable position. The gas was eased off, and the car came to a rolling stop. Tried as he might, the blinker continued to fitfully assert its presence. With much effort, Adrian cranked the window down, and lowered his sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose.

Virginia was a state he did not mean to visit, nor did he even want to be in. The East Coast was met with long stretches between urban life, vast expanses of flat roads, and the deep belated sigh of nature. Richmond had been a lovely little detour for all three, but Adrian’s grand tour had set its sights for Europe. Sure, the rules were different there, and the roads were less amenable to long contemplations of thought and enjoying the night sky. But, and this was a big but, Europe had odder jobs and nicer booze. Adrian was tired of the same circuits between Princes, Bishops, and the occasional dust up with some upstart prick who had decided to create yet another schism within the sects that existed.

How many ways could you cut an already thin slice of pie?

Finally, after hours directionless and refusing to rely on maps or intuition of any kind, Adrian was clear of Richmond. The I-95, a beautiful feat of engineering and a wonderful reflection of the unending feat of engineering, had promised a return to schedule. Traffic was luckily sparse, a rare miracle, and before dawn, Adrian would be holed up in D.C. in some shit motel, either alone or with some poor fucker with a sob story. And a shower. The place needed a shower.

As such luxuries of hot water streamed through his mind, Adrian found himself in the odd position of staring at a vague figure in the distance. Their thumb jutted out awkwardly in the familiar ‘going my way’ angle. He checked the time. A few hours before dawn. Fuck it. He could sneak in a quick bite.

This line of thinking soon faded, as the figure became more distinct the closer the car rolled towards her. She seemed put together but faded, worn out and held together by something Adrian couldn’t quite label. Her hoodie was dusty, the drawstrings pulled taut, and the fabric blotched with a dark, faded mark. In some places, it was stained with a fresher liquid. Even though he could not see any colour, nor had he been able to since his embrace, Adrian knew what he was looking at. The leather jacket atop it did its best to hide the blood, but even then, Adrian could see danger even if it announced itself whilst hitchhiking.

Honestly, Adrian was not one to judge. His eternal bruises lingered and only faded with what gentle violence he could indulge in. His eye remained swollen and brutal, and his broken nose had decided to spring a fresh leak that required bandaging. At least his split lip was cooperating, with less angry tears across his sardonic smile.

Two blood covered individuals gazed at one another. Both were separated by the bent metal of a car window; one sat in the busted Cadillac, wearing inappropriately-timed aviators to hide his injuries; the other stood against a metal post, shouldering a bag and concealing herself through her jacket to hide the blood that was most definitely not hers.

‘Looking for a lift?’ was an obvious statement, but a ‘howdy’ or a ‘hello’ would have slowed things down. The young woman regarded Adrian coolly, and nodded. Her jaw tightened, set into a grim scowl.

‘You headed towards D.C.?’ she asked, and Adrian nodded. The aviators fell onto the dusty road, and neither one acknowledged it. The woman looked at Adrian fully now, observing his bruises. The backpack was adjusted out of habit, and she pointed a sharp finger at his face.

‘You in trouble?’ She was clearly trying to gauge if Adrian was a serial killer, or a creep of some description. He turned it back onto her, the random woman hitchhiking in the late night. Adrian returned the gesture, motioning towards the dried blood on her torso.

‘Only as much as you.’

Silence fell between them, both rigidly glaring and working out the calculations in their mind. It was a risky coin flip, that chance before a tussle, before someone had to lunge first and fuck up a potentially pleasant altercation. Adrian went first.

‘Garou?’

‘Nope. Camarilla?’

‘Nope. You going to kill me?’

‘Not unless you give me a reason.’

‘Fair enough.’ Adrian unlocked passenger door and opened it up for her. It was entirely possible he was going to be brutally slaughtered in his own car, but fuck, did Adrian need directions once he got off the interstate. The stranger rounded the car, and entered. Immediately, Adrian noticed the smell of metal and dust.

The Fleetwood Cadillac shifted into gear, and rejoined the road.

About ten minutes of the stilted silence went by, and the blinker remained helpfully stuck. Briefly, Adrian tossed the finished cigarette butt into the backseat, and let go of the wheel to light another. He didn’t think much of it, but the raised eyebrow and the brushing of bright, fair hair seemed to have an opinion.

‘If a car crash was going to kill us, then frankly, how the fuck did we make it so far?’ Adrian laughed bitterly, and returned his hands to the safety of the wheel.

‘You got a name?’ She ignored his statement in favour for something useful.

‘Depends on the day. Tonight you can call me Adrian.’ he flashed a grin that was blocked. ‘What can I call you?’

‘Red.’ she grunted, clearly, and quite fairly, unimpressed with the man driving.

‘You sure have a lot of that on you.’

‘It’s not mine if you’re worried.’

‘I can’t tell if I’m more or less worried.’ Adrian mused. ‘You need a change of clothes? I’ve got some spare in the trunk.’

Red shook her head, the cloud of her only visible eye travelling to some past nostalgia.

‘No, but thanks. I just need the ride.’

‘Not even some blood?’

‘I’m full.’

‘Thought so.’

Adrian clicked his tongue alongside the blinker, and then stopped once it got boring.

‘I’m not much of a social butterfly.’ Red remarked.

‘I am a jackass, so polite conversation is not my specialty.’

‘How about we don’t ask any questions, and agree to just sit in silence until we get to D.C.?’

‘Agreed.’ The smoke of cigarettes sank heavy in the car, between the tension and the absurdity of the situation.

Once upon a time, there was a truck driver in Arizona, travelling to Nevada to unload pallets of something important. He picked up a passing hitchhiker, who was quite jovial and obnoxiously chirpy.

The hitchhiker was quite surprised that the trucker picked up a total stranger, and commented upon this.

How do you know I’m not a serial killer? he had asked.

Because, came the reply, what are the odds there are two serial killers in this truck?

This story came to the forefront of Adrian’s mind as they travelled in the night. There was something deeply incorrect about each of them. Neither Red nor Adrian appeared upstanding, or like members of society that would be so readily accepted by the rest. Perhaps that was the issue: there was no facade or pretense of normality.

‘I know we said no questions-’ Adrian held up his hands as Red shot him a look ‘- but I am curious why some vamp covered in blood decides to walk to D.C.’

Red shrugged non committedly.

‘Same reason a vamp covered in blood decides to drive there.’

‘Touché.’

By now, Adrian was focused more on Red than the road.

‘I am going there for a job.’ he admitted. ‘Some tiff between some Sabbat and Anarchs, something about a blood feud. I’m like a private contractor for shitty jobs like that.’ The mention of the Sabbat caused Red’s hoodie to jolt slightly, as if it were some unconscious buzzword.

‘You got problems with the Sabbat?’ it was a question that had intended to be casual, but Red’s fire still bled through a tiny part.

‘Christ no. I used to be Sabbat. Technically. Anyway, I had an ex-wife who was Sabbat. She wasn’t high up, but she wasn’t a shovelhead. She just was, y’know? I quite like their carefree attitude and their general oomph.’

‘Oomph?’

‘Yeah, like spirit, vibe, whatever you want to call it. That whole connection between packs. Beats being by yourself, driving in a car to get paid for peanuts for beating the crap out of Anarch bikers.’ Adrian nearly missed Red wincing, and her eyes snapped sharply to the road. Even though she was in the car, Red must have been somewhere else. The mentioning of packs and being alone was clearly the wrong move. Adrian sighed, and restarted the smoke cycle with his cigarettes.

‘Why did you leave the Sabbat?’ Red asked, the edge in her voice audible.

‘You want the actual answer or some made up bullshit? I’ll be in D.C. for two nights tops, so I doubt I’ll ever see you when you leave the car.’

‘Humour me. So long as you aren’t with those Camarilla fucks, I don’t care what you are. I just want to know how you enjoy being lonely.’

‘I don’t enjoy being lonely.’ Adrian retorted slowly.

‘So why do all this then?’ This. Whatever the fuck was ‘this’? Existing, being, doing jobs, cracking jokes? Being a smarmy asshole?

‘Sharks need to swim all the time, right? It is how they breathe. They move in their sleep. If they don’t, they suffocate. I don’t know the science of it, but. I’m the same.’

Red’s hardset shoulders did not relax, nor had it from the outset of the car journey. She knew something of loneliness. Perhaps enough to write a book on it, or yell til the stars burnt out.

‘Why do you do all this?’ Adrian asked Red’s question, though he could hazard a guess.

Despite the heat of the car, the temperature dropped and Red’s posture grew rigid and her being froze in her seat.

‘I had something taken from me. I want the Camarilla to feel that same loss.’

‘Fair enough.’ It was a common enough answer. Nobody did grudges like the undead. They stewed, and had enough time to linger on it. A lonely Sabbat lick, though? Adrian had stumbled into an Odyssey, for sure. He was simply the next step in her quest, barely a fucking footnote in her story. Even if Red ended with a tragic fate, she would achieve something glorious, whether she wanted it or not. Whomever she was after was contending with a vendetta, a streak of red painted across an epitaph. Fucking righteous, and noble. More than Adrian was capable of.

‘You avoided my question earlier.’ Red asserted. ‘Why did you leave the Sabbat?’

‘I have commitment issues.’ Adrian smiled wryly and wiggled his eyebrows, undercutting the almost moment that was growing. Red scoffed in disgust, and half lifted her arms up to move the agitation from her soul to the motion of her body.

‘Just drive.’ she demanded, and turned over so she could no longer see Adrian.

Smooth moves, beheading the emotions that nearly spilled over. The rest of the car ride was bathed in palpable bone sickness, smothered in an aggressive anxiety. Even if the Fleetwood Cadillac was halfway through the journey, Adrian and Red were halfway through different stages of grief, of anger, and of the bitter condition that death had denied them.

Adrian couldn’t wait to get out of the States, and start all of it over. He could only hope that Red would manage closure for herself that he could never afford for himself.

#vtm #vampire the masquerade #toreador #gangrel #I had a lot of fun writing this #Don't tend to post my writing but I wanted to for this event!#wod meet cute

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