ain't enough room for the two of us [Elijah+Anastasia]

[Hunter]

Vampires didn't have any special undead-pheromone detection senses or any widely recognized ways of marking their feeding grounds, but he was a bit of a traditionalist, in his way. Elijah planted his feet beside the alley wall, unzipped the front of his pants, and began to piss.

Marking his territory was how he'd sardonically explain it if asked, but in actuality, it was one-part the lack of any nearby public restrooms and one-part the perverse thrill of doing something he knew he wasn't supposed to. Let somebody try and stop him; they'd get a nice set of fangs in their throat for their efforts. It was past dark, though, so he could pretty much count on the fact that nobody would be around who was willing to confront strangers, unless there was some new vampire sniffing around.

The man rolled his head, a little groggy and swaying a bit, a tad wobbly after not getting a good day's sleep yesterday, leaving him a little scruffy and out-of-sorts. Damn yappy tourists.  What kind of person decided to spend the afternoon at the graveyard, anyway?  He would have torn out of the tomb that he made his resting place and taught them all a good lesson or two about waking the dead if it hadn't been for the sun.

That's how it usually was -- would have done this, would have done that, if it weren't for the sun.  For the most part, Elijah relished the power, strength, and all the experiences that came with being a vampire, but the weakness to sunlight, in his professional opinion, could go fuck itself.  The time of day had never ruled his life or forced him to live by some semblance of a schedule so much as now.

[avery]

She'd been in her house and she was still realizing it was missing things. It felt like she went out at least once a week to get something that someone else would probably find trivial, but she would admit to some amount of sentiment when asked why, exactly, she was buying enough candles to light a building on fire... all of them smelling like pine or some type of baked good. Most of them were to be delivered in the next few days, just because there was no way she'd be able to handle all of them, but there were a few tucked safely away into a plastic bag for her immediate use. The emptyness of the streets at night -- or at this time of night, anyway, when most people were inside bars -- had long ago stopped bothering her, and Anastasia set off home, heels clicking on the sidewalk and with no real care in the world.

She almost did a little dance as she walked down the sidewalk. It'd be a thing out of a bad musical or something. And she was about to let her guard down and do it when she passed the entrance to an alley.

She stopped.

That sounded suspiciously like drunk urinating.

Did they fucking have to?

Wrinkling her nose, she took another step before she realized that it might be a good idea to feed before locking herself away in her new home for a couple of days, and she slowly turned to look into the alleyway. She saw him -- yes, definitely urinating -- and narrowed her eyes slightly as she tried to decide if it was a good idea. If she was careful, no one would see or hear. And she could be very careful when she wanted to be.

Her stomach won that argument. She stepped into the alleyway, hesitatingly because sometimes even a drunk could see a vampire coming, and tried to make herself look as small and timid as possible. Apparently it was something men liked in women planning on drinking their bodily fluids? She'd never understand. "Um... sir? Can you help me? I'm new to town and," a humorless laugh, one that was more self-mocking than anything, "I think I'm lost." 

[Hunter]

Well that was the first time he'd been called sir in a while. The moment she spoke, he could tell by her hesitant tone that she wasn't here to yell at him for public indecency or suss him out for vampirism, and so he didn't bother to tense at her approach, not expecting any trouble from some gal too naive to know better than to talk to strangers. Especially at night.

Elijah zipped up his pants and glanced over his shoulder. "Suuure, I can help you," he drawled in response, chuckling to himself. He could swear the women in this town were fucking stupid. The vampire turned on his heel and started toward her, sizing her up. She was a short one. He'd have to bend down.

He was holding out his arm toward her as he came closer, palm up and open, as he swayed, rolled his shoulder forward, and asked, "Do you know where it is you're trying to get to?" Coming nearer to her, he moved his arm as if intending to interlock it with hers, his gaze dropping toward her throat.

[avery]

He seemed drunk enough. Uncoordinated enough. She wondered if he'd remember this all happening when he woke up tomorrow morning. Eh, maybe not from the way he tried to posture himself and still seemed to walk with the grace of a drugged up cat. There was something, though, something about this hunt that wasn't the same as they usually were. Something that bothered her.

As he reached out, or whatever it was he was trying to do (she sincerely hoped that he wasn't trying to do the thing "bad boys" do in movies where they trap girls against the wall) and that was when she realized it. He wasn't looking anywhere she was planning on him. He wasn't looking at her face, which Anastasia had seriously doubted he'd do from the beginning. He wasn't looking at her boobs either, which she would admit was the most common method of approach.

Was he... Was he looking at her neck?

Anastasia was struck with some level of fear and fascination; either he really liked necks, which could certainly be it, or he was a vampire like her. And he was hunting her. Her timidness, and forced sense of unease, slipped slightly, and she was sure that in their place was calculation and curiosity. She didn't remember being hunted; if he was, indeed, trying to make a meal of her, she'd continue to play this out. After all, there was a chance she was wrong. Or she planned on playing it out, but then his arm got nearer and she got a good whiff of him.

"You smell like a rotting corpse," she said, harsh as she wrinkled her nose and shot him a look full of disgust. This whole thing just got a little less romantic... not that it was to begin with.

[Hunter]

She looked different as he approached her, somehow, but he wasn't observant enough to notice or discern why. It was only her comment on his smell that gave him pause. Elijah looked back to her face abruptly, narrowing his eyes. Come to mention it, there was something wrong about the way she smelled, too -- stale, almost, and her skin was cold, and after several seconds had passed, he still hadn't sensed a heartbeat. Shit. He was an idiot. How could he not have noticed she wasn't even alive?

Elijah was not so reticent as she was at the realization, giving her an abrupt shove to put distance between them as he snarled, "Who are you?" He was a little testy, having just been tricked into thinking -- and then being deprived of -- a proper meal, and he bared his fangs at her in scorn as he sidestepped and cut off the way back to the street.

[avery]

It took him surprisingly long to realize she wasn't human, and she tried extremely hard not to show how amused she was at his following shock and anger and that shove he apparently thought would make him better. She couldn't stop her lips from shifting into a small smirk when she saw him blocking the direction she'd come from, however, mostly because now she knew he was taking her at least a little bit seriously. "Anastasia Wyly, if my name was what you were asking for," she said. "You can call me Anastasia."

"Oh, and you do smell like a corpse," she continued, just because she had a feeling it'd rile him up even further, and for whatever reason his anger amused her. "Not in the vampire way. I mean, literally a corpse. Don't tell me you sleep with dead bodies. That'd make you an even more stereotypical vampire than myself, and I'm painfully so."

She placed her candles on the ground, hopefully so they wouldn't get damaged by this strange and apparently volatile vampire, and then she took a few steps closer to him, just to see what he would do. She had tricked him once; she wondered how hard he would look for other acts and lies. Not that she was, strictly, lying to him. She was new to town, after all. She only took a few steps, since she didn't want to provoke him while this game was still so fun, and crossed her arms. "You know my name. May I ask yours?"

[Hunter]

She didn't seem as put out about losing an anticipated drink as he did -- which suggested she was content and well-fed, as well as none too worried about running into other vampires. That bothered him. Her comments about his smell, however, did not.

Elijah just squinted at her, raising an eyebrow when she implied there was anything to be ashamed of in following tradition. What did she mean, she was painfully stereotypical? As his mind ran with that in several dark directions, more questions arose. What were the candles for? Did she fancy herself a witch or something?

Though his arms remained at his sides, he stood his ground as she came closer, scowling. It wasn't easy for vampires to kill each other, but she was small enough that he was confident she could take her pretty close to the line if she pushed him, and what with how mouthy she was, she was coming pretty close to pushing him. After a moment, though, the scowl faded to something more neutral. He wasn't angry with her, exactly, just grumpy about his turn of luck; it wasn't her fault she was the second damsel this week to be inconveniently already-dead before he could kill her. As much as he didn't like her tranquil pleasantries, it couldn't hurt to tell her his name.

"Elijah," he answered, looking her up and down. The space between them had softened some, the man loosening in his stance and regarding her with less overt hostility. He hadn't yet made any response to her allegations, and so it was with a return to that topic that he added, "And I sleep with whoever I please." He punctuated the remark with a wolfish grin, looking her dead in the eye.

[avery]

The smirk fell from her lips to be replaced by a doubtful look and a raised eyebrow. She looked him up and down, the action clearly more studying than appreciative, and then she took in his grin. Looking back into his eyes, she pressed her lips into a line and was clearly unimpressed. He was proud for thinking of that? Really?

"Strange. I was getting the 'so heterosexual I need to boast about my sexuality before anyone can doubt it' vibe from you. It's nice you branch out, though. At least the corpses can't feel disappointed at your performance." 

She held his gaze a moment longer before turning back and going to her bag. Since he wasn't being hostile, she might as well get her candles again, before she forgot about them or... whatever could happen to a bag of candles. Bag in hand again, she turned around and tilted her head. "Now, are you still mad at me for thinking you were a drunk mortal and you thinking I was a living woman? Or am I free to leave your," she wrinkled her nose, "wonderful smelling alley?"

[Hunter]

So she thought it a wise thing, then, to continue the barrage of insults as she was trying to get away from him, some of which made him chuckle.  He wasn't sure why she narrowed in on straightness, specifically.  Maybe that was what she meant by calling herself painfully stereotypical -- a lesbian vampire, he thought, as he followed her for the few steps she took with her back turned and kept the distance between them narrow.

"Not quite," he answered, grabbing at the top of her sleeve and yanking her toward him.  At the same time, his attention diverted to her bag, and he reached in with his other hand to take one of the candles.  He tossed it up lightly and caught it again.  "What do you need all these for, anyway?"  He looked from the object back to her face, turning the evergreen-scented candle over in his hand.  It wasn't the precise details of the answer that interested him; there was a tone to his voice that said he was testing the waters.

[avery]

She did not appreciate being yanked at all. The closeness was the least of her issues (and, really, her only real complaint there was his smell), but it was more concern for her shirt. It was probably worth more than, well, everything he owned, if she were judging on his current apparel. She didn't protest, though, since she had a feeling that was what he wanted. Anastasia just narrowed her eyes and let her lips curl to reveal a little bit of fang.

A threat, sure, but nothing worse than his earlier ones.

And then he began manhandling her candles. She watched him, ready to reach out and catch the thing if he was going to let it drop. There was some little voice in her that told her that he was likely thrilled that she was paying more attention to a candle than she was to him. 

"You're... asking me why I bought candles," she said dryly, finally tearing her gaze away from his hand to look at his face again. She sounded almost confused. "They're for my house. Some people like lighting them, you know, and making their house smell nice?" 

Then again, he probably didn't understand the concept of smelling nice. 

[Hunter]

Admittedly it was a lower-order concern of his. Though he made no direct response to the information, he mentally made note of the fact that she lived in a house. Her, in a house, Anna, in an apartment, and him, in a graveyard. The vampires in this town were rather diverse in their living situations, weren't they? She probably had the nicest digs of the bunch, too. He ought to pay her a little visit sometime.

At her answer, Elijah tilted his head and raised his shoulder in a small one-sided shrug. "Well that doesn't sound too important." He was almost smiling at her, in the way of spite and contained irritation. And then, as if prompted by the explanation, he raised the arm holding the candle and forcefully threw it to the ground. On impact, the casing shattered, the clear shards spreading outward from the damaged wax.

[avery]

She knew it was probably hopeless, but she still shot out a hand to try to catch her candle and was rewarded with not being fast enough. The sound of shattering glass was accompanied with a hiss, one loud and lasting long after the candle was destroyed, and she whipped her head from the destruction to his face, her eyes narrowing into a glare.

This asshole.

Without thinking, the hand that had tried to be a rescuer had shot up to his neck, holding it. Not squeezing, not yet, but she put some pressure on her hold that said she wouldn't hesitate, wouldn't think. Her face didn't soften from her snarl and glare, even if the second twisted as she talked. "You've had your fun. Now I think it's time for us to part ways."

[Hunter]

Elijah didn't like the way she took to his message, though it certainly pleased him to see her angry. His eyes darted down to the hand she had around his neck, as though she was planning to suffocate a dead man. It wasn't that he took the gesture lightly, though. His jaw clenched as he raised his eyes back to hers as calmly as he could. She could certainly make it hurt. He knew that. He also didn't plan to let her get the drop on him ever again.

"See you around," he replied.

Bitch.

[avery]

See you around was startlingly right and wrong at the same time. She didn't want to see him ever again, and if she did she wanted it to be on her deathbed, but there was some nagging thought that the sooner would be sooner and that she would most definitely be seeing him again. Still, she could try to give him an incentive to want later too.

She lingered a moment after he spoke, watching, and she tightened her hold on his neck (digging her nails in the best she could, and she cursed that she had decided recently to keep them short) before releasing him and walking around him to get to the street. Anastasia didn't look back until she was on the sidewalk and, when she did, her face was just as composed as it had been earlier.

Except for the overabundance of loathing in the way she looked at him.

"Hopefully not," she replied, just to get the last word in, and wrinkled her nose at him one final time before turning and making her way out of downtown.