Nicola had never trusted the lift at Thirteen Towers: it creaked and moaned most ominously, letting out the suspicious noise of snapping dry-rotted rope and perpetually stinking of sour milk. She could all too easily imagine it dropping away from its supports as it clanked against the shaft wall for the umpteenth time, plunging into the damp depths of the block of flats.

This was why she was using the stairs, which admittedly were not much safer, especially in this bleeping half-light of the moon filtering through the grubby windows. It was enough to edge the darkness, giving some semblance of sight – but you couldn’t see colours, and Nicola could only try not to think what the squelching, sticky somethings were that she kept accidentally treading on.

It seemed that it wasn’t only her rooms where nothing was working – the whole block of flats must have suffered from the power cut, judging by the darkness everywhere. She did not need this… she’d already had a bad day – how much more was she expected to suffer before she could put her feet up?! She’d been yelled at at work, nearly run down on the way home, the lights had stopped working – and, to cap it off, she’d been so annoyed that what was left of the mouldering, threadbare carpet had begun to smoulder. Not good. If that started up again, she’d have to go back to the doctor… stupid weird disease, or whatever it was.

Lost in her internal rant, she slipped on something dripping, and let out a yell as she threw out a hand (regardless of what it might touch) to catch herself.

He was currently wearing a second skin of black leather pants, tucked tightly into mid-calf high boots. The boots were left unlaced so that the tops flopped against his calf. His chest was left bare with a single leather strap that criss-crossed over his torso in a random pattern. On his left arm is another criss-crossed leather strap that climbs his arm and shoulder. His left hand bares a soft leather glove, the fingers cut back to the knuckles and the top reaching half way to his elbow. Around his throat is a spiked and studded collar.

He happened to have been following the girl when she’d slipped. Not really because he was stalking her, his beast didn’t like to stalk easy prey. He’d followed her because well, he lived a few floors up as well. And when the power goes out it takes the television with it. And when there’s no television there is boredom. And when there is boredom, someone likes to go out and play with the werewolves and the vampires and all the other creepy crawlies in the city.

His soft boots had made barely any sound on the creaking wood, and when he reached out to catch her, there was silence accompanied by only a faint swooshing sound or wind and blurred movement before small but strong hands grabbed under her arms, holding her hovering just off of the sticky ground.

His hair was loose, hanging against his shoulders and framing his face in soft blonds and brown colors. His features were soft and young. Seventeen years young. He’s wearing a very sly smile.

“Would you like me to lay you down or help you up?”

Mom always said leave options open for others. Maybe he takes the rule too literally.

((the re-typed version...sorry about my computer eating the first post. It was a bit better then this one.))

Nicola expected to feel pain from hitting the stairs, or even to break through the rotten planks and fall who knew how far to the bottom -- but instead, there was merely a pressure and pulling at her clothes as someone behind her siezed her under the arms. It ached, but it was better than the alternative.

He must have been walking really quietly, she thought, I didn't even hear footsteps. She tried to twist her head to see who had caught her, but her neck was restricted and so all she could see was, out of the corner of her eye, a lot of long hair hanging in all shades from blonde to brown.

“Would you like me to lay you down or help you up?”

No contest. "Pull me up, please!" gasped Nicola, trying not to think of what might happen should her rescuer lose his grip. She wasn't scared of heights, just of what lay at the bottom of them.

He laughed and it was like a bell chimming through the dirty halls and stairwell. It was a boys laughter, thick and tingling. It wasn't a mind trick, it was simply a sensation. It was one of those laughs that makes you want to join.

"Very well."

He pushed her forward without lifting her feet from the stair, pushing her into an upright position. When he'd accomplished this he remained standing behind her, one gloved and one leather clad hand still under her arms. Hair fell into his eyes like a chin length pale curtian and he let go of her with the left hand to push back the hair. His other hand remained until he knew she'd regained her feet.

"Are you alright?"

He flashed a smile at her back. A teasing, flirting, unmistakably flirting smile. Not that he meant anything by it.

She blushed a little at that smile, wishing she wasn't wearing ten-year-old clothes she'd bought from a bargain bucket. "Yes, thanks," she replied to her rescuer, grinning back at him a little nervously. Now she was facing him and could see him properly, she thought he looked young -- about seventeen -- but felt a lot stronger. And he had a great laugh. "Um," she added eloquently. "Thank you."

She looked down, then up, then left, then right; then she looked at him again and noticed that his eyes were just visible as chocolate-coloured. The outfit wasn't helping much either. :P

"Thanks," she repeated herself. "What's your, um, name?"

Seventeen was exactly how old he was, though he may look just a little younger when you can’t see the smile. Most people mistake him as younger then he is. Some mistake him as older because of those clothes, which didn’t only flaunt everything good about his body but literally flaunted everything. And well, he had a good enough body to flaunt.

“Justin.” He shrugged a leather strapped shoulder. “Or Justice.”

His smile faded slightly into a more comfortable upward twitch of the lips. Smiling uses more muscles in your face then lifting weights does in your arms. It was still a pleasant look to his face.

“Yours?”

"Nicola," she answered. "Yes, Nicola," she repeated, as if reminding herself. "Um." Right... time for the big whammy. Would he accept it? "Um, if you want, I'm called Nicky?" Delivered with style! Finesse! Mind-numbing nerves! You can tell she's not used to talking to members of the opposite sex.

"Nicola." He said it so that the word rolled around his mouth, like tasting a new kind of candy or trying to speak a new language. Finally, he smiled. "I like it,"as if his oppinion really mattered. "I'll call you Nicola if you don't mind."

He let his eyes wander around the stairwell, darkness seemed to bring out a glow behind those brown eyes. "What are you doing out here in the dark?"

"Hm? Oh!" Nicola shook her head slightly. "Well, if it wasn't dark I wouldn't be out here. The electricity's all gone in my flat again," she complained. Then a thought struck her. "Is it gone in yours as well?" she asked. "If it is, we can show it's not just a one-off thing and whatever idiots own this dump might actually do something about it." She looked at Justin hopefully.

He laughed again, that chimming sound ringing from vocal to the narrow halls of the stairwell.

"Yeah. It's gone out in mine too. But I don't think it's just the building. The window across from mine's lights are out to."

Just an outage. Blame it on cheap city electricity firms. The laughter in his voice died down to mild, good-natured humor.

"I was just going to walk. Would you like to abandon these slimy steps and join me, since they don't seem to agree with you much."

"I'm sure the stairs would not lament my loss," she smiled back. They began to pick their way down the who-knew-what slicked steps, which groaned in protest as their weight pressed down on them and was then lifted. Here there was a patch of brighter light where the moon was managing to shine through the space where a grubby window had been, and Nicola pulled a face at the piles of dirt and muck layered thick and glistening on the stairway's surface.

Justin didn't wrinkle his nose or even seem vaguly suprised at what the gooe on the stairway looked like. He walked the steps at least twice a day to go up to his appartment and get a change of clothing. He moved over the slickness like a pro. Once on the landing, his walk changed from climb to strut. He moved with a roll to his shoulders, resembling a sailor, but muscles that most people don't realize shouldn't be in a human body, roll and flex and shift with his movment. Minimum clothing to get a maximum effect right?

He held his hand out to her, a trick he learned from his vampire master. He's watched and noticed it charms many women, even though they don't need help to get off the bottom step onto a landing.

I'm sure the stairs would not lament my loss

"They're loss right?" He smiled.

"Yes, I suppose so," she said a little weakly, accepting his hand and thanking whatever deities might be listening that the half-light made her blushing less obvious.

She stepped down onto the landing, which was not in a particularly better condition than the stairs, and cast about for a conversation.

"So. Um. D'you go out often? You know, like a usual place?"

He paused here, looking her over very carefully. It is hard to tell if one is innitiate just by appearance or touch, unless they're powerful enough that his beast can feel the magic.

Yes, he went out often. He worked at a strip club. But it catered to vampires. He liked to go to a certian cafe but it catered to innitiates. He often visited a dance club, but that too catered to the initiates. Though some unnish know what they are without knowing what the entertainment is. If they happen to sneak past the bouncers, their cherry gets popped. After that night, they are no longer Unnish.

He shook his head. Not until he knew.

"Not really. I go out, usually with," another pause as he was about to say 'my master'. "friends." Which is true. Only, a lot of his friends consisted of other lycanthropes. Justin isn't one to try to hard to hide what he is, but he does try a little.

"You?"

He guided her to the door and pulled it open, flooding in pale moonlight. Two days past the full moon. His brown eyes shifted upward to the sky.

She vaguely registered the pauses, but didn't comment. After all, he was hardly the only person in this dump who didn't have at least one thing to hide. "Well, when I go out I tend to talk to people a lot. Either that or I go down to the park, sit by the river. I s'pose it'd be closed now, though."

She didn't mention that the reason she did this was to collect materials for the stories she wrote. She didn't tell anyone about them-- better to keep them to herself than to show them to someone who might think they were rubbish. Anyway, notebooks tended to scare people off or put them on their guard, and you couldn't get interesting characters from talking to people who watched every word they spoke.

"Closed? The Park? It's never closed," he paused very dramatically this time. "I'f you know other ways in." He shifted out onto the sidewalk behinde her, moving like water over a river bed smoothed by years of flow. He walked now with his hands tucked into the back of his pockets, a very tight fit indeed.

"Want to go?"

(God, Forgive me. It's been too long and how do I make it up to you? I give you a very short reply)

((Don't worry about it. :)))

Nicola paused too, but hers was hesitant rather than dramatic. Was it really a good idea to be wandering the city with a man she hardly knew, cute and funny and handsome and etc though he was?

Well, she already was 'wandering the city' with him, and he hadn't turned out to be a mass murderer or whatever thus far. What harm could come from going to the park? She had never before seen it after dark, and her curiosity was well and truly piqued.

"I would love to," she told him with a smile.

He smiled then, a slow, mysterious smile, the sort that meant a kid was about to do something they shouldn’t and get away with it. How did he know he’d get away with it? Simple, he’s done it a million times before.

Justin gracefully offered his arm to her. Never before had he done such things, even with a stripper’s grace he’d never had such manners before Asher took him as one of his pomme de sangs. Too many times he’d watched the vampire offer his arm to someone like this, though, all the grace in the world couldn’t match Asher’s. But he was going to try.

“Then why are we simply standing here? Let’s go.” He gave that ringing laughter again.

She accepted the proffered arm, feeling her stomach loop the loop, and together they walked confidently through the darkened streets. If she had been asked to describe a street at night, Nicola would always have said something about long shadows and bright street-lamps; but, in fact, there was not so much shadows cutting through the light as great oceans of grey-black uncertainty, dotted here and there with flickering little islands of illumination. This was the Fast Food District, after all, and the technology probably hadn't been updated for God only knew how many years.

The night was by no means silent, either. Nicola could hear all sorts of nocturnal sounds: the snoring of a drunken man in a doorway; the faint rustle of the wind in the rubbish; the quiet, sticky sounds of their shoes on years' worth of chewing gum; breaking glass, far off, accompanied by a distant wailing siren. Now, one of the downsides to having an active imagination is that, at times like these, it often visits places you would rather it did not go; and so Nicola was relieved when, at last, the privet hedge surrounding the park loomed up ahead of them -- though even this, in the grey gloom, seemed almost alien. It was a queer feeling, which she got sometimes when she was awake late at night, that the world did not seem to run as everyone thought it did -- that the normal rules did not apply, and, if you will forgive the cliche, that anything could be possible.