((If anyone does take this, Adrian needs to remain uninnish. So.))

The binge Adrian went on after storming out of Gaven’s apartment was truly spectacular. Drug after drug he took, bent on destroying those new memories, these new thoughts. He chased pills of valium with wine to try and numb the pain, smoked joint after joint to try and uplift his destructive mood, and even injected God-knew-what into his veins. He danced and danced and danced and tried to forget the rejection, Gaven’s face, Gaven’s words. But sometimes he would mistake someone for his best friend. Twice he grabbed a boy by the shoulders and apologized at length. Both times they consoled him, whispered, ‘it’s fine, it’s fine, let’s fuck,’ both times he recoiled away, sickened, frightened, confused.

In the packed club, voices came to him in a blur, faces smudged out of his vision. He thought: tonight’s the night. This is where it ends. I’ve done it now, and tomorrow does not exist. Time moved in film flashes. His sight would flicker, and the scene would change. The walls curved towards him, dipped and seemed to fall but never land. The people around him seemed cartoony, their bodies stretching and squashing, some looking like the bad guy on Scream, like the painting.

At two o’clock he stumbled outside. He crumpled in the middle of the street. Sat down. Lay down. Looked up at the sky.

“Why the fuck am I not dead?”

It was amazing how not dead he was. Theoretically, he should have been a corpse hours ago. Was it possible they had been feeding him placebos? He was sure if he bled, he would bleed alcohol and acid and nicotine. He lit a cigarette, right there in the middle of the street. One car came, swerved around him, honked angrily. The driver must have correctly assumed that dead people do not smoke. Except he should be dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Dacia did not like to be out at night. In fact, she avoided it at all costs. And yet somehow she found herself out at night much more often than she liked.

Tonight, for instance, she'd been babysitting. Babysitting is a job generally considered fit only for high school students, but Dacia was good at it, and parents liked her because she was willing to sit for them all day if necessary. Kids were one of the few things that could hold her attention for hours at a time. And children liked her because she had nearly as much energy as they did.

But sometimes parents get crazy notions of being kids themselves again, and decide to stay out until the wee hours of the morning. And the idea of drinking fancy wines and wearing expensive suits and dresses at posh restaurants makes them deaf to Dacia's protests that she really can't stay out late at night, because she doesn't like to walk home in the dark.

So there she is, at night, with her hair in a high ponytail and splashing down over her backpack (which contains glue and popcicle sticks and all manner of craft supplies), wearing a bright red jacket and a short yellow skirt over blue jeans, looking slightly panicked. Almost there she's saying to herself. Nothing could happen between here and there. Except that she knows it can.

And then she sees a car almost run over a dead body in the middle of the road, and she swears. And she's runing forward even as her mind is protesting loudly, because this really can't be a good idea. When she sees that the dead body is smoking a cigarette, and therefore cannot actually be dead at all, she gives a loud sigh of relief.

And then all the alarms in her head go off. Because a dead body is harmless, but a live one could be anything. A demon, a vampire, a werewolf that's not as friendly as Cort.

But despite all her sanity, she's still running foward, and when she's close enough to this crazy stranger to make out his features, she leans over and cries, "Are you trying to get yourself killed!?"

There was a burst of color chastising him. The part of Adrian that wasn’t devoted to wallowing in his self-pity took a moment to admire this. He liked colors. Always had. Though more people should wear brighter clothes. Adrian did not sit up. He lifted his cigarette to his lips and took a drag.

“Why?”

It didn’t really matter if he died or not. Life as he knew it was already over.

“Oh, shit.”

Adrian sat up, pressing his palm against his forehead. He had never been impressed by depression or angst or emo. To him it looked as if people were wearing signs on their foreheads, proudly exclaiming their emotion. But Adrian was painfully human (though he was having his doubts now, since he was still alive when he really shouldn’t be) and therefore was subjected to distressingly human emotions. So he was painfully depressed.

But he really saw no reason to push this on somebody else.

He kind of wished she would continue walking. He sort of wanted to be alone, to try and figure out why his mind was so distressingly clear even though he took more drugs than humanly possible. But he tilted his head towards her and frowned slightly. She didn’t look like she belonged out as late as this, in a place where they were, now. He fit in much more appropriately, even in his jeans and brown hoodie, which were distinctly not clubbing clothing. His tired, shining eyes that seemed completely unfocused gave him away.

“I could say the same to you. What’re you doing out this late? Around here?”

He spoke disturbingly well. Really, he should be reduced to slurring and drooling at this moment. Proper control of his vocal chords should be out of the question, but he had it. He should be panicking right now. Instead, he looked up at her and noticed her eyes. Probably contacts. He took another drag.

Fair question. She was asking the same thing herself.

"I don't know." She said, and the expression on her face agreed completely.

"Hey, why don't you get out of the street, huh? Before the next car doesn't swerve."

This guy looked high, or stoned, or wasted, or whatever other words meant under the influence of drugs. Dacia didn't know, she could never sort them all out. But she wasn't sure he actually was any of those things, since he seemed to be perfectly lucid. Shouldn't he be acting... different? Agian, she didn't know. Drugs and their affects were not Dacia's area of expertise.

She offers him a hand to help him to his feet, even though she still can't justify this as a good idea at all.

Adrian followed the movement of her hand, momentarily distracted. Yes, he was more lucid than he should be, but there was a definite, distracted haziness to his actions. And he spoke slower than normal, as if he was carefully picking and choosing his words.

He placed the cigarette between his teeth and snagged her hand. For a moment, he contemplated dragging her down to sit beside him, to try and get her to look at life in a different aspect. 'This is what it looks like when you're roadkill,' he wanted to tell her, 'or when your life fucking sucks and you'd rather not continue anymore.' He wanted to sit down next to her. Point out favorite stars. But the sky was polluted by city lights. He pulled himself to his feet, supporting himself more with the ground than with her hand.

"You shouldn't be walking out this late by yourself," he said, releasing her hand to brush himself off.

He towered over her.

"I'll walk with you." Adrian was a Good Person, even if he was on the wrong track. He also didn't have to explain why he would be adequate protection. Adrian was tall and well-built, and knew how to be violent. After all, he was a hockey player.

She grins up at him.

"And how do I know that you're not someone I need protection from?" She asks, but one can tell by the way she's smiling that she has already accepted his company.

"My apartment is this way." She gestures in the direction she was moving before she picked up this tall stranger. Speaking of...

"What's your name?"

"I guess if only because if I wanted to do something, I would have already done it." Adrian shoved his hands in his pockets. "Or because I'm fucking gorgeous." He waved a hand in dismissal, threads of cigarette smoke following his hands. He was joking, but it fell flat. He wasn't really in the mood for jokes.

He fell in step beside her, only stumbling a little bit. Maybe his body had just gotten used to the drugs. He should be passed out in an alley or something, being mugged. Or he should be dead.

"Adrian," he said. "Adrian Bastardi." He didn't stutter over his last name like he used to in grade school. It was his name. A horrible name, but still his name.

"I don't know," She joked, "you might be leading me into a dark alley to suck my blood." But she's making herself nervous, so she stops.

When he stumbles, Dacia makes a small instinctive movement as if to steady him, but when he remains upright she stops herself. Not like she could do anything if he were going over anyway.

She flashes him a lopsided grin when he tells her his name.

"Nice. I'm Dacia Amity." She doesn't offer her hand to shake if only because it looks like reorienting himself even that much would throw off his balance completely. Instead she shoves her hands back into her pockets and watches him.

"Heh. I've met some weird people that thought they were vampires. They'd sneak into hospitals and steal blood from the blood donating place." He looked simultaneously a bit ill and amused at the prospect. "I don't know. It always struck me that if vampires were real, they would want, you know, fresh blood."

God, why the fuck was he so lucid? It didn't make any sense. Okay, maybe by some fluke of nature he didn't die because of some mutated gene, and that was what kept him conscious, also, but he should not be able to think. The whole point of getting this fucked up was to not think. But it seemed like the more drugs he did, the more his body rebelled and the more sober he became. Sure, things were still moving strangely. The buildings seemed to be on a reel, moved by a rotating belt. Things seemed over-developed. But he was carrying on a conversation.

"What was that?" It took him a moment to realize she was talking to him, longer than normal. He blinked a little sluggishly. "Sorry. Nice to meet you, Dacia."

Her smile is kind of sad and nervous. She decides to drop the subject of vampires until a time when she's not out at two in the morning surrounded by prime vampire haunts and feeling vulnerable.

She's still watching him, and sees it when he drifts to a place away from her. She wants to ask him what he's taken, because he's obviously on something, but can't think of how to phrase it so that it doesn't sound insulting. Instead she smiles at him and says, "Nice to meet you too."

Adrian is unaware of her nervousness. To him, vampires were just a silly myth. Adrian was not at all superstitious. He believed there was a scientific answer to everything. Which was slightly funny, since his family had been fanatically Protestant. He preferred proof. Explanations.

"You never really answered me. Why are you walking around this late, anyway?" He noted her backpack. Maybe she was a runaway. But then why would she be leading him to her apartment?

"Oh!" She was somewhat surprised that he actually cared. What did it matter? But she answered anyway. "I just got off babysitting. Some parents think that going out at night is a good idea." If he were watching her face when she said this, he would notice that she thought those parents were clearly stupid. Only idiots went out at night. And yet here she was.

"Huh." He cared because it wasn't exactly safe around these parts. Not at all, even. And she was little. Then again, who knew. Maybe she was a karate master. But he had yet to see someone dodge a bullet. He glanced at her face and caught her expression and smiled a bit. He didn't see anything wrong about going out late at night. In fact, he advocated it. He strongly believed people should go out and have fun whenever they could.

Adrian glanced forward again, pulling another cigarette out from his pocket. He lit it with his old cigarette.

"Hey." He had no idea why he was about to be so sharing. Maybe because she was a stranger, and it was easier to talk about these things when you didn't know the person. This Dacia could pass judgement on him if he wanted, but it didn't matter because he was probably unlikely going to see her again. That was just how life usually was. "You ever fuck something up that was really, really, really important to you?"

She's grinning as she watches him light another cigarette, because when is she ever not? But when he begins to speak, there's a serious edge to his voice and she sobers quickly.

Dacia thinks about his question. It seems only fair. She does comes up with one or two things she wishes she could change, and so she says, "Who hasn't?" It's an invitation, those words, gently coaxing.

"Yeah, I guess." He kind of drifted again, staring straight ahead but not really seeing anything. "I should apologize to him." He probably didn't make much sense, so he turned to look down at her to explain. "My best friend. I thought there was more to it than there apparently really was." He looked extremely hurt for a moment. Adrian didn't cry often, never cried in fact, but he seemed close to it.

"Don't know. I just thought it was natural. Normal. But apparently it's not." His smile was crooked. "Sorry to lay this on you. I just - I don't know. It's confusing."

It takes her a moment to piece together what he's saying and attempt to make it make sense. But she takes the time, because she really wants to help.

Finally she says slowly, "You probably should apologize. If he's really your best friend, he'll forgive you."

She can't think of what else to say without assuming a whole lot, so instead she smiles and says, "And don't worry about it. It's no big deal. Hey, you want to come up to my apartment? For, um..." What did people normally offer? Coffee? She didn't have any. Cocoa? None of that either, unless she wanted to make it the old fashioned way, with a pot and a stove and real cocoa. But who'd want to go to all that trouble? "... food?" She was pretty sure she could find some leftovers buried in the back of the fridge.

Adrian seems to mull over her words for a moment. He didn't really think Gaven would go on hating him forever, or that Gaven even hated him in the first place. "Yeah. You're right. Gav's bee my friend for forever." And it made sense. They'd work it out, somehow.

He looked down at her in surprise and was shocked into a genuine smile. He really must look like a mess, if she was offering to feed him. That charmed him to no end.

"Yeah," said he. "I would. Thanks."

She nods shortly, satisfied. "Good. We should be nearly there..." She slows her walking almost to a stop to look around her. She never gets lost in the daylight. Dacia knows this city practically like the back of her hand. But Bayfield is a different world at night.

Apparently she recognizes where they are, because she continues forward confidently once again.

"Yeah, we're almost there."

Adrian shoved a hand in his pocket and took a drag from his cigarette. "Do you normally invite strangers into your apartment?" He wasn't complaining or chastising. It was just a normal question in a slightly abnormal situation. He felt like a stray being picked up, and he certainly wasn't used to being taken into someone's home to be fed. Usually, he went to people's homes to get laid. Or drugs. Or, in rare cases, to play videogames. While on some drug.

He hummed noncommitedly. Truthfully, he was fine wherever. Adrian was good at making the best of any location. "Thanks for inviting me up. It's really nice of you."

"Yeah, all the time." She's joking, but it's said casually enough that it's hard to tell. And it's almost not a joke, anyway. Her apartment is where she invites everyone, for any reason at all. To study, to eat, to watch movies, and occasionally to fall asleep on her couches.

She brushes off his compliment with a dismissive gesture. "No big deal."

"That's cool." Adrian wasn't really good at picking up jokes when he was on lord knows how many different drugs. He just figured she must have damn good luck to still be alive after inviting so many strangers into her apartment. "So, are you still going to school?" He flicked his eyes at her backpack. It was small talk, sure, but they were almost to her apartment and he liked the idea of sitting on a couch. He flicked the cigarette to the side. Hoped it wouldn't land in a puddle of gasoline and explode, thought that would be kind of interesting.

"Yeah, only part time though. I'm an anthropology major." Dacia is momentarily distracted by the used cigarette. It looks like a falling red star in the dark, before it disappears behind the rise of the curb.