Please Don't Pick Me Up [Anzy] [PG13]

[ωΘĿƒ]

It was late at the Colleger Cabaret, and things were starting to pick up nicely. Colye was pretty sure there was a strip club or something in the other room, but that wasn't what he was here for. He liked the booze better, thank you. Although, it was always fun to keep his options open. That's why the Cab. There was plenty of inappropriate behavior here. He could have his pick of any of the seven deadly sins. How fun. He ordered a drink and got cozy at a bar stool.

The fun thing about alcohol though, was he could only get drunk whilst in his human form. He had no idea why, but he was immune otherwise, and that got kind of tricky when getting wasted was priority one. You had to be pink and squishy before you got high and mighty, as he always said.

"Where's Whit this evening?" he asked the bartender cheerfully, gulping down his first drink. "He usually mans this place on weekends, right?"

They knew him here, go figure.

"Shift change." The pale bartender muttered. He was lying, but hey, at least he was making conversation.

Coyle could smell the head vampire here. He was in the back room doing something, and it didn't smell saintly. Coyle sipped at his second glass more slowly, taking time to savor the taste before he drank it down.

He thought he heard screaming coming from back there, but it could just be his imagination.

"Cheers to another span of slavery." He smiled, thinking of that girl at the ball. She had his anchor, and that wasn't a good thing. He needed to get that taken care of, but first, he needed to ignore it with some good old fashioned hard liquor.

"Speaking of cheers, gimme another glass."
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[Anzeh]

Knoei "Moss" Titan: a hormonal factory of lust and sperm, that's the best way to describe him. He will father your children and wrench girls roughly from their boyfriends. And sometimes he took boys from their girlfriends. Gender, species, experience... none of that mattered to him, because it was all trivial. At the Cabaret he wasn't exactly a nobody. He spent so much time simply wandering around, playing his game, some people even offered him drinks.

Yes, he was underage, but they didn't check ID at the cabaret. They never did, and that's why he liked it here. Age was unimportant here as well. If you wanted to wreck your body, then you were allowed to wreck you body. If you wanted to get high, do crystal methaphetamine, then you could. Your body was yours to do with what you will, and here not only was that allowed, it was encouraged.

Moss walked though the strip club, like he always did, But this time he kept his pants zipped. He wasn't in the mood for this. He needed a shot of something alcoholic. For someone so young, the Barghest had the tolerance levels of someone much older than him, even though he didn't drink that much. perhaps three glasses a year.

The grey eyes youth opened the door and shut it behind him, waving to the people who called out to him. He recognised Coyle, but didn't bother to say anything to him.

Leaning on the counter he said, with no uncertainty, "Give me a cosmopolitan. I don't care what kind, just,.. just something." Moss said, pulling out some money to pay for it.

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[ωΘĿƒ]

Coyle's head whipped around at first smell of someone he knew.

Well, he knew everyone here, but this one was the new person he knew. He was the one that played his funny little game with all the girls at the school. Boys too, but only every so often. Moss seemed like an opportunist, not a picky character at all.

White on the other hand...

The head honcho came out of his back room quickly, closing and locking the door behind him, then slipping the only keys to the bouncer posted near the door. The bouncer held his hand out to take the dropped keys, then looked to White loyally.

"Did we do well?"

"Yes." The oddly normal looking man combed his fingers through the slicked back brown hair, cleaning it up like it was messed in some way. He then took a handkerchief out and crumpled it up in the corner of his hand, fixing his suit up as he lowered his voice.

"Do I have anything on my face?"

"No sir, you're clean." The bouncer loyally replied.

"Thanks, Jack."

White patted the bouncer lightly on the shoulder, tucking the handkerchief away then and taking a quick scan of the patrons in his club.

White owned the bar, but he had always liked his club better. No one noticed the weird things he seemed to do around here, because like him, everyone else in the joint was breaking the law. Coyle smiled at White's eyes came to scan over him, raising his glass as if in salute.

"You're so damn loud, vampy." the beast chuckled. "Not even pretty boy over here makes that sound when he's at it."

With this, Coyle acknowledged Moss, smiling to the obviously under aged kid and nudging him a little. His drink came - a really girly drink - and again he chuckled slightly.

"Am I right, Mossy?"

He gulped down his shot, then motioned for another. White seemed to be infuriated for only a second, then the calm, docile white mask of his face smoothed, and he only smiled to himself slightly.

"Good to see you again, Coyle. I see you've started off with the hard stuff. What, another of Crane's snot-nosed kids got your anchor again?"

Coyle, unlike White, made no move to hide his frustration and rage. He threw the shot glass across the table and it shattered into a thousand tiny fragments on the wall next to White. The vampire only gave a soft, grandfatherly laugh and walked off.

"So predictable..."


The beast seethed for a few moments, then stopped moping on the bar table.

"Where the hell's my shot?"

A new glass came, and he emptied it before looking over at Moss again.

"Damn bloodsuckers. But they do make such a fun mess when they've got the incentive. So how've ya been, Mossy? Aren't you a little young for this place?" He giggled to himself. "And on a school night too. Have you no shame?"
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[Anzeh]

"Coyle, you know damn well I do not have any shame." the barghest said, drinking the alcoholic beverage. Since Moss aged one year for every two years, even though he was sixteen he was thirty-two in all technicalities. Of course, he neither looked nor acted it, did he? "My body is incapable of shame. Only Pride, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Lust, Wrath, and Gluttony."

The cosmopolitan set off a pleased reaction in his body. Completely unperturbed by the alcohol he'd just injested, he tossed the empty glass from side to side, eyes inclined downwards. He'd had a pretty ****ty month in all honesty. Of course, the ****tier the month, the more irritable the Barghest became and the less tolerance he had for people's ****. His month had pretty much gone down the toilet from the very beginning. Some **** he'd rather not talk about, some incredibly stupid ****.

So he looked at Coyle and said, "My life couldn't have gotten any worse but I gotta say... A little drinking makes everything better, huh?"

Moss asked for another drink this time settling for a Coors Light, drinking it half gone, but still no sign of intoxication. He leaned his head on his arm, looking at the assortment of drinks behind the bar before regarding Coyle wearily.

"I'd say you're a bit too young to be here, but then again, you're probably as old--if not older-- than the academy."

Another long drink.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Coyle looked at his empty glass, then again at the little dent in the wall where his other glass had shattered in a moment of sheer, unrelenting rage. He raised a finger for another shot, but when the bartender got there, he quietly asked for something a little lighter. Finally turning back to Moss with his new, less potent poison, he could only sigh and sip the fizz off the top of the glass.

"No kidding, right? A little drink makes all your problems melt like butter."

Hearing Moss' mention of Coyle's age, the beast could only laugh out loud in the obnoxious yet somehow charmingly drunken way that only he could pull off.

"Oh, where I come from they don't have any goddamn ages. That's how old I am! That little prick over there," he pointed to White, now happily chatting it up with a customer, "is a slobbering baby compared to me!"

Making his nearly full glass now bubble as he exhaled into it, he could only growl and pout like a three year old. He may be very old, but that didn't mean he had to act like it...

"Well, I guess you're older than you look too. But appearances aren't everything."

He thought about his dilemma with Elle and the Russian ex-spy and he shuddered slightly. Damn them. Damn him! If only he could fix all his problems with one neat and tidy plan. That always made him feel better. Or, he could at least use something a little stronger than hard liquor to alleviate his pain.

"So, bad month, eh?" The beast didn't have to read minds to tell Moss wasn't exactly happy with his life right now. "I got screwed over with my free will by a sissy girl and a Russian lady killer. What about you?"
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[Anzeh]

The teenage Barghest tossed the bottle of beer between his hands before looking at Coyle lightly. He didn't seem to be having a very good month either. Moss blew his hair out of his face. And glanced over to Coyle, looking completely weary, perhaps more weary than someone his age should feel.

"You remember Illia? Yeah. Well, it seems she has a boyfriend. A boyfriend who's the school bully."

A completely fake smile spurred to like on his lips. Yep. That was a wonderful thing to fins out, wasn't it? That the girl you decided to mess around with had a boyfriend that she had "convienently" forgotten about. And to make it wonderful squared, that boyfriend could crush his skull.

"Z. You heard of him? Yeah. And well... I've spent my entire month being scared ****less of this dude, and if he finds out he'll mount my head on a pike. Isn't that just the darnedest thing?"

Moss emptied the beer bottle, held it above the ground and dropped it. The glass shattered and the remainder of the booze trickled out, the boy's head contacting the bar loudly. "I hate my life."

[ωΘĿƒ]

Coyle suppressed a little snicker, his shoulders shaking and his face dropping into his folded arms on the counter. It was obvious by now that he was completely wasted, but there was still some strange sort of danger to the beast. He could be like one of those chicks at a party that has a few too many then dances around crazily only to wake up the next morning with no recollection of what she did the last night and in somebody elses' bed. Or, he could be the professional drunk that even after having many too many a glass can still crank out a good joke, and whip out a good fist.

It was really hard to tell, considering he was usually laughing and sniggering to himself anyways, ranting on about things only a drunken lunatic would. But still, the alcohol was there, and he took a bit longer than he needed to to stop laughing as hard as he could.

"Ah....man, that's funny. So funny! So this guy's gonna kill you, right? Why not get a bigger guy to beat him up? I know Z. Good kid, but he's a meat head, that one! He'll rip you to shreds if he knows you did his Illia!"

More strangled, drunken laughing. It was quite the nuisance, actually. People in the bar were starting to stare. But then, almost on a dime, the temporal beast stopped laughing into his arms, and he sat straight up, face completely sober.

"I could kill him if I wanted to, ya know. He's just a little dragon."

Then the sober spirit instantly melted, and Coyle was left to gurgling his drink down again.

"Hehehehe.... Funny..." He muttered to himself, snickering.
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[Anzeh]

Moss watched the temporal beast with a slight eyebrow raised, looking at him strangely. Why was he laughing like an insane lunatic, obviously drunk, and quite obviously someone who should be kept away from the sauce from a little while, at least until he sobered up a bit. Of course, since Moss knew pretty well that the monster of the school wasn't exactly from this dimension, he was questioning in his mind whether taking away the sauce would actually be a good idea in this boy's case.

He doubted it.

After a couple minutes of watching the male laugh, the whole idea of what Z would do to him if he found out daunted him horribly. Knoei didn't want to have to meet that kind of end! He wanted to die in the middle of an orgy with twelve beautiful girls and one man (there was a specific reason why he was specific with these numbers, but... it was was a rather horrifying and disgusting reason).

Eyes squinted because he completely failed to see the humor in the situation, because he didn't exactly see what was funny about how his month had been shot in the head by learning that Illia had a boyfriend that could beat him up. Well, that wasn't true. Moss had the perfect idea of why it was funny and if it had been someone other than him then he would be laughing just like Coyle was laughing right now.

Actually, not exactly like Coyle was now, because if he wasn't in this situation then he wouldn't even be drinking right now. He'd be living it up in the town with his plaything for the night, treating her out and eventually leaving her alone to think about him her empty nights. What could he say--he liked to leave an impression.

Then, all so suddenly, the guy stopped laughing. The drunken joy seemed to have been completely wiped off his face, replaced with a look of sober seriousness and general... not-intoxicatedness.

Why hadn't the Barghest thought of Coyle instead of spending his entire month in terror? Surely he could beat up Z for him and ensure his safety, but there was the tiniest problem with his "foolproof" idea. Moss highly doubted that Coyle would do anything to help Moss unless there was something in it for him, or it was some type of fun. How could Moss make a deal that would make the temporal demon agree? He doubted he could--he had nothing of any importance to Coyle.

The male raised his finger and was about to ask for another beer when he suddenly felt his esophagus shorten, as though he was going to barf. Of course, he wasn't, but it was as though something was telling him not to drink another drop of alcohol. He put his hand down and his esophagus returned to its intended length, and he could swallow with no difficulty. Turning to tilting his head to face the other male, Moss set his head on the bar.

[ωΘĿƒ]

After Coyle was done with his oh-too-long outburst, he again plopped his head lazily into his arms, still smiling and giggling slightly. There was something about his amusement now though - it was of a different caliber than the expression of his drunken stupor. There was a little more going on than the normal, frenzied laughter or the silent, pensive chuckling he did from time to time.

...or he could just be really, really drunk.

"Listen, kid" the demon smiled, his voice just a soft, crooning whisper, "it's not my business, but I'm not in the mood to lose a friend right now. I'm really not."

More of his drunken babel, but it sounded so sincere that you had to wonder if it was really Coyle's concern or not. He did, after all, have a heart. There were some things he held sacred. Just, not many. People had wondered for a long time just what those things were...

"I'm just too damn drunk to care right now..." He giggled to himself, swirling around in his chair and abruptly giving White the finger. The well-aged man at the other end of the club took a second to stare blankly at the pair of them sitting there, then docilely went back to his business. He seemed to smirk a bit, and that ****ed Coyle off a bit.

"Damn vampires... Dammit... I want another drink..."

He pouted for a second more, glowering to himself with an excess of self pity. He eventually came to stare at the prone form of Moss lying on the table.

"What's your problem?"

Coyle had a little trouble paying attention to Moss right now. He was kind of sleepy, and kind of happy, but mostly he was pleasantly numb and for now that would do.

Avoiding problems was his most favorite pastime.
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[Anzeh]

The barghest watched Coyle as he went from 'drunk' to 'holy ****, how much did this guys have?!' in his mind. After all, he was acting really, really bizarre. Even for him, he reasoned. His eyes never left that of the other male's. He didn't want them to. He was frightened of something happening to him if he decided to let his eyes off the other that he would suddenly do something in a drunken stupor that he didn't mean to do. He sort of doubted something like that would happen, but no matter what, he couldn't keep his eyes off the other.

"I didn't know you thought of me as a friend." Moss replied honestly. He actually could have sworn that Coyle couldn't stand him. After all, sometimes the bear creature couldn't even stand himself. It was interesting to know though. At least someone in this school was on his side. Right now he thought that the entire student body was conspiring against him. Of course, that wasn't really the case, but that's part of being paranoid, right?

Gently, he shifted as Coyle asked what his problem was. "I feel really buzzed right now. I can't make myself drink anymore, which is weird." Knoei Titan said in honesty. He had completely forgotten what it was like to be buzzed. He thought that there was only drunk and not-drunk, and only sissies afraid of being drunk got buzzed. But the buzz was kinda pleasing. He could feel drunk and not like he was going to hurl.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Coyle snickered again, not as drunkenly this time.

"Well sure you're a friend. Why wouldn't you be? We've been on a few good adventures, right? So why not friends?"

What a funny little critter this guy was. Coyle didn't have very high standards for friendship, but even so he was capable of favoring one sack of meat over the other, and he favored the particular sack of meat named Moss right now. Sure, that didn't mean he would swear an oath not to drag him into any more fun situations - what were friends for if not to torture one another? - but he would like to see Moss dragged out in one piece for the most part, if not to just drag back into another great time. Once again, what were friends for?

"But anyways," Coyle stumbled off the barstool, slapping the last glass and his tab down on the table, "I'm getting outta here. No telling what kinda crazy jackasses prowl around these parts."

He made sure to have exact change for the money. He wasn't completely tanked, but hell, he knew how to get around, even with most of his motor skills gone.

"Thanks for the talk, Mossy. You've been a laugh and a half."

Coyle slipped, grabbing the table before he could careen onto the floor like a proper drunk. Instead of falling, he just tripped a little as he stumbled back up and headed towards the door. He wasn't that drunk! He could make it to wherever he was going!

.....Wait, where was he going?
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[Anzeh]

Moss watched the other magical creature as he stumbled on his way out of the bar. Since he no longer could stand the bar, perhaps he should be getting back to his dorm. Maybe he could go and spend the night in the strip club. almost all the women working there knew him on a first name basis. Then again, everybody knew him on a first name basis. Knoei was a really popular dude. The life he made was of his own creation. There was probably no one in the entire town that didn't know his name. Especially not if they had female parts.

Looking over to the demon, he could tell that he didn't even know where he was going. That was almost pathetic. Well, at least, it would be pathetic if it wasn't funny as hell. If it wasn't funny as hell, then it'd be so pathetic that he'd never look at Coyle the same way ever again. No spending the night at the strip club. You had to help your friend kinda-sorta get back to the campus grounds!

At least, that's where he thought that temporal demon was going. That was logical, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

"Hey, Coyle," Moss called out to him, sliding off the stool. Being the lesser drunk here, he felt as though it was his duty as a fellow student to make sure the school demon didn't get himself hit by something. Even though he doubted he could be of any help since there was no way in hell He could protect anyone. He was a lover not a fighter. "I'll go with you. You look way too drunk to go anywhere on your own."

A few moments of perpetual silence. "You're going to the campus, right?" he asked, just trying to make sure. Even if he wasn't going to the campus, that didn't change the fact that he was going to take him where ever he was going, even though he might not be so much help as more like a hindrance.

[ωΘĿƒ]

Coyle, completely fascinated by this display of care for him, for once had nothing to say.

No one loved him. No one looked out for him. No one even liked him. That's not to say he didn't have it coming - he spent his life torturing other people physically, psychologically, and emotionally for his own entertainment - but it was odd to still have no one give a **** if you randomly died one day or not.

...or tried to stagger home drunk from a bar in a bad part of town, but hey, he wasn't picky.

He wasn't desperate either. He was evil, he wasn't stupid. People didn't like him for a reason - a very good reason. Hell, he wouldn't like himself if he wasn't such a goddamn narcissist! And what was so bad about that? He had never been in need of someone liking him. He'd never needed love or affection or anything like that. He loved what he did - every minute, he loved; and he'd never regret any of it.

Maybe that was his love...? If it was, he just hadn't found the right soul mate yet. He wasn't very particular with his fun, and no one specifically stuck out from all the hundreds of others. Oh well, you gotta believe, right? He'd find that one, special someone to... bleed to death with all the devotion in his little heart.

But no need to rush, especially when you were as drunk as him. He accepted the offer silently, with a curt nod, and with Moss' help, he staggered away from the bar.

White seemed to turn at that moment and smile at him in an oh-so-grandfatherly way. It was kinda creepy, actually. More like a pedophile smile than a friendly old person smile. Nevertheless, it sparked a moment of pure, drunken anger in the temporal beast. He narrowed his eyes at White, and the chair right next to him exploded promptly.

Hehehe.... ****er..." Coyle laughed. White wouldn't hold it too personally.

At least, he hadn't done so in the past.

"I'm headed for the castle, yeah," he said to Moss, forgetting if he'd said anything or not.

It was so hard to remember. He was used to people reading his mind and figuring it out on their own.

[Anzeh]

"Ah, alright then." Moss said, doing his best to help Coyle retain some form of balance as they started away from the bar. It would be a little bit of time before they got back to where they needed to be. Titan didn't mind the idea of walking alone in a dark street with the temporal demon, and that wasn't nearly as creepy as it sounded. He was saying this because there was no way that someone would hurt him if he had big bad temporal demon here to protect him.

You know, so long as big bad temporal demon didn't murder him in a fit of drunken demon rage. That wouldn't be any fun. Plus, he would have no way of defending himself. Even if there was a castle with walls of concrete titanium thirty feet thick there wouldn't be enough defense around him. By this he meant that Coyle was strong. That's all it meant. Damn, he was so melodramatic when drunk. That's not to say he isn't melodramatic normally, but at least normally his melodramaticalness was appropriate and awesome.

Okay, maybe no appropriate (let's face it--when had Moss ever been known to act appropriately? Exactly) but at least normally it was awesome and made sense. Yeah. Sense making. Good stuff.

As they walked out of the Cabaret into the cool air of Washington, Moss looked around and noticed that the street lamps were oddly dim, as though foreshadowing horrible events out of the control of the younger student. Damn it, he needed to quit it with the paranoia! Not the ENTIRE world was out to kill him! Only a select few people.

That didn't make him feel better, but at least it calmed him down enough to use his remaining sense of direction to hunt down the whereabouts of the school. Once he located the black imposing figure on the horizon, watching them through the remaining yellow windows despite the call for lights out having been hours prior.

Adjusting himself a little so that he could hold him if he kept moving around, he made his way towards the castle and brought his drunk friend with him. That felt nice to say to himself. Moss was unused to having a friend. Well, at least he was unused to having a friend without benefits. All his friends had benefits. Thats how, in his mind, it worked. A friend wasn't truly a friend until they got in your pants. That's what everyone did right? Right?

In any event, he and Coyle shunted down the chilly streets. A couple times he had to stop and pull his jacket around him to stop himself from shivering. I'm not cold. he thought to himself. Who's cold? Not me. I'm not cold. I'm warm. I'm warmer than the sun. I'm just that warm. Damn it, I'm cold...

[ωΘĿƒ]

Despite not being able to read minds as clearly as he would have if he were sober, Cole couldn't help thinking and eventually coming to the same exact conclusion as Moss about this whole situation. Not only that, he decided to speak it, in a more than a little drunken, livid tone.

"Damn it, I'm cold! What the hell man, right? At least it'd be warmer in hell! Damn, why Washington?! Why not Hawaii?"

Strange as it may sound, the invincible Coyle did have his... preferences. For instance, although he could not actually feel any of this weather stuff, it still bothered him when it was cold.

It wasn't a feeling so much as it was the thought. He'd never liked cold. He didn't know why, but some people he had asked as he killed them had some interesting theories. Some of them thought he was originally from hell, so he wasn't used to this cold stuff. Others just thought he was going there, so why fight feeling a loathing for hot? Why not crank the hot up so he'd be ready?

Well, whatever it was, he did not appreciate low temperatures.

Of course, as soon as he thought this, he saw something that turned his black, acidic blood icy with terror.

A snowflake.

"Holly hell! What's that?!?!"

The snowflake fluttered slightly, then landed on Coyle's shoulder. He freaked out, throwing Moss to the side and swatting at the strange, cold object on him. Then he found that the thing was actually water. It melted when he hit it. Odd.... and still kinda creepy.

"Did you see that thing?" he gawked, amazed. Little did he know, there was more of that to come.

Snow was very common in Washington.