milliways_bar | (no subject)

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eric northman

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"Hey. Bar. What's Japanese food like? Do you get a headache after eating it the way you do with Chinese food? I wanna try some."

(Peter's response to news stories that don't involve mutants can be a little erratic at times. At least he isn't breaking into a bookstore to find out what he wants to know.)

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A tall, pale, blond man arrives at the bar next to him.
He's dressed in black (jeans, expensive t-shirt) and the truly observant might notice that he isn't really breathing.

He orders a TruBlood and receives what appears to be a a beer bottle.

It's not.

Peter's not that observant. On the other hand, he does have a sense of smell, and it's a relatively good one. The opening of that bottle's gonna be met with:

snif
snifsnif

snifsnifsnif

And then a slightly puzzled frown as Peter looks around for the source of what smells like roadkill, his usual source of exposure to the smell of blood.

Eric takes a slow sip from his bottle.

His lips come away red.

".... thaaaaaaaaat's not Kool-Aid."

Eric turns his head to look at him.
"That's right. It's not."
He turns the bottle so it's easier to see the label.

TruBlood.

"Huh."

Long pause. Consider.

"You know, you hear about some mutants having weird dietary requirements, but..."

"You do?"
All polite interest.

Mutant. Hmm.

".... lemme guess. You're not a mutant."

"And there you go, being right again. "

Eric smiles. His teeth look perfectly normal.

"Wanna guess?"

"May I just say that it's a real honor to finally meet a representative of the Internal Revenue Service?"

That earns him a genuinely amused snort.

Those are rare!
"Some might call it a close call. Not me though. I'm a vampire."

"Didn't know we had those," says Peter. "But hey, we've got guys who pop claws out of their hands and pick up entire baseball stadiums with their minds, so why not vampires. Hi there."

"Hi," Eric says.
He doesn't offer a hand to shake.

"So you're a mutant?"

Which is fine. Handshakes are overrated.

"Yep. A fast one, not a building-throwing one. It has its uses."

"I can imagine. Especially if you're often surrounded by building throwing ones."

"He was kind of a one-time thing. As far as I know, anyway." Peter shrugs. "So, vampire. Like, dead-only-not kind of vampire? Or like vampire bat kind of vampire? Or is there some other kind nobody's bothered to make movies about?"

Peter knows tact. Tact is incapable of holding his attention long enough for him to use it.

Eric doesn't seem bothered by this.

"The first kind. Fangs, sleeps during the day, that sort of thing. "

"Funky," says Peter. "How's that working out for you?"

Look, people get really weird about mutants, and Peter's mildly curious about whether everybody, everywhere, is really weird about ... things that make people not like regular people.

"For the longest time we lived in secret, but then the Japanese invented an artificial blood substitute and that lead to The Great Reveal. We're recognize as citizens now, at least in the States."

He smiles, mirthlessly.
"That doesn't stop the 'God hates fangs' protestor from hanging out in the parking lot of my club.

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