This fic is actually complete but it has been rewritten, and
is being reposted on Ao3, the link to which I cannot
actually provide (?) Sorry, , it's not you or your
readers or your fandoms I'm breaking up with, it's just
your doc formatting (and probably your content restriction,
viva la revolution, can't silence the artists et c).

The series name is "stitch" but with spaces between each
letter, author Mamcine_Oxfeather, first fic "Prelude", under
the Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name fandom tag.

Thanks for reading through this initial raw draft; quite a
few elements of the story have been cut or replaced, and
a lot of extra story and coherence added, along with a
cleanup on narration. However, the version on Ao3 does
feature much more adult content, hence the domain change,
and this draft won't be updated any longer.

Here's a preview of some of the changes, and hope to see
you on Ao3!

X x XxX xXx X xX . present . Xx X xXx XxX x X

The Registrar could be found in the city's mall of Governing Offices, right there out in the open in a plaza sharing a pedestrian Courtroom, a Police Headquarters, a Federal Building of indeterminate use, and that smelly bare-carpeted place parolees with bail could elbow in with young idiots looking to get married on the cheap. At night, the mall's courtyard came to a glowing second life - toppered streetlamps and tiered office windows and little bobbing squares of screen lights and doubled glass doorfronts; the new corners of opportunistic startups and the old cobbles of seasonal museums. Conrad smelled coffee and taco truck on exiting the cab, and could lift his chin a little higher that his vampirism hadn't banished him to that creepy third-shift isolation he'd once navigated back at Uni, and God Bless city life.

The Registrar Office busied itself like a hive - brass trim, dark tile and the winks of small black technology on the broad circles of the front desks, clerks in embroidered uniforms answering phones and sealing invoice folders for wire trays emptied by passing couriers in casual street clothes. Among all the noise of this productivity, not a single heartbeat could be heard, not the tug of a single pulse could be felt, and the wind through the halls was chill in the way it could be chill in a building abandoned for a winter holiday - that the pipes might not freeze but you could feel that there was nobody home.

A shoulder-check interrupted Conrad's waving-down of a familiar desk clerk, and Casimiro's sharp sneer flashed by, half a grin.

Conrad watched warily as Casimiro exited the revolving doors, doubly startled to turn back to his errand and bump nose-first into Finas' solid bulk. Conrad snapped up from his slouch and wobbled a step in retreat, shoving his glasses back up his nose.

Finas raised his eyes and crossed his arms and tilted his chin, a grim unspoken prompt.

"N-" Conrad started, choked a bit, restarted in a sputter - "Nothing for you, thanks, about Adelaide." He curled his fists, dipped his chin. "Fuck off."

Finas blinked, swayed a centimeter to make room for a passing courier.

Conrad swallowed, darted a glance to either side. "It was wrong of you two to threaten us, and you know it."

A terse smirk landed just under Finas' eyes, settled across his cheekbones as a brick laid upon a wall, disturbing no other part of his face. "You have been murdered, without pause or question or regret. We know that Adelaide has done this, and we know Mr. Cross is culpable for Adelaide's release. There will be a trial," shifting his weight again, Finas scanned the wide marbled foyer and its crowd, then noticed Conrad as if anew. "For the death. For the responsibility of that death." And Finas reached forward, and it was not far to reach, and his hand was a heavy cusp around Conrad's shoulder, a vice through the thick faux-leather of Conrad's white jacket. "Adelaide, for the murder. Or Cross, for the complicity."

"I'm not pressing charges," Conrad valiantly argued, though it was nearer a whisper.

Finas stepped close, anchoring Conrad in place with his grip. "Then you, or yours, will answer to someone else entirely, my friend. Soon, perhaps." His hand squeezed, braced. "Prepare yourself. Prepare your people. Adelaide cares not what Houses crumble in the path of her storm."

Conrad swallowed against the hot lead lump in the back of his throat, but his fists only clenched the harder. "Noted," he assured, jaw firming.

An argument was lost in Finas' stare, and he shrugged, patting Conrad's shoulder with a consolatory chuff. Finas stepped away, and Finas fished a pair of driving gloves from his woolen overcoat, and Finas left.

"No Country For Old Men, looking, poor man's Javier Bardem son of a bitch," Conrad muttered darkly to himself as he hitched his shoulders up around his ears and stomped forward, fisting his wallet out of his jacket to rip a paper receipt out, reading its address out loud to the first secretary to catch his eye - who then pointed him to the elevators.

"Er," Conrad debated, on having reached the floor to which the scribbled address belonged - he was not yet so familiar with the building to know which rooms belonged to what, but this room was clearly one of heightened importance, considering the thick burnished wood of its double doors, and the posted security at either end of the ornate hallway. Conrad cracked one of the doors open to a merry 'come on in' from the woman at the receiving desk, then to be directed to the open-walled waiting room, opposite from another set of dark cherrywood double-doors lacking handles in the stead of a brushed-chrome keypad.

Conrad whistled low, and took a place in the nearest stuffed leather loveseat, purveying the bookshelves inset the walls, magazines beside thick tomes of modern titles, the room extravagantly cozy - that it lacked a teakettle over a roaring fire was its only departure from rote old-money posh; but of course vampiric offices never would host open flame. Conrad folded his hands in his lap and slumped, a little irritated that he'd not been properly warned about this summons, that he wasn't better dressed or hadn't prepared any information should this be some sort of interrogation.

The desk clerk laughed from her station, and waved a courier through. "Thanks, Nate, I'll owe you." She stood, gathering a purse over her shoulder. To Conrad, "Nathan here is going to sort your appointment, doll." To Nathan, "I'll be back in an hour, so text me if he doesn't show in thirty. Maybe I'll be able to suss him out, get him in tonight, yeah?"

"Yeah," Nathan agreed, a dark, square-jawed man in runners, baggy track pants and sleeveless jogger's hood, the t-shirt underneath stretched a bit thin over his athletic torso. He smiled at the secretary for whom he was volunteering to cover, and this was a brilliant smile, warm but not over-exposed, eyes a deep purple glitter under a heavy brow. "Do you have the file?"

"Conference, I think," and the secretary (whose desk-plate read "Janet, Damnit", hopefully as an inter-office joke) took her sweeping leave from the receiving desk, its foyer, and the open waiting room with its lone guest.

"Name?" Nathan prompted cheerfully enough, rubbing a wide hand over his scalp to scuff at his closely shorn crop of black hair.

"Er," Conrad sat forward, hands on knees. "Achenleck, Conrad?"

"... 'Wound-taste warrior'?" Nathan asked from over a pile of folders atop the desk. "That's... that's not an alias, right? That's your birth name?"

Conrad gnawed on his confusion, nodding once that quirked eyebrow was aimed his way.

"Hup!" Nathan shrugged, chuckling. "Okay, you're not in here, so we're gonna hafta wait for the Big Bad to get back from lunch, as it's his stuff in the conference room and we don't move the Judicant's stuff." He wagged his hand and cracked his knuckles and rubbed the bridge of his stately, hooked nose. "You really need those glasses?"

"Uh." Conrad leaned back, tried to get comfortable, crossed his arms. "Why wouldn't I?"

Nathan's smile was slow this time, fangs evident, and he studied Conrad head to toe, then kicked the desk chair out to take a heavy sit, wheeling half into the waiting room. "You're - ah, oh crap, what was it again? Watery, or thin, thinblooded?" He tucked his arms behind his head, scuffing at his scalp again. "Still look dead, mate. Not flash."

Biting the inside of his cheek, Conrad turned in his seat to regard the windowed wall, the rain gathering in small silenced gashes of light against the backdrop of the taupe city night. "I'm a vegetarian."

"Get out," Nathan challenged with a jerk of his chin. "Right now. Get the fuck out of this office," chuckling, Nathan rocks back onto his feet to spin the seat backward, straddling it to rest his forearms along its back with all the squeak of hinge and spring that entailed. "You aren't."

Relenting, Conrad shook his head no. "But I don't bite, you know. People. I know that's supposed to help, but, I like my glasses more than I like a mouthful of human being. Thanks."

Nathan frowned, nodding. "They suit you." After a pregnant pause, "And, hey, that's not so unusual these days, going 'vegan'. Modern avenues of medicine, 'n that. Less liable to get collared for a murder, less heat from our dear city's various agencies of persecution, oll korrect."

Conrad jerked a shoulder, watching Nathan-the-desk-jockey with dawning annoyance. "I don't think I need to care what's usual or acceptable to the crowd in this building. I've been to the basement."

Nathan crumpled forward, mock-devastation. "Clutch my fucking pearls, Achenleck, now you're interesting. Did you work desk, or floor?"

A curl flickered over Conrad's nose, repressed judgement. "Desk."

"How's it?"

Conrad flashed a reluctant glare. "In a word, it's gross. I filled out the aptitude survey and they all but threw me down there. '''High impulse control', indeed."

Nathan sat back with one hand gripping the chair top to brace him, open thumb and forefinger leveled Conrad's way, but his accusation was more of a question than anything, "You didn't... want to be a vampire."

Conrad's mouth worked in a hidden chew. "I didn't want to be anything," he confessed quietly. "I just - I wanted to graduate design and build a portfolio good enough to get me around the world. And then I died. And now I'm here." He sighed, meeting Nathan's open study with all due defense, "And now I'm here, feeling like a snob and a criminal and an idiot, talking to a -" his hand flapped out, paper bird from a white sleeve, "I don't know, what are you, a mailman? Sandwich guy? Do you load a truck full of people and hock nibbles off them at midnight? What's your compliance in this more literal hellscape of the corporate west?"

Nathan was nodding, smiling rueful, and answered with a chuff of amusement, "I run 'coffee', yeah. Unpaid intern, here for the social connections on the way to a real job."

"What," Conrad husked, "Is 'coffee' supposed to mean."

But Nathan just shook his head slow and happy-sorry. "Nah, you couldn't afford it."

"I couldn't afford to know what it is?"

"That's right," Nathan stood in a sway, stretched with several pops of joint and spine. "Ooph. You're an unhappy one."

Conrad only jerked his chin, eyes wide with the effort to contain his exasperation.

"I'll tell you what 'coffee' means, if you smile."

Affront twisted Conrad's entire self, from eyebrows to nose to flashed fang to hitched shoulders to hips shoved into the seat from a leg crossing so violently over the other it actually scuffed a coffee table out of place. His hair was offended. His fingernails felt scandalised. "I'm gonna beg every fucking pardon that you repeat that, because I'm not sure I heard you oll korrect the first time."

"Not smiled since I've been here," Nathan bent to return the desk chair to its spot, still all scoffs and chortles. "Starting to feel kinda personal."

"It's not," Conrad cracked, jacket sleeves squeaking under his hands. "I wasn't in the best shape when I was alive, and now I'm not even medicated against that. It's nothing personal, I just have issues with... people. Myself. I don't know. It's not your problem." The loveseat beside Conrad dipped and he flinched, averting his eyes.

Nathan leaned his elbows on his knees to flip through an auto catalogue, having sat quite close. "It is my problem," he explained slowly, as if searching the magazine for his lines. "It's not mine, I mean, but it affects all of us. Self-loathing opens avenues of extremism, as seen in marginalized groups across the globe. And though it might not look it, for this building, in this city? We are one seriously marginalized population, us. That's enough trouble from people on the outside, that we don't need more wars from people on the inside."

Conrad's argument was slow, and careful. "I don't... hate. Vampires. I don't hate mysel-" His teeth clicked shut. "I don't think I've smiled in days. Weeks, probably. And now I've been summoned to some, what, judicial purvey and I don't have any optimism as to what this -" his arms wave out, encompassenc - "Could even entail." When Nathan doesn't answer, "So, no. I can't just put on the old water-cooler smallchat and make friendly with a coworker right now. Doesn't mean I'm a single thick pamphlet away from self-immolation or recreational kamikaze or whatever."

Peeling open a center-fold of a corvette, "Would you smile for a Klondike Bar?"

"I hate you," Conrad concluded lightly, chin dipping in a distant nod to agree with an invisible audience.

"Snausage?"

"I don't even know you, and I hate you."

"Would you smile for a particularly colorful bowl of cereal, the brand whose name escapes me?"

"Not vampires, not couriers, not even myself, just you."

"Cartoon rabbit, always thieving it away from children?" Nathan glanced up from his magazine with earnest curiosity and couldn't bite back his laughter on spotting Conrad. "Just, mate," he sat back, sinking into the seat, boneless, magazine left over a wagging knee. "You make me smile." Nathan paused, as if he'd tripped over what those words really meant, then tapped the side of Conrad's elbow. "Doesn't seem fair, you all miserable." Inspired, Nathan stood, tossed the magazine at Conrad's lap. "Let's lighten that burden, yeah? You gotta know why you're here?"

The argument lodged itself in Conrad's throat as he folded the magazine shut to set it neatly aside.

Nathan beckoned from the foyer, tapping a code into the conference room doors. "Fingers crossed he ain't in here naked," he ribbed, doors decompressing their seal to ease open.

Conrad hung back to peer into the dimly lit conference room, which held a long glass-top table and several executive-class swivel chairs around it, a desk on a platform beyond the head of the table, project screen to one side, charts and file cabinets and other working detritus to the other. A name plate glinted from the desk, half obscured by a succulent, '-aniel Montag'.

"Wound-taste, Warrior," Nathan announced, snapping a green cabinet folder into the air.

Conrad retreated from the door to make room for Nathan's passing, expression pinched in concern. "Should we be doing this?"

"Oh now we're a 'we'?" Nathan winked, gingerly perching atop the reception desk to browse the thin collection of papers. "Timestamp says it just got up here tonight. If we trashed it he'd never know you were even due." He shrugged. "Nothing in here flags your visit as particularly pressing." He browsed a few more pages, then, "Hey, uh, Conrad?"

Conrad pulled back from his tentative attempt to read over Nathan's shoulder, mouth bitten shut and eyebrows up to feign disinterest. "Mm?"

"Do you know a woman goes by the name Adelaide?"

"I don't, actually," Conrad answered easily. "I know there was a bat in my apartment, I know it turned into a woman who went by the name of Adelaide, and I know that woman killed me on the roof of my apartment building; but I never knew Adelaide, and haven't seen her since that night."

"Well," Nathan searched Conrad's face, then shrugged with his mouth. "Sounds legitimate. Guess it wouldn't matter even if you were lying."

"How so?"

Nathan left the desk to wander toward a window further in the waiting room, file in hand. "Because Adelaide's dead. Caliphate confirmed a contract kill, and her Patron got the news just yesterday. Wonder that Judicants city-wide are all taking long lunches, tonight."

Conrad squinted, stomach tight. "Was she that well known?"

"Adelaide of 1845? Fairly notorious, yeah." Nathan reached down behind a low shelf to tug a release latch, cool night rain wafting in on fresh air. The file was blithely slipped through the window, to perish in the street puddles five stories below. "There. Oll korrect."

"Wuh-" Conrad protested, staggering a few steps forward. "Is - is that? Is it, though? Was that okay?" He cast aa franti dithering glance from window to courier to hallway double-doors and back.

"No offense, Connie, but Judicant Monday has much bigger fish to fry, and he'd be downright annoyed that you even took up the space in his file cabinet, much less the time to formally dismiss your case."

"So," Conrad exhaled long and slow, relief soaking down his shoulders and into the sore hollow of his back. "So what now? I don't have to deal with the shitshow of inheritance law now, do I? No bat-siblings in the rafters ready to sue me over old drapes? Does her shit just get forfeited to whatever government of whatever countries she terrorized, or do I need to hire a lawyer?"

Nathan squeaked the window shut and dusted his hands, tilting his head. "Wealth inherits up, to the Patron or Matron who made you. Cut way back on civil warring, that law."

Conrad sighed again, loud this time, and actually had to kneel to the floor in relief.

"Hey," Nathan joined Conrad in the kneel, helping him tug off the faux-leather jacket, as vampires didn't need oxygen but Conrad certainly needed air. "I thought you didn't know her."

"I don't. I didn't." Conrad sat back with a scuff of bootheels on cold marble, rubbing his face. His hands drifted out, forward, arms stretching to meet the rise of his knees, burying sight, sound into the curl, trying to catch a breath that his lungs didn't even need.

"You're a grown man on the floor. I think that merits some explanation."

Conrad peered up from the nest of his arms. "What does that matter, right now? Who's here to see it?"

"Well," Nathan deliberated, "The Judicant, for starts."

Conrad flinched, startled search cast toward the hall doors that remained shut, then at the conference room still empty and dark. A reprimand half out of his snarl, Conrad froze. Every planet continued its dance around every star in the galaxy, except for that one cold, vicious revelation freezing the whole of the earth in place.

Nathan watched evenly from his kneel, sympathy a degree more somber than past effects, the heavy weight of authority settled in his calm.

"There was some trouble with people trying to find Adelaide," Conrad explained crisply, though his vision was tunneled from the stress of the moment. The world resumed its spin, rain gathered down the window, gold lamplight streaks on a taupe city night. Shakily, "Trouble with which I no longer have to deal. Excuse me." Blindly, Conrad pulled himself to a stand, bent to retrieve his jacket.

"No need to get so formal on me, mate," The conference room doors slammed shut, and Conrad was knocked, invisibly, to his ass. Nathan - 'Nathaniel Montag' across the conference desk plaque - folded both arms over his propped knee, watching Conrad indulgently. "What people were trying to find her?"

"Your people," Conrad accused hotly, balling the jacket up against his stomach. "Who only introduced themselves as Casimiro and Finas. I guess they didn't get the news," he griped, "because they've yet to leave me the hell alone."

Nathaniel inhaled, focusing on the ceiling, then back at Conrad, tapping his knee. "What else."

"Nothing else." Conrad's shoulders reached his ears, sinking back. "What, are you going to torture me now? I didn't have anything to do with Adelaide's death, either, if that's what you're asking. I only just recently know what a Caliphate even is, and I know they wouldn't take a contract from me."

"God, but you're unhappy," Nathaniel lamented, pushing himself to a stand. He offered a hand down in assistance, which was merely ogled, then yanked Conrad up by the arm instead. "It's offensive, how scared you are right now. You know that, right?"

"Um," Conrad grunted, tugging away. "Okay? So?"

"So holy hell, man, cheer up! I just got all the information I needed out of you, and we had fun doing it." Nathaniel chopped his hands through the air, weighing events. "I toss your file, you wilt because that might get you in trouble. I let you know, hey, bigman himself here, it's fine, and you jump up like a slapped fish. You want to know what 'coffee' stands for?"

Conrad's alarm was only rivaled by his confusion. "... Justice?"

Nathaniel dropped his chin to hide the wheezing grin. "No, mate. There's no such thing as a coffee-jockey in this building, you pretty much have to feed yourself. But you thought it meant something downright horrible, to no specific label, because you're anxious but not particularly imaginative." He leveled at Conrad again, fingers to temple and hand outstretched. "'These are not the droids you are looking for', yeah, that's my qualification for this gig. So when I say you're unhappy, that's not an assumption. Your head is fucked."

Conrad searched the room for help, chest heaving. "And what am I supposed to do about that?"

"Do!" Nathaniel exclaimed, laughing. "Fuck's sake, man, don't do anything, about that or otherwise. Keep your head down, maybe do your job, stay out of the affairs of the ambitious. If Leon calls - and he will call - pretend you're dead. Pretend you're less than dead, pretend you never existed."

"Who," Conrad quavered, and couldn't finish.

"Inheritance falls up," Nathaniel reminded. "You're Leon's problematic, now. Thin-blooded, unimaginative, honest, terrified; problematic."

Conrad shriveled around the wad of his jacket, and cringed toward the hall doors. "Thanks for the information, I guess. Really, it's been... informative. I'm going to go, now, unless you want to cat-and-mouse this conversation all night."

"By all means," Nathaniel swept an arm out toward the doors, which bluster open. "And take that rain cloud with you, Mopey Dick." At Conrad's back, "You're welcome."

"And you're insane," Conrad sniped over his shoulder, to the applause of laughter.

X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX

Cast adrift in the idea that he was absolutely, totally, completely alone in this new vampiric debacle, Conrad broke open in the rainy street and left his mind behind in a sidewalk puddle. There were people after him - what was warned by Finas, other enemies of Adelaide's, perhaps; and what was warned by Nathaniel, an ally of Adelaide's, and not a single vampire on his side, or in his House, or whatever. They didn't stick the popular clerks on basement duty, that was for goddamn sure.

"You can't smoke that here," the grocery's cashier droned, and Conrad stubbed his cigarette out on the cabbage she'd just stuffed in the canvas tote, hardly able to recall when he'd lit up, or when he'd even entered the store, much less gathered the week's groceries. "Basic," the cashier muttered. It was Wednesday, Conrad wanted to scream. Wednesday was for grocery shopping and routine was good for his mental health.

Halfway up the bus stairs Conrad remembered he had no use for groceries, himself, and broke open again on the cold seat, screaming silently into a canvas tote with a carrot stabbing a dimple into his cheek.

When it was Doc Worth glaring suspiciously from Hanna's lopsided apartment door, all the open wounds in Conrad's psyche dutifully gathered themselves back up and stacked to some semblance of stability, a leaning tower of raw hamburger instead of a working brain. He blinked, returned to earth, and scowled around at the hallway to check that he'd not dissociated so hard as to end up at the clinic.

"Wot?" Worth prompted impatiently as if he were expecting someone or something else, supremely disappointed to find Conrad there on the dingy little welcome mat instead.

"Er." A stuffed bag in each arm, celery frond poking him in the chin, Conrad pushed past into the apartment and mumbled a greeting to the dead man, who stood wordlessly to clear table space. "Is Hanna in?" The futon in the far corner was rumpled and empty, but still the question begged asking.

"Hanna is not here." Justin/Kai/Alexander intoned, but if there was frustration or worry in those spare words, Conrad couldn't hear it.

Worth, however, remained expressive. "Red's taken hisself on a little outing, sounds like. Here."

Conrad let the thrown bloodbag bounce gormlessly off his chest, quite incapable of higher motor function.

"I'll leave y'folks to yer supper." Worth cast a yellowed glare toward the grocery bags, for which Conrad had the sudden inexplicable urge to step in front of and hide from scrutiny. Worth turned a bony shoulder up as if to block the wind from a cigarette, and shut the door after himself.

"Saunderson and Sons, LLC." The dead man said, appropos of nothing. "A warehouse. We are not to follow." He shifted his step from counter to fridge to cupboard, and come to think on it, the apartment had grown steadily tidier since Gregory/Nnando/Casey had taken up residence. There were hardly any roaches.

"Er," Conrad bit down on a frown, bent to retrieve Worth's parting gift, completely gutted of appetite. "What?"

"Hanna is on a case. There have been murders, injuries. Arrows and crossbow bolts, fired from invisible hands. We are not to follow, but that is the last known lead. Down Wallabash Street, near the wayside. Saunderson and Sons, LLC."

It was the most Conrad had ever heard the zombie speak, and he suspected there was an underlying current to the information. He sniffed, worrying at a corner of the plastic bag with a seeking fang. "So?" He bit, and drank deep because it was nourishment and he needed it, and paused to fight the thick rise of nausea, and found the zombie watching him with an unblinking scrutiny.

"So, Hanna left to follow that lead. Four days ago."

Conrad frowned up at Domino/Kirk/Hector, wiping his chin of no visible spill. "Did he say why he had to go alone?"

"Yes." If there was impatience in Zoolander/Ezekiel/Barton's stance, then Conrad couldn't see it. "I promised Hanna that I would not follow. I did not, however, promise against sending others to his aid."

"Four days..." Conrad muttered, sagging against a countertop. "Who are you going to send?" The next question was going to be 'and what was this danger, exactly', but the zombie's glance to the door told Conrad all he needed to know.

"If Hanna is injured, a doctor would be the better candidate."

Conrad stifled a belch, regarding the bloodbag as if to check for ingredients. "So what's so dangerous that Hanna swore you into letting him go it alone?" Not that he was fishing for information in preparation to go himself, but... But he was doing exactly that, and he suspected the zombie was playing along just so he could creatively edit the confession once Hanna was recovered and got all indignant over broken orders.

"The victims only shared a few common denominators. Adults, twenties to middle aged. Divorced or widowed or otherwise single. What would shoot arrows at people like that?"

Conrad dropped the half-heavy bloodbag into the open maw of a wire waste bin. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Only a theory, but, there was an apprehension, if either one of us were hit, there might be uncomfortable consequence."

"Ugh!" Conrad drove curled fingers through his hair. "And you sent Worth? How is that better?"

"I could not reach Toni Ipres."

"Who?"

"Short. Werewolf." The zombie held a hand up, approximating. "Female. Single. But in all seriousness, Mr. Achenleck, people have died. For whatever reason, this minion of Eros uses solid corporeal arrows." Remus/Tobias/Yeltzen approached Conrad, as close to imploring as he seemed capable. "And it aims for the heart."

X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX

It was the first time that year Conrad had voluntarily touched someone that wasn't a violent attempt on their life (Adelaide) or an equally violent attempt on their vulgar assumptions (Worth). The fact of the matter was that Conrad preferred not to touch anyone, at all, ever, and struggled with his revulsion in the face of the horror filling that night.

First off, 'cupids', or cherubs, were not the rosy-cheeked winged infants of the Renaissance. They were many-headed, and large, and all wrong; a mashup of animal parts and too many wings and three pairs of skinny dark arms with long flashing nails with which they could play harps and fire cupid bows, apparently. Cherub wasn't even the right word; this thing was some long-forgotten slice of metaphysical lore that had been warped by the march of monotheism across the imaginations of the people. Or something.

Hanna wasn't exactly clear in his babbling lecture. He twisted in Conrad's grasp, a sweaty days-starved shell that wanted nothing more than to go to that thing wailing and flapping in the far corner. "You can't!" he sobbed, screamed, writhed in Conrad's reluctant grip.

The arrows flew. Worth fired the shotgun.

Hanna collapsed, grief-stricken, and Conrad dropped him indelicately to the warehouse floor. Kicking aside the sharpie marker, Conrad shuffled in a circle to survey the damage, blood thick and sweet in the air. Hanna had taken a bolt in the thigh days earlier; the wound had been bandaged with a plaid shirtsleeve the duration of his stay with the Cherub (with which he had, apparently, fallen in love). It was with a twinge that Conrad registered his own wound, ribs pierced through from behind, missing his heart by the grace of panic.

Worth had staggered up by then, unceremoniously yanking the shaft free of Conrad's dead torso with a warning curse. Conrad winced, but it hadn't hurt nearly as badly as he'd been prepared for. It was all very... odd. Meeting Doc Worth's venomous gaze for a split second; relieved there was no lightning strike of sudden and overwhelming infatuation. Conrad felt a little badly for Cross sobbing dejectedly on the floor there, but that was as far as feelings went for the night. He hoped.

"Kid, it killed people," Worth argued softly, helping Hanna to a shaky stand. "Yer gonna feel like shit about it for a little while, and then yer gonna remember this was all mumfuckery. Hey?"

Conrad shifted in place, discomfited by the consolation and haunted by the lingering warmth against the inside of his arms where bony ribs had heaved. "Oh, son of a -" Conrad blurted, staring down at his own arms in sudden dawning alarm. Shit shit shit, he was in fake love with Hanna. He wanted to 'go to' him and maybe do that hugging grapple thing until Hanna stopped crying.

Worth's sharp demand 'wot' interrupted Hanna's babbled arguments. Conrad relented the stage to his own wordless horror and Hanna plowed on; "It just lost its quiver so it got new kindsa arrows and it doesn't know what death even is and she - it -" A hiccough. A far-away gaze. "Man. She was so cool."

"She was gonna kill us, Red." Doc Worth lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

"No. No, man. She was... she wanted to understand. She was a weaver of threads across entire universes, and she only wanted people to be happy." Hanna slumped, exhaustion catching up with his overwrought body. "Why did you have to kill her?" He looked about to cry again, staring up at Worth like maybe he wanted to knock one out on his smug face. But Worth wasn't smug just then, and Conrad couldn't help but hear Nathaniel's lament about happiness, and his total void thereof.

Conrad interrupted the weighty moment with forced impatience. "Hanna, I think you really need to -" he pulled in a sharp breath at the register of the smell, that Worth was also bleeding and that meant he wasn't the only one who'd gotten hit and fuck, fuck everything, fuck this place, fuck this night -

Dissociation had stilled Conrad's overwrought panic, gaze distant, silent and ashen.

Worth stepped back from his forward-march to leave Hanna to his hurt muttering, brows pinched up in expressive concern, "Y' all right there yerself, Connie?"

Conrad's autopilot managed its own brand of bald honesty, a levied mutter. "No, thanks. Actually I'm in quite a lot of trouble, right now, and I don't think anybody can help me and I don't even think there's anybody who wants to." A swallow, tasting the bagged blood returned from its cold sink in his gut. "I think I'm going to die, again, for real this time."

"Aw princess, yer hardly gonna bleed out -"

Conrad laughed, bitter, shaking. "That isn't what I'm talking about." He pushed past Worth to hesitate at Hanna's side, shoving his arms in like awkward oars, gathering their stagger one against the other to navigate the gravel floor to the exit. At the door, Conrad grit his teeth and let his temple sink against Hanna's, their glasses colliding. "You can fix it," he entreated, deaf to anything but the hiccoughing rasp of Hanna's labored breath. "Tell me you can fix everything. I know you can, Cross, please," and he says Hanna as if it were a girl's name, a girl who was breaking his heart and he were only begging her not to leave his dysfunctional finicky OCD jerk-ass. "I don't have anybody else to ask."

Hanna blinked, slowly. "Excuse me," he shrugged away from the lean, staggered, mopping tear stains to smear dirt over his nose, chin. "You didn't let me explain, you both just -" he spluttered, gesturing frantically, reliving, "Worth brought a gun and you didn't even -" Hanna stepped back, raking a hard appraisal over Conrad head-to-toe, and Conrad never felt so wretched. "Maybe we give it some time before we go asking me any favors about fixing whatever-the-fuck." Hanna turned away and strode toward Lamont's car with more strength than Conrad figured someone trapped in isolation for half a week would have.

Worth snorted around his cigarette, clearly impressed.

Conrad edged away from Doc Worth, numb. "Don't even fucking pretend this isn't your fault."

"Feh. He'll live."

"What, you aren't - aren't you -" Conrad let a weak arm sway from Worth's bleeding coat-sleeve to the empty warehouse door. "In fake magic love with Cross?"

Blowing smoke right over Conrad's shoulder, Worth leaned in close. His bloodshot, sunken eyes traced a slow and deliberate path up Conrad's face until they met the dawning of Conrad's incredulity. "Nope."

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The next night Conrad marched into Worth's clinic with a very curt "Justherefortheblood,thanks." He damn well couldn't meet the man's eyes, but had to spare a greeting to that week's urchin-apprentice or otherwise raise suspicion which was ridiculous because nothing was wrong, thanks.

"Hanna left yer somefin'," Worth grumbled over the top of his newspaper while the 'medical intern' under his employ grabbed a fresh face mask from its designated cabinet and disappeared back into the surgery proper. The mini-fridge behind Worth's desk had been decorated with a sugar-skull magnet, pinning up a note.

Conman,

Sorry about the warehouse, I wasn't in the best place kind of figuratively and for realsies. What did you need help with, exactly? Were you talking about the cupid's arrow, because I doubt those actually had the same power as the originals - but then, I don't know, they probably do, because I like monsters but I wouldn't say I *love* them, you know? Maybe we get this problem reviewed, either way. There's probably a cure - I'm already looking (it's not whiskey, in spite of popular logic, lol). But if you're talking about a different problem, then yeah, get back to me ASAP.

I know I'm not the only one who can help. I know there's at least Angus/Jake/Grindelwauld here, too, and that you should know you aren't alone even if I'm busy or mad at you or whatever.

Sorry I'm always such a fuckup,

H. F. Cross

Conrad slumped against the filing cabinet, his dead shriveled heart clenching with ghost pains, stomach clenching with apprehension that Worth had access to such confession second-hand. It was dumb, what he'd asked of Hanna, and when he'd asked it, and with what frame of mind. Adelaide was dead, nobody was after him, and Nathaniel was the type of mind-gaming twat to be expected in a literal den of vampires.

"You gonna decorate my office all night, Connie?" Worth chuckled, slapping at Conrad's hip with the sports section. "Not that I'm complainin'."

"Ew," Conrad drawled, folding Hanna's note over between his fingers to spare Doc Worth some attention, before the antagony could escalate. "Where's the coat?"

"Drycleaners." Tight bandages wrapped Worth's arms, from bony wrists up to the hems of his Harley t-shirt, and to this detail Conrad nodded.

"Hiding the track marks, I see."

Worth's eyes creased in a lazy smile, challenge accepted, and he wagged his rolling chair in place, slumped back with the newspaper's tilt folded over his long thigh. "Vampire hickeys. I'm a popular bloke."

"He does it to himself," the intern said, returned to peel a condensation-stuck cooler from the floor. "Gets off to it, just so you know."

Conrad blanched, accusatory in his step back. "Jesus, you actually tell people that?"

Worth raised his eyebrows, blithely offended. "'Tell'?" The implication sank down into his grinning reprimand. "Connie. Think better on a fella, would you."

"God," Conrad relented, hands up, defeated. "I'm leaving."

"Don't forgetcher dinner," Worth kicked himself in a roll to the mini-fridge, prising a bloodbag free to meet Conrad over the cluttered landscape of his desk. Leaning an elbow on the table, Worth pulled the bag away from Conrad's loose reach, silently expectant.

Conrad stalled, still a little sorely reminded of Nathaniel and all his shitty teasing. "So help me six-pound four-ounce tiny baby Jesus, if you ask me to smile I will put you through that desk."

Worth blinked as if he'd just been wished a happy birthday, and croaked, "Is that a fuckin' promise?"

Conrad reached forward again, tentatively this time. "What?"

"What?" Worth echoed, grinning, sly, and handed the bag over. "Bit slow tonight, Con, you sure you're all right?"

"I'm never all right," Conrad muttered, but toasted the bag up in thanks. "Cheers."

"Oi," Worth interrupted the departure, pushing himself to a stand, but the door was already swinging shut, a drunk bruiser of old metal in a weather-softened frame, its dull thump like the body getting dropped in the surgery.

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"You aren't a fuckup," Conrad blurted from Hanna's open door, snapping the note up into view. "And nevermind about the help, the problem was settled before I even asked you about it." He drifted after Hanna, whose mouth was too full of pizza to retaliate, and closed the door with his heel. "But Worth was pretty friendly tonight, so, yes, I do think we should go on ahead with finding some sort of remedial to our, er, situation. You cut your hair."

Hanna had, indeed, cut his hair very close to the scalp, the second reminder of the evening to hearken back to Nathaniel, and his ears stuck out from his head in an absurd representation of a very young person - or a very old one. "'Rsh shome good newsh," Hanna mumbled, the swallowed. "And there's some bad news." He wiped a cheek with a napkin, mistakenly offered a slice forward, sat to the patchwork armchair with a guileless laugh when refused. "Guest's honor, what do you want to get out of the way first?"

Conrad steeled himself, accepting an open seat on the futon, brushing at invisible crumbs. "Bad news, I suppose."

"Right." The smile fell off that freckled face and Hanna actually looked every year of his twenty-four, regardless of how his ears stuck out like a taxi driving down the street with its doors open. The sobriety with which he delivered the next news solidified the impression. "People are dying, again. It's kinda up to us to stop it, again. We kinda might need a four-man-or-woman team on this one, and I can't get a hold of Toni, again. So we're going stag, again."

"'Us' and 'we'?"

"Well, you were -" Hanna looked pained, but forges on with a glance from Flobottomus/Mononoke/Brenda. "You were a big help, last night. If you don't have anything better to do, I could use some of that invulnerability of yours, you know, sometimes. When you want."

The zombie cleared his throat, clapping his romance novel shut.

Hanna sighed, rolling his eyes. "Okaaay, so I need help, and I'm asking you for help, and that's normal and fine and not at all lame or whiny or self-centered, and you have every agency to say no, and...? Oh, and I should let you help because otherwise I'm not respecting your autonomy of choice -"

"That's fine," Conrad agreed on the heels of Hanna's idealistic dissection. "Yes. Sure." He waved at the air as if dismissing a fly, impatient to silence the painfully obvious cross-reference to his own difficulty asking for help. "Whatever. That's not even on the radar of things that are ever even going to be a problem for me, Hanna, I'd really rather not see you imperiled by a lack of field support."

"Rrright," Hanna drawled, suspicious now over the curve of his fingers. "Which brings me to the other bad news, since you miiight be helping me out of a, sort of, sense? Of affection?"

"As opposed to the morbid curiosity and crippling ignorance that's fueled me thus far, sure."

Hanna nodded, enlightened despite Conrad's sarcasm, "So we know the stand-in cupid's arrows were just as potent as the originals."

"That's what you said," Conrad waved the note, fidgeting it open and shut, like folding a band-aid back over a cut. "And the good news is that you have a cure, right?"

"Eh, well," Tilting his open hand side to side Hanna grabbed up another slice of pizza, then accepted a can of soda from the passing zombie. "Not really that, no, not exactly." The discourse paused for another bite, chew, swallow, a long swig of soda, Hanna coughing away the tears of a carbonation burn.

"Slow down," Conrad warned tersely. "I'm not going anywhere."

Hanna laughed, replacing his meal to its t.v. tray. "So the good news is, you aren't gay!"

A dense silence crammed itself into the spare half-second it took Conrad's sharp 'what' to make it from his lungs to the room.

"... You aren't gay, are you?"

Conrad could only shake his head slowly, furiously, glasses slid down his nose so as not to obstruct the force of his owl-eyed glare.

"Good! Good, right?" Hanna entreated, "Because that would be bad, if you actually - if there was actually some sort of heinous magical love triangle happening here. I mean the arrows work but it's not like - you know, no drama." His grin was self-assured, nod emphatic. "No weird, shitty rom-drama entanglements here, nooope. We're good. You just love me like a bro, you know?"

Conrad's face pinched up as he digested this latest bit of rapid-fire profundity. "I... I do?"

"Well, yeah." Hanna shrugged, palms up. "Unless you totally wanna make out with me right now or something."

"I most certainly do not want to make out with you, Hanna," Conrad agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose, glasses falling to his lap.

"Right, that's what I said. There an echo in here? Sheesh."

"But I do seem to have a persistent notice of you, now, up to and including unpaid freelancing lent to your operation - which makes you a case for labor exploitation, by the way."

"Dude," Hanna snorted, and Conrad never again wanted to be on the receiving end of one of those sympathetic gazes. "It's called friendship. It won't hurt you. Er," a retraction; "Unless we end up in some dangerous stunts together on a dudely bro whim, in which case it might actually hurt some of you. But not as badly as it might hurt, metaphysically, were you stricken in a non-bro, romantic way! Yeah!"

"Stop," Conrad grumbled, just because he'd rather grumble than smile, which he was dangerously close to doing, because, fuck, he actually liked Hanna and was immensely relieved that it didn't have to be weird between them. Conrad sighed through his nose, replaced his glasses, leaning forward to stand to leave, but then -

"So, okay, now for the bad news part two."

"Um." Conrad sank back to the futon.

"The, ah," Hanna tapped his fingertips together. "The arrow that hit Worth? Maybe we should do something about that before Old Man Shouty makes shit weird?"

Conrad straightened, having nearly forgotten Worth's impairment in all this, since what was the difference, really? "Yes, Hanna, we should. That."

Hanna clapped his hands, rubbed them briskly together. "Okay! Take it away, Barack."

The dead man lifted a heavy book from under the futon, settling it open between he and Conrad. "There is no cure," he delivered the disjointed lecture with the usual linen-closet monotone, "A cherub curse is absolute; one must simply wait until the person they love has changed enough so as to disqualify from its memory."

"'You aren't the person I married', blah blah blah," Hanna exampled, pulling a knee up to rest his cheek against. "Cupid love is not the same force as human love. It's not affection, it's not attraction, it just is... just a magnet appeal you gotta wait for the poles to migrate away from."

"It might blind you to the flaws of your intended, or gild those flaws entirely," the zombie continued. "It is, at its heart, a force of chaos. A randomization of fates, a curse left behind by long-dead gods, forgotten of its goals."

"Lady married the Eiffel Tower, dude, and I don't know any better example to give you," Hanna said, gnawing his pizza with the side of his mouth he wasn't talking from. "At least not one that doesn't involve animal abuse."

Conrad exhaled, having flipped through a few yellowing pages of illustration and foreign, unreadable language, and appealed to the zombie's apparent authority on the matter. "So the actual bad news, is that we have to just wait this out?"

"Nooo," Hanna warned, long and low. "No, we take care of this immediately. I need my doctor whole and sane, not emotionally crippled over some powerfully unrequit voodoo."

"Hold, hold, hold on," Conrad put both hands up in supplication. "I thought this was just 'dudely bromance'. Worth isn't gay."

Hanna sucked at a molar, chewing through skepticism. "Have you seen his coat?"

Conrad's entire face puckered. "Not recently."

The zombie suggested, "The process can be expedited with verbal rejection -"

Conrad scoffed, "Easy enough, the man's heinous and I despise everything he stands for."

Hanna, "Free healthcare?"

" - And repetitive 'othering' of the self from its past iteration," the zombie continued, unfazed by the peanut gallery. "You'll have to behave quite erratically, to misdirect the curse. It won't be pleasant for the Doctor, but it will serve his overall health."

"Act like a different person and clearly reject all come-ons. Well, I'm halfway done." The book was carefully folded shut and Conrad stood. "But as a rule, I don't like head-games. Would be easier to just sock the guy."

Hanna chortled, nervous. "Please don't do that."

"What, you know about the fetish, too?"

Looking as if Conrad has just farted, Hanna blinked, hard. "What."

"What?" Conrad mocked, handing the book down. "Now we both get to suffer, knowing that."

"I -" Hanna collapsed in a slump, book balanced in his lap, armchair rocking from his silent hitching laughter. "Buddy. I just don't want him injured."

Conrad hummed deliberation in the back of his throat, "No promises."

"ALL the promises," Hanna demanded, sliding out from under the book. "He's old. You have to be careful with the elderly."

"He's only eight years older than me," Conrad said, helping the zombie to tidy as Hanna stacked leftover boxes into the kitchenette's fridge.

"Whaaat," Hanna argued. "No way. How old are you?"

"Twenty eight," Conrad drawled, eyes flat. "How did you not check his background? You're the detective in this room, not me, and I check backgrounds. He's not legal in this country, either, so. Good luck with that."

"You aren't a legal migrant?" Hanna wrinkled his nose and even the zombie had looked up from the dishes to study Conrad.

"No," Conrad answered, surprised at the assumption. "I got here on a student visa. But my bank is in England, my clients are from just about anywhere and my condo manager takes cash. He just bills it under my neighbor. I thought you knew that? Why I didn't go to the normal police, about Adelaide?"

"Wow," Hanna re-evaluated the art nerd in his kitchen, the blocky colors of his Tokyo street fashion and effervescent snobbery, a hard attitude hard earned from hard living maybe, and not just, you know, woefully naive dickishness. "I don't think normal police answer calls about talking bats, but okay. Wow." Again, to Shaun/Desmond/Lucy, "Wow." Then, to Conrad - "Is there someone you have to hide from, Conman? Someone back in England?"

Conrad smiled tight, slapping a tea towel free of dust to wield at the growing pile of rinsed dishes. "Not anymore. Which reminds me, good news part two. Adelaide's dead."

Hanna stilled, and the glance he shared with the zombie was... not celebratory. "Who told you that?"

"Judicant Montag, actually. Says she died earlier this week, something about he knows her Patron? Word might not have gotten around, yet, but that's one problem solved."

Hanna rounded the kitchen to grab Conrad by the elbow, all but stuffing him toward the bathroom, the only windowless room in the apartment. Urgently, "When did he tell you that?"

"Ow - what - hey -" Conrad blinked the dots from his vision as the bathroom door was tugged shut, overhead light's string tugging it to life with a clatter. "Cripes, Hanna, you're supposed to reject this sort of thing, not instigate it. A cupid somewhere is laughing, maliciously."

"Shut up," Hanna urged, gripping Conrad by the upper arms to walk him back in the crevice between bath and toilet. "And tell me what Monday said. Word for word."

"'Shut up and talk'?" Conrad's hands had braced up to prevent further crowding, neck and ears dusted purple. "Calm down. Who is Monday?"

"Nathaniel Montag. Before he became Judicant, he was a P.I., like Cas."

"Cas...imiro? You're kidding."

Hanna swiped at the pull-string, clattering the bathroom into darkness again, and lowered his voice. "Adelaide isn't dead."

Conrad could smell the magic under Hanna's skin, could hear his heart beating and, dimly, could see the faint blue glow of his eyes through the complete dark.

Hanna knocked several elbows into several ceramic fixtures, stepping him and Conrad into the bathtub, as if taking shelter from an earthquake. He crouched them both down, grip tightening to Conrad's elbows, forearms, wrists. "Classic misdirection. You want to find a hiding criminal, you target the people they're closest to. Tell an uninformed, isolated ally that the target is dead, or injured, or soon to be caught - and follow that schmuck directly to your target, because that's where they're going to go, to the place where they last saw. When..." Hanna was panting, grip around Conrad's hands, now. "Where did you go, after Monday told you? About Adelaide?"

"Why would you think she isn't dead?" Conrad argued hotly, reluctant to believe such a terrible ploy.

"Where did you go," Hanna rasped, tugging urgently.

"The grocery store!" Conrad whisper-shouted, yanking his hands free. "Then here! I've only been at the warehouse, my flat, and the clinic besides! I! Don't! Know! Where! Adelaide! Is!"

"Stay! Away!" Hanna whisper-shouts back, "From! The! Clinic!"

"Why!"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE BEING FOLLOWED, DUMBASS."

Conrad hushed Hanna with matched urgency, well and truly paranoid now that it might be true, that Nathaniel might have any arsenal of advanced vampire-tracking technology at his disposal - hell, even mortal P.I.s could get M.I.6 level gadgetry to catch middling politicians in sordid affairs. "What's that supposed to matter to Worth? Adelaide wouldn't show back up there since the - ooooh," Conrad groaned in discovery, wrapping a hand over his mouth to contain his horror. "That hunter was following me?"

"Probably," Hanna allowed, scuffing to a stand, knees and elbows against hollow ceramic. "And Adelaide was using the clinic same way as any other vampire off the street - resources, housing, foodbank. It's a hotspot for undesirables, no offense."

Doubtfully, "I've never seen another vampire there."

"Wull they could probably tell you were being followed and amscrayed! Monday isn't the only one upset with Adelaide, Conman, she's got an extra history of offenses committed to a lot of in-groups."

"Why isn't she dead yet?"

"Because nobody wants to deal with the guy who would come a-knocking if she was ever killed. It's all just wound-and-capture-and-restrain, far as I can tell, and people barely get away with wounding."

"Nepotism. Awesome." Conrad rubbed small aggrieved circles against his temples. "Can we get out of the bathroom, now?"

"No," Hanna grunted, stubborn. "You are never leaving this bathroom. I will feed you blood packs from under the door, and pee in the kitchen sink, for the rest of my life."

Conrad dragged his hand down his face, a quip slipping through his fingers, "But where would you shit?"

"I'll get a litterbox." Hanna chewed his nail in the dark, basil and garlic and tomato on his breath. "Stay here."

"Hanna," Conrad only meant to tap Hanna, urge him out of the door so he regain his freedom, but his hand grabs and his arm curls and he's pulled Hanna back into the dark with him, instead. "I'm - I, I think I'm the most scared I've probably ever been in my entire life, and if I stay in this bathroom I'll have to stew in that fear," he confessed, cold and clammy fists buried in the baggy gather of Hanna's rugby jersey. The world spun, stopped, juttered like a faulty carnival ride, racing its star like none else in that galaxy, and only Conrad could feel the inertia. "I need a sedative, or I'm going to chew my own arm off, maybe not even figuratively."

After a heavy pause, Hanna shifted his weight. "Okay. I can ask Veser to raid your medicine cabinet."

"No," Conrad all but crooned, heel tapping in a frustrated fidget. "No, Hanna, I need something for vampires, and I don't even know what that's supposed to be." His grip fluttered loose, rocking back onto a heel, side to side, a contained pacing. "You have permission to beat me over the head, if that's the only thing that will work."

Hanna stood there for several breaths, sniffling the type of sniffle that follows heavy eating or argument. "Okay," he whispered again, phone screen lighting the room with its blue glow, thumbs tapping. "We are officially calling the actual police. Vampire police, I mean." He shook off Conrad's warning grasp. "You can't be held accountable for Adelaide's bullshit, Conrad, that just isn't fair."

"But they'll blame you for -"

"For the truth? For doing what I did?" Hanna reached back to tug the door open with the gummy crack of over-painted wood leaving over-painted frame. "Fuck, man," he croaked, normal volume despite what monsters could be listening in. "You think her Patron doesn't owe me for that?"

Caught off guard by Hanna's causal collaboration with evil, Conrad swatted the first question out of the air that had drifted too close to his mental drowning-man flail, "Why do you even suppose Adelaide isn't actually dead?"

"Because I saw her," Hanna mumbled, avoiding eye contact. "Like an hour ago."

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