Mail, letters of worship and bills for damage to private property go here.

“Are you kidding me? I put the man in manicure,” Coop insisted, shifting up the bed a little so he could lean against the pillows. He scratched idly at his bare stomach. How did Danica manage to find ones that were so comfy? Maybe she threatened the Council for them. Totally plausible.

“You put the ure in manicure,” Danica argued, climbing back onto the bed with her hands full and fitting herself nicely into Fitch’s side. She twisted a little to lean against him, a move she would never have initiated even a month ago. “As in you’re an idiot.”

Fucking fake-pregnancy hormones.

“An idiot you’re—”

“I don’t date idiots,” Danica interjected and not because she objected to the ‘idiot’ part of it either.

“Well, that’s handy. Because I’m not an idiot. Would an idiot make New York Magazine’s top twenty-five doctors list?” He half laughed, half scoffed. “I think not.”

“That’s your problem. Thinking.” Danica arranged her bottles of varnish on the mattress next to her and picked up the emery board, inspecting her almost perfect nails. “You should stick to looking pretty. You’re much better at that.”

Coop wasn’t sure if this was what Danica in a good mood was like but it was a rare day when the insults were so swiftly followed by a compliment. Best to take advantage of it when he could, then.

Since Danica had already taken it upon herself to steal half his personal space, Coop snaked an arm around her and rested his hand against her stomach. Right in her line of vision.

The rhythmic filing of her nails faltered for the briefest of moments.

He splayed his fingers, wiggling them minutely. Invitingly.

Danica’s obliviousness was manufactured and they both knew it.

A heavy sigh from behind fluttered a tendril of hair by her ear. She blew it away through the side of her mouth.

Coop lifted his hand in front of her face and boldly held it there.

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

Danica swatted his hand away. “It’s pretty fucking obvious.”

“Oh, come on.” There was that whine in his voice. Danica bet her bottom dollar if she turned her head right now she’d see that goddamn pout on his face. “I did that thing that you really like. You owe me. And I know just how you can repay me.”

“More sex? Great, let’s go.”

“Ma-ni-cure,” Coop began to chant. “Ma-ni-cure. Ma-ni-cure. Ma-ni-cure!”

“Oh, my god, you’re so gay.” What more proof could Danica need than Fitch opting for a manicure over a fuck?

“I’m so chipped.” He brought his other hand around, turning the palms out so they could both take in the whole picture. “Occupational hazard. Uber tiny stitches come at a price.”

“That looks bad,” Danica admitted, taking his hand and pulling it closer. She ran the pad of her thumb over a couple of his nails.

“I’m a slave to my patients, what can I say?” What he wouldn’t say was that most of his patients were bananas or raw chicken breasts, the closest he could get to real human flesh during the long clinical droughts. “Gonna help a martyr out?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a proper mani.

To his great surprise, out came the emery board again, but this time it wasn’t her own nails she was doing.

“This isn’t for you.”

Fitch couldn’t help the smile on his face. It was allowed. Danica couldn’t see. He settled his unoccupied hand back on her waist, tightening his hold just a little.

“Who’s it for then?”

“You're a reflection of me and I care about my image.” It just so happened that, bar the current state of his nails, the rest of Coop fitted that image remarkably well. “So take a wild guess.”

When Danica had arrived, she’d been armed to the teeth and out for blood. Asher had told her King wasn’t here and had confiscated her gun ‘for her own good’.

Now he was telling her King was here and yet he still wouldn’t give her gun back. For the same goddamn reason.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Danica demanded, mind in overdrive, making plans. She strode over to her brother, reaching straight into his jacket to take his own gun, since all of her plans involved one of those. “Let’s go.”

( Read more... )

A year ago Danica had met Fitch outside the rec room dressed like a Golden Coast girl, sunshine and flowers and anything else she thought would throw him off from the start. Nothing was going to have stopped her making that date as hard for him as possible and by the end of the short evening she had been successful. And it had gotten her absolutely nowhere.

Today, Danica wasn't the one looking out of place. Half the island had sunk seamlessly into the depths of lunacy and there Danica stood with her usual polish and finesse, hair up, six inch heels on and a clutch in her hand. Considering Fitch hadn't made any plans the last time, she hadn't dressed for anything in particular but had made more than the average effort. The most expensive thing on her was to be smelt, not seen though.

The day had begun by being prevented from murdering mangoes and inappropriately hugged by her brother's boyfriend, so Fitch had a lot of leeway before the evening could be classed as officially worse than the morning.

Standing at the top of the Compound steps, she crossed her legs and glanced down at her dress, fiddling with a ruffle. She wasn't nervous exactly but despite her years, this was one situation she didn't have much experience in.

Nobody could blame her, not really. She'd been sensible, she hadn't rushed in to anything, she'd sat back and considered her options, planned it, taken her time. She'd practically become her brother and he, at least, would be proud.

Dani didn't really believe that but when she slipped between the curtains and spotted Fitch's sleeping form, she couldn't care less either. Asher had had his fun when he'd been graced with fangs and now she finally had what belonged to her too, it was her turn to do what was natural. It was strange how quickly the hunger had come back, a detached kind of longing to taste the metallic warmth of blood. A phantom feeling, not that Danica was aware of its fallacy.

There hadn't been much of a choice to make. As soon as the teeth had reappeared and the desire to bite had taken hold, Danica knew there was only one person she wanted first. Ever since he'd patched her up in the clinic she'd had a special interest in him. Fitch was easily played but every now and then he'd grow a backbone and scratch back and Danica found herself hoping for that more and more. She was performing a service really; knocking him down to build him back up again.

And tonight was a small price for him to pay.

Danica pulled his covers off gently so as not to wake him. She was light as a feather as she climbed on top, straddling and settling her weight on his waist, propping herself up on her hands, either side of his head. "Time to see if we're a match," she whispered, the hint of a fang appearing as a smile tugged at her lips.

Frustration wasn't new to Danica, especially not on the island. But since New Year's Eve and Delirium's little stunt on the stairs, she had been feeling particularly murderous. Her resolution - to let noone stand in her fucking way from now on - had come true a tad too literally. Not that she was complaining. A rainbow whore in pain was always a delicious sight to behold; she was just annoyed that she never got to do the shoving herself. So near, yet so far.

Which meant that her itch was most definitely not scratched. That might go some way to explaining why she was out in the woods, gun in hand, stomping through the undergrowth despite her heels. She could walk through anything as long as she had Manolo Blahnik by her proverbial side. A bear, a dinosaur, dog, cat, fucking bunny rabbit, it didn't matter. She'd shoot the first thing moving that caught her eye and pissed her off because she was in that kind of fucking mood. It didn't take much to get on the wrong side of Danica Talos and once you were there, it was nigh impossible to escape.

Danica wasn't one for New Year's resolutions but this year was different. After Christmas, a day which marked her 365th one on the island, she figured she deserved a little something for herself. She had been playing nice ever since she'd arrived; it was about time things changed. Most people, she thought sullenly, no longer viewed her as a genuine threat and while that was a harsh fucking blow to her pride, she knew she could use it to her advantage.

She wanted to hunt. She craved it, even if it wasn't fuelled by her need to satisfy her Thirst anymore. So if anyone gave her a reason to from now on, she'd hunt them down without a second's thought. She'd leave worrying about the fucking IPD to Asher. Danica knew being on small godforsaken island made it harder to get away with things now but she was sick and tired of letting her distinct lack of superhuman abilities get in the way of what she wanted. A new year meant a new attitude. Or rather, an old one. A very old one that had served her well for centuries.

Celebrations were still going on in the Compound, drunken kissing and dancing and pretty much everything Danica wished to avoid. She had had her fair share of alcohol but not enough to compromise her in any serious way. Returning from a visit to the basement bathroom, she took the stairs confidently despite her heels, much like she had that first time she had ascended them. Back then she had been sporting bruised ribs and machine gun in one hand and while she might have neither of those right now, her temperament was much the same as it had been then, even if it barely showed on the outside.

When Danica came to, she fought the urge to open her eyes, like she would if it was too early in the morning and there was no way in hell she was waking up yet. It wasn’t hard to either, they felt gritty and heavy, lids stuck together. Slow, shallow breaths were interrupted by a deep sigh when she finally let the light in. Bright light, as it turned out, pure white in her vision that dissolved from the outside in far too slowly for her liking.

It was a quick, easy decision to close them again. “Fuck that.” Her voice strained, hoarse and dry, and a frown of confusion twitched on her forehead as she tried to figure out why. Her throat was sore, so an attempt to clear it brought nothing by pain. She was too tired to work out why things were the way they were - who gave a fuck about details anyway? - so she reverted to her default and began to roll over to her side, determined to sleep in, even if she lost the entire day. A sharp tug put a stop to that, the IV in her arm catching, enough for her to force her eyes back open, roll her head and take a look.

A drip? Someone had shoved a drip in her arm? And given her a fucking migraine along with it. Thin bandage covered her wrists, though she had only spotted one so far, and she was too incensed at the knowledge that there was a fucking tube coming out of her to question why or who had done it.

“Oh, fuck you,” she told it, before fingernails that couldn’t possibly be her own started picking at the edges of the adhesive tape stuck to her skin. Getting it off, and the tube out of her, was her first priority.


[ooc: dated to Saturday, any time that suits your pup. To find out what happened, click here]

Danica had deemed the loss of her superhuman senses as good as going deaf and blind but when she woke up, cold and stiff-necked, she was met with a silence and a thick blackness that made her reconsider. The ground was hard and uneven beneath her, not so different from her bed in the Compound for her to notice right away. The air smelled stale and she pushed herself up, automatically reaching up to rub a goose-pimpling arm.

It was the weight around her wrist, not the sudden rattle of the chain, that startled her. Her gaze dropped, though she still couldn’t see, and she lifted the arm again, the limbed weighed down with heavy metal. Instinct made her tug experimentally as she stood, small stones digging into her bare feet. She couldn’t move far before the chains pulled taut and the shackles rubbed uncomfortably over thin skin and bone.

Danica wasn’t the best at waking up and instantly being alert, but it was far from dawning slowly on her that she was chained up.

“Asher?”

Her eyes darted around, ears pricked for anything. When no response came she let out a frustrated growl and tugged on the chains again, wrapping her hands around the links and pulling as hard as she could.

“Asher! Fuck.” She coughed, trying to suppress a shiver that ran up her spine. “Lew?” She hadn’t pegged him for a sordid sexual fantasist. Velcro restraints were more his style, not kidnapping and holding her hostage. No, that was very much…her style. Danica’s own entertainment of choice.


( *** )

Broken nail.

Someone's going to pay.


sws

What this meme is all about is expanding on that, to better create a personal history that you can then use to better build personal development. To paraphrase Lindsay, "it's not intended to be a way of avoiding/handwaving actual threads but rather a way of kickstarting them and getting a better idea of where our characters stand with each other. It's a small island, and it's likely that a lot of our pups have interacted, maybe in little ways." The details can be silly or trivial (They see each other at breakfast everyday), or a shared anecdote (Remember that time when they got attacked by the angry parrot?), or the seeds of a bigger plot to be played out later.

Time: approx. lunchtime, Christmas Day
Location: Basement stairs


Manicured fingertips flicked burning embers off the gun before picking it up out of the pile of ashes and shaking off the remains of a lackey who had obviously shown more loyalty to Danica than was good for his health. She checked the magazine, stepping purposefully around the couch, the cacophony of metallic clanging and sword clashes covering the clack of her heels as she moved. The noise reverberated through the tower, ricocheting off the walls in an endless echo; the cry of another vampire frying from the inside out making Danica pull back her lips over her fangs and check the magazine again.

They had Drake. And they had Blade. Asher had warned her of the dangers, more than once, but this was what she’d been waiting for, ever since they had found Drake in the Iraqi desert. As far as she was concerned now, Blade’s arrival just made it easier to get rid of him for good, on their own turf, and she wasn’t about to let him ruin three years of hard work before he had the pleasure of getting the fuck out of her hair.

Their battle raged on not thirty feet from her. She should just blow off Blade’s head right now, have done with it, and hope King didn’t scuttle off with his tail between his legs before she was finished playing with him. Raising her gun, she barely had time to aim before a Nightstalker-shaped distraction caught her eye up in the gantry.

Oh. This would be good.

Her arm swung smoothly towards bitch-Whistler, finger pulling off round after round of rapid fire, bullets licking at her heels as she ran for her life. A smirk replaced the snarl on Danica’s lips at the thought of serving up her bloodless meatsack to King later. Maybe she’d ask Asher to take photos for posterity. She might not have seen her brother in the chaos yet but they had survived far worse than this - the downfall of the entire Vampire Nation included - and would do for a long time to come. Taking a leaf out of his book for once, she narrowed her eyes and stopped playing games, squeezing the trigger with a fierce glare and aiming for the heart.

The knock took her by surprise as King - fucking Hannibal King! - barrelled into her from the side, the force enough to snap her head back as they flew through the atrium. Her ribs hit the top step first, the crack followed by another bout of machine fire as her finger tightened automatically. As she tumbled down the concrete stairs like a broken rag doll she kept her ears pricked for the sound of bullets tearing into flesh.