(Untitled)

[bringyouluck]

Night. And they are gone.
The footsteps, still echoing.
Then silent.
Then black.Nothing read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles months ago. Louis annoyed him. Lestat seemed like a god. Then he'd gone and started a rock band and it seemed a little silly after that. Nothing sings to himself, broken lines of Bowie and Robert Smith, the Lost Souls mixed

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[sommer_tobi]

Still wet from his swim, Tobi stomped his way up the beach, sand collecting on the soles of his wet feet, damp hair hanging over his eyes as he panted. His smile was bright though, spreading wide across his cheeks and he dropped down beside Nothing with little grace, his bare shoulder touching the other boy's, getting him wet and not particularly caring.

"That is homework?" he asked, just assuming given the way Nothing seemed to be so intently focused. He folded his legs under him to get more comfortable and ran a hand over his bare chest, the breeze chilling him, cooling off his skin.

[bringyouluck]

It wasn't until he felt skin pressed against his, saltwater bleeding in through his t-shirt, the sand disturbed around him, that he knew he wasn't alone. He knew the smell of Tobi now: sand and saltwater and grass and clean sweat and sunshine. All those things he never in his life thought he'd find appealing.

"It's my life," he said, letting the pages flutter in the breeze, "I found it this morning."

[sommer_tobi]

Brushing the sand off his chest and then off his fingers, Tobi leaned forward, arms circling his knees as he turned to squint at Nothing.

"Your life?" he asked, clearly not understanding. He didn't think he'd misunderstood, but there was still a lot about English he knew he still didn't pick up on, though being surrounded by it so much of the time had really helped him. His smile still in place, he cocked his head. "I did not know you misplaced it."

[bringyouluck]

"You've met people here who came from movies and books," Nothing said, squinting in the sun until Tobi was only a relief in shadows, wavering like a mirage in the heat. He rubbed at his eyes and handed the book over. Handed over his life. All those things he'd missed.

"This is mine. I came here about halfway through it. I guess I've missed a lot."

[sommer_tobi]

His smile slid away then, curving into a thoughtful frown as Nothing handed the book over. Still hunched over his folded legs, Tobi flipped past the first few pages, eyes scanning over the words in silence.

Nothing was right, of course. In the past eight months, Tobi had met countless people from books and television shows and movies. Some he'd recognized and some he hadn't, but after awhile, he'd gotten to understand that probably everyone was from something like that. Including him, even though that idea was a lot harder to try to understand for some reason.

"You-- you have read it all?" he asked, his voice quieter and almost wary as he glanced over at Nothing.

[bringyouluck]

Nodding slowly, he leaned over, drawing patterns in the sand with his fingertips.

"It says I'll live forever. Or a very long time. In fifty years, I hardly change," he sighed, tucking his long hair back from his face, "I don't think it works that way here."

[sommer_tobi]

It didn't work that way back home either, Tobi knew. It didn't work that way any place he'd ever been to or any place he'd ever imagined.

Swallowing a little, he nodded and turned the book over in his hand, smoothing over the glossy cover. So much of Nothing was still a mystery to Tobi and now he held a book that would tell him maybe everything. Or close to everything. And Tobi suddenly wasn't sure he wanted to find out, or at least not that way.

"Because you are a vampire," he said, managing to not wince as the words slid out. "But, you are not one here. This is what you mean?"

[bringyouluck]

"I'm not here," he nodded, dashing the back of his hand across his check, surprised to find wetness there. It's like standing at a fork in the road, able to see all the wonderful, wild, beautiful things your life might've become, only to know you have no choice but to go the other way.

I will never be that person...

"Half vampire. My mother was just a girl, the same age as we are now. She wandered into the French Quarter on Mardi Gras and she met them there." He felt sorry for her. He'd always dreamed it had been something lovely -- that his parents had been in love and had loved him, but just couldn't take care of him. Instead, his father had abandoned her, and she'd died in agony. Nothing, new and mindless and starving, had eaten out her insides.

[sommer_tobi]

Tobi listened and curled his hand around the spine of the book, his gaze locked on Nothing as he spoke. He felt a deep tug on his stomach, harsh and unexpected, but not entirely unpleasant.

"Them?" he asked, quiet and curious. It was obvious that whatever Nothing had read about his life, whatever he'd found out... there was more there, more of something he couldn't have now that he was here. Tobi wondered if there was a book of his life, too, if one day he'd find it and discover what things he'd done back home, back in the life he was supposed to be living.

[bringyouluck]

"Molochai, Twig... and Zillah. The vampires. The same ones I met on the road, fifteen years later. It seems ridiculous. How could that even happen?" he asked, brow furrowing. They hadn't even known, it wasn't like they'd been looking for him.

It was fate, his mind screamed at him, but he pushed it aside.

It seemed an afterthought, that it had been his father. The one he'd loved and held and touched and fucked. He felt no revulsion. No moral conflict. They shared blood, why not share everything else?

[sommer_tobi]

It took another moment for Tobi to truly understand that, to work out that the-- the vampires Nothing's mother had met were the same Nothing had spent time with before arriving here. And maybe it was ridiculous, but for Tobi, the very idea that Nothing was supposed to be a creature that killed and drank blood was far harder to believe. Even now.

His brow furrowed, Tobi looked at the book in his hand again, his thumb flipping the pages in a low, soft whirl that was drowned out by the crashing waves.

"Do you want to go back?" he asked, realizing only as the question passed his lips that he was scared of Nothing's response.

[bringyouluck]

"Yes," he answered easily, turning to look at Tobi from under his hair, "Just to... Just to see all of those things. To meet Ghost. To make it to New Orleans. To find my family. I want to know what all that's like."

To share his life with someone. Someone to belong to. But maybe he doesn't have to give that up. It might just happen a little differently.

"But not for good. I'm not ready to leave here for good."

[sommer_tobi]

Nothing's response was pretty much exactly what Tobi'd been expecting to hear and it stung just as much as he'd expected to. His gaze lowered and he nodded in silence, taking in the cover of Nothing's book, but not really seeing it.

"Nobody ever chooses to go," he said, talking to himself as much as he was to Nothing. "From here. It only happens, yes? I don't think I would be able to go with you."

[bringyouluck]

"Would you want to?" he asked, frowning as he watched Tobi look down at his book. Lost Souls. Of course that's what it was called. Tobi always seemed so wary of it all -- his life and what he'd been before -- that he wouldn't have expected Tobi to want to see any of it. To be a part of it.

Their lives converged here only, that time outside the island didn't seem made for the both of them.

[sommer_tobi]

Tobi wasn't sure he knew the answer to that, his frown deepening as he smoothed a thumb over the cover and shrugged. "Maybe," he said, knowing it sounded vague, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Given the choice, he'd want to take Nothing back home with him instead, but he knew he wouldn't have that choice. Neither of them would.

"I would not-- I would rather not be here without you." Because that much he did know. If he had to choose staying on the Island without Nothing or going back with him, back to a world of vampires, he knew what he'd choose.

And that realization was enough to startle him.

[bringyouluck]

"I don't want to be here without you, either," he whispered quietly. Tobi had become as much like home to him as the island ever would. It wasn't so much about places as it was about people. And think about what his life could've become, all the horror and pain and love and sax and mystery... he wasn't sure it was something he'd choose over what he could have now, on this new path he'd taken.