Carsten Visits Fangtasia, Part 1
Title: Carsten Visits Fangtasia
Chapter: 1/?
Author: septemberoses
Fandom: True Blood - OC/AU?
Rating: G/PG - language, drugs, redneck vampires
Genre and/or Pairing: Eric and Carsten from En forelskelse (aka Allan Hyde)
Word count: 1700
Summary: What happens when our favorite fun-size teenaged Danish boy meets our favorite XXL Viking vampire?
Note: Having watched Allan Hyde in En forelskelse, I wondered what would happen if Carsten came to the U.S. as, say, an exchange student and somehow wound up visiting Fangtasia on a crazy road trip. Those of you familiar with my pornier stuff - this is, surprisingly, sex-free. So far. (Also, in my world: Carsten looks nothing like Eric's maker, in case you care.) Special thanks to Keenoled for helping me develop Carsten's Danish backstory and to Linndechir for listening.
By the time their car had pulled into a space on the far side of the dark parking lot opposite Fangtasia, Carsten was already having his doubts about the evening. This was the latest stop on a summer road trip that was becoming more surreal the further they got from Boston. Carsten had been happy with the idea of it - four friends in a car driving across part of the United States, a several-week journey living an essential part of the American Dream even though they were their own mini-League of Nations (Danish, Danish, Russian, English).
The reality, though, wasn't quite living up to his hopes.
Carsten's host family was nice enough, and he tried to repay their kindness during the several months he'd stayed at their house by being respectful of their rules and helping out with the dishes and household chores, to the surprise and delight of his job-stressed, harried host parents. He often acted like the middle child he was - a peacemaker, liking to please, not wanting to make trouble.
On the other hand, Carsten found himself chafing against the idiocies of American-style parenting as the winter had turned into spring and finally summer. They expected to know where he was all the time. No sleeping over at anyone else's house, even the other exchange students. No drinking - not even a glass of wine with dinner! Carsten was sixteen, and he'd heard about these rules before he came from other kids in the program, but the sad truth hadn't sunk in until his second week in Boston. Apparently in the U.S. you could do all the drugs you wanted before shooting somebody in the head with a handgun, as long as you weren’t having beer or sex. It made his head hurt just thinking about it.
And the drugs! The drugs had turned into something of an issue on this trip. American kids were total drug fiends. Ian was (sporadically) attending one of the nicest high schools in the tony Boston suburbs they were living in and had easy access to drugs -- speed, weed, ecstasy, coke, mushrooms and more, the list was endless -- plus a wide array of legal pills stolen from parents' medicine cabinets. With the exception of Carsten, they'd spent the better part of this trip strung out on something or other - not so much Mikkel as his older boyfriend Alexei (who was Russian and certifiable, and at 21 was the only one who could buy liquor), and Ian, who started every day by getting high in the back seat of the Honda sedan he'd borrowed from his host family. Carsten hoped they didn't get pulled over by the police. He'd seen enough American TV to know how that worked out.
They'd driven in a slow, lazy line south, and then west. Ignoring some of the rest of it, Carsten had loved that part of the trip. He began to get a sense of the vastness and diversity of the country he'd only seen in books and movies and had wanted to visit … well, forever. It wasn't necessarily cool among his Danish friends to come be an exchange student, but Carsten had jumped at the chance.
And now they'd escaped - Carsten, Mikkel, Alexei and Ian, all of them jammed into the car with the windows down, arguing about whose turn it was to play music from their iPods over the car stereo, sleeping in a variety of hostels, seedy motels, houses of friends-of-friends, public parks and (once) sitting up in their seats on the side of the road during a downpour.
Carsten called his host parents every couple of days using his calling card to reassure them he was fine, and he got a sense they were quietly enjoying his absence almost as much as he was. Their kids were grown and gone, and Carsten thought their offering to be host parents was a one-time experiment they probably wouldn't repeat after he left; they seemed to worry about every little thing. He was still surprised he'd been allowed to even go on this trip. Carsten's host parents knew Ian's host parents, who had somehow gotten the hugely incorrect impression that Ian was trustworthy and reliable.
"Look, over there." Mikkel was sipping a beer. Carsten was pretty sure you weren't supposed to drink while you were in a car, but who knew? After all, this was Louisiana … Mississippi? Damn, he couldn't remember. "There it is. Fangtasia." Mikkel waved his bottle toward the bar's neon sign.
They'd been talking about visiting Fangtasia ever since they'd heard about it. It was supposed to be one of the wildest vampire bars in the southern states that still allowed humans inside (the human/vampire/alcohol mix apparently not having worked out as smoothly as everyone initially hoped for.) Alexei said that Fangtasia wasn't anywhere near as sick as the vampire bars in Berlin, where the vampires were really out and proud, and that was probably true (everyone knew even the humans in Berlin were crazy fuckers), but they weren't in Berlin, and nobody except Alexei could get in legally anyway.
But Alexei had a plan.
"Okay, so, there's the back entrance. Where I showed you, around that corner, halfway down. You just walk back there casually and wait. It's dark, nobody can see you. I'll go in the front and slip back and let you in. I met another guy who said he did that all the time. Easy as cake."
Carsten wasn't entirely sure this was true (he also thought the expression was easy as pie), but he'd already gotten a rep as the mother hen on the trip, even though he was a month older than Mikkel, and Ian just turned eighteen. He wanted to see the vampires as much as the rest of them, though. How had Alexei put it? In their natural habitat.
"All right, let's go, then," Alexei said, grinning. He stuffed the rest of the bag of weed in his pocket.
"What are you bringing that in the bar for?"
"Carsten, don't be a pussy."
And out they got.
Ten minutes later Alexei still hadn't opened the door. Carsten was getting a little nervous, fiddling with the dial on his iPod in his hand. The other two were fucking around a little, drunk, shoving each other. Mikkel dropped his beer bottle and it shattered.
"Where is he?"
"There was a line out front. Plus he can't just bolt for the back door, idiot. It could be awhile. Fuck, I need to piss." Mikkel reached for his fly.
A man stepped out of the darkness then, just a slight movement in the shadows.
"Hello, boys. Looking for someone?"
Mikkel dropped his hand from his fly and turned, all cocky self-assurance.
"Just hanging out, bro. Waiting for a friend." There was now another man standing next to the first one.
"Did … did you just call me 'bro'?" The first one spoke very slowly, like possibly there was something wrong with his brain. "Bernard. He just called me bro. Tell me, bro… who are you waiting for all alone back here in the dark? This isn't a very safe part of town."
"Yeah, well - we were just talking about leaving. Hey, I've got some more beer in the car, you want some?" Mikkel's voice sounded a little squeaky, but it wasn't a bad effort. The first man stared at Mikkel. He was massive. He reminded Carsten of a bear, only scarier somehow. Then the bear-man's eyes drifted to Carsten.
"What… the … fuck… is that." A statement, not a question. "Son, are you wearing a scarf?" He pointed to Carsten's neck.
"Nah, man, it's a kafiya," Ian chattered nervously; Carsten had no idea what he was talking about. "It's a sign of solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine."
The other man - Bernard? - snorted.
"Oh, beg pardon, it's a foreign-ass scarf. Well, it goes nice with your panties. In fact, both you boys have nice panties." Carsten and Mikkel (along with other boys and girls back home) wore their jeans low, showcasing their briefs, a totally legit style that seemed to garner attention (and, okay, disapproval) in Boston. They hadn't cared; the Boston kids overall had terrible style. Carsten had seen a boy his own age wearing hideous apple-green pants with small blue whales on them, a look so unbelievable he'd snuck a picture just so he could show his friends back home. But he'd begun to get uncomfortable on this trip with some of the looks his Bjorn-Borg-briefs-and-jeans combo got from strangers -- like these men. These men weren't the sort you wanted noticing you.
Carsten hadn't prayed since his brief flirtation with Christianity at age five at the invitation of a dark-haired neighbor he'd had a crush on, but he was praying now. He was praying earnestly that Alexei would come open the goddamn door right now.
"Y'all get the fuck on out of here," Bernard said to them. Carsten sent up a quick thanks to the god he didn't believe in.
And then all of a sudden Bear was towering over him.
"Not you, scarf-boy. You're staying right here." Bernard looked at Mikkel and Ian. "You two can beat it."
Carsten looked at Mikkel pleadingly; Mikkel gave him an anxious glance and then he and Ian started backing slowly away, their palms up in front of them like they were escaping a holdup. When they were halfway down the building they broke and ran, Mikkel looking back once over his shoulder.
Bernard and the Bear looked at each other. Then they looked at Carsten and grinned. Carsten noticed that Bernard was missing one of his front teeth, but they both definitely had fangs.
Chapter: 1/?
Author: septemberoses
Fandom: True Blood - OC/AU?
Rating: G/PG - language, drugs, redneck vampires
Genre and/or Pairing: Eric and Carsten from En forelskelse (aka Allan Hyde)
Word count: 1700
Summary: What happens when our favorite fun-size teenaged Danish boy meets our favorite XXL Viking vampire?
Note: Having watched Allan Hyde in En forelskelse, I wondered what would happen if Carsten came to the U.S. as, say, an exchange student and somehow wound up visiting Fangtasia on a crazy road trip. Those of you familiar with my pornier stuff - this is, surprisingly, sex-free. So far. (Also, in my world: Carsten looks nothing like Eric's maker, in case you care.) Special thanks to Keenoled for helping me develop Carsten's Danish backstory and to Linndechir for listening.
By the time their car had pulled into a space on the far side of the dark parking lot opposite Fangtasia, Carsten was already having his doubts about the evening. This was the latest stop on a summer road trip that was becoming more surreal the further they got from Boston. Carsten had been happy with the idea of it - four friends in a car driving across part of the United States, a several-week journey living an essential part of the American Dream even though they were their own mini-League of Nations (Danish, Danish, Russian, English).
The reality, though, wasn't quite living up to his hopes.
Carsten's host family was nice enough, and he tried to repay their kindness during the several months he'd stayed at their house by being respectful of their rules and helping out with the dishes and household chores, to the surprise and delight of his job-stressed, harried host parents. He often acted like the middle child he was - a peacemaker, liking to please, not wanting to make trouble.
On the other hand, Carsten found himself chafing against the idiocies of American-style parenting as the winter had turned into spring and finally summer. They expected to know where he was all the time. No sleeping over at anyone else's house, even the other exchange students. No drinking - not even a glass of wine with dinner! Carsten was sixteen, and he'd heard about these rules before he came from other kids in the program, but the sad truth hadn't sunk in until his second week in Boston. Apparently in the U.S. you could do all the drugs you wanted before shooting somebody in the head with a handgun, as long as you weren’t having beer or sex. It made his head hurt just thinking about it.
And the drugs! The drugs had turned into something of an issue on this trip. American kids were total drug fiends. Ian was (sporadically) attending one of the nicest high schools in the tony Boston suburbs they were living in and had easy access to drugs -- speed, weed, ecstasy, coke, mushrooms and more, the list was endless -- plus a wide array of legal pills stolen from parents' medicine cabinets. With the exception of Carsten, they'd spent the better part of this trip strung out on something or other - not so much Mikkel as his older boyfriend Alexei (who was Russian and certifiable, and at 21 was the only one who could buy liquor), and Ian, who started every day by getting high in the back seat of the Honda sedan he'd borrowed from his host family. Carsten hoped they didn't get pulled over by the police. He'd seen enough American TV to know how that worked out.
They'd driven in a slow, lazy line south, and then west. Ignoring some of the rest of it, Carsten had loved that part of the trip. He began to get a sense of the vastness and diversity of the country he'd only seen in books and movies and had wanted to visit … well, forever. It wasn't necessarily cool among his Danish friends to come be an exchange student, but Carsten had jumped at the chance.
And now they'd escaped - Carsten, Mikkel, Alexei and Ian, all of them jammed into the car with the windows down, arguing about whose turn it was to play music from their iPods over the car stereo, sleeping in a variety of hostels, seedy motels, houses of friends-of-friends, public parks and (once) sitting up in their seats on the side of the road during a downpour.
Carsten called his host parents every couple of days using his calling card to reassure them he was fine, and he got a sense they were quietly enjoying his absence almost as much as he was. Their kids were grown and gone, and Carsten thought their offering to be host parents was a one-time experiment they probably wouldn't repeat after he left; they seemed to worry about every little thing. He was still surprised he'd been allowed to even go on this trip. Carsten's host parents knew Ian's host parents, who had somehow gotten the hugely incorrect impression that Ian was trustworthy and reliable.
"Look, over there." Mikkel was sipping a beer. Carsten was pretty sure you weren't supposed to drink while you were in a car, but who knew? After all, this was Louisiana … Mississippi? Damn, he couldn't remember. "There it is. Fangtasia." Mikkel waved his bottle toward the bar's neon sign.
They'd been talking about visiting Fangtasia ever since they'd heard about it. It was supposed to be one of the wildest vampire bars in the southern states that still allowed humans inside (the human/vampire/alcohol mix apparently not having worked out as smoothly as everyone initially hoped for.) Alexei said that Fangtasia wasn't anywhere near as sick as the vampire bars in Berlin, where the vampires were really out and proud, and that was probably true (everyone knew even the humans in Berlin were crazy fuckers), but they weren't in Berlin, and nobody except Alexei could get in legally anyway.
But Alexei had a plan.
"Okay, so, there's the back entrance. Where I showed you, around that corner, halfway down. You just walk back there casually and wait. It's dark, nobody can see you. I'll go in the front and slip back and let you in. I met another guy who said he did that all the time. Easy as cake."
Carsten wasn't entirely sure this was true (he also thought the expression was easy as pie), but he'd already gotten a rep as the mother hen on the trip, even though he was a month older than Mikkel, and Ian just turned eighteen. He wanted to see the vampires as much as the rest of them, though. How had Alexei put it? In their natural habitat.
"All right, let's go, then," Alexei said, grinning. He stuffed the rest of the bag of weed in his pocket.
"What are you bringing that in the bar for?"
"Carsten, don't be a pussy."
And out they got.
Ten minutes later Alexei still hadn't opened the door. Carsten was getting a little nervous, fiddling with the dial on his iPod in his hand. The other two were fucking around a little, drunk, shoving each other. Mikkel dropped his beer bottle and it shattered.
"Where is he?"
"There was a line out front. Plus he can't just bolt for the back door, idiot. It could be awhile. Fuck, I need to piss." Mikkel reached for his fly.
A man stepped out of the darkness then, just a slight movement in the shadows.
"Hello, boys. Looking for someone?"
Mikkel dropped his hand from his fly and turned, all cocky self-assurance.
"Just hanging out, bro. Waiting for a friend." There was now another man standing next to the first one.
"Did … did you just call me 'bro'?" The first one spoke very slowly, like possibly there was something wrong with his brain. "Bernard. He just called me bro. Tell me, bro… who are you waiting for all alone back here in the dark? This isn't a very safe part of town."
"Yeah, well - we were just talking about leaving. Hey, I've got some more beer in the car, you want some?" Mikkel's voice sounded a little squeaky, but it wasn't a bad effort. The first man stared at Mikkel. He was massive. He reminded Carsten of a bear, only scarier somehow. Then the bear-man's eyes drifted to Carsten.
"What… the … fuck… is that." A statement, not a question. "Son, are you wearing a scarf?" He pointed to Carsten's neck.
"Nah, man, it's a kafiya," Ian chattered nervously; Carsten had no idea what he was talking about. "It's a sign of solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine."
The other man - Bernard? - snorted.
"Oh, beg pardon, it's a foreign-ass scarf. Well, it goes nice with your panties. In fact, both you boys have nice panties." Carsten and Mikkel (along with other boys and girls back home) wore their jeans low, showcasing their briefs, a totally legit style that seemed to garner attention (and, okay, disapproval) in Boston. They hadn't cared; the Boston kids overall had terrible style. Carsten had seen a boy his own age wearing hideous apple-green pants with small blue whales on them, a look so unbelievable he'd snuck a picture just so he could show his friends back home. But he'd begun to get uncomfortable on this trip with some of the looks his Bjorn-Borg-briefs-and-jeans combo got from strangers -- like these men. These men weren't the sort you wanted noticing you.
Carsten hadn't prayed since his brief flirtation with Christianity at age five at the invitation of a dark-haired neighbor he'd had a crush on, but he was praying now. He was praying earnestly that Alexei would come open the goddamn door right now.
"Y'all get the fuck on out of here," Bernard said to them. Carsten sent up a quick thanks to the god he didn't believe in.
And then all of a sudden Bear was towering over him.
"Not you, scarf-boy. You're staying right here." Bernard looked at Mikkel and Ian. "You two can beat it."
Carsten looked at Mikkel pleadingly; Mikkel gave him an anxious glance and then he and Ian started backing slowly away, their palms up in front of them like they were escaping a holdup. When they were halfway down the building they broke and ran, Mikkel looking back once over his shoulder.
Bernard and the Bear looked at each other. Then they looked at Carsten and grinned. Carsten noticed that Bernard was missing one of his front teeth, but they both definitely had fangs.