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 Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 6:55 pm
Well, this certainly didn't look sketchy, although she had gotten here from a tip from a guy on the subway. She'd double-checked the address twice and it was definitely right, so the only thing left to do was ring the bell.
So she did.
"Hello?" called Sally, trying to peer through the peephole. "Vale? Anyone home? Writ sent me, I'm with the paper-"
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 7:07 pm
The door bell rang.
He paused, ears perking up, and for a moment looked blankly at his cell phone - then the microwave - as if either was the culprit, before recognizing the noise for what it was. He slunk down in his chair and contemplated simply ignoring the bell in favor of completing the final (final!) stack of paperwork sitting half-finished before him.
Unfortunately, the unfamiliar voice dropped his name, closely followed by Writ's, an altogether unlucky and unwanted combination. He stifled a groan, gave the stack a half-hearted shuffle, and got up to face the music, opening the door to peer down at the stranger on his doorstep with dismayed, although polite, resignation.
Knowing Writ, this was a terrible and unfair trap that Valeriu was walking right into. This tiny, unassuming woman was an accomplice, and he had to be wary.
"Yes?" he muttered. "I am Valeriu. V'hat does he v'ant today? If it has anything to do v'ith the kidney I have left, the answer is no."
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 7:20 pm
Sally did not know what she had been expecting - certainly not a feral man like this. "I- no-" Kidney?! That was a cut of meat, right? "I met Writ on the subway," she explained. "I'm doing a story for the Central Inquirer, about the government testing gene mods in vaccinations."
She was working the door, pushing through her initial anxiety and angling herself inside. She had her foot in the door frame.
"Writ told me where to find you, said you'd give a statement."
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Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2010 7:33 pm
"Writ says a lot of things," he dismissed with a growl, arm planted solidly across the doorway, backing up the denial with the nearly-immovable heft of his body and the stubborn frown on his face.
Why Writ felt the need to drag innocents into his schemes, Valeriu would never know.
"I am sorry, but I cannot help you, miss. I have no clue v'hat nonsense he is spouting, but it is all lies, I assure you," said the young, minority man with the extreme, illegal, and too-expensive-for-his-apparent-circumstances gene mods. "Central's government v'ould never do such a thing anyv'ay," he added, insincerely.
"Thank you for visiting."
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Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 12:54 pm
For a lesser reporter than Sally Chu Linkletter, this would be a cue to leave. But Sally wasn't a lesser reporter: she had her foot planted in the door and she wasn't going anywhere.
"You have kitty ears," she said pointedly. "You have kitty ears, and a tail, and if you don't look like a good story lead I don't know what does. So."
She pulled a pen out of her hair and clicked it. "Either you can give an interview, or... I can go through your trash and write the story anyway."
Here was a small Asian girl who wasn't afraid to get dirty, and she wasn't afraid of dark-and-twisty catboys.
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Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 8:19 pm
For once, Valeriu had failed in his attempts to intimidate a stranger through appearance alone. Taken aback, he could only make the flummoxed and flustered noises of a man who didn't quite know what to do next now that he'd exhausted his only tactic, but was surely unhappy about the current situation.
His little kitty ears and his little kitty tail matched the discontent written on his face.
"Miss, I have no comment," he stressed, as if that was the magic phrase to ward off reporters. As if saying it three times was some magical chant that sent them running off to their next story. "And my trash has nothing to say to you, anyv'ay!"
His brain stopped, then slowly turned: except the thrown away copies of paperwork that he'd messed up and had to re-do, which would surely point her to his near-future workplace.
s**t. s**t, s**t, s**t. He rumbled, displeased, and vowed to cut out Writ's wagging tongue the next time he saw the trouble-maker.
"Fine! Fine, ask your questions," he growled, though his unmoving stance in the doorway implied that the reporter, like any other pest, was not allowed in the house. He felt a bit bad about being so rude and leaving a lady out on the doorstep, but reminded himself that it was the only thing he could do.
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Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 8:38 pm
Sally beamed. This was a win. This was such a win. "Thank you, Mr. Vale. You won't regret it."
With this, she promptly invited herself in, pushing past him into the living room and planting herself on the sofa. Sally wasn't a vampire - she didn't feel any kind of compulsion to remain outside the threshold just because she hadn't been formally invited in.
"So, you've had your ears... all your life? Or you developed them as a child?" she asked, notebook and pen at ready. This was going to be such a good scoop if it turned out the cases were related!
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Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 8:58 pm
Valeriu told himself that this was a good way to test how well he'd memorized his legal (and completely fake) back-story, even as his tail swished to-and-fro in agitation as the girl made herself right at home.
Tolerate, he reminded himself.
"Valeriu," he corrected, automatically. "My name is Valeriu."
Hell, he might as well change his name anyway. It's not like anyone he'd ever met had actually called him by his real name, yet. That would forever remain a mystery to him - it wasn't complicated to say, by any means, and his nickname didn't even pronounce the vowels the same way.
"I don't know," he grumbled, following her to the sofa, though he remained standing, inclined against the wall. "At least since I v'as a child. I v'as adopted v'hen I v'as twelve, and I remember very little beyond v'hen I v'as ten. Car accident," he clarified. "My parents died, then, and I survived v'ith some amnesia."
Lies and truth. A mixture of both. Enough to make it both easy to remember and entirely convincing in emotion. There was nothing fake about the way his voice stumbled over the mention of his parents' deaths.
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Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 7:00 pm
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Sally, looking down. How tragic! Heart breaking, really. Her audience would eat it up, but she felt the tiniest bit exploitive. But only for a moment, and then her reporter senses kicked in.
"If you could tell me a bit more - did you have them at the time of the accident?" she asked. "Or were they - were they more recent than that?"
Sally could barely imagine how painful having your ears transform had to be. It made her squirm a little in her seat just thinking about it as she bent over her notebook, pen at ready. "What hospital were you born at?" she asked. "I can check records."
They recorded mutations and inoculations in the maternity wards. Central was Bureaucracy at its finest, and every piece of information had a form, filed in its correct and orderly place.
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 4:24 pm
"I had them already." So many lies. He fancied he was getting quite good at this, spinning tales like Writ. An unconcerned shrug followed her next question, accompanied by an semi-honest, "Can't remember v'hich hospital."
Yes, the hospital was written on his fake birth certificate - but he wasn't about to hand that over to her. Too much risk there. The Carnegies had done a thorough job, but Valeriu was not about to test the boundaries of their inherent counterfeit skills any further than he already had.
Plus, he didn't even recall which hospital he really [i[was born at. As far as birth certificate information went, all Valeriu had been concerned about was birthday and social security numbers.
"I v'ould have to ask my-" he began, then stopped, ears straightening and swiveling alertly at some noise that was, gradually, coming close enough to be identified as the excited trampling of a wayward baby elephant. "Oh, no," he muttered, slinking lower against the wall and tail twitching nervously to cross his ankles. The stomping rocketed up the stairwell. "My, ah, brothers are--"
Valeriu never had the chance to finish before the door nearly flew off its hinges.
"Honey, we're home!" Murphy's voice rang brightly through the apartment's entryway. Valeriu cringed. "Here kitty, kitty, kitty! Who wants treats? We've brought home din-din for our precious kittencakes!"
"Courtesy of Mum," Seamus added, unwinding the scarf from about his neck as Murphy kicked off his boots.
"And Sydni! She's growin' up to be a right lil' chef, she is-"
"Aye, covered in flour head to toe, she was. We snapped you a picture."
"Pretty sure that was sugar, mate. Happier than a clam."
Valeriu's expression could only be likened to that of a man that has had his masculinity thoroughly drawn and quartered.
"Seamus, Murphy, v'e have a guest," he called back, a hint and a plea in his voice. No more petnames.
"Quinn doesn't count, Prince-" Murphy shot back, wandering into the living room, only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of Sally sitting there on the couch, pretty as you please. "Wha-it's a girl! Seamus, Vale's got a girl in our living room!"
"What, what, what! A lass? You sure?" Seamus was quick to follow his brother's outcry, pattering along behind his twin as if this was a strange and new zoo exhibit to behold. "Why, you cad-" His trill broke off quickly enough at the sight of her, becoming a startled choke. "Sally?"
And here Valeriu thought this couldn't get anymore awkward. He was wrong, like usual.
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 8:49 pm
"Your brothers?" Sally asked quickly-- "But I thought you said you were an orphan-- YOU!"
She had a finger of true tsundere fury pointed at Seamus, and that was about as far as the accusation got, because she was honestly so confused by all this that her train of thought derailed and solidly refused to budge. Sally lowered her hand, then scratched her head. "Seamus," she said, pointing to him, and then to Vale. "You guys know each other?
This had just gotten super weird. Why were all her leads connected lately? Sally was one to see conspiracy theories behind every corner, but at this point she was more just confused than anything else. "I was interviewing him," she said dumbly, in response to the apparent outcry over her being there in the first place. "For the Central Inquirer - a guy named Writ sent me, I'm doing a piece on gene mods and childhood immunizations."
She clicked her pen twice, and then asked thoughtfully, "How long have you guys known each other? Vale implied he was an orphan, but you said Mum, and--"
Really, this was just so confusing right now, and what was Seamus doing here, of all places! How did the one construction worker who she'd happened to have kissed turn up in the apartment of her most reluctant interview subject?
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:18 pm
"Adopted," Valeriu clarified, shortly and miserably from where he stood, hunched against the wall. "Adopted brothers."
"Seamus, wasn't this Sally-lass the one you fanci-mrrph!"
Seamus quickly took charge of the situation (for once), laughing boisterously and completely insincerely with his hand clamped tightly over Murphy's mouth.
"This sure is a surprise, ain't it? Here, Murph, sit down-" And shut yer face. He shooed his twin into one of the vacant chairs, taking the other. "You remember the lil' brother I mentioned, yeah? The one we're trying to get to apply to the University, for architecture?" He jerked a thumb over at Valeriu, cheerily. "That's him. And this git's Murphy."
"And she's the lass what sent 'im into a tizzy-" Murphy quipped to Valeriu, who'd been looking more and more puzzled.
"Murphy!"
"Positively swooning, he's been," Murphy stage-whispered aside, a cheeky grin on his face.
"Murphy--!"
"So you said you was interviewing our little Prince, eh? My advice: don't. His quotes will bore your readers to tears. The blighter organizes his socks, for godssakes."
"Murphy," Vale growled.
"Can you see the family resemblance, now, eh?"
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 10:36 pm
"Yes," nodded Sally, smiling slightly. "You all like to talk at the exact same time." She grinned wider at the word that Seamus hadn't been able to get her off his mind, and at this flipped her notebook shut and tucked her pen back into her hair. She turned to Vale.
"Thank you for your time," she said earnestly. "I really think I've got a fair amount for the article, between you and Writ."
She got up from her seat and grabbed Seamus by the hand. "How about we take off?" she suggested, grinning at him. She would puzzle over why fate had brought them all to this strange little apartment later. For now, it was time to make an exit.
"It was nice to meet you all," she said jovially, tugging Seamus towards the door.
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Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 12:49 pm
"Ahaha! Watch out m'lad, this one's a snapper," Murphy chortled, clapping a decidedly agitated Seamus on the back and receiving an elbow to the gut in turn. By the happy sound of his wheezing, it seemed it had been totally worth it.
"You are v'elcome, miss," Vale returned, intent on ignoring the antics of the twins with steadfast denial. "I am sorry I am not able to help you more. And if you see Writ again, please give him my regards." The fanged, strained smile that flitted across his face did not bode well for Writ.
Seamus was more than eager to leave his idiot twin far, far behind, though he knew he'd be coming home to the rapid-fire questions of his family once Murphy had sufficiently spread the gossip.
"Yes, let's," he agreed, grinning back ruefully (or, as Murphy would later crow, absolutely dazzled).
"Don't be a stranger, now! And go easy on 'im-"
"Quickly," Seamus added, and was all too relieved to throw the door shut behind them on Murphy's delighted, devilish jibes. "Jesus, knew I should've strangled him in the womb. Mum even gave me the rope, but no."
He ruffled a hand through his hair, only just realizing that they were still holding hands. It turned the tips of his ears pink, but he wouldn't be the first to let go.
"Sorry 'bout that. Murph gets a lil' - overexcited."
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