March 11th, 1890 - The Jinxed Jackrabbit

Jude was really serious about this Animagus thing, and Kieran, although really serious about it being a terrible fucking idea, had not yet found a good argument against it. So. He had decided to talk to some whiskey about it, because he was bitter and he was annoyed and now that Jude had decided things were moving about it.

He never saw Jude in The Jinxed Jackrabbit, so he was here tonight. Other people, sure - he had seen some of his friends from the Augurey here before, but it was fine if he ran into them tonight. Kieran wasn't astonishingly drunk yet, but he was drunk. This was the sort of night where he wanted to be pinned against a wall, or to throw a punch, but he had for now settled for sipping the whiskey.

The Jackrabbit was quiet on a Wednesday, but not dead. A low buzz of noise permeated the place and Kieran was sketching the bottles behind the bar, tracing their outlines in charcoal. His hair was messed up because he kept running his hands through it; his sleeves were rolled up.

He was relatively absorbed in what he was sketching, so he did not notice a particular addition to the bar until he was almost too close for comfort.

"Oh," Kieran said, as soon as he recognized the vampire. Oh because he did not know what to call Ishmael when they were in public; oh because Ishmael knew he was a werewolf; oh because he was probably a little too drunk for this.

---

He’d come to the Jackrabbit for some information rather than drink, tonight, having just fed last night. He’d had some useful chat with the person he’d come to see, and then with another person who had heard a few things about some of the artifacts still floating around... and then, as that fellow got up to go, Ishmael scanned the place and caught sight of someone else he knew.

As they said, the night was still young. So Ishmael stole up to him, interested to see what Kieran was so absorbed in. He snuck a glance at the parchment, but it turned out not to be an article but a sketch of the bar. Ah, artists. (What was he doing here alone, wallowing?)

Oh, was all Kieran had to say. “Evening, wolf boy,” Ishmael said slyly in Kieran’s ear, moving back a pace to prop himself beside him and grinning in a much less discreet greeting. “How’re things?”

---

A shiver went down his spine. Kieran had never been afraid of Ishmael before, but now - now, all the rules of engagement had changed. The balance of power had always been in Ishmael's favor, but the scale was never as tilted as it was now.

"Oh, you know," Kieran said. He tapped his fingertip against his glass. "Same as usual."

He took a sip. "And yourself?"

He could just, you know, make small talk with a vampire. Surely this could be -- fine.

---

Ishmael leaned in a little further to eye the sketch again. “Really?” He said with a raised eyebrow, a little disappointed by Kieran’s lack of enthusiasm both in answer, and in seeing him. “This still your usual, then?” Ishmael countered, in a tone that suggested he didn’t think much of it. “Drinking alone and sketching bottles?”

“I’m well,” he added, leaning back on his elbow now and narrowing his eyes, “but you don’t seem glad to see me.” (In truth, he knew full well why - he’d called him wolf boy already - but even Ishmael couldn’t resist playing with his food sometimes. Well, not-food. Couldn’t drink from Abernathy anymore.) “I thought we were old friends.”

---

"I never said I planned on changing," Kieran said easily. He would have been shocked if Ishmael was actually surprised to see Kieran killing himself slowly, so there were no real stakes to this, or ill-will in his tone. There was probably a point to this conversation, sooner or later - he had never talked to Ishmael and not had the vampire want something. The only thing was that this time he had no fucking idea what the desire was.

"We can still be old friends," Kieran said. He took a sip of his whiskey. "But - well, you know." He didn't want to say it out loud. He didn't even want to allude to it out loud. The scales were fully out of balance and anything Kieran said could jostle them. While Ishmael always could have ruined his life - this time, it was different, because Kieran could not see the outcome.

---

“Fair enough,” Ishmael said, pulling a face to suggest he didn’t really care what Kieran did with himself. And he didn’t.

But he did think of Kieran in a fond enough way, so Ishmael was a little disconcerted - and a little peeved, really - to find that Kieran seemed anything but keen to talk, to hang out... He was acting wary, now, in a way he hadn’t used to.

And Ishmael made it his business to know things about people, to have things to hold over their heads if need be, but he hadn’t meant to find out that Kieran liked to go running amok on the full moon, and he hadn’t meant the poor bloke to live in fear of him showing up again. Kieran didn’t understand that he was such a small fish, in the scheme of things. It almost made him want to sigh.

“Oh, come on,” Ishmael scoffed, curling his hand around Kieran’s nearest wrist and pressing his fingers down to feel his pulse. “Relax. I’m not here to cause a scene.” He rolled his eyes as though the very thought was ludicrous. “I was only going to ask if you were reporting on anything - new, lately.” He was interested in two things: cursed artifacts, and any new angles on the vampire question that could cause trouble, given Galina’s very recent release. Merlin knew what on earth Kieran thought he was here for.

---

Some of the tension eased its way out of Kieran's posture. Whether this was because of Ishmael's words or because of the vampire's still-familiar touch to his wrist, he wasn't sure - but the tension leaked out. With his other arm, he picked up his glass and took another sip of whiskey.

He had talked to Ishmael in bars countless times before. And maybe it would end differently this time, certainly without blood involved, but he ought to at least sort of trust Ishmael.

"Everything's Pictish," Kieran admitted easily. He glanced sidelong at the vampire. "And I'm more or less assigned to the creatures department. So." He knew most of what Morwenna Skeeter was up to, although of course he could not tell Ishmael her real secret. He would never sell another werewolf out like that.

---

He wasn’t sure whether his touch of Kieran’s wrist had slowed or briefly sped up the werewolf’s heart rate, but at last Kieran did look a little less green about sitting here with him. “Mmhm,” Ishmael said knowingly about the Pictish issue - he’d done a little research of his own, knew a couple of the people dealing them - but the smirk on his face had more to do with Kieran looking at him than anything they were discussing.

“And has there been much muttering there -” (or elsewhere in the Ministry, it didn’t matter) “- since Galina got freed?” Whatever her thoughts on humans (and she did like to keep them at more of a distance than Ishmael did, he knew), Galina had been innocent all along, so it was about damn time. Might have rubbed off just as badly on her lawyer as it had her, but Ishmael was intrigued to know if this meant there was to be a resurgence of ill-will towards their kind, everyone knowing a not-in-this-instance-murderer was free again. Or, you know, a sudden bout of warmth towards vampires. Either or. (Also, he felt slightly personally guilty on the matter, if only because half of the murders in Hogsmeade in the last few years had been down to Azazel, who was also his fault.)

---

"Well," Kieran said. He tilted his head at the vampire, a motion that was more instinctual than anything else - back when things had been different, Kieran used to expose his jugular just to get Ishmael's attention. Now, it was force of habit.

He tapped his finger against his glass. "They do want to know who actually did it." Just because it hadn't been Galina didn't mean it hadn't been a vampire, as Ishmael knew well. Of course, Kieran was fairly confident the murders weren't Ishmael himself - that sort of mess wasn't his style.

---

“Of course they do,” Ishmael said with a roll of his eyes, less than pleased although there was nothing surprising in it. All it was was continued inconvenience, continued risk: wizards poking about until they dug up something - or something unrelated and potentially worse; any bodies were bad news, after all - or found enough reason to crucify a scapegoat. One sloppy murder, and they’d keep looking for months and years and, although time meant little to the residents of the caverns, everyone sensible knew they were better off moving on.

“Though of course I know nothing about it,” Ishmael said, not wanting to bog things down with moroseness, and letting his tone buoy him back to his usual contrivances. It was not, strictly speaking, true: he knew Galina knew more than she had probably even let on to the authorities - her protective side was fiercer than she let on, too - and that Azazel knew less than she usually did about murders a little too close to home. And Kieran knew how he hunted too well to suspect him, really. At any rate - and now he grinned, looking at the curve of Kieran’s neck with undisguised longing although he knew the uselessness of that now - “It’s been far too long since I last slipped up.”

---

"Sure," Kieran said, because he did believe Ishmael - Ishmael was too old and too clever to be tied to something this messy. This was, if anything, the move of a younger vampire. "I understand it better now," he admitted, a little wryness in his tone. "Slipping up, I mean. Or the threat of it - I've never..."

It was easier to lie about Topaz Urquart; Ishmael shouldn't know.

---

He understood it better now, he said. Yeah... he would, wouldn’t he? Ishmael wouldn’t go so far to say that they felt on an even footing now, but - there was some difference in it, now that he wasn’t the only scary monster at the bar.

Though poor dear Kieran didn’t have much to actually show for it, didn’t look any more dangerous than he had years ago. He looked thin and tired and - well, Ishmael shouldn’t even be looking. “Oh, sure,” he drawled, as if he believed Kieran without the merest shadow of a doubt. He nudged Kieran’s arm with his own. “Perfectly puppy-trained from the start, I bet.”

But he was only prodding at the thought for something to do; for all he knew it was probably true. But they weren’t like vampires, were they, werewolves? It was never about gaining conscious control. Nothing they could do for themselves. It was just about living with it.

He grinned, regardless. “But we’ve always understood each other pretty well, haven’t we?” He wondered, though, if Kieran had understood just how easy it was to slip up that much earlier, whether he would have dared put his neck out at all.

---

"I suppose that we have," Kieran hummed. What he really wanted from Ishmael - although he would have taken it from almost anyone, at the moment - was to be touched, to feel the solid pressure of another person that would bring him back down to earth. But how did he ask for that now, when he could not trade his blood for it?

---

However uneasy Kieran had seemed at first to see him, Ishmael couldn’t pretend he wasn’t enjoying himself, even if there was little more worth extracting from him now. Well, no matter. Besides, what was it they said about all work and no play?

“You want another drink?” Ishmael inquired, perfectly happy to shell out for a simple whiskey (for Kieran; they didn’t sell anything at this bar that he wanted) if Kieran had the thirst for it. In case wages were still a struggle for him; just to be nice, maybe, and no strings to it. Just for old times’ sake.

---

Kieran perked up; Ishmael knew him too well for him to pretend that free whiskey didn't catch his attention. "Of course," he said, with a crooked grin. What was it people said - the more things changed, the more they stayed the same?

---

“Great,” Ishmael said, burying the restless part of him sitting here without being able to drink blood or drag him somewhere private to sate a different kind of craving. That had been before he’d had Monty. He gestured for another drink for Kieran and leaned back on his stool, avoiding looking at the arch of anyone’s neck in the bar.

See? He was proving it, erasing all doubt. They were old friends, and there didn’t even have to be strings attached.

---