#I have a normal amount of feelings about punchy people breaking each other's ribs dammit

[wolves-in-the-world]

Miscellaneous vampire au thoughts, with the standard ‘Moreau being an abusive jackass’ content warning:

- While Eliot was still working for Moreau, he got captured by someone who fully intended to turn him into a vampire and use him against his employer. It was a bad plan - no supernatural bond could stop Eliot Spencer from killing you if he set his mind to it - but Eliot was terrified. If he was turned, on some basic level he would no longer be so useful to Moreau.

He broke free before it happened, and he killed the people responsible, and worked even more on becoming better and sharper and stronger so Moreau would never think of discarding him.

- Chapman is a vampire - older than Quinn, maybe seventy or so. He's lower down on the ladder than Eliot and pissed about it, but at least he can pretend it's because Eliot's offering the boss something else. He calls Eliot dog, calls him Moreau's pet and always slightly means it, and tries not to keep resenting when he finally takes the job opening.

- Vampires always recognise their own kind. "Ms Devereaux," he greets her, acknowledgement and assurance in one. "Mr Quinn," she replies. They don't address it beyond that for years.

In many ways it's barely a part of her life anymore. Live as long as Sophie has, shed as many old names and faces, and it becomes easy as anything to slip into a new shell and make it your own. This one she's worked to make her home. This one she's settling in, around people who know - at least a little - what she is.

What she does to stay alive is another matter. The makeup she orders specially and the hats and gloves she finds excuses for when her skin needs to recover. The tricks she uses on marks, though not audiences - she wants too much to be recognised for herself there, a weakness she thought she’d lost centuries ago - are put down to skill and charisma, and that's true enough. She doesn't really lie to her team. She doesn't kill. And it never once seems to bother them that they don't know what kinds of lives she's left behind.

(She finds Quinn so strange to watch - so young and so open. It makes her feel ancient at first. It makes her feel like she might as well be that young herself.)

- Vampires don't, in fact, live forever, and they age at something closer to normal when they feed too infrequently or rely on blood packs for too long. Quinn relies on them sometimes for work.

Moreau, stuck in his cell, won’t outlive any standard human by long.

- At some point, just like wondering why Nate didn't ask Sophie for money when his son was dying, you have to wonder if he ever considered finding a vampire to help him. Thing is, Nate had some sort of faith right until the end. Oh, he still believes in God and Hell afterwards, but he loses some fundamental faith in the world's goodness, and it's a lot easier to betray your principles when you know nothing else is going to save you. On some level, though he'll work with vampires and doesn't think any less of Sophie once she strategically shows him enough for him to piece it together, he does think they're... something. Monsters, or damned, or just not quite people anymore. He isn’t even sure.

It took his son dying for him to realise he'd rather have his son be a monster than dead. Even years later, he can't quite get to grips with the selfishness of that.

- I haven't actually decided on how Quinn was turned, or how turning humans into vampires would work. He's definitely young, and definitely didn't have a traditional vampire ‘upbringing’.

Let's go the accidental route for now: he bit a vampire as a distraction during a very close fight, got hit in the head so hard he shouldn't have survived it, and woke up on the floor three hours later thinking huh. He tidied up, sent his best excuses to his employer, and took two months to get to grips with his new situation. Then he calmly went back to work. A year later Eliot found him in a warehouse in Kyiv to offer him a job.

- Vampire bites don't normally scar. The ones Quinn makes on jobs (these days, at least, it took a little practice) close up so quickly they're sometimes only a tender spot by the time the person wakes; generally, people are too embarrassed to report it as anything but ‘knocked out on patrol.’

They don't normally scar, but they can if they're too deep, too soon after each other, or if the vampire takes something to affect their venom. It isn't unusual for hitters to have messy bite scars obtained during fights or captivity, just like messy scars from anything else. Eliot flies under the radar. Not many people know what his was meant to mean.

Once Moreau is locked away, once the others float the idea, he briefly considers getting it removed. In truth, though, it's not the only scar that reminds him of those days. Not the only scar that reminds him what he did or who he belonged to. Some part of him doesn't want that excised - too like pretending none of it happened. He doesn’t get to do that.

Quinn bites him wherever Eliot asks him to, but he won't leave any scars. That's not something either of them wants. Eliot keeps the results of his x-rays to himself: the rib that healed fine, really, just a little misaligned. From the first time they met.

He’s felt the slight notch on Quinn’s rib, too.

#*gestures helplessly* #I have a normal amount of feelings about punchy people breaking each other's ribs dammit #leverage angst #vampire quinn au #it's the VIBES of the eliot/moreau fuckery. the class difference and the power differential and the loyalty. #it's so awful so quickly and I can kind of only focus on aftermath #YOU KNOW I think parker might be so chill around vampires because she's worked with some before. maybe even archie. #who is also a well-mannered monster thank you. he'll teach a homeless kid to be a thief but he won't be any worse than that. #(I am secretly Okay with archie but I recognise my views in that area are not the most well-adjusted. anyway. don't worry about him.) #I'd like to have more vampire au fic in me but like all my writing is a happy accident these days #(because that is the Writing That Happens and thus preferable to the writing that doesn't) #so no plans and no promises though it would be nice