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He had always been the bad boy. Kicked out of school after school, getting into fight after fight. As he got older, it only seemed to get worse. Then the day came that we was attacked by a mysterious being. He didn't see her, didn't have a chance. Now strange things are happening to him. He keeps having visions of hunting. He has a terrible thirst that nothing seems to quench. He met her. A girl he can't seem to shake. He keeps trying to convince her that he is no good, a monster. But she loves him.
Will he kill her once the beast inside of him gets stronger? Can she make him believe that she loves him for him? Will he fall in love with her?

.S.k.e.l.e.t.o.n.&.&.P.r.o.f.i.l.e.s.

[kick]

He told himself for the seventh time that it was time to leave the coffee shop. He’d memorized the times that the library opened and closed specifically so that he could avoid her, and it was getting dangerously close to the time that the old building down the way would spill its last few patrons and its part-time librarian out into the streets.

It was, Darren repeated again in his head, time to go.

But the pressure inside his head wouldn’t let up, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could rise when what felt like an anvil was pressing him down. Shoving a hand roughly through his messy dark hair and barely noticing how his fingers got caught in it, he gave himself a single, simple instruction.

Stand up.

It took nearly five minutes for his legs to obey him, just another way his entire body seemed to be betraying him in pieces, but eventually the joints locked and slowly carried him to his feet. Good.

He walked slowly, almost robotically, towards the front door, intent on getting out of the building and safely away from anywhere where the little librarian girl might see him. Where that might be, he didn’t know; his apartment was too far to get to in his current state, but he was as comfortable in alleyways as behind the creaking doors and flimsy locks of his living place.

After all, his mind whispered, anyone who broke in would find that there was nothing there to take…and that the real danger was inside the apartment.

Having made it out to the sidewalk, he took a moment to lean against one of the light-posts and try to focus himself. He hadn’t slept well; dreams of blood and death and murder kept crowding into his thoughts, even now. What kind of man was he, he asked himself, that he could picture these things in such vivid detail, and that they made him feel better? Even when he’d been a violent kid with a hair-trigger temper, dreaming of death had never made him happier or calmed him down. This was not like him, not like he’d ever been.

He chuckled aloud, mirthlessly. And the librarian thought he wasn’t serious when he told her he was a monster.

Turning away as his body remembered how to obey his mind, he began to walk away, heading for his apartment at possibly a slightly quicker pace than was really necessary. He’d wasted too much time there; he had to get out of here now.

He’d almost thought that maybe he’d escaped her, at least this time, and he was just about to let out a breath of relief when—

“Hey Darren!”

Oh, hell. Oh, damn it.

“Hey! Wait up!”

The woman just would. Not. Listen. He’d told her, repeatedly, that she needed to stay away from him, that he was not safe to be around, and she thought he was exaggerating? Thought he was joking? He didn’t joke about things like that—as she would know if she actually knew anything about him. This was the problem with those silly romance novels that so many girls he’d known liked—they thought that ‘stay away from me’ was code for ‘soulmate.’

If he had been the person he’d been once upon a time, he would only be worrying now about breaking her heart. Honestly, he wouldn’t have even worried about that; he’d have taken what he felt like getting from the girl and then he would have been on his way. But now…things were different now. She needed to stay away from him, people needed to stay away from him, and as foolish as he felt in making decisions for someone else that, under other circumstances, wouldn’t be his business, he knew in this case he was right.

So he didn’t pause, didn’t slow down, gave no indication that he’d heard her. (Unfortunately, that meant he couldn’t speed up, either.) Was ignoring her childish? Certainly. Was it pathetic? Probably. Was it necessary? Definitely.

He didn’t look back, because if he saw her trying to catch up with him, guilt if nothing else would make him slow down. Once again, he found himself going over speeches in his mind, trying to figure out what combination of words would do best to make her understand that it wasn’t about her, that it wasn’t that she wasn’t a nice woman, but he did not want to be around her. Period.

(He’d save the “I don’t want to be around anyone” for another time or place.)

He had longer legs and a longer stride than she did—hopefully she’d fail to catch up, even if she didn’t get the message.

((8D I’m glad. Feel free, if you want to.))

“Fine! But I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Not if he had anything to say about it, she wouldn’t. Next time he ended up near the library (and how did that keep happening?) he was going to make sure he didn’t get caught.

He’d mostly stopped going to the library itself shortly after he’d noticed how Faw—the librarian’s behaviour towards him was changing, and had begun avoiding it desperately ever since she’d confessed her feelings. It was a shame, because he liked the quiet and cool of the library, how there were never voices raised above muffled whispers; the quiet dimness suited his distant temperament and the strange sensitivity-change that his hearing and sight seemed to be going through. But he couldn’t afford to go where he was almost guaranteed to meet her, and it wasn’t as though he knew her schedule.

Darren didn’t allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief until he stopped hearing footsteps and was sure that she’d stopped following him. Since his hearing had gotten so much better as of late, that took quite a while; the same two blocks that it took to get him to his run-down apartment building, in fact. As he walked up to the building door, he heard a quiet miaow and turned to look.

An ugly, battle-scarred old tabby cat was sitting by the garbage can, studying him with mismatched eyes. Darren made a sound almost like a disbelieving laugh—ever since he’d gotten…sick, animals had been avoiding him like he carried the plague, and now here was this ugly skinny thing looking at him like he was going to personally deliver it dinner. “Get out of here, kitty,” he told it. “One of your friends has been ripping apart the trash bags, and the landlord’s sworn to put out cat traps.”

The cat blinked its mismatched eyes at him and trundled up the sidewalk towards him, rubbing its head against his leg. “Quit that. You probably have fleas.”

But he liked animals, and it had been months since one had last approached him. Crouching, he scratched behind one of its ears. It meowed again, almost pleadingly, and he sighed, knowing that the cat knew a sucker when it saw one. “Fine. Just for tonight, though—after that I’m taking you to a shelter. Come on.”

This was a stupid plan. So stupid. He’d have to go to the convenience store down the street to see if they had any cat food—he was pretty sure the one beside that Thai restaurant had pet food, but…well, hell, he was just buying enough for the night.

He picked up the cat and carefully hid it under his jacket—technically the apartment allowed pets, but he didn’t think a skinny, probably diseased alley cat counted—before unlocking the building door and heading inside.

((Oh, I think I can prevent that. And when tonight runs out of drama, we can always timeskip.))

He’d barely had time to toss his jacket on the floor before the skinny cat was rubbing against his pant leg again, meowing insistently. “All right, all right. Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” He gave the cat another brief pat—he didn’t know what it was looking for, aside of course from food, but he was about to go get that. “Don’t make a mess in here. I’ll be right back.”

Closing his door as quietly as he was able, he went down the stairs, shaking his head at his own folly in taking the cat inside. He didn’t want to be around anything living, and that included skinny alley cats with mismatched eyes and insistent meows. (It also included pretty librarians with multicoloured hair and an unfortunate level of honesty. At least he told himself these things.)

Shoving his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, he walked down the stairwell with the same unhurried grace as usual; no one who looked at him would know that he was even more on edge than he had been when he’d gotten up that morning.

He shouldn’t have brought the cat inside. He shouldn’t keep it overnight. He’d never done anyone any damage in the night, because no one had ever been there, and now…

Shoving his hand into his pocket and grasping the keys so tightly he almost cut his hand on them, he walked briskly past the restaurant—and nearly into someone. (With very familiar multicoloured hair.) Starting backwards, he muttered hastily, “Sorry,” before ducking into the convenience store with more speed than dignity.

Even though he went straight to the back of the store to see about cat food, he couldn’t shake the thought that he shouldn’t even keep the animal with him overnight. It was just a night. It was just a damn cat. But…

Glancing over his shoulder, he wondered if the librarian was at all fond of cats.