step back

On tip toes, even with the help of the platform soles of her boots, Phoebe found she had to strain to lean across the bar. She winked at her brother, reaching out to pat his cheek in gratitude. Telling him thanks for the drinks would’ve been impossible with the thrash and bang of the music if his ears weren’t as good as her own. Senses straining he would’ve caught the ‘thanks’ that slipped from her lips as he set the two glasses she’d asked for down on the bar. Later she’d be back, abandoning Bev and the others again to linger at the end of the bar until the clock ran down in the early hours and she could drag her big brother out of here like he wasn’t the elder of the two of them – certainly not the most sensible.

Phoebe turned away, the drinks balanced on in each hand. She had to duck immediately as a giant of a man took her place, a thick arm swinging close enough over her head that he blotted out the strobing lights for a moment. Jesus. Letting out a pant of breath, she turned back, staring at him before she shot Lawrence an open mouthed look around the guy’s thick bicep. They didn’t make men like that often, the sort that seemed carved from stone, beasts of another age. Perhaps, given Mystic Falls’ ability to draw in the unusual he was a part of a bygone era. A dinosaur in the suparnatural sense, out of his own time but at home enough in this one to be ordering a White Russian as she stepped away.

Laughter bubbled in her throat as she shook her head and began the inevitable duck and weave back across the floor to where the others had congregated in a little knot around the table they’d managed to commandeer. It had become their place on the nights Lawrence was working, arguments over being tired of the place silenced with a look and that hovering threat that she would turn the polite request into something more if she had to. 80 years of not knowing if her brother had lived beyond the night their parents had shuffled him off out of the Valley with a little money and a ring to allow him out in the daylight, 80 years of missing him like an amputated limb had come to an end right here and Phoebe wasn’t about to let that chance to be around him again be stifled by a bunch of friends who would just get drunk and party anyway. It was all most here came to do anyway.

She sipped from one of the glasses, hips beginning to sway to the low beat of the music being hammered out by the band on the stage as she worked her way through the crowd. Drink, dance, desire. The Club plied people with all three. Some a little much.

Brown eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement as she saw one of her classmates, a blonde who held her vodka about as well as a sieve wheedle her way up to him. He’d been there when she’d gotten up to get the drinks, a tall, dark shadowy looming in the corner just a couple of yards from their table. Sipping at his drink at a snail’s pace, the glass empty now, held in those thick fingers as Joy bellied up to him. Hands attempting to wrap around an arm as thick as the guy’s at the bar had been. Not even close. Phoebe let out a low whistle, going to angle back to the table, leaving the poor sap to his fate.

Men like him didn’t last long in a place like this, too polite for the cut throat world of the club, too polite to spin the blonde around and push her back into the throng of writhing bodies on the dance floor. Far too polite. Sympathy, a little unexpected, rolled through her. Joy would latch on like a leech if he wasn’t careful, ignoring the no and only hearing what she wanted to. Phoebe bit her lip and turned back, glasses still clutched in her hands as she swept in, a White Knightess ready to protect his virtue.

She inched close, slipping one of the glasses she held into his empty hand. In a quick move she snagged the empty from him, shoved it at Joy with the sort of saccharine smile on her lips that left her looking at the two of them like something with a third head had just appeared. ”There you are sweetheart. I dreaded to think where you’d wandered off to. Looks like you made a friend while I was gone. Joy … why don’t you take this back to the bar, see if my brother will pour you another.” The blonde’s hands closed around the glass, confusion still swimming in unfocused eyes.

Phoebe sighed, rolling her eyes slightly as she nudged Joy around, bouncing her back into the fray with a bump of her hip. The smile was back as she turned back. Hazel eyes narrowed shrewdly up at that handsome face, its lines highlighted by the thick scruff of beard and the hair that was probably as long as her own pulled back. All the better to show off those cheekbones. She lifted her chin towards the glass she’d handed him. ”You looked like you could do with that.” Behind her she heard uncertain footsteps again, a dubious sound. Phoebe’s eyes slipped shut, a silent prayer for hormone driver idiots fluttering through her mind. She looped an arm around Raik’s neck, nodded for him to get his free hand on her as she rose on her toes, her voice low enough Joy wouldn’t hear her. ”She’s got a brick thick skull. She won’t get it if you don’t. Will you Joy?” Her voice rose, her hair tumbling as she glanced over her shoulder. The other girl was standing there, her lips pursed with something approaching envy erasing that confusion.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ * Word Count: 1010

Now, she’d never have called herself entirely self-centred, but Phoebe had never found that the title of ‘rescuer’ had fit her too well. She had saved lives, starting with her own when teenaged misadventure had left her floundering in water cold enough to freeze the air in her lungs, rapidly working her way up to making sure the vampires hadn’t drained Dotty out in the woods. It was circumstances, not some noble sense of duty that would’ve left her the Mother Teresa of Elk Valley. Altruistic to an extend but uncomfortable enough with the mantle of it to typically have her shying away, shrugging at the metaphorical tent of a brown polyester shirt that had been the first symbol of her former office she’d slipped in. Scowling in the mirror, reluctant to even pick up the little gold star that would top it off. It wasn’t her. Not that any of them had cared. They’d nudged her into it anyway and maybe she’d grown used to the awkward fit of it.

Used to it enough that there hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation in rescuing the giant from the drunken little shrew. Joy wasn’t bad in class but get her out, get a couple of vodkas in her and she believed she was anybody’s, pushing the idea until, like now, they were obviously prepared to peel her away, one finger at a time if necessary. This, of course, was when that instinct struck, without a roll of her eyes or that sense of expectation to have to do it.

Phoebe slipped the slip into his hand out of the goodness of her heart. Her eyes rolled up, well up, to meet his, lips curving as he smiled at her. Tall, dark, and incredibly polite. The sort to be eaten alive by women like Joy. He hadn’t batted an eyelid at her sweetheart though, perhaps glad enough for the help in detaching the limpet that he wasn’t about to cough and splutter and deny knowing her. Better the devil who wasn’t drunk enough to be yakking all over his boots at the end of the night. Chivalry had a tendency to get messy at times when it came to the drunk and disorderly. ”Anytime,” she promised sweetly, curling in towards him as an arm seemed to come up with some reluctance in response to her encouragement. A meaty prop to steady her as she rose on her toes and shot Joy a look over her shoulder. She wasn’t drunk enough for her balance to leave her swaying like a tree about to be felled but he didn’t need to know that.

Eyes a couple of shades lighter than his studied his face as she looked back and saw his gaze sliding off the retreating limpet and into the crowd. Still looking for someone … shame. Phoebe made a light sound in her throat, curling the arm around his neck a little tighter as she sipped from her own glass. A faint warmth from the alcohol in it but no longer that illicit little buzz she’d always gotten when she’d snuck into her parents liquor cabinet, too young and naïve to realise that those little acts of rebellion were going to pale in comparison to everything else. ”Girlfriend?” she queried, her question almost lost under the loud rumble of his voice as he continued to explain. Brothers, why did it always have to be brothers.

Head dipping slightly, she laughed. Phoebe tilted her head back in the direction of the bar. ”I suppose I could say the same, although mine’s on shift. I suppose having one serving you drinks all night isn’t half as worrying about losing one in all of that. I could have Lawrence keep an eye out for him if you want?” Or at least make sure that a back-up rescue was available if Joy tracked him down. If he looked anything like this one she’d be on him the moment she focused enough to get a look.

As he eased in, his voice close enough to her ear for her to catch the unusual name, Phoebe splayed her hand between his shoulder blades, an anchor for her far smaller form as she tipped her head up to introduce herself, her name not carrying half as well as her own. ”Phoebe,” she called out, grinning a little as her lips skimmed the beard that darkened his jaw. ”Do you always watch over your brother, Raik? Or…” Her voice drifted to a croon as the music abated for a moment, seeming to put a brief pall over the chaos on the dance floor. ”… can he be trusted to take care of himself usually?” She understood that urge to protect where family came in at least. For too long she’d believed Lawrence was dead and had then spent decades yearning to be hold onto him again. The only family she had left … and she’d walloped him for it when she’d found him here too. Affectionately of course.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ * Word Count: 837

Most lived with their heads buried in the sand, avoiding a painful truth she’d lived out when she wasn’t even out of her teens. Those closest to you died. It didn’t matter if it was your ninety year old grandmother who was sour enough that it felt like Death himself couldn’t bear to come and get her or your nineteen year old brother who hadn’t even been able to break out from under your parents’ expectations, they could be cut down at any time. Hushed funerals with only a handful of mourners, grand parades through cities gathering up those who didn’t even know you but wanted to join in the celebration of your life anyway, or, Phoebe had found herself thinking a hundred mournful times, worse, no notice taken of your passing at all. A shallow grave in woodland, people left behind with no clue of where you were.

So many didn’t see it coming and so wasted their time. They didn’t cherish every one of those moments they had. Choosing to lose them to bitterness or regret instead until suddenly it was all gone. She could’ve soured the mood now she supposed, her eyes narrowing as she studied that darkly handsome face. There’d been no response to her query but human ears were as deaf as their eyes were blind and she wasn’t about to lose her damsel in distress to some real distress when her maudlin words about brothers not turning up sent him careening into the crowd. Phoebe’s lips curled once more, the start of a Cheshire Cat grin. ”Perhaps with of a walk of very little shame in the morning?” she suggested with the quick of a brow. Or worse. His nerves gave him away there, that rapid flutter of his system that she understood all too well.

Three quarters of a century after she thought she’d lost Lawrence and that first reunion had bought her own worries flooding back. She’d lost her brother once, who was to say it wouldn’t happen again – but she wasn’t going to wring her hands over it and lose that time with him. A brother for a brother, she would make sure that Lawrence did look out for Raik’s brother. A watchful eye in a place that needed it.

Up on her toes, Phoebe had introduced herself, tilting her head as she felt his hand finally rest against her back. Oh and look, that was a smile despite the concern. ”You too,” she murmured, easing that bit closer to absentmindedly skim her lips just above that scruffy line of beard as he smiled. ”It’s not just the younger ones you have to watch out for.” Phoebe hummed lightly, half pirouetting on her toes to look back for Lawrence as she took a sip. No sign but she tossed her hair back from her face. ”It seems as though your brother and mine have a little something in common. Lawrence was never what you’d call a party animal but … he’s magnet for trouble and it’s a sister’s prerogative to drag him out of it. A big brother’s too, I suppose?” God, she wasn’t going to tell Lawrence that. He’d always given her the space to stretch her wings but things were very different now to how they’d been before the vampires had found their coven.

Licking a trace of liquor from her upper lip, Phoebe craned back against him. The hand curled around her glass pressed against his left shoulder, another point to steady her as she brought her face close to his and laughed. ”Are you a sucker for punishment or is it all work and no play makes Raik a protective boy? You need some space too, even if being a big brother sound like a full time job. Perhaps you should cut him free for the night?” A dangerous prospect in a place like this perhaps but the odds were better than some spots in the town. At least if he was in here his brother wasn’t out in the woods or walking the streets in the dark, a target on what she imagined was an equally brawny back, just daring someone to take a nibble.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ * Word Count: 699

Men and women could’ve become a blur of faces since she’d arrived in Mystic Falls. College campuses were a thousand times worse than the village in that way. Even in dorms it was an ever revolving door of bed hopping. The RAs made some attempt at upholding the rules but an entire college of teenagers – and some that had been in that teenaged state for a century or five – made fighting hormones a useless prospect. They were going to party when they wanted to, sowing their wild oats thick. Now, she’d indulged occasionally, without an ounce of shame, but Phoebe had found herself with other priorities – the biggest of which was handling things behind the bar tonight. Decades of being a one woman, or man, woman had ingrained itself. The minute there were any ties she drew the line. It was what was fair after all.

There were no ties tonight. No warm body – or otherwise – waiting for her back in her room. Watching the clock tick by until she slipped in, heels dangling from her hand. It had left her free to rescue one who it seemed would’ve been waiting for his own brother. The concern of a sibling keeping him up, eyes on the door until the slap of it signalled the home coming. And that strut. Phoebe snorted at the image of it, already fitting together an impression of this guy’s brother from his description. ”I’m with your brother there,” she promised, a bob of her head wrapping her own behaviour in the description. Phoebe’s gaze sharpened, giving the bearded man a quick study. ”How about you? Pride or an embarrassed crawl in after being out half the night.” Hopefully not in the octopus like arms of his near miss here.

It sounded like Raik needed to sprout some of those arms himself. Practice or not, dragging people out of trouble, especially the self-induced kind, was never easy. Phoebe studied the bar for a moment, where her brother would’ve been finding his own again, but she couldn’t see that lanky figure working alongside the bulkier form of his Viking-a-like coworker. She hummed lightly, lips pursing with amusement as she looked back, up at the equally bearded form of her rescuee. ”And you’d watch his back the entire time,” she said, her tone kind rather than condemning. ”I think…” Her hazel eyes narrowed, that considering noise buzzing in her throat again, ”…my brother would say the same about me, but this is most an excuse.” To get to spend time with Lawrence. Decades apart had left her hungry for that time together. If there was one thing she’d been taught by all of this it was not to look the gift horse of the family you loved in the mouth.

He could’ve been just another pretty face in the crowd. Aloof or shy, trying to pry himself free of grabby hands, or, what would’ve been worse in a way, a pretty face who thought itself above everybody else. No girl, or guy, stunning or compelling enough to grab his intention. There was a heart beneath that solid chest though, one Phoebe could hear over the music with no strain at all. A good one from the impression he was giving … that was far rarer than pretty eyes or a handsome face.

And if his ward was gone?

Phoebe smiled sharply, her chin dropping an inch in an expression that should’ve been a warning. If his ward was gone and all he was doing was killing time here til he could follow his brother out, if he saw him, then Raik here was at a loose end. ”Uh huh,” she drawled lightly. Her chin lifted again and that hand with the glass in rose, gesturing lightly back towards the dance floor. ”Perhaps we should. Find our own trouble while they’re finding theirs, hmm?”

The drink was brought back to her lips, her gulp as large as his before she draped her arm around his neck and started to shift her weight back. An anchor leading in the direction of the dance floor. ”Tell me, Raik, do you dance as well as you drink? We should work up a thirst, burn some of that responsibility right out of us.” And perhaps sell that story she’d started to write the minute she’d come to his rescue. That glass pressed to the back of his neck, Phoebe drew his head down, meeting his dark eyes before she gave that flash of a wicked smile as pressed her lips to his to chase that taste of alcohol and irresponsibility.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ * Word Count: 767