Cat's in the cradle (Melia and Taliesin)

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Matt laughed a bit at that. And once he laughed, it set off a peal of more giggling. Once he'd finished that he glanced over at Tessa. "I meant... just regular old stargazing... with actual stars. But I'm glad you think I'll be successful. Appreciate that."

He took another toke of his joint and continued staring at the lights. "D'you think we're the only ones out there?" he pondered. "I don't think we are. I don't think it makes any sense. I believe in aliens. I think there is a probability that they know about us, maybe they even live among us and are more advanced. Maybe they work on entirely different communication systems. We know about radio waves and all that sort of stuff... but what if they just figured something else out entirely? What if they speak through their minds? What if they evolved that way? Y'know and sometimes we've picked up some weird radio waves that we can't explain... but maybe it's just us picking up some explosion that happened light years away billions and billions of years ago and the sound waves are only just getting to us now... or it could be aliens."
 
Tessa wasn't quite sure what was so funny but something obviously was so she couldn't help but laugh along. She was a bit embarrassed once he explained himself but it had been totally worth it for what seemed like a 5 minute fit of laughter. Maybe longer. "Aliens." She blinked owlishly at him as she mentally sorted through what he said. Her mind absently wondered if that's what demons and such were, but she couldn't imagine why they would ever want to come here. Of course she had no better explanation either aside from 'magic is real and took on various shapes'. "That's pretty cool." She giggled and squirmed around so she was facing the ceiling rather than Matt now. She kept on running into the problem of wanting to mention Kristie but not wanting to say anything about the other two because their budding relationship seemed to bother Matt a bit.

It was about that train of thought when she had a realization. "Ooooh...." She said quite a bit louder than she had intended. "You're gay aren't you?"
 
"Uhhhhhhh, where'd that come from?" Matt asked giggling but quieted as he thought. "...maybe, I don't know." Now it was his turn to focus his attention on Tessa. "But seriously, where'd that come from?" He squinted at her, confused. "Are you?" He paused again.

"Oh my god we forgot about them-" he flipped over and scrambled onto his knees on the bed, flicking the curtain in his room which looked out into the backyard. "Oh, they're gone..."

He sat back on his heels and was quiet again. "I'm hungry, he announced after a moment. I should go lock the doors and the backyard... Don't want anyone breaking in.... I'll be right back," he said before wandering off, slipping outside to pour water on the fire and locking up the gate. He came back inside with the leftover cake and locked the door. He stopped in the kitchen to grab some potato chips and went back to his room to rejoin Tessa.

"Maybe I should just eat the rabbits. Sustainable backyard and stuff..."
 
Tessa mentally smacked herself upside the head. She somehow only got more blunt when she was high. "Er- I'm pretty sure they've been gone for a while..." She said lamely while watching him pull the curtain open. She kind of felt bad for him and them in this situation but honestly it had been a terrible idea on Dominic and Kristie's parts to come here when they were seconds away from tearing each others clothes off at any moment. She pondered what could have gotten into them until Matt returned.

She offered him an embarrassed smile. "Perhaps..." She murmured in response to his statement. "Sorry about uh...what I said earlier. It's just, you don't seem to look at Kristie or other women quite the way other men do, and earlier in the backyard..." She frowned, not entirely sure she wanted to bring it up again, but she'd started this so she might as well finish it. "Well, it was hard to say who you seemed more...jealous, of?" She wasn't quite sure jealous was the right term, but it seemed pretty obvious that he hadn't just wished he could take Dominic's place, nor Kristie's.
 
"I'm not jealous of anyone," Matt said, a bit more shortly than he'd intended. He mowed down a few potato chips to curb his munchies problem. "They can do whatever they want. It's none of my business." Still, he flushed slightly. He seemed to debate with himself for a few moments before adding, "I mean, I admire him a lot. He's really smart and sometimes we have really good conversations and I feel like we click."

His expression was more confused now than it was earlier and he went back to eating his potato chips. "Seems like a pretty personal question for someone you barely know..."
 
"mmhmmm" Tessa definitely wasn't quite believing him on the jealousy front. Of course it was her turn to flush as the conversation turned back to her. "Well...I hadn't exactly planned on actually saying it, it just sort of popped out." She smiled through the blush and tried to pretend it wasn't there. "I'm afraid that Kristie's bluntness had rubbed off on me a bit. Besides, Kristie spends so much time talking about you that I kinda feel like I know you already. At least as well as she does." She paused, and flushed again. "Er, but don't tell her I've been talking about that either." She chuckled nervously and glanced around as if expecting to see Kristie peering in the window or something. Kristie was quite sneaky when she went cat and while she should be more than distracted by Dominic well...you never could tell.
 
Matt pursed his lips and crooked an eyebrow. "She talks about me that much?" he asked, more than surprised by such a revelation. He tended to keep so to himself and was so focused on the things that he was working on that it hadn't really dawned on him that anyone would find him that interesting, especially to be a topic of conversation while he wasn't present. It was a foreign concept to him, but slowly a smile crept on his face as he realized that it felt nice. Like having friends. "I keep getting this feeling that everyone knows more about me than I know about them... except Mr. Howard."

Matt grinned a bit at this. "I have a pretty vast knowledge on him... I did a lot of research..." he explained. "He thinks it's creepy... .I just... I just wanted to know who was going to be the most trustworthy person to work with on this project..." he said flushing... "I'm not very good at... reading people or being able to tell if they're telling the truth or not... so sometimes it's easier to just... look at their history..."

He rubbed his forehead, feeling embarrassed. He was less bad at reading people than he thought he was. "I sound like I'm making excuses for myself, don't I..."
 
Tessa grinned, finding his surprise rather cute. Kristie had described him pretty well in that respect. "You are." She responded to his not really a question. She had a unique view of the dilemma being so close to Kristie and knowing what she was and what she did. Kristie too liked to go to levels that most other people would at the very least think creepy to get a proper feel for a person. Tessa couldn't condemn her for it though because it wasn't like she was doing any harm and Kristie freely admitted that most of the time it was just out of curiosity. Just like when she had stalked Matt.

"I think people are a little...weird about privacy these days though. They seem to care a lot about things being known when it really doesn't matter and seem to plaster the things that do matter all over their social media. There is definitely a certain things that require privacy but..." She shrugged. "I guess I'm not making much sense. Anyway, you shouldn't feel too bad. Looking into a person's history is something pretty much every job place does to determine trustworthiness. You may have gone a bit farther than them but you also are doing something that requires a bit more, so it follows, yeah?" Maybe her worldview was a bit skewed from her interactions with Kristie.
 
"Er... maybe," Matt said, not entirely convinced. "You don't have to justify it for me or anything." He thought for a moment. "'S not like I like it when people are watching me... maybe we should all just keep to our own damn selves and never bother anyone ever. Including the government and stuff," he paused, the confusion coming back onto his face. "Except it would be like living in our own cell. Humanity is weird. You can't have friends without nosing into other people's business. Or... at least I haven't got the concept yet."

He lay down on the bed again, getting comfortable. He fell silent for awhile. He was starting to get cold so he pulled a blanket over him. His high had come back down to a slow wave again and he was completely relaxed. He closed his eyes but finally asked, "So how did you end up being Kristie's sidekick or whatever?"

He wouldn't hear Tessa's answer though, because he'd no more than gotten his question out and a few breaths later he had fallen asleep.
 
"Awww" Tessa cooed as she realized the man had passed out before she could even think of how to start her story. "Well then." She chuckled and eased off the bed to avoid waking him back up. She snagged her purse and made sure to lock the doorknob on the way out, though there was simply no way she would be able to lock all of those deadbolts of his without stealing his keys and then slowly sliding each one under the door. That seemed like way too much work when she could have a kid or two watch the place just to ease the paranoia.

Unsurprisingly Kristie didn't return home until the next morning but equally unsurprisingly Tessa was there waiting for her, demanding a play by play of the night. She may also have scolded Kristie for showing up at Matt's like that but she was much more interested in what happened after they left. Kristie was very much like a contented cat for the next few days after that. All the worries about what she was and why she should never let Dominic get too close were forgotten for the moment.

When everything was going so well, that was when it all went terribly wrong.

Upon returning to his home from some errands, Matt might notice something seemed a bit off about his house. Nothing obvious, it may just have felt wrong. Once he entered, he would be treated to a bloody spectacle. The creature on the floor was recognizably Kristie. It had her features and general body shape, and the tattered remains of her clothes were the same that she usually wore. Along with that was a tail, two large cat ears in place of human ones and her fingers were elongated and ended in claws. Her whole body was covered in a fine golden-red fur that darkened to scarlet with her tail and ears. If her eyes had been open, they would have been golden and slitted like a cats as well.

As it was though, her eyes were closed. She was probably unconscious, judging by the multiple knife wounds and odd gunshot wounds in her leg and side. The gunshot wounds had pressure bandages over them that were nearly bled through and the rest of her had no treatment whatsoever. She was lying in a literal puddle of blood on the floor.
 
In the past, Matt had always tried to avoid traveling through his neighborhood at night. As of late, he'd noticed that he felt safer. He wasn't sure why, but he rarely saw the pesky kids from down the street, and when he did, though they weren't exactly polite, they generally didn't pay him much attention at all, which was fine by him. Though this of course also set off his paranoia wondering what they were planning. Mr. Howard would have asked if it had ever dawned on him that not everyone was out to get him and if perhaps that paranoia had previously egged them on.

It was a particularly late night for him, however, and he'd been buzzing down distant streets he didn't feel safe in, so his paranoid sensors were on high. That was probably why he noticed the slightly crooked doormat in the flickering light of his porch lamp, something he typically wouldn't have noticed during the day. He was already breathing hard as he went through his locks, fully intending to do a thorough search of his house. As it was, he wouldn't have to, and he let out a yelp the moment he stepped through his door. He didn't have a particularly sensitive nose, and certainly nothing close to Kristie's sensitive nose, but he smelled blood and one quick glance to his left revealed someone laying in a pool of it in his living room.

"Shit!" he swore, initially staring. His mind raced. At first glance the being was human shaped but looking closer he noticed they were also cat like, and looking even closer he realized he recognized them and it was Kristie. Or at least she looked like Kristie. Though this wasn't his top concern. "Jesus Christ," he muttered to himself, frozen in place as he took in the scene and then he was moving. "Blood, stop the blood," and he was running to his kitchen and to his bathroom to grab as many towels and sheets as he could get his hands on and he was back by her side instantly.

He tossed a few towels down to help soak up some of the blood and then tried to analyze the wounds. "Are you even alive, oh God-" he muttered, tears suddenly springing to his eyes at the realization that he could be losing one of his only friends. He hurriedly took her pulse, panicking at first because of his inexpert ability to find a pulse but finally he found her faint one through the fur. "Okay, you have fur, that's weird," he muttered, mostly from relief. "I have to call the hospital- they are gonna freak out when they see you, shit I can't call the hospital, but you need a hospital what do I do..." He was scrambling to press clean cloths down on Kristie's wounds while simultaneously trying to dial his cellphone and eventually managed to dial Tessa and put the phone on speaker and tossed it on the floor as it rang, keeping his hands free to do his best to stop the bleeding.
 
While Kristie seemed to stir a bit, the phone rang and rang. It almost rung to the point of hanging up before there was finally the 'click' of someone picking up. "Good evening." A deep male voice answered the phone. "I'm afraid Ms. DeLaclare is a bit tied up at the moment, can I take a message?" In the background, there was just the faintest hint of sounds of exertion, like someone was either working out very hard or struggling against something but unable to speak.

At the sound of the mans voice Kristie's eyes finally flickered open, revealing the slitted cat pupils. "No..." She murmured, not entirely coherent. It took her a few moments to work out what was going on before she painfully moved her arm, almost flopping it onto the phone, but managing to hit the end call button in the process. Her glazed eyes took in Matt and his house and her brow crinkled in confusion. "Why...why am I here?..." She sounded more like she was talking to herself than Matt. Her eyes drifted slowly closed, back open, closed again before settling in a half open position. The pupils below looked decidedly glazed.
 
Matt was more confused and concerned now than ever. It seemed like Tessa was in trouble now too and he felt like he was in way over his head as far as Kristie was concerned. He knew the smart thing to do would be to call for an ambulance, but he really didn't want to shove her under the bus the way she was. If she came out of this alive her whole life would probably be ruined. He debated calling Mr. Howard as well but knew that he was such a rule follower, his only suggestion would be to call an ambulance and he might even do it for him, so that was out. He considered Tom and Chris too, but felt unsure, he could maybe have one of them check on Tessa, once he'd gotten Kristie more stabilized. He realized then that he had unconsciously made the decision that he was about to become a doctor. It was time to focus and begin seriously treating Kristie's wounds then, if that was the case. Carefully he peeled away the tattered layers of clothing to analyze each individual wound.

Matt patted her cheek a bit roughly, "I need you to stay awake for me, okay? Talk to me. I don't care what you say just talk." He had already wrapped towels around the wounds in her leg to stop the bleeding, so he focused his attention to the wounds in her side, which he figured were probably more serious. One of the stab wounds seemed particularly deep and that one concerned him. The others seemed at least shallow enough that he could probably stitch them up.

He had to sterilize the wounds. It made his stomach churn because he knew it was likely to be extraordinarily painful for Kristie. However, he left her side for just a moment to get some hydrogen peroxide, because in his personal experience it hurt slightly less than rubbing alcohol. He also dug up a needle and some dental floss and found a candle and a lighter. He came back and rolled up a clean rag and pushed it between Kristie's teeth so she could bite down on it when it got too painful.

"I'm so sorry," he apologized in advance. "This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker." He almost got started and then stopped and thought twice. Shock was a thing that happened and could kill someone, so despite the fact that it was summer, he quickly started a fire in the fireplace to help keep her warm. He also paused and went to wash his hands, bringing a tub of water and soap back with him. "Such an amateur. Do it the right way, Matthew."

Then he was back and started the very terribly painful process of pouring the hydrogen peroxide into her wounds.
 
Kristie's eyes blinked rapidly at the pat and after a few moments the glazed look seemed to recede a bit. "Hurts..." She murmured. "Haven't felt like this in a long time...since Master" She tried to take a deeper breath and caught it as that aggravated a myriad of wounds. She let the breath out slowly and resumed the shallow short ones she'd been using before. Her eyes tracked him as he left to get the peroxide and other items. She saw the needle but didn't react aside from what looked like an approving nod.

"It's okay." She tried to smile. "I'll be alright. I promise." She felt herself starting to fade out but before that happened purposely moved to aggravate her wounds and caught Matt's arm before he started pouring. She spit out the rag with a pained grunt. "Wait...shoulder...you have to get it out." She jerked her chin towards her left shoulder. From Matt's current view there was nothing there, but if he lifted her at all he would find the remains of something similar to a tranq dart, though it had spikes to hold it into the skin. It had ripped out of the skin somewhat and turned sideways due to how she was laying. "It's..." She gritted her teeth. She didn't know how to explain it, her brain was too fuzzy to even start bringing Matt up to date with what was happening to her. "Just...need it out..."
 
Matt was very confused as to what Kristie was talking about but now was not the time for questions. Though he did have a lot of questions. As he gently tipped her up to take a look at her shoulder, he swore softly as he eyed the painful looking tranquilizer. Carefully he worked it out of her skin and set it up on the coffee table to be analyzed later.

"Just lay still, okay?" he said trying to help by propping a pillow behind her head so she was at least somewhat comfortable. He held out the rolled rag again questioningly, if she wanted it to bite down, then went back to her wounds.

"I don't suppose it's possible for you to just... change back so I can get you to a proper doctor is there?" he murmured, feeling more than a little out of his depth at the severity of the wounds that were in front of him. Over all, he wanted to make sure they were treated right so they wouldn't cause her problems later. But for now, his shoddy medical work would have to do.

He began the very painful process of cleaning out her wounds again and cringed every time he had to pour the hydrogen peroxide because he knew it was the worst kind of pain. "It'd be really lovely if someone could invent a method of sterilization that wasn't painful as fuck..." he muttered.
 
Kristie let out a soft sigh of relief once the main source of her problems was gone. It wouldn't help with her situation right now but at least there would be not even a tiny bit more of that drug injected into her system. The relief almost made her fade out again and it was only the knowledge that it would mean Matt was all alone in this mess that kept her holding onto consciousness.

She refused the rag, knowing she could take the pain without making much more noise than what someone else would have with the rag. "I can't...change back." The tail under her flipped lamely. "Not until the....poison...runs it's course..." Hopefully soon.

She set her eyes firmly on the ceiling as he started his work. A soft hiss escaped her clamped jaw but no other sound was made. "Don't worry." She gritted out. "I heal much better than your average person." One bonus to the excruciating pain was that it was doing a lot to keep her awake and more cognizant. "So long as you can stop the bleeding you don't need to worry much."
 
"I can close up a wound, but that doesn't mean you're not bleeding on the inside..." Matt muttered, still feeling far out of his depth. The stab in her side still worried him the most. And there was one in her leg that looked like it might be close to an artery, though he hadn't ever studied anatomy much and he wasn't very sure.

He worked diligently on wrapping her wounds and trying his best to clean her up. He stitched up the wound on her side with the dental floss after sterilizing the needle with the candle flame. He stitched up the wound on her leg just for good measure. After she was considerably cleaned up, he used all of his strength to carry her to his couch because though it was saggy, it was infinitely better than the floor. He covered her with a blanket and brought her some water.

"I guess i'm gonna need some new carpet..." he said of the large blood stain on his floor. He didn't know what to do about it for now, so just covered it up with some old newspapers. He disappeared into his computer room briefly and came back out with his laptop where he began looking up books to read on medicine, fully intending to power his way through a degree by morning. Whether that would actually be possible was another thing, but his intent was there, though obviously nothing could ever take the place of actual practice.
 
Kristie let out a quick sigh through her gritted teeth but didn't bother to reiterate her statement. Nothing she could say right now would convince him of her abilities until he saw it for himself. As wild as his brain worked, that was still a bit of a jump. For the rest of the time he treated her wounds she kept up a soft, steady stream of expletives. She didn't want to distract him but the cursing was doing wonders for her.

"Thank you." She murmured to him quietly when she was settled on the couch. "And I'm sorry..." She turned her head then, letting her eyes drift closed without explaining just what she was apologizing for.

Kristie slept as if in a coma through the night, not once did she so much as twitch a muscle. Then, sometime well into the morning she sat up abruptly. "Tessa!" She exclaimed before clutching at her side and wincing. "Ow...too fast." She closed her eyes briefly and waited for the pain to ease to a tolerable level again before carefully swinging her legs off the couch and frowning down at the wounded one. That would be a problem. The poison had really slowed down her healing, the wounds looked only slightly better than they had last night.

Then she took in where she was and put a hand over her eyes. "I really did end up here somehow...shit." As if the situation wasn't bad enough, now she had to worry about Matt too.
 
Matt had only made it through half a textbook on human anatomy before he had fallen asleep on the chair. He slept lightly though, Kristie's well being at the forefront of his mind, even in sleep. He dreamt of not having done something right and not stopping any internal bleeding and he woke up with a start multiple times to check on her, then continued to try to power through the textbook. Finally though, exhaustion took over, and his laptop teetered precariously on his knee and part of the chair's cushion and a touch of drool was leaking out of the side if his mouth.

When Kristie had exclaimed of Tessa though, Matt had jumped awake as abruptly as she had, his laptop crashing to the floor with a loud thunk. He cringed a bit at that, but looked over at Kristie with some bewilderment.

"Is she okay?" He asked, rubbing at his eyes. He felt like he'd been hit by a semi. He'd worked so hard at creating the delicate balance of his sleeping waking schedule so that he could function on very little sleep but if anything ever threw that off, he felt awful, as had been evident when he'd been so allergic to the perfume Kristie had brought in the once.

"How are you feeling?" He asked.
 
Kristie looked over at Matt, taking in his current state and winced. He looked terrible. "I'm fine." Kristie said dismissively to his question, carefully standing up. Her injured leg wobbled a bit and she compensated by taking most of the weight on her other leg. "Tessa should be too...probably." She frowned towards the door. "She is human after all so they shouldn't have any reason to harm her. They are just using her as bait to lure me in." She sounded very distracted as she spoke and her eyes kept scanning the room, looking for some clue as to how she had gotten to Matt's house. She would have never come here of her own volition, not now that her cover was blown.

Now that she was awake she was starting to panic a bit. The whole thing had just exploded into complications. Then a familiar sweet smell caught her attention and suddenly her eyes flashed (literally). "Show yourself, vampire." She hissed.

"Now, now. No need to be hostile. I was just returning from cleaning up the mess you made last night." A bat glided through the window, which had opened itself, and landed in front of Kristie. It's form then lengthened and shifted until another person stood in the room.

Kristie sniffed the air delicately, and a hint of confusion crossed her face. "You-"

The vampire smiled brilliantly. "Yes. I am his actual spawn. I should have known you would spot it right away." He raised a hand to stop what she was going to say next. "No, I don't blame you for what you did. He was not much of a father to me either."

It took a few moments for Kristie to recover from her surprise. "That's all well and good. Why did you bring me here then? You've just brought another human into this!"

"He was already involved. In fact he was the one who gave you away." The vampire tilted his head and fixed Matt with a look. "It was partially your own fault as well of course, but only so much can be expected of curious little kitties yes?" Kristie gave him a dirty look, her ears laid flat along the back of her head and she growled at him. Her tail was twitching a mile a minute.

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