I really don't know where this came from other than my agrivation at having to find a table one weekend while mother was fetching food for me and my darling sister. And this lady stole my table and this old couple cut in front of me. Hard times. And I was sitting there thinking about how annoying it would be if someone just sat there. Very frustrating. ::grin:: Oh well, enjoy and happy holiday type season, for whatever you do or do not celebrate.

Christmas. No other time like it. Smells of freshly baked cookies permeating the house. Wrapping paper being carefully applied and careless ripped to shreds. Hot chocolate never looking as good as the commercials make it seem.

And the commercialism.

Can’t forget that. The lines stretching and twisting throughout the store. Children running rampant, screaming and kicking, demanding their parents to buy them more, more, more! Creepy old men sitting in front of even longer lines as children wait to be placed on his lap. And lest anyone forget, the overly crowded to the point of it being sickening, food court at the mall.

Men and women with children stand outside clusters of tables, fully expecting to be given first choice because of their disability, or rather their children. Like that makes them special or puts them higher in the pecking order. Of course, can’t forget those actually disabled who perhaps thought being blind or deaf or having only a stump for a body meant they were closer to God and should be seated immediately. There are no reservations in a public food court, buster! Then there were the old people who also felt themselves above everyone else, just because they could keel over at a moment’s notice.

And who got the short end of the stick? What age group almost always seemed to get the short end of the stick? Well, except for the old people, who again, could die any time now (which would free up some tables). Teenagers. They were young and vibrant and beautiful, let’s hate them and make them wait for years to sit down and eat food that they paid for while wasting the precious time of their youth just because we can’t ever get it back! Spiteful much?

Jonah grinned victoriously, shifting into a frown as a small blond boy ran past his table, toppling one of his excess chairs. He hadn’t lurked around for twenty minutes after waiting in line for another fifteen only to have a kid he didn’t know upset his meal.

And why were there so many of them lurking around? This would be a great opportunity for an abstinence commercial. Show clips of the little terrorists running around dismantling anything their grubby little paws could wrap around. “Abstinence. Protect yourself, or your psychiatry bills will be next.” Or…something to that effect.

His fries were getting cold his noted as he plopped them into his mouth covered with ketchup. And that’s when he noticed it. Or rather, him. Not only was someone sitting dangerously close to his table, but it appeared that this someone was sitting at his table. A table it had taken him twenty minutes to get! His table wasn’t for sale!

And to make matters worse, the dastardly fiend didn’t even glance in his direction. No, he was wrapped up in eating his…well his wrap. His raven hair was hanging over his eyes but he looked vampire like with his pale skin. His eyes were probably red and glowed in the dark.

“Um, excuse me,” Jonah remarked. Not even a glance in his direction. Well wasn’t that a little bit rude. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. “Excuse me!”

A near shout, though considerably drowned out by the wailing, screaming, thrashing crowd surrounding the table. This time the vamp looked at him, proving the hypothesis of him having red eyes quite incorrect. They were in fact blue, clear blue eyes that looked like the water in the commercials that advertised vacations in the Caribbean.

“This is my table.” The eyes seemed to inquire ‘so’ in a rather snotty manner. “Well see, I waited for twenty minutes in the mess of people who have too many kids and it was very frustrating and in the end I had to distract an old couple and slip by them to my victory. So I don’t think it’s fair that you just sit here without having had to work at least as hard as I did.”

His table thief decided that the salad was more interesting than the fascinating conversation Jonah was providing. “You’re not a rabbit.” Darn, it was word leakage again. That had gotten him punched in the head one day, but the guy’s pants had been shiny and reflective. If he didn’t want people to say they could see themselves in them, he shouldn’t have worn them.

He was being stared at again. Darn it. “Well you know, how rabbits eat salad. So you’re eating like a rabbit, but you’re not one. Not to say you are a rabbit, or resemble one while you’re eating, just that your eating habits are like one. Other animals eat salad like food too though, I suppose. Lots of them, I guess rabbits are ju….” His babbling trailed off as he discovered how he had lost the attention of the vamp.

“What are you doing here?”

Blue eyes looked around at the mob surrounding their table before going back to eating his lunch. If this were a musical the lights would dim upon everywhere but their table and Jonah would have to climb on his chair, one foot planted upon the table and start singing to him and then he would sing back and he would at least get an explanation of why he was sitting there.

“What’s your name?” Not even a look in his direction this time. Helloooooooo. Sitting right here, right next to you! “What’re you doing at the mall?”

This time a look at the bags that were propped up on an unoccupied chair at their table. Shopping, of course. Well he didn’t have to be so sarcastic about it. He was pretty sure his eye had just twitched there. Yup, there it went again.

The salad was almost done while Jonah’s food lay there, cold and forgotten. Which was probably a good thing given it was McDonalds and eating anything cold from there was something one did at their own risk.

“What do you want?” he screamed, this time in a near moment of quiet, causing several disapproving heads to turn in his direction. How dare they glare at him in such a way. That woman had ran over his toe before with her double wide, three seater stroller to beat him to a table. And she was passing judgment?

And how dare there be a sparkle in those eyes. A sparkle of amusement no less. It did make them prettier, but still, Jonah’s life was not for the amusement of those around him. It was for his own amusem…his life wasn’t amusing!

“Who are you?” Jonah asked again. The vampire looked at him. He couldn’t have been that much older than him. Maybe though, he wasn’t good at guessing ages. Maybe he was a very young looking twenty five year old who was just dressing like a teenager. “Just tell me your name, can’t you at least do that?” he pleaded.

An amused stare in response. Grr. If this were a cartoon he would pull his hair out. But it wasn’t, and if he were to do that the hair probably wouldn’t grow back as soon as it moved onto the next scene.

“Hey Jonah!” He looked disbelievingly at the silent boy who didn’t appear to have said anything. No, he wouldn’t have, would he. Russian spy that he was. “Jonah open your eyes.” His head swung around in the direction of the voice, not wanting to let the elusive stranger out of his sight.

It was Sharon and Roger and Mike, laden with packages. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Sharon gushed, the two boys looking out of place and bored. “We would never have been able to find a table. Can we sit here?”

“Actually, I was eating with someone-“

Mike interrupted his comment with a snort of laughter which Jonah met with a glare. The concept of him dining with another human being wasn’t that ludicrous.

“Um, no one’s here Jonah,” Sharon pointed out helpfully before planting herself at the table. He frowned, glancing at the stranger’s chair and indeed finding it empty. Even his salad was gone. No sign of him in the crowd but there was only one way out of this dead end food area. Well two, but he was going to assume he hadn’t just left the mall entirely.

“Yeah, sure, eat here, whatever,” he told them as he grabbed his bags filled with gaudy baubles. This is what Noah must have felt like parting the red sea. Or Moses…, whichever one didn’t have the ark. People jammed their bony elbows into his rib cage and stuck their legs out in his path and generally behaved like an unruly mob.

Finally emerging mostly unscathed with his packages in tow, Jonah declared himself victorious. Until he realized he had no idea where the vampire escaped to. Damn.

No sign of otherworldly creatures with pale skin and dark hair….or none that immediately stood out. Not to the left or to the right or near the big corral filled with screaming kids and the creepy Santa man.

Jonah sighed. Another lost opportunity to make his life even the slightest bit more interesting. And how many of those moments passed him by, passed everyone by everyday? How many times in the last week had chances come and gone that could possibly have taken his life in a whole nother direction?

How close had he come to becoming a strung out drug dealer or a famous ballet dancer or an overeating bitter comic strip writer?! He would never know. Just like he would never know how many licks it really took to get to the center of the tootsie pop.

“Hey.”

That was probably because every time he got near the center his sister would distract him from counting or rip up his tally sheet or worse, bite the pop! Truly villainous. He probably would make a good super villain, one that would take hostages and slowly but surely take over the world!

Some dastardly creature flicked the top of his head. “Ow!” He looked up. “Vampire lad!”

The sparkling blue eyes which were still sparkling annoyingly looked mildly concerned, as if they were approaching a psycho. Of which he most certainly was not. “Hi.”

And suddenly, as if turning off the switch, his brain forgot how to form correct sentences. Now that his apparition was speaking back to him it was a little more difficult to decide what to say. Now that he was almost certain that he wasn’t hallucinating the entire situation. “You speak!”

Melodious laughter emerged from the devil boy. Pretty. Do it again. He shook his head. “Yes, I do speak,” said the vampire boy.

“Oh. That’s good,” Jonah informed him. His head felt like it was about to disconnect with his body and float into space.

More laughter. Pretty sounds. “You look like someone hit you in the head with a bat. Actually, more like you’re high.” High. He was high on life. “What’s your name?”

Huh? Oh…hey, no! “I asked you multiple times and you never told me yours, why should I tell you mine? Huh? Bet you can’t answer that, can you, Vampire lad!”

“No, you’re right. Tis only fair. Patrick.” He extended a hand. Jonah stared at it for a moment before gently, and probably at great risk to himself, placing his hand within the larger one. When his wrist wasn’t immediately bitten nor the life power sucked out of him, he looked upwards. “What’s yours?”

“My what?” Pause. “Oh! My name! Jonah!” he declared happily. Happy that he had actually managed to drag his eyes up to the pretty face and, at the same time even, remember what it was they were talking about. Love at first sight, no. Lust….well he didn’t lust after pretty things. They were just pretty. So perhaps infatuation. Yes, that worked.

“That’s a pretty name.”

“I know. I like it too. My parents actually had good taste in one thing, which is certainly more than I can say in their music or food or clothes or any of that typical parent stuff. Oh…I mean, thanks.” Before his mouth could open and spew more unwanted statements, a small girl ran by, shoving him.

It would have been cliché if this had shoved him up against vampire boy and his warm body had provided all the heating he needed. Of course, that wasn’t the way it worked in a food court Christmas scheme.

Instead he was shoved forward a step or two which ordinarly would have been fine, had someone not previously spilt some slippery substance on the floor causing his feet to betray him. His arms pinwheeled, legs getting tangled in the dropped packages and he fell. On the sticky ground, nearly trampled to death as people didn’t bother to move around him instead stepping over him. Which was a problem when their legs weren’t long enough to make the journey, damn kids.

An arm emerged, plucking him from the Disney death scene before it was too late. Jonah had never really pictured dying like Mufassa. And suddenly, when facing vampire boy, it had become awkward. They stood there, staring, unsure of what they were expected to do now.

Or that was just Jonah because suddenly Patrick didn’t seem self-conscious.

Or maybe he liked to place his, and it should be noted that they were really soft, lips against strangers to see what happens. It should also be mentioned that it was a very pleasant sensation. Much better than when his sister had made him kiss that porcupine.

Jonah blinked slowly, mind taking its time to refocus on the present. More laughter, more intoxication. Wait, wait, rewind. “What’s with the assumption that I’m even into guys,” Jonah snipped.

“Well most straight guys don’t wear shirts that have a rainbow and say recruiting,” Patrick the vampire said.