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"You're kidding, right?" K asked of Jay.

"No, I'm not kidding," Jay insisted. "You deserve to hear the truth from me from time to time. This is one of those times."

"Next you'll be telling me that the earth will be crashing into the sun is a few minutes," K laughed.

"Ha ha prick boy," Jay grinned at his friend. The two letters had been drinking at a party since about nine the day before, and now sat on the back porch of their friend's house talking at nearly five in the morning. It was another winter session that Jay had convinced K to switch his sleep schedule for, so the two of them were able to out last all but the most hearty of drinkers.

Light had just barely begun to appear on the horizon of the unseasonably warm winter night, but Jay was hours away from needing to seek shelter. The porch was littered with cans, bottles, cups, and the occasional passed out girl in clothing that would normally be very ill advised in January. The two letters had found where the lawn chairs had been stashed and were currently lounging in comfort with their respective drinks.

Drinking was still a slightly dangerous activity for K, as drinking and magic don't mix well. K got around this problem by gaining an affinity for sipping whiskey and sipping very slowly. This fairly well kept him out of trouble.

Drinking, alcohol, was no trouble for Jay as when he drank his tasty beverages his body did not absorb the alcohol the same way a human body does. However, Jay had also been drinking blood at this party, and drinking the blood of inebriated young women had far more affect then beer, so Jay was a little more talkative than normal.

"You're really going to tell me about a girl you dated?" K's eyebrow was hovering mid forehead.

"Yeah, well, sort of, that is if you will shut up long enough for me to tell you," Jay gave K a meaningful look. K smirked, knowing that he could stave off this conversation for hours if he were so inclined, but as he did have the usual curiosity about his friend, he did keep his mouth shut. It's not every day your remarkably tight-lipped friend actually volunteers information you normally couldn't drag out of him with wild horses.

"First of all, she was one of us," Jay began. K correctly interpreted this to mean that the girl in question was a vampire, which didn't make sense.

"Wait, how does that work? I thought you guys couldn't..." K tried to clarify, but Jay interrupted.

"I can't explain it, but just trust me, it wasn't an issue for us," Jay waved his hands around to keep the topic in place. "Anyway, when I first met her, she was, her name was Claire." K fought the urge to roll his eyes at Jay's inebriated attempt to explain. "She was beautiful. Not just like pretty, or hot, but like really beautiful. She looked maybe five, ten years older, but she was really much older than me. I was young and stupid by her standards, and she was so much more than I could possibly know what to do with. I really was young by those standards too.

"When I first met her, I was a tongue-tied idiot. I couldn't string two sentences together to save my life. I really don't think she had a clue about me. She was polite but we never spoke for more than a minute or two once in a while. I guess that saved me from looking like a total idiot since she was always too busy to stay around and watch me fail to talk to her. She was always doing something important and I just did grunt work in the background.

"I tried to convince myself that I was just crushing and that the feeling would go away, but months passed and it just got worse. I eventually got to the point where I could talk to her without looking like a total idiot, but we still never talked for very long. A couple of the other people around figured out what was up and tried to get me to give up hope, but I just couldn't.

"After like a year of that, I eventually got up the nerve to ask her to talk to me alone. It was a bad night to ask cause something big had happened, but it was the night she agreed.  She agreed, as she had no clue still, and we had a nice walk in the jungle. I asked her about what she was working on, and told her a little about what I was doing, and that part of the walk went ok. She laughed at my jokes, seemed to like talking to me. Eventually though she realized that something else was up and asked. So I told her.

"It wasn't that bad at first; I tried to play it off as the crush I knew it wasn't and she believed that I think, but she started asking questions, and eventually I just cracked and blurted it all out. I wasn't sure how she was taking it, but when I was finally done talking like an idiot, she didn't say anything for a long time. She just stared at me, in disbelief I think.

"After a few minutes she told me it wouldn't work, that I was too young, she was too old, that everything was wrong, and then she excused herself and ran away. I didn't run after her at first, I just cursed my big mouth and wandered around kicking myself. Eventually I figured out that I needed to talk to her and that I probably should have chased her in the first place. It took me an hour, but I eventually tracked her down and found her crying alone in the middle of nowhere.

"She told me to go away, but I bet you can guess how well that went for her," Jay winked at his friend.

"I wouldn't take that bet," K quipped back. Though he kept his manner light, in truth K was a little worried. Jay was never this forthcoming. Though the intelligent section of his brain truly wondered if when Jay sobered up he would regret what he shared in this conversation, the less intelligent sections of his brain were throwing around theories involving roofies. K managed to keep a straight face somehow.

"Anyway, after trying to get rid of me, which took a while, then she got mad at me and started yelling things like 'why did it have to be today', stuff like that. Then she started hitting me while yelling and eventually just kind of fell on me crying. I held her for a while and ended up sitting leaned up against a tree while she cried herself out.

"At some point in there I told her I loved her, and she kind of froze. After a minute she pulled away to look me in the eye and asked me if I meant it. I told her I did. She started to cry again, but I headed that shit off by finally just kissing her. The crying stopped while she figured out what just happened. Then she pulled back to look at me again. I gave her this weak, kind of nervous smile and she kissed me back. She was pretty intense about it and... well... I suppose you know where it goes from there." K nodded but said nothing as he watched his friend's eyes slowly fill with blood tears.

"When we were done she cried more. I made a joke about ruining the mood and got her to laugh, even with the crying," Jay blinked away some of the accumulated tears and continued. "I asked her why she was so upset. She got all still for a minute, then told me the last thing I ever wanted to hear: that she wasn't going to survive much more than a day longer. I told her I would do everything in my power to help her, but she sighed and told me there was nothing I could do. I made some comment about how unfair life was and she asked me how I thought she felt? She'd avoided love for just this reason only to have me come along and fuck things up." Jay thought for a moment. "She probably didn't say fuck though." K smirked and shook his head at that totally inapropriate comment.

Then for a long time Jay didn't say anything.

"Then what?" K prompted. Jay gave his friend a long sad smile.

"She died," he replied simply. "And there was nothing I could do."

"There's more story to that part I reckon," K commented gently.

"Another time perhaps," Jay whispered.

"Another time then," K nodded. Given that Jay had just revealed more about his earlier life to K than he had since the day the two had met, K wasn't going to push Jay for any reason. Then both friends were startled when one of the presumably passed out girl's tear streaked faces suddenly appeared next to Jay.

"That was so sad!" the scantily clad girl informed Jay before surging into Jay's lap, kissing him. The letters shared a confused look followed by a very amused look over the girl's head. Jay's suddenly twinkling with amusement eyes suggested to K that he clear out; K grinned and winked in reply, quietly rising and walking away. Before totally losing sight of his friend, K looked back with speculative eyes.

"Yeah," K sighed as he turned to walk home. "I'm never going to hear the end of that story."