Trials in Accounting (Costin)

[Costin Dracula]

Costin looked down at her hand, where it was tucked into his elbow. He had just been thinking to himself that he didn't want to get her hopes up as far as this whole interaction went; the last thing he needed was a sad-eyed cowgirl moping around because he wasn't babysitting her. Anyway, she had survived this long on her own, she didn't actually need him. And he certainly didn't need friends, or found family, or whatever she thought was going on here.

"There are dozens of kinds of sauce," he explained, taking a step forward, looking down at her hand again, then somehow managing to start walking in earnest. "I am making my favorite kind, which is a red sauce, but I am also quite good at my own pesto sauce as well." He was not about to let her lure him into defending his own human experience; he was fully aware that it was lacking in many ways, but he didn't want to supplement it, and he refused to be manipulated into saying so.

[Dusty Fae]

Costin was not as distracted by her questions as she had hoped he would be. He seemed to notice her hand in his elbow. But he wasn't doing anything about it either. He wasn't pushing her away or telling her no, so that was a positive step in the right direction. At least, she hoped it was. Costin was highly confusing after all.

Dusty walked beside Costin, listening carefully. So many different kinds of sauces. She wondered which kind she might like the best. She wondered if there was a kind that other people liked the best. "What's in red sauce?" she asked, tilting her head to one side curiously as she peered up at him. "Like what's it made of? And how do you make it? What's pesto? Do all pasta sauces have colors in their name?"

[Costin Dracula]

Well. That certainly was more questions about pasta than Costin had ever anticipated answering in his life, let alone all in the same breath. He waited for a few seconds, just to make sure she was actually done talking, before he went about answering her.

"No, they don't all have colors. Pesto isn't a color, Dusty." He thought he was being remarkably patient here. "And if they all were named after colors, pesto would just be 'green' because that's what color it is. There are also more than one type of pasta of each color, especially the red ones. There's marinara, and vodka sauce, although that's sort of orange-ish, and bolognese sauce...there are many, many different kinds. I can make a lot of them, if you'd like to begin a series."

[Dusty Fae]

Dusty laughed and shrugged as he told her that pesto wasn't a color. "Well how was I supposed to know that?" she asked. "I ain't ever met any Italians. I don't even know what pesto means." She nodded at the continued explanation. She wondered why pesto was green. She wondered what was in it? There must be a whole world of food out there that she knew nothing about.

"There's more than one kind of pasta?" she asked, her eyes wide with amazement. "Vodka sauce?!" she exclaimed, completely scandalized by the idea of liqur in one's dinner. "Who's idea was it to put spirits in their dinner?" she demanded. "That don't sound like a good idea."

She thought about it for a second more. "A series? Like every week you make another kind of pasta dish and we eat it together? Hmm, I might be interested in doing that. As long as they ain't any spirits. I don't approve of drinking."

[Costin Dracula]

"I just assumed you had at least a basic grasp of primary colors," Costin shrugged, still smiling. There were some things you just never expected to have to explain to a grown woman, and pesto not being a color was definitely on that list. "And would know that pesto wasn't one of them. But you're right, I suppose if you'd never met an Italian person, you wouldn't really know about pesto."

She certainly did have a lot to learn about pasta, and Costin was not nearly as resistant to teaching her as he would have expected to be on principle. "It brings out some of the flavors," he explained. "It's not...you don't eat vodka sauce to get drunk, there's not even enough of it in there to get you drunk, and it all cooks so it doesn't do the same things anyway. Don't worry, I promise I won't get you drunk on pasta."

He glanced down at the bottle of wine, and wondered what she considered "drinking" considering she'd been helping him drink wine for the past hour or so. Maybe it was just the really strong stuff, like vodka, that she didn't approve of. "I must warn you, I do have...spirits...in my room, but I promise not to bring them out if you don't want me to."

[Dusty Fae]

Dusty rolled her eyes. "Of course I know my colors," she told him. She wanted to poke him for good measure, but figured that might be going too far. He didn't particularly care for her hand tucked into his arm, so poking him was probably not the way to go. "I've met plenty of Mexicans and some Indians, but never any Italians." She shook her head sadly.

She looked up at Costin suspiciously, wondering if that were true or not. But he did promise, so that was probably alright then. "Okay," she told him, still looking a little suspicious. "You promised so I reckon that's alright then."

He had spirits in his room. Well she didn't quite know what to think about that. But at least he had told her ahead of time. That was thoughtful. And it probably meant that he wasn't a drunk. Drunks wanted to hide their alcohol. Dusty nodded. "Thank you for telling me. I'd prefer if you didn't bring them out while I am there."

[Costin Dracula]

"Well," Costin said, tilting his head to one side, "I'm afraid you've still never met an Italian, as I am not one, but I do know a bit about the cooking." He didn't mention that was just about the only thing he knew how to cook well. It wasn't as if his parents had ever gone out of their way to teach him how to make delicious meals they didn't need to eat; what Costin knew about food was what he had taught himself from books and the internet over a lifetime of being the only human being in his house.

"Dusty," he said, feeling as though he should warn her about one thing, "listen, when I promise something, you can rely on that, I don't promise things I don't mean. But that doesn't hold true for everyone. You mustn't just trust everyone because they make you promises, alright?"

Hadn't she said something about a saloon? Was that why she had such an aversion to his hard liquor? He would have thought she'd be used to it, but maybe she'd seen too much of it and was sick of drunk people. That made enough sense, he supposed.

"Did...have you had bad experiences with alcohol?"

[Dusty Fae]

Dusty giggled a little bit. "I didn't think you were an Italian. Unless Costin is an Italian name. Is it?" She hadn't expected that he might be Italian. He didn't really look like how she thought Italians were supposed to look like. But maybe Italians looked different when they lived in the sky. She wasn't sure. "Have you met any Italians?"

Dusty looked up sharply at her name. The way he'd said it made her feel like this was about to become serious. And it was, but he was saying something she'd already known. "I trust you," she told Costin honestly. "I know the rest. People are always gonna hurt other people and break promises because they can. I cain't trust everybody and I don't."

At the next question Dusty slipped her hand out of Costin's arm. This wasn't the kind of thing you talked about when you were arm in arm with someone. This was much more serious and she needed the space. "Not personally, but I've seen plenty of things. And none of them pretty. But I also grew up in a Saloon. Men drink and then they get ugly." She had seen what happened after the fact. Bruises and crying and fear. Chairs or tables or windows broken. "Gambling and drinking bring out the worst in men. The worst in humanity."

[Costin Dracula]

Costin shook his head. "No, it's not Italian. Costin is Romanian. So is my last name. And my middle name, Miguel, that's Spanish. But none of it is Italian at all, you're right." He considered her next question briefly before answering. "I have probably met some Italians in my life, I suppose. My fathers had...a lot of interesting people over for dinner. They never talked to me much, though, I was always sent to bed early those nights."

For whatever reason, he was glad to hear that she wasn't as trusting with everyone as she was with him, although he certainly couldn't imagine what had made her decide he was trustworthy. Costin didn't make much of an effort to befriend people, but he was honest, often brutally so, and he imagined more so than a lot of other people might be. "That's good, then," he said, giving her hand a little squeeze with his arm, then immediately looking down in abject horror, as if he had been betrayed by his own arm.

As she detailed some of her bad experiences with drunkards, Costin couldn't help thinking back on his night out with Mordred. He hadn't even had that much to drink, and he'd gotten into some of the trouble she was talking about. He'd had one glass of scotch and whatever that pill was that Mordred had given him, and he'd gotten punched in the side of the face. "I suppose you may be right," he said, shrugging, and returned his free hand to his coat pocket now that she'd let go of his arm. "I've just seen so many of those things in people when they weren't drunk at all, it seems like just an excuse to blame it on the liquor."

[Dusty Fae]

Romanian. Well, that was something she never would have guessed. "How come you got two Romanian names and one Spanish one?" she asked. That seemed curious. Most of the Mexicans she'd met who had Spanish names had only Spanish names. Not any other kind. And as far as she was aware her own name was as American as could be. "Are you Romanian then? How does that work in the sky on different planets and stuff?"

Costin squeezing her arm was a bit reassuring. It was nice that he was trying to look out for her a little bit. She didn't really need it, but it was nice. Especially now with her momma gone.

Dusty nodded. Costin was right to some degree. People could be ugly without the alcohol and then even uglier with it. But it was different in Los Avalos. "It ain't the same," she told him seriously. "Back home there are expectations on how to behave in public. It's real polite. But behind closed doors you never can be sure what's going on. But sometimes men who drink act ugly in public. And for some it don't take much." She shrugged too. "It's just different back home."

[Costin Dracula]

There was something bizarrely endearing about the way dusty phrased things. How did being Romanian work in the sky? Costin laughed, he didn't even bother to try and hide it this time. "It works much the same way as it does here, I suppose. Romania is the name of the sun my father's planet orbits, and anyone from that system generally speaks the language. I've got two Romanian names because...well, I suppose they agreed on the first one, and Dracula is the family name. My other father is Spanish, so I've got a middle name after someone he knew, but I don't think he had a family name he wanted to give me. And anyway, the nobility comes from the Dracula side."

He decided then and there that Dusty could never know about his indiscretions with Mordred. If she knew how they'd been shouting in the library and starting fights in bars, she probably would label him an ugly person and be done with him. Which he...didn't want? Maybe?

"I think people who only act...ugly...in private are maybe more dangerous than those who portray it out in the open," he said, thinking back. "People can be delightful in public, and then go home and do terrible things to their loved ones or to people who have come to visit them. But perhaps I'm only speaking from my own experience there."

[Dusty Fae]

"Do you speak Romanian then?" Dusty asked, curious. He did have a funny accent. Not that she could speak much on that considering that her own accent was pretty strange to everyone else here at the school. "Or Spanish? Or both? Do you speak both?" She wanted to know a lot of things about Costin and his life in the sky. It sounded so strange, so surreal. She wondered what these places looked it.

Dusty nodded. Costin was right. The truly dangerous people were the ones who acted ugly behind closed doors. They were the ones who acted ugly to people they saw as below themselves. Those people were the worst kind of people. But Costin seemed to be speaking from his own experiences and that worried her a bit. "Costin,"she said quietly, reaching out to touch his arm. "Do your daddies hurt you when you go home? Did someone hurt you?"

[Costin Dracula]

Costin nodded. "I speak both. My fathers made a point of speaking both to me when I was younger, because there's no better way to learn a language than to speak it as a child." He glanced over at her. "I could teach you a little sometime, if you'd like." Why was he offering that? He didn't want to teach languages to humans. He didn't want to do any of these things, but somehow, he kept volunteering them for this human in particular. Costin wondered for a moment, if he'd ever had a sibling, if there was someone out there who was related to him by blood.

He was shaken out of that line of thought by Dusty's next question, which caught him completely off-balance. Did his fathers hurt him? Was she asking him if his vampire fathers beat him? Or...bit him, or something? That hadn't been what he was getting at, not at all.

"No, no," he shook his head quickly. "No, I only mean...well, a lot of the people my fathers brought over for dinner, they weren't good people. They were fancy people, people who thought they should be associating with nobility, but who were quite vile in reality. My fathers...they never hurt me. Not physically, anyway."

[Dusty Fae]

That was pretty amazing that Costin had grown up speaking two different languages and then he learned English too! "Wow," she breathed, very impressed by this knowledge. She nodded, delighted that Costin had offered to teach her. "I know some Spanish. Los Avalos is real close to Mexico and rancheros come through town often enough that everyone knows a little Spanish. And the chef at the diner speaks Spanish so sometimes I talk to him in Spanish." She wondered if he would tell her that her accent was awful or something. She wondered if she'd mind.

Dusty frowned. She was glad that Costin's daddies didn't hurt him physically, but that wasn't the only kind of hurt a person could have. Hurting took all forms. "So, they hurt your feelings?" she asked softly. "That ain't very nice. Parents ain't supposed to do that."

[Costin Dracula]

"We ought to practice sometime, then," Costin said, "because the Spanish I speak is the sort they speak in Spain, and I'd love to compare the differences between that and what you learned back at home." Why? Why would you want to know that, Costin? There's no reason to waste time learning that. "Have you taken any language classes since you've been here?" To be fair, Costin absolutely would have made fun of her accent if it didn't sound like a regional thing, but if she started crying about it...well, all bets were apparently off if she started crying.

"They...they withhold things that I need, that's all." That sounded sort of like they never fed him. "Not...well, they won't give me the thing I want the most, no matter how hard I work to prove myself worthy of it. I am growing old, closer to dying every single day, and they still ignore my requests."