Things never quite settled into a routine for Ren, simply due to the chaos of life on the streets. But she had developed patterns, and found comfort in them.
She and her “roommate” saw the dawn together, so long as he didn’t carried away, which... had been known to happen. But his internal clock was better than hers, and normally they had long since given up on his dick out of sheer exhaustion on her part. Sometimes she fell asleep, but she tried to stay up and make as much progress as she could on her never-ending project to teach him words. He couldn’t make them, but it was clear he could learn what she meant by them.
He always settled into a position before dawn. She liked to be within his sights, at the very least. She felt like it gave him a sense of continuity. She had no reason for feeling this way, she just did. She often watched as he turned to stone with the first rays of the sun.
Then her day began. She tried not to nap immediately, because these few scant hours before most of the world rose were precious. First she would dress, because her roommate never really let her stay dressed for long. How she dressed depended on her plans for the day. Today, she needed to dress up--to a limited definition of “up”--and so when she opened her trunk of clothes, she selected something nicer. Something she’d gotten from Ruka, because god, people just... really liked dressing her up for some reason, she was basically making her living as a professional doll at this point.
Ruka’s sense of fashion was closer to Ren’s, or perhaps it would be more apt to say Ruka actually cared what Ren’s sense of fashion was. In either case, there was often clothing in the little boxes labeled “REN” Ruka had taken to leaving out in her kitchen. So that Ren would stop stealing from her kitchen. She acquiesced, because she loved being able to snag a box and leave quickly before something could find her. Things frequented Ruka’s bar, and so despite its place nestled in the safety of Old Town, she shied away from it, especially at night.
She picked out a shirt she liked that she suspected would satisfy, a black knit that covered her neck and chest but left her shoulders bare. It would show off her newest coat of glitter. Her skin never didn't shimmer, not anymore, and she took extreme pleasure in showing it off when she could.
She paired it with dark denim skinny jeans. They had been skinny jeans in name only when she first got them, but they fit a bit more snugly around the hips these days. She wasn't concerned. When they got too tight, she could give them to someone else. They had whole shops for that, and she did it quite often with clothing Ruka had given her that she knew she'd never use, or Jean had gotten her for his pleasure that his fickle nature decided he never wanted to see again.
She went back and forth on shoes several times before settling on a black boot, the kind with the red sole she'd become so fond of. It had military-style buttons all up the front, and it was a good height for these jeans. A wedge instead of a needle heel made it easier and more practical for walking around town.
She also shoved real clothing into her backpack for the day, a tank, an oversized black shirt, a hoodie, some leggings, and sensible sneakers Ruka had gotten for her because Ruka knew Ren's feet were primarily used for walking.
She resisted the urge to shove a granola bar in her mouth, but tossed a few in her bag along with two oranges. She never knew what the day would bring. She paused, and no more had to think before a swarming of rats came from every corner of the building to meet her in the large, central chamber of the cathedral. She set her bag down but only let Phoebe and Timothy in. The rest, she requested gently to take shifts watching over her roommate. She got nervous. There were over a hundred rats in the church now, though, so there was always someone to keep an eye on him.
Finally satisfied, she set out to face the day. She headed straight to Jean’s, which was the only reason she’d bothered dolling up like this. He’d probably put her in something else; he preferred pretty dresses and heels you could put a man’s eye out with. But he was notoriously fickle and there was no point in trying to predict his tastes for the day. It varied so widely, what he wanted with her, that she gave up on even trying to predict it. She just wore clothing that would offend him less than her average wear, and went to his house two or three times a week with a vague list of things she might ask for.
Today, it was food, because she was feeling those uncomfortable cramps she got when she hadn’t eaten enough meat.
She arrived at his house sometime past sunrise, climbed the fence around his backyard garden, and dropped in. It was nicer than waiting on his front steps. She settled in on his patio and napped.
The sun got higher in the sky as she drowsed on and off for an hour or two. As it got closer to time for his shop to open, she stretched and yawned. He wouldn’t be letting her in today. He wasn’t in the mood, or already had company. She took no offense; theirs was an arrangement of convenience--his convenience, mostly, but still. She knew if the situation was truly desperate, he would be able to taste it on her, and let her in.
She changed in the bushes, tucking her nice clothing back into her backpack and putting on things much more suited for the remainder of her day. Even if Jean wouldn’t be buying her a steak, it wasn’t as though she was out of other options.
She swung by the cathedral Ruka owned, but a few nearby rats informed her there was a shifter in the kitchen. A cat, to their distaste and hers both. No robbing Ruka today, either. Well, it was still early, and there were a lot of very nice houses in Old Town. She spent the next few hours digging through trash with a collection of her friends. She found a few things of value; her rats were very good at finding shiny when she asked, and a few things that were mostly edible, though very little in the way of meat. It was hard to find a combination of cooked, edible, and relatively fresh that kept meat safe to eat, but still something thrown into the trash. Her rats got plenty fed, at least.
She decided to head downtown. A walk, to be sure, and one she took cautiously. She was outside Jean’s jurisdiction when she crossed the river into downtown. There were things there, a lot of things, but she took care to be out long before sunset and kept to streets she knew. It used to be, her rats gave her a marked advantage over other homeless. Now? Most everyone else in her situation had advantages much better than hers. The others had all died, especially those who dared to call downtown their nighttime home.
She ducked into the library, glanced around for a familiar face. She found it behind the counter, the tan woman easy to spot thanks to her ever-present hat. She looked like she’d been up all night crying, eyes hidden behind thick frames and dressed in long sleeves. Either she hadn’t been the one with Jean, then, or she had been and it had been a less fun night.
Ren would never understand how those two got into it so much. Jean was so straightforward.
The sad little half-wave the librarian gave her implied that it might have had nothing to do with Jean at all, or if it did, she blamed herself more than him. Bree got very rough around the edges when mad at Jean. In any case, Ren waved right back and headed into the bathroom, where she changed. Again. She did a lot of that in the course of a day.
“Did you go to Jean’s this morning?” Bree asked, catching Ren directly outside of the bathroom.
“I did. He didn’t invite me in,” she replied.
Bree sighed, long, heavy, and dark. “Me neither. I was stuck outside all night.” She ran an exhausted hand across her face. “That motherfucker. He’d better just be in a mood.” She sighed again. “Thanks, Ren. Did you need anything today? I’ve got those print-outs you asked for.”
Ren brightened considerably at this. “Thank you! We’re making great progress on anatomy; I think it’s a niche he understands.”
Bree snorted, too loud for a library. “Yeah, I bet. Anything else?”
“I’ll probably be in and out,” she replied. “I’ve got errands.” Which was a nice way to say she’d be homeless-ing up downtown all day and needed a place to change and get clean water. “Would you like an orange?” she offered.
“I’m having a hard time imagining something shittier than accepting food from you,” Bree scoffed. She was rough around the edges even when she wasn’t mad at Jean. “I have class this afternoon, but if you’re still around here at noon, we can grab lunch at Moody’s.” Her cheeks flushed a bit with obvious pleasure. “Jean opened a tab.” Her moods were damn near as fickle as Jean’s. Mostly because of him.
“Alright, thank you,” Ren said cheerfully. A deli would be perfect to get her meat-needs satisfied, and she knew Jean wouldn’t object to feeding her under any circumstances. “I’ll be sure to stop by.”
“Don’t lose track of time,” Bree said sarcastically, which normally meant she was trying to tell a joke. “Any of your watches actually work right now?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Probably.”
“Alright, be careful out there. Don’t piss off anyone toothy. If you need a rescue, kite ‘em in here, you know I’ll give ‘em hell.” She would, probably. Also, Ren was fairly certain the head librarian was something terrifying. Possibly a vampire.
With lunch settled, she was free to spend her day a bit more leisurely. She still stopped by the pawn shop a few blocks down, the reason she’d come downtown in the first place. She had some nice things Jean and Ruka had given her, which she’d long since figured she could turn into cash. Coming in looking nice helped, because it looked less like she was a thief. Also, she kind of figured the proprietor didn’t actually care.
The object for sale today was a choker Jean had given her. He’d gotten it purely because there had been a salesman working with a very strong interest in her, and her neck in specific, who was driven halfway to madness by the antics Jean put her up to. He’d taken great pleasure in making the man tie half the chokers in the store around her neck before settling on one. He’d ask her how each one felt, in detail, and run his own leather clad hands over her neck, and even she’d been able to tell the poor salesman was desperate to run into the back room and jerk one off.
Jean was made happy by weird things, but that one had actually been genuinely kind of funny.
In any case, he'd purchased one of the necklaces, probably the one that most aroused the salesman, a choker with a link of thick squares covered in chips of diamonds. She couldn't remember how much it cost, because after a certain point the numbers stopped being quantifiable for her.
She placed it onto the counter with a smile. Ricky looked at it, ran a thumb over the diamonds.
"$100."
"Try again."
"Diamonds seem fake."
"Ricky," she said with a little smile, putting her elbows onto the counter. "Have I ever come in here with fake diamonds?" She had not. She had come in here with jewelry and old watches that ticked like new. Most of the time, she traded them for power tools. Ricky didn't ask questions, because he lived downtown.
He sighed. "$500, and only because I like you and your weird Twilight skin. You're the shittiest vampire I ever get in here."
"And I never even bite," she replied cheerfully. "Cash today, thanks."
That would last her for a while. She could get something nice from that bakery near the river, Maria’s. Eclairs, maybe, because she wanted to see her roommate eat eclairs, the cream bursting out and surprising him and getting everywhere. Yes, that would be wonderful. And she wouldn’t even need the money for lunch, thanks to Bree.
It was nice to have friends, in a town like this, because she so often attracted trouble.
She sat at the corner near the library and ate her oranges, feeding the peels to Phoebe. Timothy sulked, because he couldn’t have oranges, but she gave him a kiss on the head and promised him leftovers from lunch for being such a sweetheart. She piddled away the rest of the morning, reading in the library and picking up a few things she needed that she didn’t want to pester Ruka or Jean with.
Lunch with Bree was... well, fun was never quite the right word for hanging out with Bree. But Ren could tell she was trying. It’s just that she wasn’t very good at it. She suspected this to be why the woman had so much trouble with Jean. She was rude, but you could tell she wasn't cruel. She ordered the entire left half of the menu, then proceeded to eat one sandwich and declare she wasn't as hungry as she thought she was and oops, she was running late, bye.
Leaving Ren with six extra sandwiches.
She wasn't as subtle as she tried to be.
Ren ate a second sandwich there, and then wrapped up the others in tin foil that she carried with her because you'd be surprised how often you needed tin foil. She gave the meatball sub to Timothy, for being such a wonderful little angel.
She headed back into Old Town early after making sure she'd done everything she might need to in downtown, stopping by Maria's on the way and picking up a box of eclairs. She ran about Old Town for the rest of the afternoon, picking up cigarettes and medicine and 2x4s. She couldn’t have wood delivered to the church, for obvious reasons, so she bought one or two planks of wood from a nearby hardware store essentially every single day. What they thought of her, she had no idea. Not many people had a “regular order” at a hardware store. They had suggested she buy in bulk multiple times before giving up and letting her walk cheerfully out the door every single day with a giant fuck-off piece of wood over her head.
She was settled back into the church by mid-afternoon, just in time for her exhaustion crash. She took a long nap by her roommate’s feet, in case she slept in and missed sunset--which she did. She awoke in a fluffpile of rats. She’d fallen asleep in her good clothes, sigh. She shifted, and realized her friend was awake, but hadn’t really moved. He was just watching her. He did that, a lot.
She shooed off the rats and sat up, yanking off her shoes. She fed her friend eclairs, which was exactly as funny as she expected it to be. They both got shockingly covered in cream, and then she barely managed to get her clothes off in time to get covered in another sort of cream. There was a break for dinner; she ate two more sandwiches, then pulled a third apart to tell him the names of all the ingredients. She fed him the bits he’d eat, nibbled on some herself, and tossed the rest to some of her rats. She didn’t need to feed them all; they could take care of themselves. But she liked giving back.
Then they got distracted again. Then she tried to show him the new cards she’d had printed, which worked for a while, but then he got distracted, again, and by then she got pretty damn distracted herself, and remained that way for the rest of the night.
She woke up half an hour before dawn, like clockwork, to see him to “bed,” and start her day anew.
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