chapter one | heartbreak girl

Marcel had given Josh a simple task. To go throughout New Orleans and find any misfits, any loners, that he could find. Marcel needed people who had been beaten up and spit out by the world and still somehow found the strength to keep going. People that could disappear for a little while and it wouldn't change the day to day lives of the people around them. People who were young, who could fight, who were used to fighting for every damn thing they'd ever gotten. 

People just like Leo Thomas. And that's exactly why the bartender was one of the many standing in a large, disheveled group outside of the abandoned warehouse Marcel Gerard now called home. He, like the rest of them, were in a trance-like state, swallowed up by both the enchanting words Marcel spewed and the oversized hoodie he had worn that day. 

At this point, Josh had brought Marcel dozens of groups filled with dozens of people. Each time it was the same thing, Marcel would do his whole charade of how if they wanted power, something to fight for, or even to live forever, they would have to find there way back to him. He'd do his little trick, and then send them all on their merry way in a haze, the fact that they had just been given a speech by a vampire in the back of their minds. That is, unless, they found the willpower to recall the memory and find their way back to Marcel to be turned by him. 

Today's speech ended no differently then any other day, with Josh hopeful and Marcel less so. Marcel needed an army if he wanted any semblance of the power he used to have over the French Quarter, that's why his test for new vampires was so hard. He knew that only a select few would ever come back to join him, but with each passing day he seemed to have even less faith that even that might happen. 

"My money's on the rocker chick," Josh declared as he and Marcel entered the warehouse together. "And that hoody guy. When you said all the shit about being afraid, he didn't even flinch." 

"I wouldn't bet on it," Marcel muttered. "Be lucky to get one from that group."

"How can you tell? They all seem tough. What are you looking for?" Josh asked Marcel for probably the hundredth time. He always felt so sure that he was getting exactly the right people for their cause, but Marcel was never impressed. 

Marcel sighed as he went over to his makeshift bar and poured himself a glass of whiskey. "I don't need tough guys, Josh. I need warriors." 

"What's the difference?" Josh muttered. 

But there was a difference. A tough guy was just an act, a performance someone put on to impress the world around them. But to be a warrior meant you had something special deeply embedded into your heart. It was what made a person a fighter, what gave them fire was what drove them to fight. And, Lucky for Marcel, or perhaps not so lucky, Leo Thomas had grown up fighting for his life for what felt like every damn day since he was fourteen. If there was one last warrior to be found in New Orleans, it was Leo. It all just came down to whether or not Leo still had it in him to put up a fight.

The coffeeshop was bustling with it's usual afternoon crowd. From tourists traveling who needed a caffeine boost before they continued to trapeze through the quarter to college students trying to find a place to study, the place had plenty of faces filling it up. One in particular was more familiar then the rest. Leo Thomas was a bit of a regular to just about every coffeeshop in a three block radius. 

Leo wasn't one who did things like going to bed a reasonable time or getting a goodnights sleep. However, this wasn't a lifestyle choice so much as a coping mechanism. Leo didn't sleep not because he wasn't tired because truly, he was always tired. The reason he didn't sleep was because he couldn't. A school therapist had told him she thought he had insomnia, but nothing had really been done to help him beyond that diagnosis. 

Leo was pretty sure it wasn't just insomnia, though. Especially not in the past few days. There was something dark and twisted in his mind that triggered awful night terrors and conjured unsavory nightmares, and in the past week they only seemed to get more daunting. So if never sleeping meant he could avoid them, Leo was just fine with that. 

Standing at the counter of the coffeeshop, Leo's finger's tapped an unknown beat on the counter of the coffee shop as he waited for his order. While one hand performed an underappreciated musical number to the packets of sugar sitting on the counter top, his other hand haphazardly trapping his phone next to his ear. 

"Hey, Busboy, where are you at? You're shift starts soon," Brady Elliot's voice echoed through the phone. It was clear by all the sounds of glass cups clinking in the background that Brady had Leo on speaker phone as he worked. 

Even without his oldest friend being with him, Leo could perfectly picture the other boy's crooked grin pressed against his thin lips, his eyes glimmering in a mischievous shade of green that'd always simultaneously managed to get them in and out of trouble. Leo could imagine Brady so clearly, it was like he was next to him having the conversation. But then again, what else could you expect from two wild spirits who had practically been intertwined in each others lives since birth? 

"Getting coffee," Leo deadpanned. Across the counter, the barista slid him his order of one large black coffee. Silently, he nodded as a way to show his gratitude as he took the cup. "I needed some," Leo explained further to his friend. 

"Didn't sleep last night?" Brady questioned, but he already knew his answer.

 Having been living together since they were fifteen, Brady had come to realize Leo didn't sleep nearly as much as any halfway decent doctor would recommend. However, after happily accepting an unhealthy amount of coffee as his source of energy, Leo waved off his sleeping problems as a misfortune he alone had to bare and wouldn't accept Brady's insistence to try to get some sort of help. 

"Yeah," Leo still answered. "Look, I'll be in soon. Don't clean up all the dishes without me." 

"Don't worry, I'll leave plenty for you, Lee," Brady assured the other boy, his sly smirk that was definitely plastered on his face somehow slipping through the phone. 

Biting back a snarky response, Leo pulled his phone away from his ear and ended the call. Slipping his cell phone into his jacket pocket, he turned around with the fullest intention to head straight to work. He absolutely planned on carrying out his daily routine of going from the coffeeshop to the bar he worked at, but those plans blurred quite significantly as soon as he saw the girl sitting in the window seat of the coffeeshop. 

Unconsciously, Leo stopped dead in his tracks as he looked at the girl. He was glad no one had been following him, because they surely would've ran in to the back of him and spilt their beverage everywhere. Leo couldn't help how he had reacted, though. The girl in the window was visibly saddened by something, which Leo felt to be the greatest tragedy he'd seen in a while. She kept looking down at her phone as Leo kept feeling like an idiot standing there staring at her. As she bit her lip worriedly, Leo felt a tug at his heart strings. 

Leo looked at the clock hanging on the wall. He had ten minutes to get to his shift, and it would already probably take him at least that to get to the bar at this time of day. Then, his eyes fell helplessly back to the girl.

 "Shit," he murmured to himself as he started heading towards the girl. 

 He couldn't quite put his finger on why, but he felt like he just had to make sure this girl was okay. Normally, he didn't pay attention to other people and other people didn't really pay attention to him and that was exactly how Leo liked to live his life. But thos sad brunette girl, she was different. And so, with no reason other then the fact that something inside him was screaming for him to talk to her, Leo walked over to her. Nimbly plucking a rose out of the small vase on the table behind to her, Leo slid into the seat on the window ledge next to her. 

Upon Leo's sudden arrival, the girl jumped unexpectedly. She looked up at him with wide blue eyes that were somehow equally both fierce and anguished, as if she wasn't sure if she should be crying or yelling, so she suppressed both urges as best as possible. Leo had a feeling that the girl had more strength then he could ever imagine, she just didn't quite know it. 

"Expecting someone else?" Leo guessed as a small tight frown tugged her lips downwards. He gave her a soft smile that he hoped appeared to be charming. 

"Um, yeah," the girl responded cautiously. As if embarrassed, she dropped her head a little so her dark hair fell in her face, leaving her hurt expression just out of view from Leo's gaze. Leo rather appreciated her attempt to cover up her pain, mostly because he had done the same thing enough to be able to see right through it. 

"I'm Leo Thomas, by the way," Leo introduced himself. He looked down at the cup of coffee in his hands and fiddled with the cap. He tried to act casual, as if he were life long friends with the girl he'd sat down next to. He hoped it would make her feel more comfortable with him. 

"Davina. Claire." responded the blue-eyed girl with a story Leo would love to hear. 

"Nice to meet you Davina Claire," Leo told her. A soft smile spread further across his lips, one that held a type of warmth that was unusual for the boy to have.

For a minute the two sat in silence. It was an uncomfortable silence, but it wasn't exactly unnatural either. Both Davina and Leo were very conscious about the other's presence, and neither exactly knew what to make of it. 

"Is it a guy you're waiting for?" Leo pondered further. 

Tucking some of her hair behind her ear, Davina nodded, but she still didn't look over to Leo. "Yeah. For an hour. I'm such an idiot, waiting for a date that's obviously not showing." 

"Nah, you're not," Leo assured her. 

Remembering the rose he had taken from the other table, Leo twirled the rose stem in his fingers for a second before slowly handing it over to her. He watched carefully as she took it, handling the flower with a great deal of caution. 

"What's this?" Davina asked, holding the rose with the tips of two fingers as if it were a weapon. 

"It's a red rose. I want to say it's a type of flower," Leo joked. He thought he saw a smile threatening to break out through the frown on Davina's lips, so he continued. "It's what you should've been given an hour ago. Along with endless compliments and a cup of coffee the guy should've paid for. You should be given a dozen roses every time you're on a date, Davina Claire. And you should never have to wait for anyone." 

When he was done talking, Leo's eyes fell back to Davina's lips. He thought that maybe, for a second, there might've been a shadow of a smile, but he couldn't quite be sure. But the frown, that frown that had been so unacceptable to be possessing a girl like Davina that it had made Leo stop dead in his tracks, that frown was gone. Leo supposed that for the time being, that was all he could ask for.

 Leo was doing something right, he was sure of that much. And he sure as hell wasn't going to give up now. All those things he told Davina that she should've gotten, he absolutely believed she deserved it all. He wasn't going to be able to bring himself to leaving her until she believed that, too. Why he felt so hellbent on this, he wasn't sure. There just... was something about her. Like she had shown some light into the grey and hazy world he'd been stumbling through for god knows how long. 

Davina still had trouble looking at Leo. He could tell she was still embarrassed, maybe even ashamed, that she had gotten stood up. There was nothing wrong with her, though, and the single action of some idiot guy couldn't measure her significance. She'd come to realize that soon enough, but until she did Leo was fine with helping to guide her. So, as she wasn't turning to look at him, he slouched a little, his head falling to the same level as hers. Slowly, he leaned a little bit closer, trying to get her attention because what he was going to say was possibly the most  important thing he'd ever utter. 

"You know what? Fuck him," Leo stated matter-of-factly. His tone was some how both soft and strong, and it was laced together just to be heard by Davina. Finally, Davina turned her head just enough to look into Leo's eyes. She studied them carefully, a bit of confusion in her own eyes. His eyes gently looking in hers, Leo clarified his statement. "I mean, if he's really stupid enough to stand a girl like you up, he doesn't deserve you." 

Finally, Davina dared to smile softly. It was small and barely noticeable, but it was there. And with it came a bit of ease on her heart, which felt a little less like it might explode. 

She had no idea who this boy was or why he was saying these things to her, but his brown eyes were soft and trustworthy and she thought it might just be okay to hold on to his every word and let them lift her spirits. Normally, that'd be a dangerous game, but there didn't seem to be a single thing about Leo that told Davina he was dangerous. And in a city like New Orleans, that was saying something. 

"So, Davina Claire, how do you take your coffee?" Leo asked, his smile widening a bit into a grin, but it wasn't at all smug. He had a grin that was still comforting, still safe. But his grin had an edge, a mystery of sorts involving questions Davina couldn't think of quite yet. Leo was a type of person Davina felt completely taken aback by because he was so different, so unusual to the selfish vampires and witches she'd been surrounded by for so long. The mystery he was shrouded in wasn't threatening but instead just simply intriguing. 

"Excuse me?" Davina questioned, raising her eyebrows. She wasn't suspicious of him, though, just completely and utterly intrigued by the puzzle that was the random stranger who had given her a rose laced with hope and confidence. 

"Well, I'm about to go buy you coffee and I figured it'd be a little awkward if I get your order completely wrong," Leo explained with a soft, playful laugh. He sat up a little, but kept his eyes on Davina as he moved. "Unless you have somewhere else to be? I won't be offended." 

Slowly, Davina shook her head. She didn't quite understand what was happening, but she did know that she liked being in Leo's company. She'd come to the shop to sit with someone and have a cup of coffee, and maybe she wasn't on a date now and maybe it wasn't with the guy she'd developed a rather unexpected crush on, but Leo seemed nice enough and she really didn't want to sit alone anymore. 

 anybody have any idea's for leo and davina's ship name? lavina? deo? or like taire or clomas with their last names? i can't decide if i like any of those whoops.