fandomtownies | The Arms Hotel, Saturday

Allie had woken up hungry. There wasn't any food in the apartment where she woken up so she'd gotten dressed in her well-worn, slightly tattered clothes and went looking for it.

The well stocked kitchen was overwhelming and Allie quickly shoved as much food as she could fit into her pockets. She probably shouldn't have stopped to eat the chocolate chip cookie, but she was only eight. Impulse control was still an issue.

Nikolai couldn't live on dry Cheerios forever. Sooner or later, he was going to have to suck it up and go into the kitchen, potentially risking the wrath of Gunther, wherever the hell Gunther had gotten himself off to, today. It wasn't like Nick cared, so long as he didn't end up with proscuitto being thrown at his head or something.

What he was not expecting was the small child with the overstuffed pockets who was cramming the cookie into her tiny little piehole like she'd never eaten a meal in her life.

"Hey, kid. Hungry?"

Nope. He didn't expect it. That didn't mean he couldn't take it in stride. At least she wasn't a shark.

It was daytime so he wasn't a vampire, but that didn't mean he wasn't a Pet, one of the cruel humans who enforced the vampires laws. A smarter move would have been to cringe and grovel since the Pets seemed to enjoy that. But even at eight Allie was contrary. She squared her shoulders and met his gaze steadily. "I'm always hungry."

Hopefully Nick wouldn't notice the way she slowly started edging towards the door.

Aw, come on, Allie. Nick was wearing dark shades, but he wasn't blind.

"Well, stick around then, kid. I'm about to make lunch," he nodded toward the fridge. "I have no idea where the cooks got off to today, but I have a mind for some pasta or something. You like spaghetti?"

The kid was obviously starving. It wasn't like he was going to chase her out the door or something. And he could manage spaghetti without it being too much of a disaster, which was an added bonus.

It was hard balancing the instinct for self-preservation with her overwhelming case of curiosity. Which meant Allie was still edging herself towards the door, but her pace had slowed the tiniest bit. "What's spaghetti? And what's this?" Allie asked, reaching out to grab another cookie. "It's good."

Oh god, a kid who didn't know cookies. Nikolai wasn't a soft touch or anything, but so help him, she was tugging at the heartstrings a little, there.

"That's a cookie," he share. "Chocolate chip, I think. Hard to tell with how fast you're sucking 'em down. You want to stick around for the spaghetti, though. It's got noodles. Those are... fun?"

God, who let Nikolai be alone with kids?

"And beef and a sauce made out of tomatoes. You know tomatoes, right?"

Allie nodded. "Widow Tanner grows them and sometimes mom will trade with her for one as a treat."

She'd stopped her retreat but still didn't relax her guard. "You're not gonna turn me into the Prince?"

Nikolai squinted a little from behind his shades. There were bits and pieces that were starting to ring bells here and there, but he wasn't going to leap to some grand conclusion.

Mostly because 'one of your friends is suddenly maybe six' was a pretty crazy conclusion to leap to, even here.

... Right?

"Nah," he replied, shrugging. "Why would I do that? You're hungry, I have plenty of food, and I always make too much anyhow. I'll cook, you'll eat what's extra so it doesn't go to waste, we all win."

Eight, thank you very much. Even if she was the size of a six year old. Malnutrition will do that.

"Cause that's the rules," she said solemnly. "You're not supposed to break them."

But the thought of food, and maybe another cookie or two, was a powerful draw. "It there's extra can I bring some home to my mom?" Not that Allie had seen her mom, but it wouldn't be the first time she'd disappeared for a day or two in search of some extra food.

"Sure, kid," Nikolai replied. "I'll make up extra, and you can take some with you when you go, okay?"

The wonders of take-away containers, right? Even if this was somehow Allie, and Nick wasn't just losing his goddamn mind, even if it turned out she had no mom to take the food home to, at least he knew she'd be fed until whatever fuckery the island was pulling wore off this time.

"Okay," Allie agreed. "And I promise I won't tell where I got it." She didn't think he was a Pet, and if he wasn't Allie didn't want to get him in trouble.

"I appreciate that, kiddo. Here, how about you take a seat," he pulled up a chair for her to make herself comfortable on, "while I throw lunch together. It shouldn't take too long. Boiling water isn't that challenging."

And he poked around Gunther's kitchen often enough that really, he knew where to find most of what he needed anyhow.

Allie took a seat. One that put her suspiciously close to the cookies but still had a clear path out the door. Don't take it personally Nick, that suspicious nature kept her alive for a long time.

"Even I can do that," she said, scandalized. To have all this food and not know how to cook it was a horrifying thought. "What's your name?"

Hey, any kid that broke into kitchens and stuffed their pockets with the contents had probably earned their right to a suspicious nature.

"Nikolai," he replied, glancing back her way as he pulled the pasta from one of the cupboards, and then went scrounging about for tomato sauce. "Nick, if you prefer. You have a name, kid?"

If it was 'Allie,' he was just going to give up pretending that the island had a limit on weirdness.

Give up and go with it Nick, it was a lot easier on the brain.

"I'm Allie. I'm eight."

Yeah. Yeah, that was Nikolai, mentally flipping a few tables and lighting the island on fire. All while very casually filling a large cooking pot with water.

"Eight whole years old, huh? That's practically ancient." Again, really, who let Nikolai communicate with kids? "Well, it's good to, uh, meet you, Allie."

This was so damn weird.

On Monday evening, when Allie woke up and remembered her first taste of a chocolate chip cookie, she'd join him in the table flipping.

Eyes wide, she watched the pot fill with water. "Do you live here? This is like what I think the Prince's tower is like."

They could just have a table flipping party. It would be awesome.

"I live upstairs, yeah, but I don't own this place or anything. I work here. One of the staff. Getting to eat out of the kitchen," when all of the cooks were small children or just skipping out on work for the day, "is one of the perks."

Expect lots of yelling.

"Lucky," Allie said. "You must be Registered then."

Please. Nikolai could handle yelling. He worked with divas back in LA.

"Registered?"

Sure! Maybe? He had no idea.

The divas couldn't kill him in a fit of temper. At least not easily.

"Marked. Usually it's on your arm." Allie turned her arm and pointed to the inside of her wrist, which was still, thankfully unmarked. "It's so everyone will know you belong to the Prince."

And if Allie killed him in a fit of temper, he'd have to be very put out by it.

And also very dead.

"Oh. Nah." Nick rolled up both of his sleeves, showing off his own wrists. "No marks to be seen, see? So, I guess I'm not."

If it made him feel any better, she'd feel very bad.

"That's good. My mom is Registered. She says it's worth it for the rations," she said matter-of-factly. "And that it doesn't hurt when she gives her blood. But I don't believe her."

Nah. He'd probably still just feel really dead.

"For the food, I could see," Nikolai noted, looking thoughtfully at Allie before turning the heat up on the water on the stove, and then starting to slop sauce ingredients into another pot. Maybe he was doing this backwards. Maybe that's why Gunther didn't like him in the kitchen.

Either way, he was peering into the refrigerator for the ground beef.

"It sounds like your mom is a very brave woman, to me."

That earned him another solemn nod. "She is."

Allie hesitated, on the verge of sharing a very big secret. She was pretty sure Nick wasn't a Pet and he hadn't said anything about the stolen food stuffed in her pockets which was a death sentence in and of itself. "She taught me to read."

"Did she, now?" Nick considered that for a moment. For a lot of kids, that would simply be a statement of pride. And, while there was definitely pride in that, there was something else, too. Trust, a sort of caution. He could respect that she was going out on a limb with that one.

So he nodded.

"Good. Being able to read is a powerful tool. I'm glad you can, Allie."

"Someday I want to have lots of books. But they're hard to find now. The Pets burn them when they find them." She grew up in a really nice world.

Oh yeah. Nikolai was starting to get a feel for just how charming it really was.

"Yeah? There's a library not far from here that anyone is welcome to go into-- No Pets allowed. Place is full up with all kinds of books, you might be interested."

He'd never been there, but it seemed like the sort of thing to share with a little Allie who was denied books. Poor kid.

Guess what wee Allie's plans for the morning were going to include?

"I'd like that. Mom says there used to be a library in town. But they burned it."

"Burned it? Really? Damn, talk about crazy control freaks," Nikolai grumbled, shaking his head. "Well, the one here on the island is standing and fully stocked, so you won't have that problem, Allie."

He pulled out a frying pan and tossed the ground beef into it, and then dumped more spaghetti than he could ever possibly need into the pot of boiling water. Allie was going to eat tomorrow, dammit.

Nose twitching, Allie padded over to watch what he was doing more closely. She'd never seen this much food in one place. "Is that all for use?"

"Which? The spaghetti, or the books?" Tiny children and their weird little attention spans. Nikolai glanced down at her, and then shrugged and decided to answer both anyhow. "The library is there for people to use, so I'm pretty sure you can just go in and read to your heart's content. And all of this... Well, if I'm going to make enough for me to have some, and you to have some, and then for you to take with you when you go, I figure I might as well make plenty."

Because in his own way, he kind of felt obligated to stick his neck out for her while she was tiny.

"The spaghetti." And use there was the tiniest lisp as Allie said the unfamiliar word. "It's a lot. It smells good."

"That's good to hear, since it's not nearly done yet," Nick chuckled. "We probably don't need this much, but hey, there's nothing wrong with being guaranteed a meal waiting for you tomorrow too, right?"

Because he was lazy and would really rather just throw leftovers in the microwave than have to cook again if the kitchen staff were still kids clear through the weekend.

The thought of hot meals, two days in a row was enough to shock Allie into silence for a minute or two.

"That would be nice," she admitted. "Mom tries. But sometimes it's hard."

"Sounds to me like she's got a lot to work against in order to make sure there's enough to go around," Nick noted, nodding thoughtfully. "All things considered, it sounds like she's doing a good job."

Since he was beginning to get a somewhat clearer picture of where it is that Allie had come from, here.

He should have been around back in the Spring. He would have had a chance to meet her.

"I think so. Do you have kids?"

Oh, god. Nikolai didn't mean to laugh at that. Honest, he didn't. But the prospect of ever being responsible for little humans dragged a bark of a laugh out of him before he was even aware of it.

"What, me? No way. I've never really given having kids of my own any thought, but I don't have time for that sort of thing right now, anyway."

What with all of that super-important sitting in his suite trying to pull together a superhero costume because apparently he'd lost his goddamn mind that he had to do, these days.

Allie smiled slightly at Nick's laugh. "Having kids is hard. Anna says she's never having kids and that mom was dumb for having me. But mom says I'm worth it."

"Yeah, I'd buy that," Nikolai decided as he checked the meat, and then scraped it into another pot, followed by the rest of the ingredients for what was probably the laziest spaghetti sauce ever. "You're a good kid."

She was cute. God, how the hell was Allie so cute?

Eyes wide, Allie sniffed appreciatively. "You're a good cook." Honestly he could have slapped peanut butter on some bread and Allie would have considered him a five star chef. This was Michelin star quality to Allie, not that she knew what a Michelin star was.

Everything was fairly fresh and it was going to be served up hot. Really, so far as Nikolai's usual cooking prowess went, he was going all out, here.

"I get by," he decided, giving the sauce a stir before checking on the pasta. It was still a little stiff. He'd give it and the sauce a few more minutes. "Usually I stick with simpler food. But sometimes you get in the mood for something..."

And that something was apparently pasta, today.

The idea of choices, and being able to pick or choose what to make depending on the mood you were in was far beyond Allie's understanding of how things worked.

Allie had her hands firmly clasped behind her back to keep from sticking her finger in and sampling. "Like the cookies? I'd want to eat them all the time."

"Right up until they gave you a belly ache, I'm guessing," Nikolai replied, smirking to himself. "They taste good, but too many of them at once aren't going to leave you feeling very well."

He reached for the lid to the saucepan and covered up the contents. All the better for letting it simmer while the noodles softened up, after all.

"Sugar will do that, though."

That was probably something that Allie was going to have to learn from experience, because she was torn between watching the pot of sauce and wandering over to snatch another cookie.

"There was sugar in those? That's why the taste so good?" Sugar was a rare and precious commodity in Allie's world.

"Sugar and chocolate," Nick agreed. "I'm guessing you don't get chocolate often either, huh?"

"Nope. But Mom told me about. She had some when she was a kid." Forget the zombies. It was a world without chocolate. It was hell on earth!!!

He had no idea now, but someday, Nikolai would get a taste of a world without chocolate.

It was a shame he didn't know to enjoy it now while he still could.

"Well, that's what those dark brown bits are in the cookies," he shared, giving the pasta another stir before checking it again. "Chocolate. Maybe not pure chocolate or anything, but still pretty good."

The Arms Hotel, Saturday

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