[Private] When all else fails...there's always Denny's.

"You know, I can't say I have. I was going to go with a White Russian but when in Rome...go with what the locals go with and you're pretty much a Denny's local." He teased her playfully.

When the bartender came over to Lucas, he ordered two Palomas, and he put in an order for their Apps sample platter. The bartender advised him that they usually don't make Palomas here, but after staring at Lucas for several long moments with eyes full of infatuation, the bartender was inspired to do his best to make the two of them the best damn Palomas they ever had.

Lucas turned to face Dani once more and he is genuinely caught off guard at the bluntness of her statement.

"Damn, Phoenix. Not even waiting until I've gotten some liquid courage in my system before asking the tough questions." He chuckled, shaking his head.

He eyed the half chicken tender that was offered up to him. Lucas could pick up on the intent behind the gesture. This was the opportunity for them to sign the Great Chicken Tendie Treaty of Las Vegas. Signed on the year of our Lord, April 2021, between Winter and Summer in the heart of Denny's.  However, like with any good treaty, there were bound to be casualties and sacrifices on both sides. For Dani's part, she was willing to give her partner's ex a try. An ex who was a member of the polar opposite court of her court. On his end, it required him being willing to be vulnerable on some level and divulge some of his personal history that could easily be met with  a cold reception.

The Winter courtier picked up the half of the chicken tender that had been offered to him and he popped it into his mouth, signaling that he was open to signing the proverbial peace treaty.

"I'm sure Riley and I both have our own takes on how things went down. Given the nature of your relationship, their take is more important than my own. So, I don't want to get into too many details." The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally step on a landmine and send the Moth's wrath right back at him.

"But I don't mind sharing the tl;dr version of it from my perspective. "

He paused, reflecting on his relationship with the Spring Darkling. From start to finish it had roughly been around six months, give or take. In that time, they had gotten into a number of truly heated and dramatic arguments. On the flip side, they had so much fun with each other mixed in with some wonderful, sentimental nights alone together.

"Riley and I are more alike than either one of us would like to admit. On the one hand, we were able to bond with each other in a way we didn't with the rest of our particular team or the whole group in general. At the time, we were both in Team Winter." He explained before continuing. He was sure Dani could pick up that he was using team to represent their respective courts.

"On the other hand, that meant we both had similar hang ups that would set each other's off. They left Team Winter and joined their new team without saying anything to me. I felt shut out and it reminded me of some...difficult moments from my past. I didn't respond to it well and had a total knee jerk reaction."

Thinking back on the experience caused his shoulders to slouch forward while flickers of sorrow appeared in his eyes.

"The long and short of it is, I ended up ghosting them. I was mad at the time and I wanted to hurt them like they hurt me. I'm not going to try and deny that.  But at the same time...I also genuinely thought that it was in their best interest if I removed myself from their life. I didn't want to hold them back with my hang ups. I figured they would get over it in time, shine in their new team, and be happier in general. In that regard, I wasn't wrong. They seem happier with their new team."

And happier with you.

Lucas had some sense of self-preservation. He wasn't going to share that part with Dani or anyone else. His mind wandered back to Ostara, when Riley accused him of being a liar. Yeah, maybe he had turned out to be something of a liar, but he wasn't the only one. So much for them not doing the whole monogamy thing.

He tried to switch the mood over to a more humorous one. "Then they committed petty acts of vengeance and property destruction against me. Things eventually cooled down and we just stop communicating with each other in any way until the Spring Fling"

That went as well as he could have hoped for. He was proud of himself for not letting his negative thought patterns take over and cause him to shrink back.

His drink being delicious helped too. 

"Excellent drink choice, by the way. Hmm..."

He considered her offered. There were a few different directions he could take this. At the forefront of his mind was the focus on trying to build more good will between the courts, especially because of recent conflicts. Anything he could do to help highlight the threads that bound them together was a plus. He cleared his throat, warming up before he proceeded to launch into one of his favorite quotes from a book. Instead of quoting it out loud like an audio book, he recited the quote like he was reading a poem. There's a hint of musical whimsy to his voice, causing the words to flow together like he was reciting an inspiring lullaby. 


"My dear,

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.

In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.

In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.

I realized, through it all, that…

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." 

The other patrons who were hanging around the bar area stopped what they were doing to listen to him. By the time they were done, most of them applauded loudly, and there were offers for free drinks or food. Lucas was pleasantly surprised by his own performance. The words weaved together to bring new life to an old passage from one of his favorite authors. The part of him that awakened during Ostara reverberated through his voice, wanting to let the built up musical passion that had laid dormant inside of him for so long come to life once more. However, this wasn't the place he wanted to make his grand re-entrance into the musical world, so he kept it at a gentle, melodious volume.

"Tell me, Dani, what do these words mean to you?"

Lucas looked absolutely delighted that Dani was already familiar with the passage. He sipped his drink, listening intently and nodding his head in encouragement while she explained her thoughts.

"You are correct. I didn't want to share that part incase you weren't familiar with it to avoid the author's take influencing your own."

After he finished his drink, he put in a request for another round of drinks for the two of them.

"Invictus is a great poem. For someone in my line of work, it hits differently. "

He paused and smiled at Dani. The two of them had navigated through the breakup conversation without any fanfare. The more they talked the more he saw they actually had some common interests and they could move away from having to depend on pleasant small talk to keep things civil.

He thought back to a couple of her earlier comments. The smile on his face quickly transformed into a grin.

"Speaking of which, any interest in hearing a ghost story from my time in Detroit?"

Lucas took a longer sip of his drink as he thought about death and what waited in the great beyond. He thought he was prepared for it only to quickly learn that death held more mysteries than life itself. Still, poetry certainly brought about a lot of comfort in the cycle of dying and grief.

"It has some strong summer vibes to it and brilliant imagery. That's the thing about all of our teams, yeah? We have to find ourselves within in it. There's no one sized fits all path. We gotta forge our own path. It sounds like you're on the right track already. " he replied encouragingly.

"Hmm, if I had to choose a poem for what draws me to my team, off the top of my head I would have to say Emily Dickinson' "Hope" is a Thing With Feathers. With my team you see a lot of...ugly things. The world can be a terrible place yet it keeps spinning forward and that little birdie of hope never stops singing-at all. You learn to hear that song and focus is on it to keep pushing through the ugly. "

He shakes his head.

"Anywho, do you want a scary ghost encounter or Gothic romance style one?"

Lucas studies Dani for a long moment as he listens to her describe the two famous poets and their connection with depression. She wasn't wrong in that regard either. While he didn't like to wear his depression on his sleeve, it was common knowledge that a great many Winter courtiers struggled with Major Depression. He nods his head in agreement, looking almost...relieved. it was refreshing to hear someone discuss how depression could be used as a creative force rather than focusing on how it made someone broken.

"Scary it is." He was feeling more generous about his story telling now that he sensed Fire was someone who would actually appreciate the different nuances he liked to work into both his ghost horror stories and his gothic romance flavored ghost stories.

"And honestly, it's the better choice for our current atmosphere. Denny's isn't exactly a great backdrop for a gothic romance story."

He paused briefly, looking like there was something else he wanted to say. Dani had already set the tone of being blunt rather than dance around an issue.

"Okay, so at the risk of maybe making things weird, if you have an interest in hearing a gothic romance story or more ghost stories in general, we could meet up sometime to hit up some of my favorite haunts. I'm not sure if that's something Riley would be down with and I don't want to rock the boat there. But you actually have an appreciation for poetry and ghost stories, which is a nice change of pace."

Regardless of her response, Lucas forges forward with his story.

"Prior to coming to Vegas, I lived in Detroit. My team was the main team in Detroit. There were other teams there too, whose take on their various teams is a lot different than how they are portrayed here. Which makes sense. Different cities are going to have different vibes and mind sets to them." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Detroit is a city with a lot of soul to it. There's a lot of history to it, the people there are proud of their roots, and they are resilient as hell. The city has taken some beatings and it refuses to keep it's head down for long. However, some of the trauma and loss that has happened there runs deep and it has left scars in the community. There are parts of Detroit that have various abandoned buildings scattered all over the place.

One of the most famous abandoned buildings there is the Southwest Detroit Hospital. The hospital itself was actually a collection of several different BIPOC owned hospitals. Around the time of the civil rights movement,  African-American doctors were usually segregated to black-only hospitals.  In the 1960s, the idea was to combine the smaller hospitals into one big hospital so they could better serve their community. Unfortunately, the path to damnation often starts with good intentions. In the late 1970s, many of the practitioners there took advantage of the situation and their clients.  Close to 100 doctors were caught engaging in unethical medical practices, including selling illegal forms of amphetamines.

A great many patients suffered under their care because of it. The hospital was eventually sued, which lead to the hospital becoming bankrupt by the 1990s. A few years after that, a man by the name of Harley K. Brown bought the hospital. He was from Detroit and was the owner of the company Ultimed. Once again, a group of individuals were looking to exploit the struggles of the citizens of Detroit. Brown and several of his directors abused the financial breaks they were given. Wayne county, which is the county Detroit is in, really wanted to make the hospital work this time around to help provide better healthcare to the citizens in that area. So, Ultimed got a bunch of tax breaks that were meant to help cut down on medical expenses. Instead, Brown and the board of directors spent that money on themselves. By 2006, Ultimed was given the boot and the building fell under the care of a court-appointed relator."

Around this time, his sampler platter arrived. Lucas pushed the plate to the middle, encouraging Dani to help herself to anything on it.

"Fast forward to around the time I showed up in Detroit. The hospital had long since been abandoned. When it got shut down, everything stopped all at once. There was no proper discharge care. Many of the patients were left to figure out their next care steps on their own. Rumor has it the whole fiasco from start to finish lead to several deaths because of all of the negligent care that occurred over the years. To make matters worse, the building was never properly boarded up and none of the equipment nor the medical records were removed from the hospital."

He paused to take a long sip of his drink. When he spoke up against, his voice took on a more cryptic, hushed tone.

"Blood bags, dirty needles, wrappings, and some say even human remains from surgery were found there because the hazardous waste and biohazard waste bins were never cleaned out. The hospital drew in quite a few urban explorers, but people didn't like to stay too long. Any time someone spent more than an hour or two there, they reported feeling an eerie, evil presence to the building. There was a young couple who went in there because they wanted to be daring and take photos of each other getting all cozy in some of the former patient hospital beds. Around midnight, the two of them started to get all hot and heavy. The woman felt her boyfriend's hand running up her leg, dragging his nails along it. At first, she was enjoying it but as they continued...he dragged harder and harder until he drew blood. She yelled at him, telling him to stop. He was confused and swore he didn't do anything to her. The two of them looked down and they saw a trail of blood handy prints all along the floor."

He sat his hand down on the bar counter, spreading his fingers out to demonstrate what the hand print might look like.

"The two of them ran like hell out of there. My particular team didn't pay much attention to it until sometime in the winter...a frozen body was found there. An older man had made his way into the building to shelter. Over the winter, the pipes had broken, which lead to the basement freezing.  Somehow the man had made his way down to the elevator and he fell out of it, into the basement. More rumors began to circulate. People nearby said that he seemed possessed when he walked into the hospital. He looked like more of a puppet than an actual human being. It took the police days to reach his body and get it out.

Enter, yours truly. I was tasked with investigating the hospital. At the time, I was still learning about ghosts. I wasn't as skilled as I was now. I was sent in by myself because we didn't want to draw much attention. The idea was for me to figure out if there was a ghostly presence and then get out of there. "

Lucas paused again to give Dani time to soak in the story so far.

Lucas momentarily choked on his drink at the threesome comment. He managed to clear his throat, downing the alcohol before it burned his throat. His mind couldn't help but wander for the briefest of moments.

Even if he didn't care much for Riley's company, there was no denying that they were smoking hot at Ostara. Phoenix over here was pretty cute and witty and nooooppeeee. He hit the mental breaks stopping himself from entertaining that thought any further. He shoved the thought out of his mind and switched gears back on over to spooky mode.

"Let me know what they say."

He left it at that while he wiped at his lips with a napkin to get rid of a couple of drops of alcohol that he had almost spewed.

While he weaved together the story, his voice became lower and there was a creeping intensity in it.

"It was a normal hospital. Lots of medical procedures happened there, including life-or-death ones that ended in death because of the medical malpractices."

After answering her question he dived back into the story.

"I started to explore the different medical wings. The hallways were a mess. There was graffiti all over the place. Lots of used drugs scattered among other unpleasantries. I knew the basics at that point. Most ghosts aren't strong enough to affect the areas they are in. They are stuck in twilight, unable to manifest themselves. There are more powerful ghosts that can not only appear, but they can affect the environment they are in. They are usually either attached to a fetter, which is some object that's important to them. Otherwise, it's typically an anchor...which can include an entire building like a hospital.

While I was walking down the hallway, I heard a strange scratching sound. No matter where I went, the scratching sound followed me. Whenever I would pause and search for it, I didn't see anything. I was trying to not freak out but it definitely got my anxiety going. I headed out of the wards and over to the stairwell that led to the basement. I wasn't planning on going down there. I wanted to get a quick glance to see if there was any ghostly presence there. If there wasn't, then I could check it off and get far, far away.

Just as I leaned over to peer down at the stairwell, a cold breathe ran across my neck. It freaked me out out because I usually don't feel mild coldness. My kith makes it so my body doesn't retain any body hit. The fact that I could actually *feel* the coldness in that moment threw me. I was startled and jump and as my terrible luck would have it...I dropped the flashlight over the banister. Without it, I didn't have any source of light.  At best, I had a little light from the moon outside but that wasn't enough to navigate around.

I needed to head down to the basement to get the light or else I was going to be stuck in the dark without any way to figure out where I needed to go next. I wish I could tell you I was fearless and dashed down the stairs like a hero. Heh, instead I crept down the stairwell, my hands shaking the entire time.

The scratching started up again as I neared the bottom of the stairwell. Suddenly, I heard something else..."

He paused dramatically, letting the suspense fill the air between the two of them.

"I turned around and..."



Lucas banged his fist against the bar counter, making a loud thumping sound. A couple of people glanced over at them but given they were blathering poetry earlier, no one bothered to pay any further attention to them.

"WHY DID YOU  LET THEM HURT ME?!"

His voice took a guttural, unearthly quality to it that put any modern horror movie to shame because he had experienced the voice of the dead first hand. He leaned in towards her after he made the ghostly voice, his eyes looking wild and unpredictable. He held the look for a long moment before he shifted back to his previous story telling voice and expression.

"The voice rang out in the darkness. I didn't see anyone behind me as much as I saw a flash of what looked like an operating room light. The hallway lit up for a brief second and I swear I saw dirty surgical equipment scattered all over the stairwell. I lost my balance which caused me to fall the last several steps.

My head was killing me. The basement was still frozen over which on the one hand meant I wasn't going to drown. The downside was it meant I hit my head pretty hard.  I was starting to lose consciousness but the adrenaline in my body forced me to stay in go-go mode. I managed to stumble over to where my flashlight was. I shone it all over the place but I couldn't find the source of the voice."