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Adrian had never been the type of guy to hold down a traditional job and being Moroi, he had wealth and privilege to insulate him from the real world for a lot longer than most people. Still, since branching out to Palm Springs and now to the Nexus, he had to actually work to support himself even if it was just as supplement and not his main income source.

To that end, he'd set himself up in the hotel lobby doing caricatures. It worked for people down on the boardwalk and while he didn't have the advantage of great natural lighting indoors, his pale skin wouldn't appreciate the sun beating down on him while he was trying to work so it was a fair enough trade off. He was charging a few bucks per portrait and while it was mostly pocket change, it did keep him from getting bored.

Right now, he was working on a drawing of Sydney just to hone his skills. It was mostly her blonde hair with a prominent chin and generous mouth but it was coming together and starting to look distinctly Alchemist like. He was toying with whether or not to add the lily to her cheek when he decided against it; Sydney had broken away from that life and maybe he needed to respect that and depict her as such.

He looked up every once in a while, hoping to catch the eye of someone he could charm into buying a portrait off him. Pocket change, sure, but every little bit helped.

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While Hal has yet been unable to find a door back to Barry, he has managed to retain some of his control. It helps, he believes, that there are so many oddly scented folk about him, which throws off his hunger and riles his curiosity. When he reaches the lobby, he takes a deep breath (nose in the air) and finds he's in this situation again.

He can't place it, but it's familiar, as if a smell from his long ago years coming back without being able to be placed.

Adrian noticed the guy after a few moments and nodded toward his sketch pad. "Do you want a portrait? I'm doing caricatures but I can do a regular one if you're so inclined." Anything to make a buck, at this point, and Adrian wasn't afraid of a little hard work on the sell. He'd always been good at persuasion, even without the help of Spirit.

It's been some time since he's permitted a portrait of himself to be created and five hundred years and change since he's last seen his reflection. The very suggestion is unexpected and he blinks as the awkwardness of not having a response takes hold, nodding and gesturing to the boy. "I would very much appreciate. I've some money in order to repay you for the service."

"Absolutely," Adrian said, flashing him a broad smile. He had always liked doing portraits even if some other artists might find them boring. There was just something fascinating about capturing a person in a specific place and time and preserving a memory.

"I'm Adrian, by the way."

"Hal," is his reply. Every breath doesn't return with it a hungry accompaniment and so he thinks that there must be something different about this boy in front of him. It's certainly enough to stoke his curiosity and he keeps it in mind as he sits, posture perfect, and waits for his visage to be captured. "Do you do this often?"

"Draw? Every day. I painted my hotel room before my girlfriend stopped me from covering the ceiling with a bad imitation of Van Gogh. I'm an art student in California," Adrian explained. He was a lot more than that but being Moroi required him to keep his vampire side a secret from most everyone. This guy didn't seem quite human but Adrian wanted to play it safe.

"It helps calm me down."

Hal retains his posture, having sat for many an artist throughout his life. His posture is impeccably straight and he refuses to waver from it at all, keeping his chin high. "Calms you down from what threat?" he inquires as he retains his control, voice steady as if mimicking his body.

"My brain isn't exactly normal," Adrian said, unsure of how best to explain the concept of Spirit. It was a Moroi thing and not even really understood among them too much.

"I'm kind of bipolar. Art helps keep me from going manic or getting too depressed, among other things."

Though he tries not to show it, Hal's curiosity has been piqued and he turns his chin ever so slightly towards Adrian, his attention now suitably earned. "I've some experience with something similar, myself." Though he's unsure whether it can truly be called bipolar. At times, it's far more dissociative, but he is still the same man.

Good and bad, bad and good, always knocking at the door and vying for time in the sun.

"It happens to the best of us," Adrian said, sketching out the line of the man's chin, deepening it. "The most creative, the best and the brightest. They always have problems, am I right?"

"Yes, I'm not very creative." Hal supposes that could be construed as a lie given his talents with medieval instruments and origami paper, but that's less creativity and more his ability to put five hundred years to use. "Do you see yourself as the creative type, then?"

Adrian nodded toward the paper.

"I wouldn't be any good at this if I wasn't. Honestly, it's about the only thing I'm good at, art, and I guess that makes me pretty specialized and not very adaptable but there's worse problems to have."

"I assure you, with enough practice, a gentleman can become an expert in anything," Hal says, utterly convinced and aware of such a thing. "I, myself, have learned many arts and talents through sheer perseverance and dedication to the study of them. Practice makes perfect," he says. "Rota and routine instill habits."

"I'm not so much for routines," Adrian admitted. "Now my girlfriend? She wants everything just so and in the right place. I drive her crazy."

"There is restraint in order," Hal murmurs, soft-spoken as he thinks of what his routine is telling him will come next. "There is something dignified and honourable in knowing what each moment of your day consists of. Allowing chaos would be allowing evil into one's life."

Adrian laughed lightly under his breath. "That's me, full of evil and chaos. Seriously, you and Sydney would probably love one another. You could organize your Skittles by color or something. Line up your shoes according to length. I think Sydney irons her underwear, even, so she's pretty far gone on the OCD train."

Hal's heart practically sings to think of organizing to such a degree, but it would be a lie and a mockery to assume that he is always like that, always has been, always will be. "I'm afraid I'm split down the middle, then. While I greatly appreciate order and the lack of chaos, there is a part of me that is..."

"Well, evil and chaos is quite the understatement."

"I try to refrain from evil. It's bad on your skin," Adrian said, grinning a little.

"But I love my vices. Smoking, drinking, illegal drugs - you name it, I've probably tried it. I love feeling like I can escape from life in any way I can."

Evil being bad on his skin would be perfectly lovely if that were truly the case. The trouble is that evil on Hal is several cities losing their population and wars. It is dogfights and devils loose in the streets. He manages a brief smile, though it trembles. "Yes, I can't see myself in a similar situation. I avoid drugs as best as I can. Control," he says again. "It doesn't suit me when I have lost it."

"You should teach an AA class or something," Adrian said. "Moderation and abstinence and all that. You could put all of us back on the right path flying straight and narrow. Some of us could use a little more...direction."

Adrian chief among them.

"Were it not for the unfortunate side-effect of requiring my presence around people for a prolonged amount of time, I do believe I would be best suited for such a thing," Hal concurs, soft-spoken as he gives a nod of agreement. "Fifty five years without blood, however, is quite the accomplishment. That, I would never treat lightly."

"No blood at all? How are you not dead, then?" Adrian was pretty sure this guy wasn't Moroi but if he were Strigoi, why would he care about keeping humans alive? Strigoi by nature don't care about anything but getting theirs.

"I would starve to death if I went more than a few days without blood."

"I don't need it to survive," Hal replies, feeling every bone in his spine as he adjusts his posture, using this perfect poised control to keep him tethered as they speak about such a precarious subject. "It only unlocks the darker, deeper parts of me and unleashes the other me, the bad version, the one who kills countries with a smile."

Adrian finishes a few final strokes of the pencil against the portrait and takes a look, trying to decide if it needs something. He pulls the sheet off his pad and shows it to Hal, wanting his opinion.

"Well, what do you think of it? You look positively harmless."

It has been over fifty-five years since he has last seen his own reflection, running a hand over his hair as if to wonder at what it has grown to look like. He keeps the picture close at hand, thinking that though he knows he has not aged, there are more years around his eyes. "You're very talented," he praises, folding the paper quite precisely. "Have you been doing this for very long?"

"I'm 22, so uh, twelve years or so?" Adrian said. "Give or take. I feel like it's a long time but I'm getting the sense you're a lot older than me so a long time for me is probably a drop in the bucket for you, right?"

"I lost count around five hundred and twenty-five," Hal says with a slow nod of his head, given that he hardly knows what he had done with his own life when he was twenty-two. He can't even recall what age he had been turned, after so many years distanced from it. "I've my own small skills in drawing, of course, but no reflection to draw a self-portrait."

"Did you remember what your face looked like?" Adrian realized it could be construed as a rude question but he meant it more in simple curiosity. He couldn't imagine going without a reflection for hundreds of years and not knowing what his own face looked like, not knowing each individual little stroke of it.

"Before I placed myself in isolation, many portraits were commissioned of me," Hal assures, which means he has seen his face rendered many times over. "And my former best friend had quite the talent for description. He did his best." Still, with no mirrors, photographs, or video possible, that was all Hal could rely on -- the subjective basis of others.

"I couldn't imagine not being able to see my own reflection," Adrian said, laughing a little. "And having to rely upon other people. I don't think they could capture just how perfect and glorious I am."

Hal arches his brow. "You've quite the ego, I see? Was that also developed from years of practice or something you were merely born with," Hal remarks, polite yet only mildly cutting, as the boy has just given him a free portrait.

"Born that way. I'm from a royal house," Adrian explained. "And I'm a prince. It's hard to look this good but someone has to do it," he joked.

"In all seriousness, I'm glad we can still see ourselves in the mirror."

"I believe the reason we can't, where I'm from, is because the devil has taken a part of us," he says, quiet and serious. Not many can say they've met the devil, but thanks to the first world war and the concurrent war between vampires and werewolves, he has met the creature. He puts that out of his mind as best as he can, eyeing his companion anew.

"Prince? Of what?"

"A Moroi prince," Adrian said, flashing his fangs a little. He was used to hiding them among humans but he had already established that this guy was anything but human. "From House Ivashkov. There's eleven other royal houses but ours was most recently in power before Dragomir. We alternate...my aunt was queen until she died."

"The words sound very pretty, I assure you, but they mean nothing to me." This form of himself, this good cycle, did not value lying and so he offered honesty wherever he could. It made him think of Leo to do so, always open and honest; always wise. "And what duties does a prince of your bearing hold?"

"Nothing really, my dad does most of the prince stuff. He has to sit on the Council and represent us when we vote and everything. I will eventually," Adrian pointed out, "But my dad has to die first, so we're a long way off from decisions being made by me. Which is probably a good thing, all told."

The weariness of decisions had always plagued at him and Hal is immensely grateful that he has been in hiding for long enough that his decisions, by and large, are hardly ever asked for. When he was bad, when he was evil, he hadn't minded who got caught in the crossfire, but that was a long time ago. "And do you yearn for it? Power?"

"Not really. It means I have to be responsible and I'm allergic to responsibility," Adrian said, shrugging a little.

"I guess it might be nice to be called King Adrian or something but really, I'm fine with being a prince and being left pretty much alone by the royal court. There's too many rules and regulations that go along with that and my friend Lissa is a great queen. She can have it."

Hal feels that old frisson burst through him, whispering about how he could be a King too, a ruler of all things mortal and they would bow to him and they would worship him and he would never be hungry. As always, Hal closes his eyes tightly and ignores it, ignores any hint of that old life. "Is she like you, then? Young, but different?" he asks, shaking off the tremor in his voice to gain control again.

"Lissa? Yeah. She's Moroi," Adrian explained. "And she uses the same element that I do in her magic. She's just...a lot more put together than I am ever going to be. I guess having a functional family for your formative years will do that to a person. My parents have never been functional."

Once more, this is something that Hal has no experience in. Family is foreign to him, as foreign as the concept of humanity is. "Well, then, let her live long and reign, then," he suggests. "Don't form a coup and I believe you will have great luck skirting away from your responsibilities."

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