There once had been a time when everything was alright. Both boys had very promising futures and the help to get there. Stevie with his basketball and Cooke with his art. There were no twins who had such dramatically different paths in life spread before them, only to crash completely before they'd barely started. But they didn't just stall out on the path or choose a different one. They just kind of rolled into the ditch and never left. They were just starting high school. Cooke was cracking under his own pressures. He might have been okay, but there was something going on with Stevie that he didn't understand. That strain alone was too much to bear and he folded into numbing himself against it rather than dealing with it.

After that, after he'd found his brother had done exactly the same thing, after they'd found the same path again, Cooke found out what happened to his brother. Why he'd gone the way he did. Cooke felt awful at first, for not seeing it. He tried to run from it all. Got clean and tried to take off for the west coast. He barely made it outside Philadelphia before he turned back, guilt eating at him. He should have been there. He should have done something. He should have punched that stupid coach in the face. Vowing to never fail his brother like that again, he returned home.

And that's where he's been ever since. Well, whatever passed for home these days. Mostly finding corners to sleep in and places to hang out. Parks were good. Places with basketball courts for Stevie to play, and for Cooke to sit in the shade with whatever he could say was a sketchbook.

Lately, they'd found themselves with a proper roof. A flop house, but it was better than sleeping in the park. Daylight streamed in through a crack in the cardboard over the window, and Cooke was already awake. Leg bouncing, he chewed on the tip of his thumb, watching the sleeping form of his brother. He was getting worried. He should probably be asleep, too. It was safer to be awake at night. Night is when their friends got taken. Not that anyone believed him, because he was the only one who ever saw it.

"Hey," he said, in the poorest attempt at a whisper. He chewed at his lip, getting out of the chair and moving to sit on the bed. "You awake yet?" He gave his brother a tentative jab in the side. "You get your money yet?" Because there was one surefire way to sleep the day away, but they were out of it at the moment.

(This is a work in progress so it might be a mess for a while)

He is from a world in which vampires and humans co-exist, as described here.

Liam Reed, known as Cooke to his friends, wasn't always a washed up junkie slumming around Portland. It all started in New York. In high school, he was a fairly bright if easily distracted student. He excelled especially in more creative classes and showed promise of going places once he figured out where to focus that creative energy. But he was also rather high strung. He did not handle stress well started to struggle as school got harder. The summer before his senior year him and his mother were in a car accident. He made it out with relatively minor injuries, but his mother ended up in the ICU for a few weeks. He did not handle it well.

A friend concerned that the boy might have an aneurism gave him something to calm down. It was meant to be a temporary fix. Harmless. And at first, it was. Cooke calmed down for a little while, and was able to deal with the rest of the summer once his mother pulled through with barely any long term damage. But then senior year started. At first, he just needed a little medicinal help to get through mid terms. Then finals of the first quarter. The stress of college was starting to freak him out. What was he going to do? His grades were only a B+ average. He still didn't know what he wanted to do. Everything was falling apart. What if he couldn't hack it after high school?

The holiday break between terms is when things started really falling apart. Well, it started with a wild Halloween party earlier in the term when he blacked out for the first time. And the winter break was a similar sort of blur. Better that than college essays, because it was less stressful. By the time school started up, he found excuses to get wrecked frequently. On a near weekly basis. By his final term he hadn't done any college prep and just barely passed his classes.

After high school he just drifted. He couldn't hold a job, he couldn't get a school application together. His family was lenient for a little while, but they were high successful types. Go-getters and very driven people. It was necessary for humans to be extra driven if they wanted to compete among vampires. They saw Cooke as a slacker. They offered him help which he never took. His mother even got him into therapy once, trying to figure out what was wrong with him, but she couldn't babysit him all the time to make sure he went to all of his appointments. He hadn't needed that before, why now? He had a sister who was harsh but honest with him, telling him to get clean. But he'd rather crawl back into bed instead of listen to them.

By the time he turned 20, his parents were fed up. But they couldn't outright kick him out. They gave him a chance. An ultimatum. It had worked in the past to incredible effect. They'd told him to get his grades up when he was 16 or he wouldn't get access to the family car. He did so well, they awarded him with a car of his own. So now it was "get a job and pitch in for rent, or you're out. You have six months." Only in less harsh terms. They knew their son didn't do so well with direct stress, but they were at wits end.

He did exactly nothing and squandered his time. Well, he tried to get a job but it lasted about a week. And then he just gave up. He mooched off his friends to ensure he didn't feel the stress of the impending deadline, telling himself his parents wouldn't kick him out. But they did. They sent him off with nothing more than a duffle bag of his belongings, but were nice enough to let him keep the car. The idea was that it would shake him out of his bad habits and either come back or learn to stand on his own. Mamma bird shoving a baby out of the nest to teach it to fly.

And in a way it did help. It was more the fact that all of his money went toward feeding himself and no longer had any for his habits. For the first time in several years, he was clear and sober. He started to get his stuff together. He found a school he wanted to go to on the other side of the country. He was technically homeless, so he was sure he could get a lot of help. And he was already learning that information was valuable, but he didn't quite know how to cash in on it.

He pawned what he could and started a trek across the country. New York to Oregon was going to take a long time. When ever he ran out of gas or food, he'd stop and beg. Or perform. Or steal. Whatever it took to get a few bucks. And that lasted until somewhere Minnesota. Sick of sleeping in his car, he found himself in a flop house. He couldn't afford anywhere that required cash, but he had other things to trade. Until then, all of his habits had been in pill form. For the first time, he was offered something to be snorted. He actually refused at first. But he is rather lacking in conviction and when the guy insisted, he gave in. What could it hurt?

He didn't leave for over a week.

Sick of the journey and just wanting it to be done so he could get his life on track, he sold the car for what he could. He spent a few more days getting "one last hit" before finally buying a bus ticket. He'd be in Portland and then everything would be fine.

Once he got to city, he headed right for the school. Only to find out he didn't qualify for aid. He'd used his parents' address because he didn't have one and they needed one. So his parents' income was counted toward the support they expected he would receive and that put him well outside any bracket of financial aid. Hearing this, he had a meltdown in the admissions office. It ended with him tearful and collapsed on a bench when security finally dragged him out. It was then that he learned he couldn't be compelled. The guards were vampires who tried to use it to calm him down, but it didn't work.

He tried a few more places, but back on his habits, no school would take him. He was arrested more than once. He ended up falling in with a bad crowd. He was only 22 when he he stuck the needle in his arm for the first time. It wasn't even for any specific reason other than wanting something more.

He learned that if he acted more stoned than he actually was, or if he behaved as though the vampire compulsion worked, he could learn a great deal. People talked a lot when they thought you wouldn't remember. And that came in handy one day when he was attempting to use a paint bucket as a drum to earn some cash on a street corner downtown that he overhead a couple of guys. They wanted to rough up a dealer who had stiffed them. Cooke butted in on them, telling them he might know how to find the guy. MIGHT. But his memory was fuzzy. They paid him what they had in their pockets and he led them to where the guy was holed up.

The problem was, he couldn't quite tell who was safe to sell his information to and who wasn't. He didn't know how to hold back. He'd tell someone everything if they let him talk enough. Most people didn't know who he was. He was just some homeless junkie who ran his mouth. But some people found out that he'd ratted them out and roughed him up pretty hard. He ended up in the hospital for it. Which led to forced rehab and another line added to his arrest record. The rehab worked for about six months, too. He even had some decent housing. Well, better than the street. But part of his recovery program involved getting a job. Which meant legal documentation. So he called home to get it. The first time since he'd left New York.

The phone call was a tearful and his mother was so glad to hear that he was at least alive. And that he was getting his life together. But when he asked to talk to his dad, she had to tell him that they were separated at the moment. Nothing permanent, but he wasn't living at home while they figured things out. He took the news incredibly hard. He washed out of the program and ended up on the street. In a fit of defiance, as if he could distance himself from his family, he started calling himself Cooke. It was also an attempt to mask himself from those who had put him in the hospital in the first place.

After that, he drifted. In and out of rehab. Off and on the street. 28 now, he's learned a little better to control who he tells his information to. His one decent skill is convincing vampires he's been compelled. He's picked up other scattered skills, anything that helps him earn a quick buck.

He is mostly aware of his tendencies to not being able to handle stress and lack of self control. He really does want to get clean, but he keeps getting tripped up. He knows he has to really want it for it to stick, he has to do it for himself and no one else. But without any sort of support network, he can't stand on his own. Because when it starts to hurt, his determination falters. Just one more hit to take the edge off, then he'll be fine. Think of all he could afford if he got clean. A real apartment. Real food. Maybe he could even go to school! But every time he tries, those goals shrink. He could stay somewhere for a night. One hot meal. A sleeping bag. A cup of coffee. Just one more hit wouldn't hurt that goal, would it?

Despite his habits, he is still incredibly driven. Just as his family had been, as he'd been at 16. He has lofty goals and big dreams. The problem is he tries to skip the actual work part. He can imagine himself doing something, so he thinks he can do it. This leads to a lot of less than stellar performances and getting himself into a lot of trouble. Things like he thinks he can take on the toughest guy on the street and then gets his ass kicked.

He does nothing by half measure. It's all or nothing. He doesn't simply try new things. He immerses himself in them completely. If he decided to try a vegan diet, he didn't just try it for a day. He would BE a vegan for a solid week. He decides he wants to be a graffiti artist and starts tagging without practice. He throws himself completely into everything he does. If he loves someone, it's not just a little. It's completely and with his whole heart. Whether friendship or romance.

That's why he's never sold Oliver out. A hybrid private detective that's always asking questions. It's not hard to figure out what he's looking into. Cooke could tip people off easily, and make a lot of money. But he doesn't, because Oliver is his friend. One of his only friends. At least, the way he sees it.

He would do anything he possibly could for his friends and loved ones. The problem is his standards of doing everything are not everyone else's. He'd throw everything he possibly could into it and for him the effort would be incredible. But to others it might not. Or he could seem overbearing at first. Either too much or too little because he hasn't quite learned how to control that throttle. And it sometimes takes him a while to do something that others want him to do. Like his parents wanting him to get a job. He was trying, really. It just didn't look like it.

Because he lives at basically full throttle every moment he can, he hits burn-out incredibly fast. Some days he can go full force without getting out of breath. Others it's a massive accomplishment to get out of bed. This is because he is very likely bipolar, but is undiagnosed and untreated. It started creeping in when he was 16 (the dip in grades his parents needed to push him to fix), and just progressively got worse. The self medication does nothing to help.

But he knows himself well enough that he holds to needing to do things for himself. His own expectations are what matter. It doesn't help that his view of the world is a bit skewed so his expectations are as well. And both of these things shift day to day. But if he keeps trying maybe, just maybe, he can find a place to live and go to school.

Then everything would be great.