Nate Marszalek
The main library at Denver University is open twenty-four hours a day. The lights blaze even when no one is at the service desk and from the outside the entire building looks like it's made of glass. Large frosted windows show stacks and chairs but not many students. During the summer like this the place is all but deserted. Errant summer students come in to use the wifi and avail themselves of the air conditioning until the time comes to go to work or a party.
Vending machines hum in half-dark alcoves. None of the elevators move. One requires a key to access them so they sit, dead-eyed and silent.
One of the few students here this late at night is a grown man who hasn't shaved his face since Friday morning and uses the words 'trust fund' together in a sentence for the purposes of mocking folks his age who don't have anything more pressing than a social media news feed to attend to before noon most days.
He isn't hunched over his work at the moment. He's outside on the terrace or whatever the hell it's called. Holds a paper cup of kiosk coffee in one hand and lights a cigarette with the other.
Behind him a cheerful blue sign proclaims in white letters DENVER UNIVERSITY IS PROUDLY SMOKE-FREE.
Mosquito
[ Just Joey watching. Hope y'all don't mind. ]
Everett Stone
[I don't mind!]
Lux
[Obv. not! *g* Go for't.]
Everett Stone
Everett Stone wasn't the kind of guy you really expected to see in a university library at night (or at all, really.) He definitely didn't look like the kind of guy who went to a private university like DU. And yet, there he was, sauntering into the place like he fucking belonged there. He had that I-just-got-laid look to him, too. Thoroughly relaxed and just a little bit self-satisfied. (Except he hadn't just gotten laid. But the distinction at this point was pretty muddy.) He smiled at a girl who glanced at him from one of the tables, but didn't afford her much attention. Instead he walked over to the stacks and ran the tips of his fingers over the faded bindings of the books in the history section, paused to read a few of the titles, then lifted one from the shelf and took it with him to one of the cushioned window-seats near the terrace where Nathan was smoking.
When he sat down, he stretched out his long legs on the cushions and propped himself up on one elbow, crossing his feet at the ankles. He opened the book, flipped to a specific chapter, and started to read.
The guy's hair was a little messy. A little in need of a haircut (or maybe not, the look kind of worked for him.) A light growth of facial hair took up residence on his chin, and in truth he looked both older and younger than he actually was. His face had a bit of aged weariness to it that transcended his 28 years of life. But of course, that'd long-since ceased to matter (and he was a lot fucking older than 28.) He had on a pair of old jeans, brown leather boots and a threadbare white t-shirt with a couple of small holes along the seam of the neckline.
Lux
There was a beautiful girl sitting in one of the deep, not very comfortable wooden chairs, at one of the long, weary-looking desks with plug-in outlets for laptops and a crust of gum beneath that is the disgust of the janitorial crew. It's a shame to introduce a girl as 'a beautiful girl,' but as it is difficult to paint a picture without bowing to the terrible presence of beauty we will forgive the narrator. This is the picture that the narrator wishes to paint:
The beautiful girl cannot be much older than twenty-five. Go ahead, call her Lux; Lux will do. Lux has one arm out, the sleeve of her jacket pushed up to the elbow, and a night-owl student who looked tired and wan and full of precise concentration is drawing on her arm with black sharpie. Lux is practically lolling, most of her weight resting on her spine, her shoulders pulled into an insouciant and careless slouch. It matches the insouciant and careless -- truly, too, for there is no artifice in this at least -- rake of her tousled hair a fitting shadow-counterpoint to the glass-sharp fineness of her features, the vibrant little slash of a mouth. She has one long leg extended, the heel of her boot firmly planted in the ground, her other knee resting against the desk, and the foot belonging to that leg a-twitch as if energy could only be imperfectly sheathed.
This not very comfortable wooden chair Lux is sprawling in. This desk, the bane of janitors, the haven of chewed-up gum, where who knows how many failed papers have been scrawled vs. successes typed. The chief advantage of its location is it allowed her to watch a grown man who hasn't shaved his face since Friday morning come and go; and now he's gone outside to smoke; and now the toe of Lux's foot is twitching, and she slips further down in the chair, the back of it hiking up her jacket so the collar's two points stab up over her ears.
Her attention being fairly well engaged, it's no wonder she didn't notice Everett Stone until is between her and -- well. Let's not call him her quarry, because that wouldn't be very nice, would it?
She pulls her arm away abruptly, and it seems fairly thoughtlessly, away from her friend of the night in order to press her knuckles into the chair and sit up. The guy with the sharpie says, shit, and, hey, and Lux looks at her forearm and then says, "Smoke break."
"I have asthma," the guy says, and Lux says, "I'll be brief," and then the Toreador is leaving the mortal with his warm warm skin and his warm warm heart and his shitty skin-drawing skills to go head toward the terrace. And Everett. Two birds, one stone.
When she draws abreast of the brujah, she cocks her head to the side and says, "'Sup, Stone. You go here now?"
Nate Marszalek
With his back to the brick wall as it is he can see the modern art sculpture guarding the place and he can see impressions of bodies moving behind the glass. Anyone looking out can see him silhouetted against the jaundiced haze of the exterior lighting, the lampposts planted at intervals along the paved walkway.
He and the one other person on campus who doesn't look either the age or the type to be attending classes here don't cross paths just yet. Everett comes in and goes in the direction opposite that from which Nathan came. But the sated creature can see him standing against the side of the building like he's holding it up, drawing off the filter like an emphysemic would an oxygen mask.
In the wan light he looks his age. Older. Above average height and in need of a haircut. His posture is militant and he looks out at the darkness like it's a comfort rather than a threat. The hand holding onto the coffee cup hangs by his thigh. After a time he crosses one ankle over the other. He wears motorcycle boots and dark-wash jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt whose hem is untucked though it's buttoned at the wrists.
A messenger bag is tucked behind his calves. Inside a motorcycle helmet sits atop one of the long tables and serves as an overprotective paperweight for a small stack of stapled computer printouts. A battered yellow highlighter threatens to roll off the desk. He didn't push in his chair.
The young man yawns like he's been up way too fucking long and flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette.
Everett Stone
The last time Lux had seen Everett, he'd been practically feral with grief. That was back when he and a handful of the other Anarchs had carved a swatch of blood through the Sabbat until he'd scarcely resembled anything like a human being. And he'd been inspiring back then - that was the really terrifying thing. Such violence and such contagious passion all rolled up into one person. (People like that, they started wars.)
But maybe she also remembered him the way he was now. Languid and smiling that slow, lazy smile. Or perhaps, most likely (considering her bloodline,) she remembered him on a stage, with the rich, honeyed tone of his entrancing voice filling the air of some small smoky bar.
He would have preferred she remember him that way.
And then there she was, after.... 15 years now? Saying sup like a damn 18-year-old and asking if he went there. Everett was slow to look up, though he'd seen her approaching in his peripheral vision, and though he recognized her voice almost immediately. When he did, he shut the book over one finger to hold his place and tilted his head back and smiled. "I'm just visiting."
Everett Stone
[Edit: "carved a swath of blood"... not a swatch. They weren't making a damn quilt.]
Nate Marszalek
[Speak for yourself.]
Lux
"Just the books, or the city too," she says, leaning against the wall by the cushioned window-seat. This gives her a very specific view: she can look over the Brujah's tousled hair at the suggestion of Nate's shape through the glass.
But who cares about Nate, and the fact that Lux is watching him, and has been watching him, and will probably continue to watch him until somebody calls her on it, and then she'll tell them to shut up and the cycle will begin anew.
"You know things've changed a lot in the last few months. Oh," and look, see how perfectly she echoes a live-girl's gesture, dragging her fingers through her own hair to mess it up further, so the smoke-fine cloud of it hangs messily over the other side of her face, "It's Lux now, not Viollette or Jósephe."
Nate Marszalek
Something tugs at his attention and the young man transfers the cigarette to his coffee hand, holds it between his second and third fingers leaving the other three to pincer the paper cup. Hair flops into his eyes as he glances down to remove a smartphone from his pocket and he squints at it. Slide to unlock.
Silent and short laughter. He knocks out a response and stuffs the phone back into his pocket. Coffee goes into the hand originally responsible for the cigarette. Got to even out that dead-tobacco smell on the old digits.
Everett Stone
[Per+Alertness - you watchin' someone?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Everett Stone
Everett craned his head to glance casually in the direction of the terrace, where Lux's eyes seemed to be covertly drawn. He took in the profile of the man standing with his phone and his coffee and his cigarette; watched him for a few moments, then looked back at Lux. "Visiting the books. Back to stay in the city. And yeah, I heard something like that... Lux."
He tried the name out, decided it was as good as any. As for himself, "I'm still sticking with Everett." Because he was straight-forward like that. Always had been. One of these days it would probably get him killed.
Lux
The guy with the sharpie: you can practically hear his heart breaking from here, smell the salt-tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, the testosterone kicking into over-drive. The girl with the beauty, which she's been in the habit of wielding like a scalpel or a knife (they say that's all you have [they mean that's all you're known for]), doesn't seem to have noticed she's been less than discreet about her quite obvious spying.
But she does notice Everett looking at him, if not that the cause of Everett looking at him was how she was looking at him, and it makes her grow as still and silent as an auditorium after a soprano's voice has broken [shattered], fallen into nothing - that's how still and silent.
"Why'd you come back? Are you going to perform anywhere?" Here, the quick tug-tugging of a side-long smile, "I want to be there."
Don't look out the window again -- ah, but she's doing it anyway.
Nate Marszalek
The cigarette flares up with a last gasp as the ember starts to burn through the borderlands between tobacco and filter that people only really take in when they're desperate and he extinguishes it on the bricks beneath the PROUDLY SMOKE-FREE sign. Tosses the butt into the shrubs before he hauls open the door and lets himself back inside.
And under the fluorescent lights he looks tired but not exhausted. Sleep-deprived but not delirious. Probably doesn't have anyone in his life to tell him to get a goddamn haircut or if he does he tells that anyone to shove off. Despite the tiredness about him his shoulders are as straight. Spinal surgery or social conditioning keeps them this way. His eyes are dark brown.
As he passes by the gorgeous woman and the midwestern-looking fella he brings up a hand to cough into the back of his fist. They look like two normal-enough transplant types, he from the midwest somewhere and she from Europe or something, and he doesn't look at them as he makes his way not back to his table which is in the other direction but towards a drinking fountain tucked against the wall.
The smell of full-flavor tobacco trails him like a cat he fed once.
Everett Stone
Everett didn't look like he especially cared about the guy whose heart was breaking across the room. Either that, or he just didn't notice. And to be fair, guys like Everett broke a lot of hearts, whether intentionally or not. He didn't answer Lux's first question (so okay, maybe he wasn't always straight-forward,) but he smiled at the second question and the look was practically as honeyed as his voice.
"When have you ever known me not to perform? It's in my blood, honey." He shifted on the cushions, pushing himself up and settling his feet back on the floor. The neglected book was abandoned for the moment, shut fully and set to the side. He ran a hand through his hair and dragged his fingers down to scratch at the hair on his jaw. "I play at Dixon's pretty regularly. You should come by."
When Nate walked back inside, Everett's eyes trailed after him for a long moment, if for no other reason than to try and determine why Lux was so damn interested in him.
Lux
There's a second when the Brujah suddenly has all of her attention. When she just looks at him. When has she ever known him not to perform? "Hmm." That's the final result of her atttention. Hmm. The Hmm is followed by a "Yeah?" and now Lux looks pleased for whatever reason, though the pleasure is contained, irradiant, in the stray flash of her glance, a quick and nervous curl of her lips. Her collar is still askew, and her sleeves are asymmetrical, but it's strange how neatly she makes dishevellment look like a matter of course. It's a carriage-thing, a beyond-these-clothes thing, an aloof-from-the-matters-of-wool-and-denim thing. She adds, rather languidly, "I'll bet you ten bucks and a Queen cover that I'll show up on a Tuesday night.""Hey, you," Lux says, sending her voice out like a femme Indiana Jones's whip to coil-hiss around Nate's ankle and drag him back, or at least keep him from the water fountain for a second or two.
Where does he think he's going?
Lux
There's a second when the Brujah suddenly has all of her attention. When she just looks at him. When has she ever known him not to perform? "Hmm." That's the final result of her atttention. Hmm. The Hmm is followed by a "Yeah?" and now Lux looks pleased for whatever reason, though the pleasure is contained, irradiant, in the stray flash of her glance, a quick and nervous curl of her lips. Her collar is still askew, and her sleeves are asymmetrical, but it's strange how neatly she makes dishevellment look like a matter of course. It's a carriage-thing, a beyond-these-clothes thing, an aloof-from-the-matters-of-wool-and-denim thing. She adds, rather languidly, "I'll bet you ten bucks and a Queen cover that I'll show up on a Tuesday night."
"Hey, you," Lux says, sending her voice out like a femme Indiana Jones's whip to coil-hiss around Nate's ankle and drag him back, or at least keep him from the water fountain for a second or two.
Where does he think he's going?
Nate Marszalek
Funny thing about a woman saying things to a man in a confident goddamn voice. Anything, really, depending on the cut of the man's cloth. He doesn't get too far before the stranger's voice cracks at him and there's the funny thing: he stops.
He doesn't whirl back around but he does stop. The loiterers can read the expansion and return of his ribs. Ignore the dark eyes and boyish face for a moment. He is a good six feet tall without factoring in height from his shoes and even if he moves slow and looks like he'd bruise easy his chest is broad, his build suggestive of strength.
Human strength, easily beaten down strength, but within the context of his own plane of existence it isn't anything to sneeze at.
He puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans and turns to face her.
"Sup?" he asks, barely enough inflection to mark the utterance as a question.
Everett Stone
"I'll hold you to that," Everett's smile crooked itself into a hungry grin as he drew his eyes away from Nathan and back to Lux.
And then, Hey, you. And the man stopped in front of them.
Sup?
Everett afforded Nathan a silent tip of his head in greeting. Casual and lazy. But there was a brightness to his blue eyes that indicated a keener focus and interest than his relaxed attitude might imply.
Lux
The girl fishes in her pocket and holds up a quarter; it glints like an old tired moon, all dinge and dishwater. "Can I buy a cigarette off'a you?"
Nate Marszalek
He doesn't bat an eye at the appearance of coin in exchange for tobacco. He pulls a pack of Marlboro Reds out of his pocket and retraces his steps.
"You need a light, too?" he asks.
If she does he'll have to come outside with her. If she doesn't, doesn't matter. Either way: he flips open the top and bounces out a coffin nail. Hard to tell how much he smokes in a day from glancing at the culprit, maybe five left in the pack, but the fact that he slips one out for himself too and tucks it behind his ear hints at him having a bit of a problem.
As for the quarter that he hasn't taken: "Nah, don't worry about it."
Everett Stone
Everett watched this exchange with the kind of familiarity that came from years of an active smoking habit. He might have offered Lux a cigarette from his own pack, but given her behavior towards the mortal he let the matter be - let her take one of Nathan's cigarette's without interruption.
But see, he really had come here to be alone. And so, after a breath, he got to his feet.
Nathan was tall, but see... next to Everett, he looked pretty average. Adding the heels of his boots onto the Brujah's normally impressive height brought him to nearly 6'4". So he tipped his eyes down at Nate, then bent to pick up his book and took a step away. "See you on Tuesday, girl."
He winked at Lux, then turned on his heel and strode away, taking the stairs up to the next level.
Lux
Everett. He gets a nod. The sort-of angled, half-absent cant-of-head coupled with a lift of chin that acts as a definite punctuation. He'll see her on Tuesday, sure as daylight burns. Her throat is still because she doesn't need to breathe until she needs to talk to Nate. That comes now, and just wait for it: "Yeah."
The angels sing; no they don't. The singing angel's just left. The quarter, when he nahs it away, gets put back in her pocket, like okay that ritual's complete.
There's a will-you-join me assumption in her body language; she looks after Everett for one more second before her gaze snaps back to Nate.
The commercial break is nigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment