Jack
[Mask1k. How good is it?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Robert Coulter
[Mask Up!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Robert Coulter
This is the hour where cities like this one blink slowly, slowly into sleeping. The lights click out in kitchens everywhere, the late shows compete with snoring on the couch. The rain that falls is welcomed, washing away the grime of the day, the footfalls and discarded gum, the number on the napkin tossed into the gutter. This is the hour for forgetting, for discarding, for tossing away. And the discarded ones creep out along with the roaches under the fridge and the rats in the walls. They slush through the rain soaked alleys and grow fat on the city. And in their dark little hearts they find something to love.
They had scheduled for this hour, for this rat scurrying, roach roaming hour, for the rats to meet. At least these two rats would meet. Meet again, that is. After...how long had it been? He couldn't count anymore. Perhaps Jack would know. Perhaps he had some hallmark with which he could govern how many decades had passed since they'd last been in the same city together. Though, casual catching up might be the least of their concerns. The lights were still on in this one kitchen (one hoped) of the all night diner the Nosferatu claims as his own. The man in the tweed suit who comes strolling along the sidewalk stepped in as though he was a regular, though no one here had likely ever seen him before.
Hair slicked back in a smooth auburn shape, Robert Coulter scanned the interior, his fingers worrying at his beard as he watched closely, and listened.
What skin are you in tonight, dear Jack?
Jack
There are a couple of men in one corner at one table sitting and chatting, an air about them that says they're about to start a night shift somewhere nearby and this is a tradition. They've got coffee in front of them and the remains of an appetizer, of some greasy and unwholesome nachos. The kitchen is lit and somebody's back there, and Robert Coulter who goes by other names doesn't have to wait long before a waitress with a trim waist and tired blue eyes comes out to smile at him and offer a menu. There's a sign that says 'seat yourself' and it looks like somebody left a laptop cord on one of the tables and...
What skin is Jack in tonight? What stolen [borrowed (taken)] Face?
Here is one of those guys. You know the ones. They're boring. They're bland. They're not creepy and they're not skeevy and they don't stare inappropriately and they're clean but they're nothing to look at. They're everymen. They're Every Man. Eyes the color of used dish-water. Hair cut short, not a bad hair-cut, but not a good one either. He must be between hair-cuts. Might stand out near a barber-shop, but on the street who'd look? His skin is of an olivine cast, broad cheekbones that hint at his ancestry. He's wearing glasses and they are not fashionable glasses. They're not nerdy glasses or drug-store bargain-bin glasses. They're just glasses, perched on a narrow nose that almost hooks at the end. Summer still, so the jacket he's got is light and not really worth noting. His build is average, maybe a touch underfed. Go ahead, feed him ladies. There's something hangdog about the eyes, something almost dolorous, fucking mellifluous, if you looked really closely. Then again, if you look really closely, look past the shape of them to the mood that informs them, there's nothing hang-dog about him. This Every Man. This round-shouldered short-haired man in glasses with eyes the color of used dish-water and short stubby fingers, workman's hands, and thin wry lips.
He's sitting over there in the corner, that seat next to the seat that anybody wanting a good view of the door would beeline for. It's not that his seat doesn't have a good view, it's just Not The One That Would Be First Pick. You gotta keep an eye on the ones who beeline straight for that booth, too. And when he sees Robert Coulter, sees Martha the waitress approach him, Jack lifts his hand and waves.
There's a notepad on the table, one of those little ones, and he has a pen in hand. It still has a few beads dangling from its end, chaingang pen escaped from a doctor's office.
When he smiles, it's clear his teeth are a little crooked.
Robert Coulter
"Ah." He says, sighting the stranger with the all to familiar generic features. He brushes off the menu with a smile, his own imperfect teeth showing signs of yellowing.
"Just a coffee" comes the deep, haughty voice. The order might explain the yellowing. He makes his way over to the corner seat, sitting across from Jack but not trying to block his view of the door. This had been his city longer, he knew the faces and knew when to run and disappear. Let him be the warning light tonight. Just in case.
"Sorry for being late. I had to...grab something on the way. Have you been waiting long?"
Jack
The waitress looks like this is a not unexpected order and says it'll be right up, and to give the place credit they mean 'right up' when they say 'right up,' there's no disappearing in the back and the discovery that the pot's gone cold or needs to be refilled, and when she brings the coffee over it's in one of those heavy-duty (generic [always]) ceramic mugs that look like they could be dropped and they wouldn't shatter, but that's a lie, because when they do chip or shatter they crumble like chalk made sharp and dangerous. The coffee smells okay, and its color is dark, and Martha sets down a little pitcher of real cream without being asked. It's half-and-half you gotta raise your voice for here.
Before the waitress came by to do her duty, Jack gave Robert Coulter a nod, half-standing in order to take his hand in a firm handshake. Been-a-long-time handshake. Been-a-long-night handshake. Who knew a handshake could be so expressive? But our Jack is an expressive thing, the honey's not limited to his tongue.
"Waiting, no," Jack says, and then folds his arms over the table's edge, looking at the other Nosferatu's favored face-of-the-night. "To be frank, there's no place else in the city I'd rather be right now." Musing. "Where to begin?"
Robert Coulter
"I was trying to remember how long it'd been." He says once the waitress is gone. He pulls his coffee closer to him, making a show out of savoring the smell.
"My old Baldwin, secretive bastard that he was, up and disappeared oh...how long ago now? Flared pant legs? Facial hair. Yes, the seventies somewhere."
Jack
"I would forgive the seventies anything," Jack says, thoughtfully, because he is a musing Jack our Jack of Heart, Jack of Nothing, Jack of Nobody, Jack of Many Faces, though his tone flattens into a deadpan, "if only they hadn't been followed by the 80s. Do you think they all disappear?"
The deadpan disappears, replaced by frowning contemplation. Robert (Donkey Teeth) remembers Jack's sire. Dulsinea. Dulsey. Dulsey, with her radios and her abrasive cackle and a look to her monstrousness like she was going to fade away into nothing but horror and the root of disgust. Dulsey disappeared a decade before Baldwin stopped coming around.
"The last time we shared a table," Jack says, coming out of contemplation, "was the year of the animatronic dinosaurs. Jurassic Park. Everybody murmuring 'clever girl,' and dreaming of velociraptors."
Robert Coulter
"Hah!" He says, a smile slowly appearing and head lifting, eyes wandering in the wonder of recollection.
"And they hadn't found the unabomber yet. Oh. Things were so much easier back then. Now there are cameras. Cameras everywhere." He shudders, reaches for the cream, pours and mixes. "You have to be so careful these days. Someone is always watching. And yet...yes. they all disappear. Or die. I think, at some point you choose. While you still can, that is. We...we are usually the ones that see it coming first."
Jack
"Cameras in their phones. Cameras on their keychains. Cameras in front of every store. Camera around back," agreeing, and there, just so Donkey Teeth knows.
He has come out of contemplation, but that doesn't mean he ceases to be a contemplative Jack. He doesn't have so much as a mug of coffee in front of him, though there's an open packet of sugar a few grains still scattering on the surface's top, a glass of water with the ice melted into nothing. Martha didn't bother refilling it because it's barely been touched, there's a half-circle of water left behind, like a watchful moon dripping into poetry or a half-smile or an open eye. More like an open eye, calligraphied in the color that is no color (water is the color that is no color, that's the answer to that riddle).
"Usually," he says. And then, his mind turning toward current nights, toward the state of Denver, toward the Keep and their Rattish King and... "It is certainly easier to see a disappearance coming on than it is a reappearance... going." He doesn't need to breathe, Jack, but he is breathing now, and snorts at the attempt at symmetry he feels fell short.
"Nobody, for instance, would have guessed at Henrietta."
Robert Coulter
The spoon clatters loudly, Robert pulling his hands up to his face (his?) so that he can frown into clenched fists.
"Disheartening, to say the least. But...I'm left with...why? Some slight? A deeper betrayal that she decided to answer with one of her own? Makes no sense. Who would have even been a position to betray her in the first place? No. A hunger for power? From one of us? And to show her face! It makes no sense, Jack. This plot is quite the nail-biter."
Jack
"Her betrayal," Jack begins, and stops. He is seeing Gotfred again just before their Primogen entered frenzy. He is seeing the wall of rats coming after his one brave rat messenger. He is remembering the nakedness of the story that one brave rat brought him. He shakes his head to negate the story and undo the image and the smoke. "I wish that I knew the reason, but I do know it ran deep. We wondered how they," see how he pitches his voice low, "kept getting into the heart of the underground, the oubliette warren, how they knew. They knew because she brought them, didn't they? Because she told them." He sounds disgusted. "While Gotfred fought for her, thinking her gone. I think he was right. I wish I knew - "
Jack's motto. He wishes that he knew. He will know. He will know what makes those of their blood run mad or eventually disappear so often they're never seen again and they leave no signs or traces. He'll get there, Jack. He'll get there and he'll come back. He knows there's Something There, Some Greater Tale.
But he sounds forlorn or unhappy, habitual sharpness weathered into something dull. " - what made her do what she did. I believe it was malice and madness. But I know," deliberate, news-giving, low, "that she will not be showing her face again. Word is she is Finally Dead." Beat. Wry: "Again." Another beat. "And..."
"The Tower might be calling for Gotfred's head, too."
There. Good/Bad news all at once.
Robert Coulter
"Gotfreid? Do they think he was helping her? Helping her by fighting off her attacks? Maybe they were playing a game? The fools!"
He reels back in his seat and glances around after he realizes how loud his voice had become. When he's sure they hadn't attracted too much attention, he pushes to coffee to one side, leaning in closer, conspiratorial.
"How can that be? It can't can it?"
And then its evident that he's actually asking him. Even through the mask there's that desperation and worry in his eyes. What trouble had he landed himself in here?
"Can it?"
Jack
The fools! Robert says, and This Face's eyes widen. Because he'd never imagined a game between this incarnation of the Hag and her childe. The idea of it is a shard of ice slipped under his cold skin and against his cold bones and somehow the ice is cold to him who is not warm. He also looks around, but any interest engendered in Robert's outburst seems at best to be cursory.
"No." Jack is a creature of belief. He believes this. "Certainly not," he says, frowning again. This Face's thin lips are made for frowning, gives him a rumpled and vague look, a cloudy sort of not-quite-there look. "But…" He hesitates. "I wasn't here when she was. But to hear him speak of her … His devotion to avenging- "
"Before I fled, I know he was in a Frenzy. I think he may have..."
Jack shakes his head sharply, drumming his fingers against the table. Once, twice, three times. Four, five, six times, and seven. And then he repeats the process. And then he repeats the process.
"They weren't playing a game. It's inconceivable. But they might wonder whether he will still stand so strong against Those Others now... I said they might call for his head, but first they want to talk to it."
"And I do not know what is going to happen there."
Jack
ooc: Man, I am so sleepy. Change that end to. . . "I said they might be calling for his head, but first they want to talk. What that conversation might be like?" A shrug.
Robert Coulter
There's silence then. Robert looks everywhere but at the man across from him. Better for thinking, at least for thinking about other things like where Jack might have seen those eyes and who's nose is that he stole. Jack drums fingers on the table. Robert reaches for his coffee again, resting his fingers in the crook of the handle as if he were just about to take a sip, or had just finished doing so.
After a while he breathes in sharply. It is a cue to their kind. A thing they only did when they were about to speak. Its still a while before he speaks.
"There may be other things she told them. And, though I hate to think of it, there may be other things he told her. We can't rely on anything traditional anymore. In with the new, as they say. New blood."
That last he says with a wry smile.
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