Nate
Nine o'clock on a Monday night. He ought to be in bed but instead he's just getting out of work. He's stayed clear of the warehouse and the burning hotel where the massacre happened. If he tried to call her before last week her phone was melted and she was not answering.
La la, phone's ringing.
Lux
"Hello?"
Ambient noise indicates where-ever she is, there are people nearby, some of whom are in the background talking in that loud way people talk when they're just a little too tipsy, but none of whom sound to be close enough to overtake her voice.
Nate
"Hey, you're alive!"
Like he was beginning to think she wasn't. His voice is a tired tenor and he could be a debt collector or a pollster. Nothing in his inflection or his dialect to distinguish him from any other Midwestern young thing. It occurs to him that she might not know who this is, so he goes on:
"It's Nate, by the way. Marszalek."
Lux
This extremely tiny tick of a pause; then laughter, born-of-impulse. "For now and forever, I hope. How are you doing, Nate?" like he didn't need to say his name once he started talking, this silk-I-know-you-ingness. "Have you named the kitten yet?"
Nate
"Nooo..."
Said all slow and rueful like the more he admits the cat doesn't have a name the more ridiculous he's aware it sounds. Like someone has already yelled at him for this once already.
"I call her lots of stuff but nothing that's going to go on her vet records or anything."
Lux
- insinuation of laughter, this time, instead of laughter itself, all in her voice. "What about Lucifer? Lucy, for short. Or Olivia."
Nate
"She is a ginger. That's the most fiendish of all the fur colors, isn't it?"
Rhetorical question. Everyone knows gingers of all species are evil. Lucifer it is.
"So how you been?"
Lux
"Gossip has it in for redheads," all languor, "but since when is gossip wrong."
So how you been? Silence. Maybe they got disconnected, though he can still hear the sound of people around and not-too-close/not-addressing Lux.
Nate
He clears his throat like to check and make sure she can still hear him, but he doesn't repeat the question and he doesn't offer another one like he didn't ask it in the first place. No expectation in it. Just a mic check.
Lux
The silence continues to stretch, taut and tauter. Lux is in the unfortunate position of wanting to use Nathan to check on something for her, and wanting to protect him.
No breathing, of course. Until, "Sorry about that. It's been a crazy August..."
Nate
"Hey, don't even worry about it. Mine hasn't been all that sane either."
He has no idea.
"Is there..." And he pauses because he doesn't want to have an idea and he knows that once he opens this door he can't shut it again and she can practically hear him grimacing with the knowledge he's about to do something stupid. Offering to help someone is never stupid but it's an all-or-nothing action potential. He clears his throat again. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Lux
If Lux is making faces, he doesn't hear it in her voice. There's another tick of silence, but then: "Sure. You can keep me company again, Nathan. I think you're likable."
Nate
She can hear the laughter as it saturates his voice though he does not let loose the laughter itself.
"Well, shucks, Lux, I think you're pretty likable too. Where are you? I can meet you there."
Lux
"I am at ..." Like she needs to take a moment to remember. "The Cruise Room."
Oxford Hotel Bar, one of the oldest (if not the oldest) in Denver. Where else, huh?
"See you."
- and a click.
Nate
Half an hour later, not even, he comes in through the door of the Cruise Room.
By now she knows he uses a motorcycle to get around and this requires he wear clothing that will protect his delicate mortal skin if he wipes out. The dermis is so easily torn from the muscle fascia in the event of collision between the body and the asphalt. So he wears boots and thick jeans and a leather jacket even though it's still fairly warm outside. Inside most places the air conditioning cranks and ladies wear shawls to cover their bare evening arms.
Nate pauses just beside the doorway to sight her in the half-lit indoors and swipes his hair back from his brow. Sweat and the unseen helmet have matted it down so it's slightly less unruly than it normally is.
Lux
[Charisma + Empathy, for earlier victi- uh. Contact. Meeting. How gruntled does Lux look?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Lux
The Cruise Room opened the day after Prohibition was repealed and it looks like it doesn't forget the way Denver must've felt letting the glamour back in after all those dry years. Art Deco glory, with that ambience only transient bastions of age like old hotels have. Something in the air, old ghosts. Perhaps quite literally: Nathan might even hear them whisper.
Monday night and there must be some kind of convention in town or something because it sounded louder when Nathan called her and there are still more people than you'd expect in early August. Locals, some of them. Others, actual denizens of the hotel: you can tell the difference.
Lux is wearing something with a jacket. The jacket looks like it's more for style than for warmth and drapes just so just there and there with this fold and that fold so it is an interesting execution of contoured lines [and concealed knives, or paint brushes - or wallets - or the hearts of the damned should probably know better or unwary.], and it's on the seat of the bar-stool next to her. A lace dress that can be casual or dressy, depending on the company, something in a red that shades toward burgundy, flowers-shapes-cut-into-the-lace, faux-bohemian-ragged strands at the short skirt of it and the heel of it, falls to a v just above her bra-line.
And she's slouching at the end of the bar, all signs of a glass of something having just been whisked away by the bartender, who she's chatting easily with, a glance dragging her gaze that-a-way and then ... Wee, Nate. She smiles a quick slash of a smile and waves.
Nate
Seeing the happy-flash of teeth after he was on the phone listening to her hold her tongue and not answer questions appears to ameliorate the jangling concern that had Nate rushing out here as he did. If he did rush. The streets may have been empty or he may have been ready to go out when he called her. Expecting it.
And if he hears the voices of the ones trapped in this place and the era that this place represents he has enough practice acting normal that it doesn't show in his eyes. They have to speak loud though and those who can sense the dead burn as beacons in the darkness of the deadlands.
Maybe Lux will know he's listening to another conversation when his pulse starts to slam in his throat and he goes even paler than he already does. In the meantime he comes to stand beside her at the prime real estate at the corner of the bar and looks like he would hug her if she were the sort of person who looked like she enjoyed hugs. Nate looks warm even if he doesn't look soft.
Solid. She knows he weighs a lot, tall and muscular as he is. Gary knows better than she does.
"That's quite the dress," he says.
Lux
"Oh. Oh," Lux breathes. He is a warm thing, Theodore Amherst's son, and it is so tempting. Lux's mouth compresses into a firm line, until the righthand corner snicks up sharply [smirk] and dredges this light from her eyes. They're crystalline tonight but the iris' are corroded-dark at the edges, all that glacial green turned to darker smoke [where there's smoke there's]. "Oh, I know the answer to this one," and she leans forward, having spun to meet him, having reached out to touch the outside of his arm or to take his forearm, to meet his eyes and draw him into The Conspiracy. " - quite a dress for quite a guy."
The smirk becomes a grin; the grin diminishes; disappears like a wafer dissolving in communion wine. Lux doesn't look depressed, per se, but there is a certain tension to her shoulders, a certain - well, just how empathic is Michael Amherst's grandson?
"You look like you got over that weird bug."
Nate
It isn't fair to call a man stupid for having no cognizance of things outside realm of the entirety of humane experience. Not knowing how to talk to someone outside his age bracket or his sex or his ethnicity would be grounds for calling him ignorant, at least, but not knowing not to drift too close to a predator would speak of a sheltered life or a lack of self-preservation.
When the predator looks like a person and that person wears a dress cut to cause traffic slowdowns and pulse speedups one could forgive the man his stupidity.
Nate has known her a month now, longer, and he has not even tried to cop a feel while in the midst of supreme inebriation. Stood beside her now he doesn't look like he believes himself to have a foot in the door. She isn't a structure to conquer. He still notes the way she breathes and drinks him in and laid a hand on his arm and she doesn't feel like a corpse. She feels like a warm young thing who may or may not have had too much to drink.
Because that is clearly the only reason a woman would ever show interest in him, is if she were drinking to forget something shitty.
He laughs at her conspiratorial parry and then settles in beside her when the grin fades.
"Yeah," he says. "Must have been all the purring from that fuzzball lying on my chest for three days straight."
[perc + empathy: how empathic IS michael amherst's grandson?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 6, 6) ( success x 3 )
Lux
[Can I hide one thing, at least?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Lux
[I hate you, ties.]
Lux
He sees enough. He can read the insinuation of -- a readiness, an expectation of a shadow falling cold on the back of her neck, in the way she pays attention (or does not pay attention) to her surroundings. He can just see the glint-edge of tension. There's something else he doesn't quite see, submerged and unrevealed, something more. And he can see, there in her eyes, that she thinks he looks good; glad he came out; glad that he seems hale and whole. He must've looked really shitty last time she saw him, huh?
"If you write a story about how a kitten purring over your heart healed you, I wager your blog views would skyrocket in number," Lux says, wisely. "You drinking, or," see, she sits up straight in order to lift her chin and look toward and through the door, over by the hotel's restaurant, "hungry?"
Nate
On the phone he knew something was troubling her even if he couldn't sort out the manner of trouble. With strangers one could never tell. He had never been able to tell what was bothering his mother or his younger sister but that had nothing to do with their sex. They were less transparent than other men were.
Men like to think they behave behave in manners that make apparent what is bothering them when something is bothering them. A splinter or an annoying coworker or mortgage payments fallen behind and foreclosure looming. But Nate, like most men, is too afraid of his inner feelings to have paid them enough attention to learn how to mask them. He doesn't know what all is out beyond his own horizon to know to fear that either. He blamed his sudden weakness on a bug.
He looks at Lux and she can tell he's attracted to her and he doesn't intend to do anything about it because she asked him here for company. Trouble clings to her brow though she tamps it down behind her eyes and Nate looks at her really and long.
A kitten story would inflate his numbers. Nate laughs at this and he doesn't smile big and wide like that often because it makes him look younger than he already looks. He pushes his hair back from his brow and lets her go on.
"I ate already," he says. "What're you drinking?"
Lux
The problem with being a vampire is that drinking is a pleasure that becomes dangerous and, while it forces one to do so in company, it also almost forces one to be bad company, pushes the issue of trouble. The problem with being a vampire is that drinking the kind of spirits sold everywhere isn't a thing, and your tongue forgets the taste. And you've still gotta pretend occasionally, because the kine have drinking or eating as part of almost every damned event. So: "Wet martini," she says, looking longingly toward the bartender, who doesn't immediately notice, but notices soon enough. The place is busy, remember, but not that busy, and she was talking to him before Nathan came, 'round about the time the bartender made himself scarce.
"How are the solitary adventures of Nathan the independent - " see, she is interested apparently in what he wants to do on his own, not for his paper " - journalist proceeding? Anything new and exciting?"
Nate
The problem with being Nate is that Nate has grown used to eating when food is right in front of him and forgetting to drink water until he has a headache because even if he looks like a rumpled young man he was a Marine his entire adult life and now he doesn't know what he is. Figuring It Out. He's a reporter and that's even worse than being a Marine. At least when you're a Marine the government is invested in your health and they have rations and canteens. Someone is taking care of you.
So he ate already. If she was to say she wasn't drinking anything at all he'd be just fine with that. They stood out at a reservoir for nearly an hour smoking cigarettes and running off at the mouth on their first General Outness excursion.
"Let's get two of those, then," he says.
And she knows because she's seen him drunk before: the man doesn't Drink. His tolerance is shit.
As for how his adventures are going:
"Eh. That Truthhunter guy I told you about's vanished. No idea what happened to Jerry. The vets who were involved in that warehouse break-in are all just about as hard to track down and the cops didn't have anything for me when I called to follow up with them. Shannon thinks she has a lead on someone who would make a good essay, so it's like a hard reset at this point."
Lux
[Let's rock that manip + subt.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Lux
[I said rock it, you insidious chat.]
Nate
[ORLY]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Lux
Lux hails the bartender. Hails him, we who are about to die salute you. Drags him back into her orbit, and apparently his name is James, a friendly man who speaks more than one language and has been at the hotel since just after college, and there's a tattoo hidden beneath the collar of his shirt. The Cruise Room 'tenders are supposed to dress up. Look classy. Fit into the Art Deco décor. Conjure up a sense of timelessness.
As before, Lux listens to Nate like she's interested in what he's saying.
But this time --
But this time when he talks about the warehouse he can intuit (sixth sense, hunch) something beneath the surface. Not as beneath the surface as she'd like. Something that looks an awful lot like it's touching her eyes with relief and disappointment both, and if she hadn't been sitting before, if she'd been standing at the bar and content, then she hops up into a seat now with the kind've smooth grace commonly associated with dancers whose choreography is so damned perfect its not even choreography any longer it's just a natural response to being alive to being more than alive to being a muse except it's all natural on Lux completely careless and beside the point but she only moved because she knows something he doesn't and she doesn't like what she knows. So you make a little movement and your poise remains the same.
And she rests her elbows on the bar countertop, and once she's got her martini, she proceeds to take the olive and lay it on the cocktail napkin, and says musingly, "Maybe the truth got him instead."
"I hear that it's a bitch."
"But that's too bad about those other trails vanishing. Who's the someone and what would make them into such a great essay?" Her mouth twists, speculative, "Wouldn't it be a thing to have it said 'you'd make a good essay'? What kind of essay would you be?"
Nate
Nate takes the speared olive she sets aside. Doesn't ask her if she wants it before he goes ahead and takes it. If she wants to retaliate his is still floating in its amniotic fluid.
And she can see that he sees. That he doesn't understand what he sees. Sees the relief and the disappointment when he talks about the warehouse. And she knows he doesn't want to know.
Maybe that's its own source of disappointment in those whose hearts don't beat anymore. That he likes being alive so much he skirts away from truths that lurk in dark places that promise nothing he can wrap his mind around. He who pursues truth in the light. He's young and he doesn't know any better and he's seen the awful things that human beings do to each other but he hasn't seen the face of the things in the darkness because he won't even stick his hand into it.
Still: for whatever reason her disappointment hits out at him.
"I wouldn't be," he says. Eats the olive. "I've got my shit together too well for anyone to find me interesting enough to put me in an essay."
Lux
[Aw, do you really think that? Percept + Empathy.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Lux
Emotions are complicated. They're complicated when you're alive and they're complicated when you've got forever to spend just you and your emotions until you get rid of those suckers. Let's not say emotions. Let's say passions, instead. Because the lovely thing sitting with Nate at the bar is a creature of passions, whether out of sheer will or impulse, who knows. The point is: complicated. Lux is glad that Nate's instinctual denial of the truth, who is a bitch, and who will eat him, might help keep him safe. But there's the but. Like: is this the kind of kid Michael raised? And did Theodore take those lessons, and raise this? But she knows that Nate's brave and that he tries and she wants him alive to make more alive people so it's basically just a complicated knot. No need to cut through it. She sees that he sees and it gives her pause.
She also sees that he means what he's saying, that he's got his shit together, that his shit together isn't essay-worthy, and she arches both eyebrows, "So what, that isn't rare enough to be worthy for an essay? Nate: Shit Together Too Well For Interest To Make An Essay Out Of Him."
"An Essay, in Five Acts.
"The First: Birth of a Questioner of Man and Beast. He came into life screaming, as do we all," and see how an echo of pompousity insinuates herself over her tone, mocking some professor somewhere who spoke like that, and by the end her mouth seems to wanna curve up, seems to wanna smile instead of continuing with this academic echo.
Lux does steal his olive, though she doesn't it it. Just places it on her cocktail napkin like a dare, or like a perfectionist who wants an olive there.
Nate
The plastic spear now empty lies on the napkin beside a drink he has not touched. Nate is standing and he has been standing though Lux sat already. He can lean against the corner of the bar and it lets him stretch out his back. If he needs to he can put a foot up on the metal rung fed around the edge of the bottom of the bar. His eyes rest on her mostly for he cannot smoke and stare off into nothing.
Sometimes they go to the door but only when someone new walks in. His vigilance is not a hyperactive thing. Truth be told the man looks tired. That blunted sort of tired born not of depression or suicidality or insomnia but too much physical activity.
Her joke drags a stump of laughter out of him and Nate twirls the martini glass by its stem without lifting it. The condensation has cemented the napkin to its base.
"Well you're going to have to go through all the facts now," he says with a lazy lift of his eyebrows. "Your audience is rapt."
Lux
"Oh it's not ready yet. But fortunately, I'm still in the research stage, and even more fortunately, word on the street tells me that a prime source lounges before me," Lux says.
Nate
"There are all sorts of words on the street, Miss Lux."
He tries very hard to sound noir and worldly but he's neither. He dresses like a broke reporter but he happens to be a broke reporter. Only problem is he has integrity and doesn't chase ambulances. The ad revenue on his blog takes care of that need.
As he lists facts he extends a finger for each paragraph into which the facts fall.
"The Marines took him because he didn't have any legal problems despite the fact that the only topics in which he excelled in high school were English and Pot. He got a B.S. in media studies while he was working as a combat correspondent for them. That was pretty great. When he got blown up in Afghanistan they put him up in a very nice hospital in Kandahar.
"After he got out he moved to California because his girlfriend thought it was a good idea. When he proposed to her six months later she didn't think that was a good idea.
"His father teaches law at DU and suggested he get his Master's there because they have a really great graduate project and also it would be nice to see you occasionally, Nathan. Nathan was accepted into the program but doesn't see his father all that often because he's busy.
"But luckily Nathan has a cat."
Lux
"Coda. And luckily for the cat, Nathan has a friend who will insist that he name the cat. Lucifer, come on. She looked like a Lucy."
Lux watches Nathan as he speaks, and watches him as she speaks too. And then, confessional,
"Somebody I liked died last week. His loyal dog, too."
Nate
The kitten is a noisy redhead that makes him laugh because she's uncoordinated and eats all the time. Lucy it is. The staff at the veterinarian's office will think he's honoring a comedy icon. Shannon will later learn it's short for Lucifer.
Neither of them sip their drinks. Nate touches his but that's just to give his hands something to do since he hasn't nipped outside to wolf down a cigarette yet.
When she confesses he's present and sincere. Not drowning in empathy exactly but he doesn't think of his own losses when Lux shares hers.
"Shit," he says. "I'm sorry, Lux." He doesn't ask himself if he really wants to know before he asks her: "What happened?"
Lux
"Certain parts of the city are at war. He was an idealistic guy. Brave, full of heart and conviction. He wasn't really on either side, but he was against one," the creature replies, though as she speaks her eyes [those catch-traps for an intrigue of light and dark, all spark and sublimation] leave Nate and go to the rest of the bar. Her back feels naked, not just because of the cut of her dress (skin revealed like a dare), but because of what she doesn't know. Because what she's really worrying about. "And I don't know exactly how it happened, but he killed in a fight. His dog, too. Feels like Denver's going to get more and more dangerous."
That last line wasn't something she was going to say; but she wants to warn Nate, somehow. Wants to warn him that there are going to be more men in fedoras in parks, not all of whom will be so 'nice.'
Nate
Certain parts of the city are at war.
His eyes flick at that but his mind knows that isn't the point of the confession. Thinks it knows. Thinks it knows she's telling him this because she's upset and alone in her grief and wants to reach out to someone. A part of him recoils subconscious from her touch. Another part of him she saw in the dark. He's drawn to her. Curious, maybe. He is still alive and his heart still beats and his appetites are ignored most days but that doesn't mean a damned thing. Isn't like he didn't seek out companionship when he was overseas getting shot at.
He wasn't really on either side.
Okay. Drugs maybe. She's thin and gorgeous. A supplier's moll, she could be. Do people still use the word moll? Maybe she's the supplier. It's 2013. Women are running things these days. Always have been but they're louder about it. Good on them.
And good on Nate: he doesn't pull away from this and doesn't look bewildered or disbelieving. You see a buddy's head explode in front of your camera lens and have to wash away his gray matter later on you get to be capable of believing just about anything.
"What kind of a war are we talking, here?" he asks.
Lux
He makes some assumptions or maybe makes some assumptions. Those assumptions don't touch Lux. Lux assumes he's going to make assumptions. They always do and that's just fine. That's the world as it is -- a place where the surface matters because the surface informs what's going on beneath the surface. So she says certain parts of the city are at war and be starts wondering if its drugs, whether or not she's a supplier or a moll or just how it is she's involved in the underworld because that's what a city at war always means in America. The underworld at it again: mobsters or gangsters tiny men and tiny women trying to make it big and breaking laws and sometimes they're not bad and sometimes they're not brutal but mostly they are. Mostly, they are. Because war's brutal, no matter what the front. War does take prisoners. Everybody it fucking touches is a prisoner at one point or the other.
Maybe she just assumes he'll assume she's talking about gang violence. That she had a friend who was brave, and idealistic, and therefore stupid, and he got in the middle of something too hot for him to handle. The truth diminishes once the Devil leaves, taking all the details. The truth can seem so small.
"Oh," Lux's lashes sink lower, hooding her gaze but not quite closing, "you know. Fucking sharks and fucking jets bullshit. Everybody wrong; I don't know. I don't want any part in it. I don't want the people I value dragged into it, but can't want something enough to make it so."
Maybe it occurs to her that she's talking to a reporter now (no, she never forgot), and she cups her chin in the palm of her hand, says wryly, "Don't you know? Aren't you on the 'crime beat'? Is that what they say?"
Lux
ooc: Er. "Is that what they say, 'crime beat'?"
Nate
"Hard to see the forest when half the trees are on fire."
He doesn't have a ton of time for metaphor. It doesn't belong in journalistic writing and when he sees it in sports or entertainment articles he groans. Sometimes he groans too close to the person who wrote the article and he gets into a dick-waving contest with the other person but it's alright. Nobody is threatened by him.
An air of truth to it though. It becomes solid a moment later. Answers enough of her questions without being too showy about it.
"Or the buildings."
Lux
Lux shudders, slightly, too recently caught in fire for her liking. Fire; it's nothing she likes, even if she's got something of it inside her, informing her decisions. Cold fire, maybe, something that's a white radiance that'd devastate if it could -- beauty is a weapon, yeah, but so is will. And in a few days, she'll meet some addict who's not just addicted to what's in her veins but to fire as well, and she'll just really have had enough of it. For now, though, a shudder, that's all.
"I guess that's true."
Nate
He runs his tongue over his teeth without opening his mouth and considers the still surface of his ignored drink. Something doesn't add up but he doesn't voice what it is. Only faction-related warfare he's heard of lately has been between two groups of people he knew existed out this way because the south of Colorado breeds insulated crazies the same as any other wide open and ignored area on this planet.
As he thinks he shifts his feet so he can stretch out his back without calling too much attention to himself and then turns to look at her again.
"Smoke?" he asks.
Lux
"Sure," she says, spinning neatly in order to tumble out've that chair, a tall drink of knife's edge grace, light. Doesn't need to pay for the drinks, it's already taken care of; maybe she has a tab, or maybe she's drinking on somebody else's.
Nate
Out they go.
Nate keeps his hands in the pockets of his jacket until she's come abreast of him and then he cants out his elbow all nonchalant like she can hold onto it if she wants to it doesn't matter to him. Like they're promenading past a bunch of people looking at them and they probably are. Her beauty is a devastating thing and if onlookers don't find him cute they at least notice his height.
He holds the door for her if nothing else. Teddy taught his son manners if he did not teach him fearlessness.
Through the lobby to the sidewalk, a ways away that they can stand without fear of immediate observation, sickly orange light washing over them. Nate pulls out his pack of cigarettes and lights two. Gives her one. Pockets the lighter and takes a long drag and holds it. Uses the thumb of the hand holding the filter to scratch at his eyebrow.
"Anything you say to me is off the record," he says. Exhales. "I just want you to know that before I ask you any more questions."
Lux
Certainly, Lux takes his arm. The pressure she brings to bear on it is precise and light; a butterfly thing, that nonetheless does not feel as if he'll accidentally jostle her by taking a step too quick or that there's a lack of synchronization going on here.
Outside, Lux --
[what's up, Night?]
-- flashes a cool look around, and see, coming out of the easy amber gold-gilt glow of the hotel and into the orange fading ember effulgence of outside street lights and pollution and darkness puts even more gloom into her ember-drowning hair, shadows slip over, but her dress is still damned red when she leans her back against the hotel's façade and precisely folds one ankle over the other.
Anything she says to him is off the record, he says, and Lux smiles at him. Killer smile, seriously, it will cut out your heart if your heart gets in the way.
"Kind of you to say. This mean you want to ask more questions?"
Lux
[PERCEPT + ALERT. Srsly, what's up night? I can roll this pool without rolling three 1s, right?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5) ( fail )
Nate
Subtlety, thou dost not travel in the guise of a tall floppy-haired young man.
She calls him kind and flashes that killer smile and maybe he's been hanging around her too long or he's just that age where he can adapt because if he doesn't adapt he's going to die. But she flashes him a smile and asks her question and he shoots her one back. Doesn't show teeth. Boy isn't even bothering to try and play coy.
"Uh huh," he says. Takes another drag off his cigarette.
Lux
"Uh huh?"
Nate
"'Sharks and jets'?"
Are you shitting me? his tone asks. Maybe he doesn't grasp the reference. He had to have sat through the film adaptation of West Side Story in music class in 8th grade like everyone else of his generation did if his high school drama club didn't perform it. A girlfriend had to have dragged him. He looks like his girlfriend in high school would have been into theatre. Dark things. Painting her nails and lips black.
Or maybe she went to church and wore white up until her wedding. But that doesn't sound like the type of girl who would quail and run away at the thought of marrying a man who went off to war and came back decorated for his valor and ability to not die.
"TheIt's been over a week and we don't have enough information to say anything other than Yup. Big-ass fire at Richthofen. Cops are gonna have a press conference. They're totally renovating. Nothing to see here. I was starting to think the cops just didn't want to talk to me for whatever reason but it's been like that with everyone."
Deep drag on the cigarette.
"It sucks that your friend got caught up in whatever he got caught up in--" And he means it, he really does mean it, even if he's plowing ahead. Exhales. "I'm just having trouble believing it was skinhead-infighting bullshit."
Lux
He echoes her -- sharks and jets? -- and the Toreador smirks. This precise little snick of her mouth. This little slash; this little insinuation. But there's no sharpness, no cut-your-thumb-on-a-thorn bite to it, because look at Nate putting two and two together and bringing something up that hits too close.
Look at her. She tucks one hand between her side and elbow, canting her body so it is turned toward his, and the cherry on the end of her cigarette smoulders when she takes a drag, breathes out like she's always been breathing smoke [oh, Morning Star, and your attendant minions--] into the dark.
He hasn't technically asked a question so she lobs one back at him instead, eyes curious but not more guarded than they ever are. "Why? What seems more feasible?"
Nate
Letting her ask questions that he can latch onto like a lost caver grabbing onto a nylon cable in the dark isn't fair but he does it. Smokes his cigarette faster than she does because he gets something from it she doesn't get. She won't get unless she bites him.
And he doesn't remember being bitten because his brain doesn't have a synapse for that yet. No way to surmise that the man in the fedora in the park fed from him because how in the fuck would he surmise that. No easier way to surmise that than to surmise Lux is that, that Lux's friend is that.
Feasible has no place here.
"I'm sure I don't know," he says. "You wanna give me a hint?"
Lux
"Not really," she says, with a little rill of laughter; something luminous moving across something dark. She's not lying to him, though. Not denying that Richthofen is where her friend fell. "I thought we established that I kinda like you. What're you gonna do with an off-the-record hint?"
Nate
"Understand you better."
Oh yeah that's good, man, keep going with that one.
He's ignoring his cigarette now. Turned towards her and not the world beyond. Vehicle tires whisper-yelling by and doors opening and shutting and roving bands of 20-somethings caterwauling off in the distance. The city alive and no one knowing better that they're here.
"Not say something inadvertently hurtful when we're sitting at the bar talking and you sort-of kind-of make reference to something I don't know anything about." A beat. "Off the record means I can't turn around and do anything. Maybe not for other people and maybe not usually but right now that's what it means."
Lux
[Seriously though, do I have any idea what you want out of this? Percept + ... Subt, for motivations, let's say. Though hey wait the pool would be the same.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Lux
Lux's gaze skims over Nate's face. His throat when he takes a breath to speak. Warm thing, and tempting. Lux doesn't neglect her cigarette, and smoking's just a very precise and very poised ballet, just this dance between ash and fire and smoke and gesturing, just a social thing to do, wasn't ladylike once upon a time but then they started smoking and watch the fuck out suddenly the women were here, kicking up their heels, kicking up their skirts, kicking up a big to-do, and then it became classy and elegant and cold, something wielded like a sceptre, 'til eventually it became social and naughty, a minor rebellion, and it's all those things now. Mostly it's just giving her a dissipating halo, obscuring the sloe-dark lashes, the shadows that bite her cheekbones. Lux kinda likes smoking, likes being kinda alive enough to smoke.
She should just tow the party line. She doesn't want him to get hurt because he was knew too much.
But Lux sucks at towing the party line, especially that party's line. Her ally died for nothing, and she doesn't know whose (un)life she's gotta destroy to make it up to make it square, and she's got other shit to worry about.
"He didn't get caught up in skinhead infighting bullshit; got caught up in something more messed up and just - "
" - heh. If," submerged amusement, almost surfacing, you can see the edge of it like a glint there, "you inadvertently say something hurtful, promise I can take it. I'm a big girl, and you don't seem all that mean. Even advertently."
Nate
No relief from him at having her slip her cards higher up her sleeve. Never came close to palming them out for him even when she made that confession inside and if he knows anything at all about this particular woman not Women but this one right here. He doesn't have a glimmer of an idea what kind of life she leads.
She only comes out at night. Born of independent wealth or she works the overnight shift. Something. Her friend died in something even more messed up than skinhead infighting bullshit. Organ trafficking or HIV sharing or something. He's been on the deep web once or twice just to look around. Never again. People are capable of some messed up fucking shit.
"Thanks," he says to the matter of not seeming all that mean. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day."
He pinches the ember off his filter and pockets the butt.
"You wanna go back inside? We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. I'll leave this alone."
Lux
Lux shakes her head. "I like the feel of the night air. But there's not a lot to say about what happened to my friend. He's gone, and I just don't want to be involved."
And she pauses, and she knows she could leave it here. But she wants to warn him. "Nathan, there are conspiracies, you know. Everybody is a conspirator in some respect or other, the little conspiracies of if I do this then that or if I don't look there then that. There's something really fucking dangerous moving in the city now; I don't - "
"Just keep a sharp eye out when you're at school, huh? When you're everywhere."
Lux
[Oh, Manip + Subt.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nate
[sit down before you hurt yourself]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )
Lux
[I will cut you, chat.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lux
[NO.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Nate
[YES.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Nate
Lux wants to stay outside so Nate makes himself comfortable. Leans against a pillar and doesn't light another cigarette. The night air ceases to be night air when it's choking on tobacco smoke. Maybe he ought to try the patch. Problem is he likes the burn of it in his lungs. Coughing up one of them in the morning reminds him that yup he's still alive. yup he's still slightly depressed. yup he's going to get up and go to work anyway.
"That zombie apocalypse all the kids afraid of actually happening?" he asks. He said he'd let it alone but he's joking. She's the one who brought it back up again, to be fair. "A coven of vampires or... wait, vampires don't travel in covens. That's werewolves." He flicks his eyebrows to will away the thought. "I know absolutely dick about movie monsters." Scrubs his face. Serious again. "I'll be careful. Alright?"
Lux
He's joking and Lux knows it. There are so many references to vampires these days, and witches, and mages, and warlocks, and zombies and werewolves and cat shapeshifters and fairies and wizards and, yes, zombies and angels and mermaids and succubi and anything, everything, that ever walked the annals of folklore. So Lux doesn't freak out when he says the v-word, knowing full-well that she is a vampire, that his blood would sustain her, and that he would be horrified if he learned the truth.
"Nailed it," she says. "Bad Vampires versus Bad Vampires. Who will win? Hopefully, the upstart underdog," and she grins, and she is a thing of sublimated radiance. "There probably are some zombies and covens thrown into the mix. Sheesh, Nathan, what kind of films do you watch?"
Nate
"Not a lot of them." Deadpan. "And they tend to come on late at night with big squiggly static bands going through the picture."
Lux
"The hell? Let's go catch a late show."
Nate
Like he's got somewhere to be in the morning. He draws a breath and checks his watch. Confirms the night is still nascent.
"Why the hell not."
Peels himself away from the pillar and holds out his elbow for her again. She's already been on the motorcycle once. He doesn't feel the need to warn her that's how they're getting to the cinema this time.
Lux
The Anarch takes his arm. The pressure is the same: light, but firm. No clinging, easy to slip away if need be, but not to be slipped-away-from.
"The answer to that is The Smurfs 2," she says, rather disdainfully. Lux is an animation snob. "But we can find something better."
Nate
[YAY WRAP TIME TRAVEL OVER]
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