István
It doesn't matter where in time and space the closet actually exists. The hallway outside the closet is wide and the air smells of candles and other people's body heat and other people's perfume. Neither of the two who are walking hand-in-hand toward the closet produce body heat or wear perfume but they are lovely regardless. She with her luminosity and her air of curious sophistication and he is like a statue beside her nothing out of place or out of his control.
A surreptitiousness just before one of them tugs open the closet door. Good. It's empty.
István places a hand at the small of her back to usher her in first and then he tugs the door shut behind them. A string overhead to awaken the bulb or a switch somewhere nearby. No light in here. It isn't as if they need it. He does nothing to illuminate the space.
"I think I am getting the hang of this," he says, "this capturing wayward Kindred. I am not so sure where I am going to keep him. At least he is very small."
Lux
[Oo, a closet. I'm going to roll Perception + Investigation for a thing. Aw yeah. Behold the amazement.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Lux
There are coats in the closet. This is not the coat closet. This is the auxiliary coat closet. But there are coats in this closet and anybody who espies the attractive blonde man and the [compelling, somehow; a hook to the heart] beautiful dark-haired girl slinking into the closet doesn't have any illusions about what's going to go on. Their coats aren't in the closet and so they do not care.
Lux gives the thing a sluice of a glance. Runs her fingertips slowly across the coats because they hang on both sides when she heads to the closet's not-very-far back. Her hair is in a loose fish-tail, one of those carelessly messy things. The coats go: swish, whisper, kiss - some of the fabric clings, knap catching on her skin. She pauses once to investigate a woollen coat's pocket and to come out triumphant with a pipe and a bag of pipe tobacco. She turns around so that she is facing István after-all; sinks up to her left shoulder, reaching past some coats for something that she is looking for.
Her eyebrows rise; "Oh," says she, and then compresses her mouth together, one corner snicking up - knife's edge sharp smirk. "Well, gosh, I don't know what to think; should I find myself alarmed?" The smirk does not fade; however, one might deduce this is more serious, "I really don't know what to think. The parking lot creature?"
István
"Yes, this is him."
He isn't surprised that she doesn't know what to think and if he is he keeps it out of his tone but this did come somewhat out of nowhere. Like it had been on his mind all this time and Lux ought to have been following him. They were talking about nothing having to do with the parking lot or the creature in the parking lot.
"Do not find yourself alarmed, my gem. He did lose himself in a red haze once before. There is no knowing when he would again. If you did see him, you would agree something more Final would be better than that. Miserable wretch."
Lux
"I accept the invitation," she says. There. Lux leans her whole body against the coats on her left side; the fabric gives and the hangers sing against each other. Her arm emerges whole; no monsters in the closet (except for these ones, of course). But she is holding a little disco ball.
The closet is dark. Very, very dark, with the door shut. Even with auspex, they can hardly see one another, because light does not steal so unsubtly in from under the door. The pipe she holds against her waist with her elbow, the bag of pipe tobacco gets the same treatment, and she sashays closer to the door and István, if only to tie the disco ball to the still-turned-off-light. It is too dark; in this kind of darkness, what's to make anybody's eyes gleam? There's no sense of warmth; still, there is a sense of presence, isn't there? Presence and shadows, pale skin and pale skin.
The little chain to turn the light on dances. "When is convenient?"
István
As ever the blond creature is not inclined to move if he has no reason to move and stood with his back to the door and the coats crammed in all around them his reason here is in explaining.
He finds this all very interesting. That should come as no surprise to her. He finds many things interesting that other people have no cognizance or comprehension of. The affairs of young creatures as real to him as works of film and literature are to others. Some people invest themselves heavily in works of film and literature.
In the dark Lux feels his eyes leave her face to watch the impression of the little spherical object with no light to catch. They hear the chain sway but nothing glints.
"Now," is convenient. "Although I do not suppose he will be going anywhere. Doctor Jacobs did run off with his little fire-haired friend instead of staying to help with the asking of the questions. It's very boring, asking sense of one who only speaks nonsense."
Lux
(Now is convenient. It's very boring,)
Lux puts the stranger's pipe between her teeth and loops her finger through the tobacco pouches handle so that both of her hands are free. ( -- asking sense of one who only -- ) The left hand she places across István's eyes; palm on his right eye, fingers falling across his nose, cupped across his left. ( -- speaks nonsense.)
And the she pulls the little light-string, and so there is light in the closet. And little fairy flashes from the miniature disco ball, and Lux grins this kiss of a grin around the stupid pipe, watching the thing sway. She does not take her hand away from István's eyes; she doesn't press so hard, though, and glow gets in.
"You're a snob," she tells him, taking the pipe away. "I say it's more fun asking sense of someone who only speaks nonsense; why, if they only speak nonsense, you know exactly where you stand and what is sense, because it's whatever they aren't saying. I'm only being fifty three percent sincere, of course..."
"If now is convenient, by all means."
István
Beneath her palm his brow is cool. Not tacky and stiff like the brow of a corpse but it is bloodless and dry and not what one would expect when resting their hand upon another's face. She knows he is not a warm thing. She knows and she covers his eyes and in the dark she feels the muscles around his eyes crinkle. Almost a smile.
The crack of the string bringing the light back to life and her hand doesn't move. He's a snob.
Even with his eyes covered she can read the flick of his eyebrows. That razor-thin half-a-smile under his facial hair. Of course he is. He always has been.
"Ah, it is, but convenient is a human thing, no? Everything is so fast fast fast with them. Or maybe I just don't understand them. I did tell this to--"
Metaphorical lightbulb at that.
"I met another of the cause, my gem. Your cause. Speaking of talking nonsense. She did talk much nonsense."
Lux
But there is blood there, isn't there? Sweet blood. Sweetest blood. Old blood that doesn't require heat. Blood that is more than life. Vitae. Blood infused with spirit. Vitae. Caine's blood, moving by sorcery or curse to animate István so that a century after his Sire came to him Lux can rest her palm across his eyes and feel his skin and the almost a smile. Lux of course has thoughts on convenience and human things, makes some back-of-throat sound at his no?, and lifts her hand so the ridge of it is still against his forehead, but he can see again.
Peekaboo. I see you.
Do you see me?
Lux. Isn't she a thing? Can't she look at somebody just the way they'd like to be looked at? Look how she's looking at István. That'd be nice, huh?
But alas, there are misunderstandings. There are the kind that happen on paper and there are the kind that happen in flesh. They've weathered the former sort, know the cadence of one another's thoughts when set out in ink. They are not used to the quickfire flitting of them in real time. Fast fast fast fast: huh? So what wouldn't draw ire if she were reading it on paper -- oops.
Her mouth becomes a firm line. Lux steps back. And Lux slaps István across the face. The shock of it is the thing. Not too hard, the slap; not with any particular force; not with the back of her hand, nor her rings which would cut, but firmly. Once. SLAP, and lets her fingers linger on the sting.
"Nonsense? Is it so nonsensical to to believe that there is something better than what is currently a la mode? Has been, for centuries? So nonsensical to believe in libertas, that it is as essential to our condition as blood? Or as a ready supply of air is to them?"
Lux
[new and improved!]
István
And this creature is not a passionate one. Not hot-blooded or easily incensed. Not so far gone from the person he once was that he acts on an instinct that is all raw nerves and flaring heat. His passion is for things that do not change. For laws of nature and the boundaries of his own consciousness.
They are still sensate beings. This is why he does not want to turn into a constellation to be strung up across the galaxy even if that means he would have all the time in the world alone with his thoughts. The nerves are middlemen but he's rather attached to them.
SLAP.
Not hard enough to knock the detached smugness from his stupid face and no blood rushes to the surface of his bloodless skin because that isn't a reflex that he has anymore. He cants his head to one side like a dog that's been scolded for no reason only this dog is big enough that he could bite your sweet hand off in the time it'd take you to blink. Only reason he doesn't is he likes you dear.
And she is a thing. He likes the way she looks at him. All this time corresponding in the old way no skin or eyes to go with it. It's nice to have her look at him just before she misinterprets him.
So her fingers linger. He grabs them up quick and holds them there like to make her feel the ringing of them against his flesh and then he realizes what she thought he meant and he looks as if he could laugh again.
"She is a descendant of Malkav," he says. Sets his teeth into the knuckles of the hand that slapped him but not hard enough to break the skin. Contrite in this. "Ach, little one. That isn't what I meant. That isn't what I meant at all."
Lux
He grabs her fingers up quick and there is a certain shadow of malice in Lux's eyes. As if she'd rather, and she is a devotée of quickness, of preternatural speed, slap him again; perhaps this show of temper (ardent) has to do with the company she keeps (rabble & revolutionaries).
But it does not, and she does not narrow her eyes when he looks like he's going to laugh, but gazes, mouth firm, until teeth into her knuckles and her eyelashes drop so her gaze is just a gleam of colour, a suggestion of dark-limned brightness, beneath even darker lashes: demure. She is looking at her hand and his mouth; not his face at all. That isn't what he meant. That isn't what he meant at all. Lux, she herself is poised and still; but her eyes flick up, knife's edge, thoughtful.
"If that is so, then I will take it back," she says, deliberate. And then: "What nonsense did she talk?"
István
"When I did speak a sentence, most times she did tell me the opposite."
He's making an attempt to speak straight to Lux instead of treating their conversation as a change to whet his verbal sword. Not turning his own statements into rhetorical questions or parrying her questions with something that doesn't quite make sense.
Hell: he might be a descendant of Malkav himself. They haven't ruled it out yet. He and his ghoul are both fastidious men of science. For all she knows they wash their hands in sets of prime numbers and count every crack in the sidewalk when they go out of the house on Thursdays and believe without having any real reason to believe that if they don't check the locks on the door seventeen times exactly then someone will come in the night and kill them.
But he doesn't seem that crazy, does he. Maybe a little eccentric but he thinks quantum physics makes for enthralling dinner conversation. He doesn't get out much. She wouldn't know if he counts sidewalk cracks.
He holds onto her hand like he believes in the notion of her slapping him again.
"Em... like so: I say to her, we meet outside the hospital. I say to her after we talk some time, Oh I know nothing about these security things, speaking of the parking, when I did not know where to start to find the creature who did attack René. I did think maybe the cameras did see him but I did not know anything about these things. I know nothing, I say to her. She say to me Nor I.
"Next time we do meet she is breaking the lock on a door. A loud lock, one that will alert the men in the blue uniforms. I say to her, Ah, see, so you do know of these things of which I say I know nothing, hah hah, very good, and she says to me she knows of places where the footage is kept. Words like 'private security firm' she does use. But because she cannot track the tapes, that means she is not so good with the security. Nonsense.
"I say I am not so good with the security, I mean I know nothing. I know the camera, it is an eye for the men in the blue uniforms. But I do not know how it works. I cannot break into the building without the door making a noise. I do not know this word 'private security.'
"This is just one conversation. I have more too for you if you would like to hear how she did argue with me in one night."
Lux
Lux listens, all poised and still and not slapping István again. She has not realized that he is trying not to answer her questions with questions still; that it is still a thought in his mind, that request made at the Oxford Hotel, because it is not a thought in hers. But because he is holding onto her hand like he believes in the notion of her slapping him again she tests his strength by pushing a little; test, test, test.
By the time he has finished re-counting one example of conversation, the corners of Lux's mouth have deepened: shadowling smile, see, amusement's very own kiss.
"But István, you are very easy to argue with. You are often wrong, and when you're not wrong, you're right in a very arguable way."
István
Test test test is met with resistance resistance resistance but it is no hardship for him. They are both creatures of the night and their blood is their strength and the point of this trip to the closet is solitude. Not privacy. No privacy in a place where people expect and hope to store their outerwear.
It wasn't the Malkavian's fault she was afforded so many opportunities to argue. István lifts his eyebrows like to refuse to believe Lux's betrayal and yet his eyes and the corners of his mouth betray him too. This is amusing.
"Ah, so see, now if I say that you are correct in this, am I wrong, or am I right in an arguable way?"
Lux
Lux does not choose to answer that question at this time.
Observe: she quirks an eyebrow. Gives István a sluice-of-a-look. A scrape-of-a-look, a fall-of-a-look. Sticks that pipe between her lips again, lets one corner deepen even further into something that is more than a suggestion of a smile, more than a shadow, and shrugs with deliberate insouciance.
István
István is not surprised that Lux does not choose to answer that question at this time.
Her silence strikes him as a sort of acquiescence. At least an acknowledgment of the thought-problem nature of the question. No matter what she says it's going to negate her original statement.
"Well!" he says, buoyed even in the face of her indifference, "whether I am right or wrong, I did tell her I would introduce you. If you are interested in this."
Lux
"Do you believe I'll like her?" Lux says, around the pipe; and gently, gently, extricates her hand from his. "What is she like?"
István
"Like?"
After she looses her hand from his the tall creature holsters both of his behind his back and tongues an incisor. Confusion.
"What is she like and do I believe you'll like... I think you will just have to be meeting her. Is it so very important to know if you will like her before you do meet her? You are both anarchists, I thought everyone of you did like everyone else. Not like the Tower."
He's teasing her.
Lux
Like? he says, and Lux picks a coat quite at random from the closet. The coat is leather. A leather trench-coat. It has tweed elbow-patches. The tweed elbow-patches do not do very much for it; perhaps it belongs to a wishful-thinker. The leather is cracked brown, or no, some shade that deeps to almost burgundy; its shadows have something of bloodiness.
He's teasing her and Lux is shrugging some guy's coat on. And then she is placing one hand on the door beside István's head, at his shoulder. She is not technically taller than he; but doesn't she have wicked shoes? She plants the toe of one of those shoes into the floor, and you know this pose. Everybody does. Often seen on bullying popular kids in 80s teen flicks as they hit on the poor outsider girl who will be so pretty once she takes off her glasses. She hitches the coat back when takes the pipe from her mouth, forcing the leather to sweep down, and puts that hand on her waist.
She is not a greaser punk, but it works.
"Loveliest István; don't you know how I thirst for any drop of experience as glimpsed through your oh so insightful eyes? Don't you know I'd happily wear your opinions, wrong or right, fashioned on my fingers like rings? I'd use your thoughts to clip my hair back. And here you are," she laughs: "Denying me!"
"You suck."
She says 'sup' now sometimes. Can't always be fancy.
István
And here she comes in what might have been a philosopher-king's coat if the philosopher-king were ditching out on his AA meetings and had not taken his antipsychotics in quite some time because he needed room to think. Freedom. It drapes off of her torso and István keeps his hands behind his back watching her as she leans herself over him.
No more blood rushes to his cheeks now than when she had slapped him but it is not for lack of physiologic response. He is not a teenage girl in an '80s movie.
Ah well. She is a Toreador. So dramatic, those.
"Ohh," he says in a cloying tone like to soothe her. He lets go the hand closest to the door and takes loose hold of her fishtail braid. "There, there, darling--" This as he's inspecting the end of the braid rather than looking her in the eye. "--don't you know so long as we both do suck I will so freely give you my opinions as I form them, huh?"
He must not hang around enough young people to hear words like 'suck' and 'sup.' Quelle surprise.
István returns the braid to its place falling down her back and rests his hand on the place where her neck meets her shoulders.
"Yes. I think you will like her. Like talking to a statue, when statues do talk. No emotion, huh? Stone, even when she does argue so."
Lux
[Self Control will decide me.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lux
Lux does not immediately reply. Perhaps she is contemplating a social occasion consisting of István and a Malkavian Anarch who is like a stone when she talks. Perhaps she is contemplating István's hand on the place where her neck meets her shoulder. Perhaps she is contemplating her own self control; yes. Lux wants to laugh; Lux does not want to laugh. So Lux does not laugh, but this just dredges a dark and vibrant edge up out've her eyes; they do not dance. What malicious shadow? It was never there.
"Mm. Well, I do wish to be introduced; you may give her my number. It will be good to have more of the riotous rabble-roused mob again," and see. Lux; she misses Everett. Perhaps it isn't obvious when the next thing she says is, soberly:
"István, do you know what 'suck' means in this context?"
István
Think think think. She can see his eyes shift skyward like to access the information where it must be buried in his brain. Or thinking back to the context in which she used it.
"Here I am denying you, I suck."
He looks back at her face and it is not a lightbulb flashing but he is not so dull in his mind as his poor English would have the world believe he is. If he were a sneakier thing a power-hungrier thing he would fashion the language barrier into armor but he is not sneaky. He does not hunger for political control. He really just hasn't mastered this his fourth language yet.
"It's a negative, no? Not the suck of blood?"
They could probably have his conversation without his hand at her neck but he likes to trace his thumb against her throat and jaw when their senses are aloft like this. It's interesting to him.
Lux
"A negative," she confirms. "Not," and Lux is a Toreador in this: a certain sharpness -- an intimate suggestion, "the suck of blood."
"So why must I also suck, István, mon sang-fleur de beauté, mon cher plus froid, l'un qui je chéris?"
Bully, bully, bully. Or something. Lux, she is teasing him because it is fun, not because she thinks he is dull. Bully, bully, bully.
István
"Je ne parle pas, my gem."
She knows this. It doesn't matter if he speaks or doesn't speak French. He barely speaks English either. His tone distant but no less charmed. Because she knows this and they know they have such long nights ahead of them with winter not yet gone and what else do they have to do besides stand in the closet with each other teasing and bullying.
"You do not have to do anything you do not want to do. I did think you meant suck as in the feeding, huh? Now I do not know. Other than this is negative and not what I did think."
Lux
[Lalala.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Lux
[LIKE LIGHTNING.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Lux
"So 'as long as we both do feed' I will be given your opinions as you form them, huh?"
Her 'huh' is a different animal than István's 'huh.' Her huh is the huh of a smart-ass languid American; slangy with style. Lux, she pulls his hand from her neck and kisses the inside of his wrist.
"Well now should you be leaving one of the Tower's bastions of class, when some passionate revolutionary flings a bucket of paint in your face, saying," another kiss; this one lingers. "You suck," a beat, "Oppressor, fucking Tool, you know. They do not mean 'you feed,' like I exist therefore I -- "
No. Wait. What the fuck is that? Lux notices something. Lux notices that she appears to be wearing -- what the fuck is that? Her lovely eyes widen and she quicksilvers herself out've that coat so quickly and deftly and with minimum touching of the coat and then it is on the hanger again and there is not a hair out of place and Toreador, man.
What're you gonna do? They're very useless, eh?
István
At least he doesn't laugh. He looks like he wants to laugh but as he watches the Toreador slink her way out of that ugly fucking trenchcoat and throw it back onto the hanger as fast as would could imagine her evading smoke tendrils or arms formed of shadow.
It is a harmless coat. Just ugly. Coats can take no initiative in combat.
Anyway:
He does not laugh. He folds his hands behind his back and lifts his eyes at her. Not sure what in the hell he just watched her do.
"So what it does mean, to 'suck'?" he asks. "'Fucking Tool' I do understand. This I have heard before. It is a stupid person and the word is vulgar, yeah? Not to be used in polite company because 'tool' does refer to male genitalia."
Lux
Lux pulls the light's chain. The light goes out again; darkness, and darkness, and darkness.
"It means," says she; and pauses. Then, "to be a drain; to be a rattle-the-nerves slurp of a thing; to behave poorly."
"István, why have we not left this closet, if the now of a few minutes ago was so convenient a time to go?"
István
Out goes the light. No breath between them and they can feel each other standing close for the lack of space in here. István does not find her in the dark yet.
"Because you say to me that I suck and then we did talk of my not-understanding and revolutionaries coming to throw paint in my face."
The whine of the doorknob and the hinges join in. A sliver of light where before none found its way in and then he reaches back to find her wrist or her elbow maybe her waist to escort her out of here.
"It is still now."
István
[SEGUE TIME]
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