By the time they return to the warehouse that will one day be a laboratory the college graduates who have been scuttling around the basement all week have gotten into their cars and left. No sign of René's car because René came and got his car on Sunday morning and made enough of a fuss about the fact that he drove from downtown Denver to the Aurora suburbs with a dead body in the trunk.
But René loves him. René would never deny him anything. René came and picked up his car and now the lot is empty.
They take a cab from the building where the party was still raging when they left the coat closet and the cab drops them off and they pay the driver. He paid no mind to them during the drive and he pays no mind as they climb out onto the sidewalk now. Cold outside but March in the plains is never warm.
This is the first time Lux is seeing the warehouse. Trees loom in the background and the parking lot needs to be resurfaced. None of the lights are on and many of the windows are covered from the inside. A sign at the mouth of the driveway warns motorists that this is not a through street.
He leads her up the sidewalk and around to the back door. He does not fumble with his keys for he does not have many keys.
"If it does console you any," he says as he unlocks the door, "we are not going into the basement."
LuxOff goes the driver. He did pay them mind. Off goes the driver, and he wonders what the fuck they're on or what line István used and whether he'll get any more fares. A Monday night isn't exactly a nonstop thrillride extravaganza of cash-flow, even if one's got the airport circuit, which he does not.
Off goes the driver, and Lux slips her hands into the pockets of her (own [not leather or tweed]) coat. Trench. Alexander McQueen. Three-quarter length. The colour of a lick of moonlight lancing through fog slicking across rain-wet streets. A scarf, too, to protect herself from chill. The scarf is black; it gleams like water. She has black gloves in one of the pockets, but she is not wearing them.
Lux - look how fine; how fine and close the attention she pays István's warehouse, looks around the desolate yard, up and down the desolate street, at the desolate and empty shadows, then up at the snow-bound sky; Lux - she follows István up the sidewalk, and her boots go click-clack, click-clack, for she is not trying to be stealthsome and incorporeal - and then
a side-long look. "Do you enjoy making a habit of dashing my expectations, lovely thing?"
They aren't going into the basement? That's fine. Lux isn't a doomed blonde.
István"Sometimes I do."
Hard to tell what color the building is in the dark as they approach. Up close as she waits for him to open the door the paint around it screams pink at the Toreador. Starting over is difficult work. Real estate is hard to come by and then there's the matter of funds and the individual István presents himself to the humans as is a physicist from Austria or Hungary or something like that. Grant funding doesn't give a man a lot of room to impress people. Not when one is interested in theory.
He holds the door open for her. Dashing cultured thing that he is. The door leads into a vestibule and several feet straight ahead is a freight elevator. Open floor plan on the ground floor yearning to be something else one day. Cold concrete floors and high ceilings. A staircase leading up to the first floor. They can look up and see where the landing gives way to a corridor. Shadows cloak everything.
The stairs. Up. Just as bad for a doomed blonde as going down into the basement.
"Is it not my fault you have expectations that are so easy to dash, yeah?"
Lux[Eh, how alert is Lux anyway. LOL. It's not a frivolous roll Jamie she is paranoid.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Lux"It is entirely your fault. Ah, István, darling."
Lux does not have any bad reaction to the pink of the warehouse, where the warehouse is still pink. The night dims any garrishness day might lend it, and she rather likes pale pinks; or perhaps she is just contrary, and would as soon see it painted purple with a big-breasted amazon wrestling a snake-tailed tiger against a backdrop of the milky way with Marvin the Martian winking.
"Once my expectations were so loftly; they dwellt in the firmament, attended only revels held by the Lady Moon, and now."
Lux, languidly, presses the back of her wrist to her forehead; leaves off looking, and looking, and looking, at István's warehouse, which looks like it should be haunted, the spot Something Bad Will Happen, to cut him with a clear-eyed look, a slant of her chin, tilt of her head.
The stairs up: that's fine, too.
István isn't a Bond villain.
IstvánIstván isn't a Bond villain and yet they're ascending the stairs to retrieve the body of the wayward young vampire who he staked in a parking lot and has left in such a state until such a time as someone reminded him that he was there.
At least he isn't torturing him. This place isn't meant to serve as a torture chamber. It's a place of science. Of progress. Of understanding and the broadening of one's horizons and he already said he doesn't derive much pleasure from trying to glean sense from one who speaks no sense.
Sharp thing that Lux is she would notice if something were off. If the windows were painted with blood or he had made lampshades out of human skin. Chairs out of skeletons. This is not a Tzimisce lair she's walking into.
"Never trust the moon, dearest. She is not so high as she looks."
The first floor has tile in the corridor. More tile in the rooms off the corridor. He leads her to the very end of the hall and then he reaches up lazy to grab a handle tucked into a panel in the ceiling.
"Here come the stairs," he says.
Squeaking of hinges and clattering of wood as the ladder-stairs unfold. He isn't a villain. He goes up into the attic first.
Lux"Give me a list of things to trust, then, if you are so wise. Seven things, if you please. Seven is the cad of numbers," she says, stepping well-back when the ladder-stairs clatter down; then she follows him up, glancing behind only once, and then not with an air of paranoia, but coolly, assessingly.
István"Ah, you will have to give me a moment. Seven is so many things to trust."
At the top of the stairs they come to a musty and treacherous part of the building. Easy to misstep on the beams and put one's foot through unstable flooring covering the insulation and providing a means of wandering around. Not much up here but boxes and the impressions of furniture draped over with drop cloth.
That mound in the far corner is not a rug. It is covered in a blanket but Lux can see the soles of his feet stuck out the bottom. The windows up here are stoppered with foam insulation and if the ladder were done up no light would filter in from outside.
"Well, there he is, dearest."
He starts to pick his way across the attic.
"I trust that the sun will show itself in the east and leave again in the west. This is a thing that I trust."
Lux"That's one," she says. "Is this where you sleep?"
How dark it is. How hushed the darkness makes the air; air undisturbed by breathing, except - why, except - Lux chooses to breathe. Lux enjoys breathing, the pull of air into her lungs, the way they expand against her ribcage. She has forgotten, sometimes, what it is to feel a heartbeat in her chest, not in the moment of feeding, but she remembers breathing and she likes it. From the doorway, light tiptoes in, and it is not a reassuring little attic room: is it? It looks like the kind of place a dead body would be lying covered in a blanket.
Lux: Lux is speed's darling, is a devotée of Celerity; she has always gloried in preternatural balance, in being able to stand on the edge of a knife, sit on a flag-pole, walk a telephone line, outrace -- outrace. Which is all to say that Lux is in the doorway one moment; in the next moment, she hungrier, but also at that pitiful bundle's side, crouching down to uncover it and see:
why, the parking lot vampire. His gut, bleeding, saint's stigmata; his eyes closed; the expression on his face an expression poised just on the outer edge of the betrayal, of hurt. Frozen there.
Until ashes to ashes, or whatever his fate is.
She rests her elbows on her knees, still crouched, and then her pointed little chin on her fists, and hmms.
[MANIPSUB.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Lux[Intelligence.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN10 (1, 3, 7) ( fail )
István[perc + subt: what are you doing lux]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
István"The attic? Here? No. I sleep some other place."
Maybe one day he will make the attic look like a place someone like Lux would want to escape to. He can install proper floors and drape the rafters with tapestries and line every vertical space with bookcases. Attics are not good places for bookcases but if they are properly insulated and ventilated. Maybe he could put a writing desk up here. Compose his letters by candlelight the way he did back in Chicago. They can see each other in the flesh now but there's something about sending people letters even in the same city.
He had calling cards once upon a time.
Now he has an attic that is covered in dust and a body lying on the floor underneath a blanket. István does not move so fast as Lux does. She shuttles across the floor to crouch beside the body and he continues after her unhurried. The body isn't going anywhere.
She might like to imagine that he was gentle to the bloody-bellied creature. That he didn't just cram him into the trunk of his ghoul's car and sling him around like an inanimate object. That he would recognize a staked vampire is a vulnerable and scared thing frozen and completely at his mercy.
And yet this wretch nearly killed István's ghoul. His ghoul with whom he crossed an ocean and has spent nearly seventy years. This wasn't a staking come of boredom or sadism.
István makes no mention of what he reads in her shadowed profile.
"That wound in his abdomen, that I did not do. I am not so sure how old is the wound or who did wound him. The body, sure, we can fix, but the mind. That is why I have not let him up yet."
Lux[We're gonna do this one more time, 'coz it should've been 9 before. And I have hope.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN10 (3, 8, 9) ( fail )
Lux[Ha, ha, dice.]
LuxLux does not touch the staked vampire; she does not move more than necessary, and her breathing stills, or slows, or is simply slower than a mortal's breathing would be. The only movement from Lux is indeed the easy rise and fall of her shoulders, and that is so subtle a thing. The end of the trench coat sweeps across the dust; she is poised on the balls of her feet; the very Muse of stillness [wouldn't Lucifer look down at the Silver City, so? Before?]. Though perhaps István, if he is watching Lux's face, will be able to trace the movement of her eyes, even in this dark gloom room; from Vex's face; to his chest; to his gut, where the wound seeps. Then she tilts her head to the side, flash of throat and flash of dark eye both, a shadow-loved thing, is Lux, and looks up at István, and speaks in Latin.
"Mirum non vulnus curare. Quid cogitas cum illo? Quod falsum est cum animum? Puer Malkav?"*
It is strange that the wound does not heal. What do you plan to do with him? What is wrong with his mind? Do you think him a child of Malkav?
--
* this is Hollywood Latin thanks to google translate. It is not correct.
IstvánIstván does not speak Hollywood Latin. He speaks the Latin of someone who studied it in his formative years and kept on reading it through his adulthood and cherishes it now that his nights have turned into centuries and no one has tried to do to him as he did to the wretch.
Nothing to do with him now but determine if he can be saved. That's a task for a Prince perhaps. A Sheriff at least. Yet István will continue to argue that his domain was breached by the attack on his ghoul. As if René could not have been anyone that night.
His Latin is better than his English.
I suspect he is a descendant of Malkav, but I have not yet determined if this is so. If I can locate his progenitor, or heal his afflictions, I will. But I need more time.
LuxLatin. The language of the educated and of the Church; a dead language, or a dying language, or a language which is just as vital as ever it was in the past couple of centuries, depending on who one speaks to. Lux: she pronounces the words like an Academic; like an ivory tower dame. And she does not switch back to English.
He can hear and understand them.
So now, the creepy warehouse has revealed its villains: the two frozen-eternal things 'chanting' in Latin around a dead body.
Figures, eh?
"I see. More time to do what? What are you going to do to determine these things?"
István[doodly doo! doodly doo! doodly doo!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
VexSpeaking of things István determined, by touching the blood from the stake-wound or the blood seeping from Vex's gut, he learned that: Yes, this is a vampire. He appears to be of the 11th Generation. He'd not fed for nearly a week prior to the night that István caught him, captured him, pinned him like a bug for examination, and he's very, very low on blood indeed now, because after all, each night staked is still a night he 'wakes' and lies there still as stone and unable to do anything but scream inside his head. He has never, ever diablerized anyone.
IstvánIt is easier to deflect a question that would give away too much information if answered correctly when one has until the candle runs out of wax and the pen ink to compose a response. To reveal himself to be witty and charming and not hiding anything. Easy to give oneself away as a liar when one is poor at it but István has quite some skill when it comes to lying.
This isn't really a lie but it's close enough.
The doctor would have more success talking to him than I would, and would recognize if he were truly disturbed or if he were under another's influence, but I have not yet asked him to assist me.
As if he ever has to truly ask René to do anything.
Lux[Conscience?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 10) ( success x 1 )
LuxHe says 'the doctor.' He means his ghoul. "Jekyll," says she, and it her gaze does not linger on István's because she is suspicious. Lingers because his answer fails to satisfy her and she wants to take in his expression: what a clear-eyed thing, how measured.
Then her gaze sluices from his face back down to the staked Cainite and while Lux does not shift her weight [no need, not with the gift of her Blood a whettstone for her grace], she does turn her whole face away from István after-all. A fish-tail braid does not allow one's face to be hidden, no matter how dark it is, or how elegantly messily it has begun to unravel, and she covers Vex back up with the blanket.
Blankets and rugs. They are not sufficient coverage.
"Can you guess what I think about it?"
Lux rises after she asks the question. It is a smooth movement: a fluid sword-unseath of a movement, a liquid mercury bead drop up of a movement; then she leaves Vex where he lies. Where the Hell is István standing? She goes over there. Or perhaps she passes him.
IstvánWhatever humanity he has left in him is not present in moments like this. When he's looking down at another creature cursed to the same endless hell that the rest of them are in and instead of feeling pity or compassion or a compulsion to help he sees an opportunity to study.
Doesn't see anything wrong at all with the idea of leaving this poor bastard staked in the attic until he can tell his ghoul to come over and help interrogate the vampire who nearly killed him. To figure out what to do with him only then.
Can he guess what she thinks about it though. This sharp-boned long-limbed creature with whom he has been fascinated since their paths crossed thirty forty years ago. He turns to look at her. Has been wandering closer throughout the night.
She tries to pass him and he holds off her escape with a hand.
"I am not a guesser," he says. "But I am curious..."
He can appreciate a good hypothetical scenario as much as the next guy. Here comes one.
"Imagine you are where I did stand a week ago: your thrall does tell you what happened. A bleeding Cainite, blood-hungry, does attack him at the place where he does work, yeah? What do you do?"
LuxA hand, and then restraint. István feels resistance for less than a second (token [Rebel, rebel, Morningstar- we are what we are]). And then Lux is quite still, considering István side-long and something taut there which catches at any light and makes it dark. Such attention. Do you know? There are no heart beats here. He asks her to imagine she is where he was last week. At the end of his hypothetical, she turns her head to look over her shoulder, which rises, at the blanket again. Her eyebrows flick upward and her mouth purses. She studies the blanket for a moment, the shape beneath it, then says,
"It would depend on the Cainite. I could never say without knowing who first; we are individuals." A pause; now she meets István's eyes again. "But between us, Ván, my heart. That one?" This is still Latin. It is important that it is still Latin; she cheats her body nearer István's, although this time in order to look over her shoulder again. "I don't know. One like him? Why,"
careless, but no: no, that is the lie, you see, that is the persona. "Why, if I had to say, and I will say because I would be very angry if you avoided saying by saying you couldn't say, what I would say is this. I would find him; and perhaps I'd stake him, or otherwise lure him. Then I would rip out his fangs and make him swallow them; when he could not keep them down, I'd make him swallow them again, and again, until his throat was a bloody mess, or until he apologized properly and he begged to be allowed to never do it again."
IstvánTheir eyes are used to the dark but are no less grateful for the thin light come up from the lower floor. Gray shapes come out of the darkness and they can read each others' profiles and the direction of their eyes. A hand on an elbow and his back to the staked creature underneath the blanket.
Of course it would depend. Everything depends on the individual. And yet he doesn't want o hear about her ideals. He wants to hear what she would do if she had this creature here.
Not because he doesn't know what he wants to do. They are both still now but she has a fire small as it may be that he does not. Or a different sort of fire. The things that kept a body going in life don't quite cut it anymore.
She would find him. Rip out his fangs and make him swallow them.
All this time István stands still as she is and he listens. Ice-hard eyes on her in the dark and she can hear his consideration of what she's just confessed to him though he does not nod or utter a noise.
"It's possible the doctor will want to rip out his fangs and make him swallow them himself." It's important that they speak in Latin. He switches back without effort. "It's also possible he will convince me to take the wretch to the Prince. I'll let him make the choice."
István[PAWS]
Lux[pause=y [aouse]
LuxThe careless confession: for that Lux had met István's eyes. For István's response her attention does not wander but it takes in the rest of his expression and her head is still turned isn't it so she also takes in the unmoving shape in the darkness and there are so many shadows aren't there. How still she stays, and let's be honest: how pensive but ultimately unrevelatory her expression. It is not because she lacks expression but because sometimes the compelling thing about Lux is that for all the suggestion of a radiance there is more of darkness huh and darkness is hard to see through [and anyway, brightness is hard to see through too: and she's a commingling of the both, eh?]. And so, and so, she shrugs, executes [Beautifully- it loved to die] some dancer's pivot that shifts her so she's in front of István who has his back to the staked creature and it is awkward to keep hold of her elbow and she touches the shoulder that is not attached to the arm holding her elbow with her shoulder
" - well! If a medical doctor," the snobbery! or the submerged, sublimated, tease of a thing: hard to tell, "is going to come up with the same plan, I will have to change mine," and would she really do that, anyway? Rip out somebody's fangs, force them to swallow it? She seems capable of it one instant but Lux - well, who knows. "Unless you were going to suggest it to him, in which case, I disallow it, 'ván, because that is mine," (this is when she nudges his shoulder with hers, like so).
Silence; she is going to rest her chin on his shoulder in the next minute, the better to contemplate poor Vex.
"Let us go downstairs," she says, instead. Latin still. It is always still Latin: formal Latin, academic Latin, a strange juxtaposition for irreverence, so. She wants to go downstairs where she can speak English without a pang.
IstvánAnd this is what demarcates the two of them. Keeps them on opposite sides of the war even though she has no real side at all and he would leave his own side without a second thought if only the second thought weren't a promise that his unlife would end just so soon as the treason found its way to his elders: she feels a pang. Standing in the presence of one who cannot move cannot speak cannot do anything but scream internally while the pierce of wood rests heavy in his chest Lux assumes that he does not speak Latin and thinks she does him a mercy by speaking in a language he does not understand.
His ghoul's first language was French. Both of them speak German. István never bothered to learn French with any degree of fluency. Just what he picked up from hearing the medical doctor speak it.
A chin on his shoulder and he does not glance back to follow her gaze. Arrogance. He knows the staked vampire will not rise without his doing. Trusts Lux will do nothing to cause him to rise. No point looking back.
"Eamus intro," he says and offers her his elbow.
Lux"So tell me the second thing to trust," she tells him, voice pitched low because her mouth is nearer his ear and though she doesn't know (does she [perhaps]?) that his senses are sharper and preternatural hers are and sometimes still she is softer than she would've been just a few months ago half-a-year-ago and sometimes louder.
He offers her his elbow; Lux rests a moment, before disengaging to take it. After-thought, English-again and savored: " - wise guy."
Like the 'amen' to a poem, baby, not quite you lowsy punk of a wise guy and not quite oh you are wise, guy, but occupying some precise borderland between.
IstvánThe second thing.
The dare was to come up with seven and he has only given her one. The rotation of the Earth in relation to the Sun pared down so that she in all her artistry and rejection of the beauty of science could understand what he was talking about. Sunrise and sunset. Bright thing comes up in the east and goes away again in the west. There have to be six more things he trusts.
He could go along in this same vein until he hit seven. Just tick off astronomical certainties to which he could set his watch. But István respects her underneath all of that.
Wise guy.
"I trust that the universe honors symmetry and that time, space, and phase will always remain in symmetry."
Down we go. Hello collapsible stairwell.
LuxDown we go! Lux precedes him because that's what ladder-etiquette dictates. There is indeed etiquette for ladders. Even with her silly shoes there is no difficulty. There is rarely any difficulty: she is too composed a thing, too carelessly balanced a creature - and when she's on solid ground again she steps back and considers a cigarette.
"Third?"
Her gaze is intent; her eyebrows dark; her mouth, moody; her hands very sure when she twists the unravelling braid back into a bun at the nape of her neck and reaches into a pocket for a pin with which to pin it.
IstvánThose shoes of hers. He hasn't said anything about the shoes yet because he's only seen her two-now-three times. It isn't his place to say anything about the shoes and the way his mind works he has to be figuring that if she couldn't walk in them she would have figured that out by now. That if they caused her trouble tonight of all nights isn't the night she's going to have that epiphany.
She makes it back down to the first floor and though he says nothing about the shoes István still holds out a hand to her that she might take it up in her dominant hand and when she's back down considering her cigarette he shuts up the attic again takes away the light for Vex and now she wants to know his third truism. The third thing he trusts.
He has already covered astronomy and the law of conservation. One can extrapolate his views on thermodynamics from his views on the law of conservation. One can extrapolate his views on chemistry from the law of conversation.
Still he throws her a bone:
"I trust that all chemical processes are reversible."
LuxLux does not stop him at this point to say: no science. Because if this is what he trusts -- what he would recommend she trust: then that is fine. This isn't a question about being strung up as stars, where science is beside the point of the question. Lux wants to hear what he trusts or is willing to admit to trusting, and there's a sweep of lashes across her cheekbones and afterwards there's a gleam (meaning [something] what?) to her eyes, contained.
Lux is an artist, yes. Art is not without effort.
This is his warehouse; his stomping ground. Lux can be content to stand where they are, now that they're no longer (perhaps) in hearing range of the creature upstairs.
"That isn't a very poetic third; don't you know the third of a thing is always supposed to be special, darling boy? Fourth."
A loft of an imperious little chin: entertain me.
IstvánSo she wants to introduce humanities into the discussion. Very well. They can introduce humanities.
István is not a graceful creature. Pumped full of his victims' blood he can be graceful. Can surge it forth to make him faster or stronger. All of them can. So when he steps around and in front of her it is with the knowledge that she might slow with his movement and give him the space to turn 180 degrees so that he's standing facing her.
"Ah, but what if I did not?" Hands clasped behind him walking backwards down the hall. Curious as to whether he can claim plausible deniability in this. His curiosity doesn't exactly banish the death-wax from his body or his face or his skin but it does touch his eyes. "May I move the chemical process to fourth and give you a new third?"
He does trust in the conservation of angular momentum.
Lux"Mm," she says, and then; something French, a quote, medieval French, archaic diction: practiced and precise. Follow it with:
"Yes; but only if what you say is not what you would have said fourth before you knew better."
Lux doesn't move to follow him down the hall yet; watches, listens.
István"That is fair. I don't trust fairness, but I do enjoy it when it does happen."
Alright. The fourth thing he would have trusted if he were not assigning it a position as the third thing he has already stated he trusts:
"I trust that just laws are... lényeges... in English, one says it is... intrinsic. Yes. I trust that just laws are the ones we discover, not that we create."
LuxLux; she might laugh, but not right now. The laughter's there, though: the impulse to do it - restrained and then dissolved. It's just an impulse. Lux: she is too curious.
"But that is entirely provoking, and you know it. How can you mistrust fairness?"
István"I do mistrust fairness!" he says. The impression of laughter but not the actuality of it. This is all very amusing to him. "Until I do find a reason to trust fairness I will not trust it." A beat, a compromise: "If you can tell me what is fairness, I will tell you how I can mistrust it."
LuxA compromise. "A challenge?"
Lux says, and she does smile at him now, a brief suggestion of a thing; shadow on silk, a movement. Her hands find her coat pockets, though she is still content to stay still and watch him retreat; she doesn't worry about catching up, after all. Or maybe she just wants to speed upstairs once he's far enough away and rip the stake out of poor Vex's heart.
"Very well; I accept. Let's say first that fairness is beauty."
IstvánOf course the Toreador wants to veer towards aesthetics when they were discussing natural laws and laws of science. They. He. István was. She has never had any interest in it unless it served to ballast a philosophical discussion.
The tips of the other vampire's teeth glint in the light as he starts to laugh or smile or something. Some light shines in his eyes that doesn't give way to true laughter or a true smile but it would have been a tickled grin a century or so ago. Not that coy sort of almost-smile that tends to lose itself under the camouflage of his facial hair.
"That is not what kind of fairness I did say I did not trust!" he says. The gentleman doth protest too much. Compromise. The conditions have already been set down. "So now I am to tell you how I do mistrust beauty? Fairness being beauty?"
Yes. A challenge. She already accepted. He provoked her.
"Kallos, eh? The Hellenistic Greeks, they did use the word hÅraios, from hÅra, eh? Hour? One did say that beauty was being of one's hour. Ripe fruit was beautiful. Men and women who did appear their age, they were beautiful. Ripe old age, eh? That was beautiful. I did already say I trust that the universe does maintain symmetry, but fairness, do I mistrust it?"
Think think think. He wanders a distance down the hall before turning back to her.
"What is the opposite of beauty?"
IstvánOf course the Toreador wants to veer towards aesthetics when they were discussing natural laws and laws of science. They. He. István was. She has never had any interest in it unless it served to ballast a philosophical discussion.
The tips of the other vampire's teeth glint in the light as he starts to laugh or smile or something. Some light shines in his eyes that doesn't give way to true laughter or a true smile but it would have been a tickled grin a century or so ago. Not that coy sort of almost-smile that tends to lose itself under the camouflage of his facial hair.
"That is not what kind of fairness I did say I did not trust!" he says. The gentleman doth protest too much. Compromise. The conditions have already been set down. "So now I am to tell you how I do mistrust beauty? Fairness being beauty?"
Yes. A challenge. She already accepted. He provoked her.
"Kallos, eh? The Hellenistic Greeks, they did use the word horaios, from hora, eh? Hour? One did say that beauty was being of one's hour. Ripe fruit was beautiful. Men and women who did appear their age, they were beautiful. Ripe old age, eh? That was beautiful. I did already say I trust that the universe does maintain symmetry, but fairness, do I mistrust it?"
Think think think. He wanders a distance down the hall before turning back to her.
"What is the opposite of beauty?"
LuxLux would have done well during the Enlightenment (if she'd been born a man [and wealthy-enough, or up-and-coming enough]). Her views on science and natural laws usually fall in line with the old philosophers, and add to that a dash of American pragmatism (invention [not-quite-faith]), because who wasn't thrilled to know they'd touched the face of the Moon? But Lux is not a scientist and never will be. Philosophe. He smiles such a smile and Lux she stays where she is, but she takes her hands out've her pockets and clasps her right wrist with her left hand, holding both behind her back. Most of her weight she rests (precarious [perilous]) on one leg, her head canted, hair a shadow, eyes also dark because the hall's all full of gloom, but light's glinting on István's coy-not-coy-tickled-almost not-quite-smile before he begins to protest.
"Yes." He is to tell her how he mistrusts beauty, fairness being beauty. Attentive is Lux. Attentive throughout.
And then: "What is the opposite of beauty, hm? Nothing is the opposite of beauty, mon amour." She does not mean that beauty has no opposite; she means, exactly, that nothing is beauty's opposite. Her chin's still up and imperious; she lets it fall a touch while her eyebrows rise. "But now I wonder what you think beauty is; this Greek concept of timeliness? Not symmetry, not perfection?"
Lux"Not the universe; fitting together - so lovely, in harmony?"
István"Ah, little one, sometimes I do like to talk just to hear the sound of my own voice. The framing of the argument is as important as the argument itself, no? How am I to tell you if I mistrust or do not mistrust this beauty of yours if I don't build it as a carpenter would a house? Then you can just walk along with your tiny little fists and just--"
A flick of his eyebrows. He starts his slow pacing back the way he had come.
"I think that beauty is a concept that is very much open to interpretating, eh? Like sanity. It does not translate between cultures. Clans, eh? Some clans do find bathing in blood and ingesting still-warm flesh to be part of ritual and others, they do think it a sign of madness. Many things in the world that are symmetrical or this perfect that you speak of, they do also hide deadliness. I do not say 'faults,' or 'ugliness.' A thing that is not aesthetically pleasing, a thing that is ugly, I can trust. A building that has already fallen in on itself, or a pile of corpses. A painting that you look at and you ask the person next to you, What is it that I am looking at? This looks like terrible and the person next to you does say--" He must be imitating René. His accent becomes more French. "It is a sculpture, István, look at how it does tell of the artist's torment, yeah? Use your eyes." No more mocking the Belgian. "These things are not beautiful but they are honest."
He isn't answering the question. He stops his pacing now.
"I do trust the beauty of the Greeks, eh? Everything as it is supposed to be. Timeliness, yes, that is good. But the Hellenists are dead, my gem."
Lux"How interesting," she says. "But I'm afraid I don't follow you," lazy. Languid. She follows him. "The Hellenists are dead; so is their trustworthy beauty also dead? Meaning, what, you mistrust beautiful things -- fair things -- because you do not think them honest?"
István"This way leads to a trap," he says in a song. Lyricism that tells of his seeing a way he could go from whence he would not return. Amused even as she nearly leads him into that trap. "Who can say what is beautiful and what is not? The Hellenists are dead. Americans, modern Americans, what do they think to be beautiful? The beauty of New York in 2014 is not the same as the beauty of, say, Vienna in 1914. Parameters, eh? Without them I do wander." Sympathetic frown here. "Very difficult to follow, the one who does wander."
LuxSpeaking of traps. This is a Toreador-trap, this conversation: somehow it has become one and that was not Lux's intention at all. "What is beautiful and Beauty are -- " a pause; a beat. There's a wall somewhere; Lux leans her shoulder against it. If it's dusty, dirty, well, whatever: her clothing's fine but it's just trapping, just stuff, really.
So her voice is a soft clot of shadow-silk see: "Aw, Hell, Isty-baby." There; the edge of a smirk. "Don't long after parameters. Long after anything else, and you'll have a better time. Let's say for seconds that fairness is justice."
IstvánNot until she concedes to let fairness be justice does István adopt the mirrored twin of her leaning stance. The wall is not filthy. On the outside the building is in need of service but the inside has already been cleaned. That scientist's fastidiousness apparent everywhere but the attic. The attic will take some time.
"Yes, let us say this," he says. That fairness is justice. That he already stated he did not trust. And then: "What is this Isty-baby?"
Lux"You don't like that nickname?"
IstvánNow he puts his hands into his pockets. So casual. Just hanging out in the hall not doing anything of any import. He might cross an ankle over the other if the hanging out leaning against the wall persists much longer.
"Did I say I don't like?"
Lux"Do you like?"
Lux reaches out to take his jacket between her fingers and tug it.
IstvánThough she tugs the jacket the body inside the jacket does not move. His hands stay inside his pockets and his feet stay on the floor. His hip and shoulder maintain their contact with the wall. She can feel the chill of him beneath his clothing. Gone from the party as they are now he has no reason to continue preserving the Masquerade. That blood has been burnt and it is not coming back.
"Isty-baby?" He attempts to reproduce the nickname as she pronounced it and ends up with his vowels drawling their way up his sinuses. His American accent is even less kind towards its subject than is his French. He drops it a moment later. "I think I like it better when you do say it."
LuxHis accent is atrocious; if there is a smirk, a sharpness, why, there is one or both of those things, briefly evident.
"Mm. But do you like it?"
Tug, tug. No: stroke, rather, feel the fabric between her fingers, fix the line and fall of it, savor-slow.
Lux: she grins. "Just when would you call yourself by a nickname anyway? You aren't going to begin speaking in third person, are you? Because that would be just too much."
IstvánThe flash of white come with that grin bring his eyes away from hers so he can read the point of her teeth and the shape of the words as they form on her lips. When he looks back up his brows are lifted and that tension of impending smile has come to the muscles around his mouth but he does not show his amusement any broader than that.
"Say it again."
Lux"Promise to never refer to yourself in third-person."
IstvánHe holds up his right hand as if taking an oath.
"I, István Jákob Virág, do promise to never refer to myself in the third person."
LuxLux cants her head; does she trust István Jákob Virág, hm? Touches the tip of her tongue to her canine, jaw just aslant; rests her temple against the wall, like that angle better allows her to judge his honesty.
Immortality is for games. Didn't you know?
Then: "All right, Isty-baby," laughter? Nope: contained; a suggestion of shadow, which in turn suggests radiance, "I'll trust you. So do you like it or not?"
István
With that he lowers his solemn swearing right hand and tucks it back into his pocket. Nothing there but a watch and he has no need of a clock now anyway. Dawn won't come for several more hours and most of the windows in this place are boarded up anyway.
Answer the question:
"I do like, yes."
Lux"What's the fifth thing you trust in?"
Lux. Lux is somebody who can have straight conversations: she can. But she can also leave a path; follow another, return later; and she will. She always will. Everything they're talking about in István's warehouse is just a detour on the way to an answer.
So she asks him what the fifth thing he trusts is, but there's something speculative (Musing), the way she's studying István right now, and her eyebrows draw together, a sharp line and delicate etched between. She still has hold of his jacket.
And stillness, stillness.
IstvánNow he frowns. It's an inward-turned befuddled sort of a frown. A thinker's frown. As if he's got so much else on his mind that an ordered list hasn't got much room to congregate with everything else.
"What did I say for the first four things?"
Stalling. A test. Will her hands stay on his jacket.
Lux"The sun will show itself in the east and leave in the west; the universe honors symmetry and time, space, oh, what the Hell did you say, phase will remain in symmetry. Third, just laws are discoveries not creations. Fourth, chemical processes are reversible."
See? Lux listens.
István"I will have to be careful what I do say around you, eh?"
Harpy's childe. Of course she listens.
"The fifth thing I trust... so long as it does have oxygen, heat, and fuel, a fire will continue to burn."
LuxThe line between her eyebrows disappears; candesce, that tarnished-up whatever; lashes rise and she is prepared to be delighted, baby: "Oh, but why; why would I turn your words into pins and needles for-to prick you, why would I turn them into anything you wouldn't like: chains, perhaps, ropes of 'em, knives of 'em, wooden splinter-stakes of 'em -- do I strike you as a cruel, darling thing? Don't be careful."
IstvánSo he does not get to his fifth thing because he tells her he will have to watch what he says around her. Because she wants to know if she strikes him as cruel. Because a light shines up in her eyes and he does not look as if he thinks himself to have wandered into a trap no but he does see that she has found something onto which she can latch and they've taken another turn off the rails so he stands up and away from the wall and works not to let his lips twist into a smile. Glint in his eyes that isn't the same sort of glint as in Lux's eyes but it's hard enough to tell this time of night.
"You think I would like chains and ropes, or you think that I would not like chains and ropes?"
Lux"Oh, wouldn't," a 'plash of surprise, carelessness. He straightens but she doesn't release his jacket or move her hand, hold strong, so the jacket: twists. "Then again, you are a Tower boy."
IstvánShe twists. He does nothing to urge her to release the jacket or remove her hand. Instead he leans into the twisting and tilts his head just-so like oh so she wants to play this game now instead of that game they have been playing all night. Okay. They can play this game.
"One never knows about the chains and the ropes when one does speak with a Tower boy, eh?"
Lux"But perhaps one should just assume," Lux replies, and oh: he's leaning in. Lux tugs, again, then. "There's no such thing as a sure bet, but what about a safe one?"
"István, if I asked you to teach me, would you?"
Luxooc: Eh. Make that a more symmetrical: "if I asked you to teach me, would you be my teacher?"
IstvánIstván plants a hand on the wall behind her and turns his body so that she will have to turn with him or else concede control of the jacket. No blood dropped into the movement. She knows his is not a naturally strong body but it can be if he so chooses. It was not innate strength that got that staked wretch upstairs into his ghoul's car.
No piqued interest in his attention but Lux can tell she does have his attention.
"That would depend on what it is you would want me to teach you."
LuxLux does not concede control of the jacket, but she doesn't want it to rip either; one supposes she is turned, then: turns with. Lux is only stronger than she looks if one looks at the delicacy of her, the glass-fine sharpness, and thinks she must be shatterable: must be easy prey.
"Really," she says. Says the word like it's a candy. "What would you refuse to teach me?"
IstvánReally.
The cant of his head in response like the swipe of a whetstone across a blade. Shadow cast across their faces dampening the humor in the exchange. It's still there in the corners of his eyes but she's in his domain now. No one knows where she is or what she's doing. She hasn't seen all the rooms in the place and hasn't been in the basement yet. That door to the outside won't refuse to latch in a grad student's wake until tomorrow afternoon.
"Now," he asks, "why would I tell you what I would refuse to teach you? That would take all the fun out of it." His eyes tick down to her throat once and then her goes on: "What do you want to have taught?"
LuxHe wants to know why he should tell her what he'd refuse to teach her. Lux is prepared to answer that question: of course she is. There's that imperious lilt of chin again and a slow rise of her eyebrows.
But his eyes tick down; a pause, delay. "Well now," she says, linger on the 'now,' "I rather think my answer may be different than it was only seconds ago. Which answer would you rather have? Was for sure or maybe is?"
IstvánIf she wanted to she could slip away from him. His elbow is locked at her shoulder and his palm is firm on the drywall behind her head. His other hand is still inside his pocket and he has his weight not evenly placed between both feet but leaned on one in an echo of her schoolboy greaser posture in the closet earlier this evening. His hair hasn't abandoned the combed-back order to which it has complied all night.
The only odor she is aware of is the cigarette smoke clung to his suit jacket. Other people's cigarette smoke. René's maybe. István does not smoke. Did not in life and did not take it up after death.
"What was in your mind when you did first ask? Hmm? Before we did start this back-and-forth."
LuxLux is fast (Disciplined [Artist]) when she wants to be. Perhaps: she could slip away and slip up the ladder to the attic and be at István's unwilling guest's 'bed' before he realized that she was gone. Lux is fast: when she wants to be. Does not want to be now. Why would she?
Lux presses her mouth together: surprisingly firm. The expression in her eyes is not clear; absorbant, though: pensive, maybe - or musing. Mused.
"I don't know if that answer is the fun answer," she tells him. "I think the new one might be more fun." A sweep of lashes, down. Up. He's echoing her greaser pose, so she echoes him: puts the hand not keeping firm hold of his jacket where his shoulder meets his neck, like so.
"The Discipline of Dominate. That's what I want."
István"That is what you want."
Nothing to be read from his tone but that is not what he was expecting. It makes him stop and think. Of all the people she knows here in the city and all the years she's been here none have taught her this. Interesting.
The discipline does not work without the vampire having his victim's full attention. Eye contact is part of the myth. Her will is such that he could have thoroughly seduced her first and she would still deflect a command stabbed at her this way. István doesn't know this about her.
Corresponding as they have all these decades there is still an ocean full of things they do not know about each other.
"This does make me wonder who one so fair as you could not convince to do whatsoever you want without such a power. All you have to do is say to someone 'Oh, does this not bore you so badly that you just want to scream--'"
[manip + intim: this is so not going to happen. diff 10 because someone has Iron Will.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 1 )
Lux[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Lux"Tch," she says, to that: this does make me wonder how one so fair, etc., etc., languid and amused and perhaps a touch contemptuous.
And then:
István learns something now. He learns that there is nothing in Lux that wants to allow itself to be commanded (dominated [ruled]). Eye contact isn't necessary but it isn't as if Lux wouldn't meet his eyes. Eye contact is occasionally necessary, but it's not about the eyes it's about the contact. They're in contact. Her hand on his neck as it is, her fingers loosely curled: then not so loosely curled. Seizure.
Because Lux is by nature a rebel childe: so surely István can see how his command almost doesn't take effect, eh? How it gets a foothold: how stricken she is, before stricken becomes furious, and her fingers grow tight on his neck, but mostly she is stricken because she can't help it, and part of her wants to bite off her tongue instead of -- but that is silly, and anyway, she can't help it. So, grudgingly, and after a bare taut and silent moment, pupils gone large eyes gone black black, Lux leans forward quick-quick and puts her mouth against his ear, which she kisses, and then
screams.
Which is probably just the kind of sound the cabbie who dropped them off earlier expected to come from the creepy warehouse.
IstvánJust before the power takes its hold over the metal-cored woman-beast the one commanding her scream like this drops his senses down so they are no more than they normally are. He cannot feel every rustle of his clothing against his dead-nerved skin or hear the wind outside. Fingertips on the back of his neck do no more for him than they would any other corpse cursed with eternal consciousness and mobility baring other circumstances.
He trusts he will only go on like this so long as other forces do not act upon him. The universe does so value balance. One day he will do something that causes another to snuff out what passes for his life. This is the last thing he trusts but they haven't gotten that far yet.
Lux fights it because of course she fights it but she is in the presence of a scientist. One who would never learn anything if he did not try. So he tries. He does.
Their eyes are on each others' and he sees when the protest and the fury surge up through her. Not the beast come up to claim its due but her own indignation. That moment where her lips touch his ear: that is when the rest of the world drops dead.
That shriek would threaten to cast his hearing to ringing for the rest of the night but for the fact that István has one hand free still. It shoots from his pocket and clamps down over her mouth. Not so fast or so strong that she could not block it but she cannot do anything else but scream until the compulsion passes.
His hand is cold against her face.
Lux[?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
LuxThe compulsion passes quickly: she is a recalcitrant subject, does the barest minimum required by the command. Scream; she screams in his ear, and then into his hand, and for this Lux will release István's jacket, grab his wrist. So: one hand hard on his shoulder, on his neck; the other grabs his wrist, though she doesn't pull his hand from her mouth. She bites his hand. Hard. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard.
Lux[Vampire Friends, yay. Pause.]
IstvánIf she had pushed at his wrist he would have let her go. This is an exercise in Dominate but not in domination and she screams against his palm despite all the fight and the fuck-you in her core. His sway over her was not strong. Few things in this world are.
Her focus comes back to her and the fury takes over and Lux can see if she is capable of seeing such things that István is staring at her with no small amount of curiosity in his eyes. The rest of his face a mask of nothing. A flinch of irritation at the dull chomp of teeth against the meat of his palm but it is not enough to make him lose himself over to a red haze.
"This is what you want to learn, yeah?" he asks. His eyes flick towards the place where his palm hides her mouth. "You're going to have to bite harder than that, little one."
With that he releases her.
LuxBut Lux does not release István. Not his wrist, when he takes his hand from her mouth (teeth, pull-on-the-skin); not his throat, if he straightens, although her grip relaxes by an infinitessimal degree. Lux presses her thumb in at the pulse-point that-does-not-beat. A second.
"Then your answer is 'yes.' You will be my teacher if I ask?"
Beat. Her voice is a shadow on silk right now, low and (furious [shh]) how still she is even when suddenly invitational, deliberate: "Or do I need first say 'Oh, István, darling blue-eyed boy, does this not bore you so badly you just want to scream. Why don't we do a thing?' And that is where you scream."
"Why did you do that?"
IstvánHer refusal to release him does not distress him. Thumb at his throat and fingers about his wrist István lets her keep her hands where they are. No point introducing a struggle where he has already introduced one and now she wants to know why.
Most scientific progress is born of active minds asking this question. Religion was born of active minds asking why. Intelligent beings have a ceaseless need to understand the things that happen to them.
István flicks his eyebrows. A lazy action. Death and stillness have been together longer than life and questions.
"Call it a demonstration," he says. "So you will know what it is you are asking to learn, eh? To teach you blind so, that would be irresponsible."
Lux"Oh," she says, smoke-soft. "Do you know, that is the most ill-thought out remark I've ever heard you make; perhaps ever read you make, as well. How would you learn Protean? Ask the filthy be-clawed trash to give you a scratch behind your ribs? Just so that you responsibly understand, of course, what those claws feel like."
István"I do not desire to learn Protean."
Lux[Doo-dee-do.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 10) ( success x 1 )
István[Oh are you going to be an asshole?
-1 BP, activating Elemental Strength]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
István[Might as well drop 2 into Dex while we're at it]
Lux[well I want to roll things too then! How skeery are you, Lux?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lux[Pft, it'll do.]
Lux"So?" she says, but only after a moment where-in it looks like she is going to slap him again; gives him this sluice-of-a-look, rake-of-a-look, like she'd like to scratch the other side of his ribs, indeed. There is tension in her hand; the one at his throat. Even she lets him go, but instead of slapping him she just brushes a lock of hair away from her eyes. Relaxes back against the wall; slides down it an inch, and after brushing aside the lock of hair, fixes her earring. Each gesture is of course: delicate, do you see, fine as anything, precise.
"I'm very unhappy, ván. But you have not yet said 'yes.'"
IstvánIn the low light she can read his pallor as it thickens. Blood burned in case she decides to rain violence on him. No malice or intent to do malice forewarned in his eyes. Close as they are she would see it.
Nothing so obvious as his muscles bulking or his limbs lengthening but when they release each other he stands as one stronger and faster than himself.
"You are unhappy," he says. This does not amuse him. It intrigues him but he does not look as if he wants to laugh. He steps back from her. Lightness in his step that was not there before. "You do come into my home, you ask of me this thing, nothing in return offered, and you are unhappy. You do not enjoy this, having the will of another forced on you. This I understand, little anarchist. Do you understand that to learn this thing, for me to be your teacher, you must take of my blood? Hmm? This is not a thing you can learn from books. It is not the same as to say to me 'Oh István do teach me how to read constellations.'"
LuxLux presses her mouth together: firm. And Lux studies István: István who is paler, now; István who has stepped back; who is not laughing, but who is intrigued; who is looking at her, and fine then - perhaps he can see it, but likely not: that moment when she also dredges up what potency there is in her blood to sharp her grace into a killing point, into something yet more deadly than already it is. Because Lux: she is lovely, but she is dangerous. Because Lux: she wants to be hungry right now - that lick-kiss of the Beast it is a pleasure for once. The edge of hunger: why shouldn't she occasionally flirt with it? Lux flirts with everything.
So - see? Lux cants her head, flash-of-throat, flash-of-eyes, considering. Her own hand has come to rest on the side of her neck and her fingers are loosely curled. Her posture is loose, too, going toward insouciance but still too tense for that too strung-tight too furious beneath it all.
"But István, I would never ask you to teach me to read constellations. I am sure I read them better than you do."
Answer the real question, hm? The flippancy leaves and he is left with:
"I do understand; why do you think I'm asking you?"
Lux[Oh, and that is 2 points to Dex, yo. Because why not. *grin*]
IstvánSomething pleasurable about the fire of hunger not just in one's belly as in life but all throughout one's lifeless body. Pleasure in the conquering of it. Denying the Hunger its power. To think that they are smarter beasts than their appetites. It's a flirtation for the Toreador and an experiment for the -
She still doesn't know what he is but in moments like this stood in desolate places no self-respecting monied creature would choose to frequent he does look rather deranged. Water-colored eyes gone rimy with the hunger and the dubious direction of their discussion.
With her hands off of him he can stand where he wants and step back so far as he wants and he does not want to step back too far from her. Just enough that he can read the intention in her hands and spine. They are both intent now. Tense.
Until she jokes about constellations. A corner of his arrogant mouth threatens to cut into a smile but it doesn't follow through on its threat.
Why does he think she's asking him of all people to teach this to her.
"Aah," he says. Like it's just dawned on him. Weight of the past inquiries and the repeated quest for an answer making his voice creak and a silence sit between them. It lasts no longer than a few seconds before he says: "Yes. This, I will teach you."
LuxLux does not at this time peel herself from the wall she is still leaning against (careless [graceful]). No. The Anarch studies István for a second. More than 'a' second. Lux: she gazes, and it's dark in the hall anyway, so even if her expression dredges up knife's edge of radiance now and again, her eyes are dark, and it is perhaps a difficult look to read. So another second and another, until:
"But why?"
IstvánSo they're gazing at each other in the dark she with her hands now occupied after losing their grasp and he with his sheathed in his pockets and they could do this dance not just all night. They could question each other and dance about the questioning of each other until the sun collapses in on itself. But the sun will rise in the east eventually. This is one of the seven things István Jákob Virág trusts.
Why:
"Why I will teach you this? Or why do I think you did ask me."
Lux"Both."
IstvánOkay. Both. Of course both. István shifts his weight so his feet more evenly bear the distribution of his weight like he's planning on being here for a while.
"I think you did ask me because you trust I will not aim to bind you to me when it is not necessary for this sort of thing. If you had found another in all your time in the city who you did trust so you would have asked them already. And I think you would not ask at all if you did not think it necessary to know this. So I say to you that I will teach you." A beat. "Besides, I do enjoy teaching and I have not yet had a pupil in such things. It could be interesting, no?"
István[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
István[+another 2]
Lux+11.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
LuxLux listens. Head canted, just so. Fingers still curled loosely at her neck, and just so those too. Lux watches. Her gaze has not grown less opaque, but it is indeed intent (invested [passionate]). Lux is still. Motionless. Poised, see? Because she needn't do anything at all except for watch István when he answers her. And then! Lux is quick. Remember that? Devotée of quicksilver, of speed? Of unbelievable and impossible precision? Now is when she peels herself from the wall and that compass-tug impulse smile she gets sometimes like she can't quite help herself, like why would she ever help herself?, you know the smile, right? you know the one that's all cupped just-contained radiance a spark a pleased shadow, well. The point is: that isn't the only reckless impulse Lux has. And now she peels herself from the wall and hugs István. Because why the Hell not? His hands are in his pockets and she slips her arms between his arms and torso and hugs.
She is still angry. But she is more pleased than angry at the moment.
"You say everything with them is 'fast fast fast' or maybe you just don't understand, but sweet creature, do you know? I was waiting for you to tell me what you wanted in return."
"This is going to be fun."
A beat. "As long as you," pause. Hmm. Abort.
IstvánThis post would be way longer and better but the author decided to slam two Labatt Blue Royales after she got home from work and has lost contact with the sensation in her hands.
István hugs Lux back. It is an awkward rusty motion because he does not hug people unless he is feeding from them and then it is not so much a hug as it is a bear-hug. But he does hug her. To hug her not to keep her from struggling before he bites her neck.
As long as you:
"... what?"
Lux"Promise not to use it on me again. Without my permission."
The 'without my permission' a grudging caveat, in case that's how István imagines lessons in Dominate are going to go.
IstvánHe doesn't have to think about it. The answer comes so soon as she has finished asking him and without the theatrics he employed before.
"I will not use it on you again without your permission."
LuxHug tighter! Does she believe István? Perhaps. Does it matter? Perhaps not now. There is still a lick of tension, understand, in her frame; she is still stricken, see? But she is immortal (conditionally). She has years to deal with that. And she is pleased; fond; affectionate. Unwinds one arm to pinch his jaw, turn his head to the side and [bite him? (There is a pause; it is a tease)] kiss his cheek. "Thank you."
Then she lets him go. "It's getting late. Are you going to show me the rest of this joint or do you want go outside and look at the stars? Bet you something good that I can name more of them than you."
IstvánSo she's hugging him tighter.
István does not match the force with which she secures her arms around him nor does he give the awkward open-palmed pat of his hand against her shoulder blade to signal that the time for the hug to have come and gone has passed already. He accepts that she hugs him tighter and that she is still unhappy with his having done the thing that has necessitated the promise in the first place and then his mandible is between her fingers and István lets Lux turn his head.
Perhaps he would want her teeth on him in return for his blood and the power of commanding another with only a word.
"I am in a mood to bet tonight." He offers her his elbow that he might escort her outside to look at the stars. "What is this something good, eh?"
LuxLux loops her arm through his elbow. "I don't agree, by the way. About your prisoner upstairs. Just seeing him is not - " - firm, the side-long look she gives István steady " - enough to make me agree something more Final would be better." Her voice softens at the end of that sentence: be better. Not quite a trail-away; not quite a dissolution.
"As for something good - "
And who knows what an artist and a scientist eventually agree is 'something good' pre-bet? They no doubt settle on something by the time they've been outside for half an hour, and by then perhaps the clouds are not cooperating with their desire to see stars, or maybe they are and one of them wins, or maybe it's a contested battle up until the end.
Or maybe they just argue about it all night, until it really is too late and Lux gets a cab or a ride from a friend ("Hey Nate! Help!") and István goes back inside and that is the end of the night.
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