Meet Delilah

Lucy

Friday night. First Friday night. The sun has just dipped beyond the still snowy peaks of the mountains to the west, but the sky is still light, a dusky shadowed blue full of promise. The air is warm, the oncoming nightfall will be comfortable until the darkness finally leeches out the heat of the day. But now? Now. Now the night is comfortable. Pleasant, even.

And Santa Fe is packed because of it. It's the first night of the warm summer season of the art walk, and the masses have flooded from their homes in droves to pour down the street, into galleries, into the little half-hidden gardens between galleries. Somewhere there is music playing loudly, but all anyone can hear is the beat, thump-thump-thumping lightly in the veins of those who hear it at this distance.

Lucy feels alive. It's her time of day, that inbetween time when the sun gives way to the night. And there are so many people in this new city. It hadn't seemed this full before, but it feels almost like there are too many people. Too many bodies, too many lives crowded on this one-way street. She smiles, wide full lips painted a vibrant red just a shade off from the maroon-red of her hair. She's dressed in a black cardigan, unbuttoned to reveal the line of her milk-white cleavage and then the red of a tank top. Over her left breast, embroidered into the sweater are the words Be Still My Heart, along with the image of an ornate pair of silver scissors stabbing a heart. They look a little like Lucy's scissors, the ones she keeps in a dark and velvety bag inside her slouching canvas bag. Her pants are black, sit low on her hips, and are adorned with more zippers and straps than may be strictly necessary, along with a pair of black suspenders left hanging at her sides. There are boots beneath that, the same ones she always wears though their height is hidden by the legs of the pants. It's a warm outfit for a cold woman on a pleasant late spring/early summer evening.

They've been in the city for a little over a week now, and they've spent their time together of course, but this is the first time that Lucy and Delilah are out exploring together. Not running to the fast food place across the street from their motel, not running to the 7-11 down the block because fuck I ran out of deodorant should we get razors, too.

"Ooh," she says, pausing before the doorway to a gallery with stark white walls lined with large photographs. The people inside are milling about, shifting slowly from one picture to the next, some hmming, some pointing out some detail that caught their eye, but Lucy? Lucy spies a table spread with snacks. Brownies and carrots and cookies along with plastic champaigne flutes. "This place has food, Del."

Delilah

There are so many stories about sisters. These young women do not look like sisters but they look like sisters, don't they? Aren't they sisters in someody's heart, in some artist's eye? Lucy with her vibrant mouth and her vibrant hair and just now as the day weaves (threads, stitches, in and out, in and out, mingles) into night and night pulls the threads (mingles, out and in, out and in, stitches, threads) free so there's just this one tapestried space-between this gloaming-time twi-light time dusk settling soft as ash with its caressing light its promise of a pleasant spring night just a bit of a nip just now as all that Lucy in her element. Rose Red. Dusk Bright.

This time of day-night isn't Delilah's element. Delilah would mistrust it if she weren't so certain of herself and if she didn't feel comfortable in spite of her dislike of endings, in spite of a certain restlessness which works under her skin like a pebble or a pea yes a pea under how many mattresses or a lentils scattered in ashes.

Del: she's the other sister. Two young women and you want them to be sisters even if they don't look related. Delilah's hair is golden and in Santa Fe's uncertain and fading (tapestry) dusk-light it's a darker and more barbaric blond than it might otherwise seem. We say barbaric and we mean just that: it conjures up antiquities, wants to be sun-dappled, wants to be paler - would be in another light. Del: she has on a rush-woven black-and-white luma woven fedora with a broad black band. Around her throat, hanging negligently, is a scarf, which is as pink as a blush and almost as translucent (how translucent is that?), embroidered in white lacey designs. Her jacket is a light spring thing of a blazer, gray. Beneath it she's wearing a teeshirt with a design silkprinted across the chest. Her jeans ride low on her hips, are belted by a thick belt. Her shoes are ballet flats patterned like something out've the Arabian Nights, embroidered and dusty and so worn that the heels are unravelling.

She is looking around half-mistrustfully, but half again surprisedly and curiously and though she doesn't smile there is an open look to the smooth arches her eyebrows make and the heart of her mouth pursed in consideration and she is dreamily distracted or perhaps a bit discombobulated by all the clamor when

She turns so fast she almost gets whiplash; narrowly avoids hitting somebody with her hair.

"Food? An artful spread!" Her smile is sly or could be sly if she knew how to be sly, but she doesn't; her eyes are too telling. "We should look it over carefully. Wouldn't want the people who put it out to feel unappreciated."

Sail in. Abrupt pause; she reaches out to touch Lucy's hip or wrist or some part of her which is near. "What do you think about," a pause, as she stares at the photographs, "Do you think about, ah, here? I bet there are apartments. Be better than squatting in the motel."

Squatting, 'paying in theory,' it is the same thing: right?

Lucy

Sisters. They fit together like sisters, somehow, in some nameless way. They don't move in unison, but there's something about them that seems in synch, that seems like two halves, one whole. Two sides, one coin. Light and dark, oh but no, not quite. Lucy mentions food, Delilah whips, and Lucy seamlessly moves into a space, the chill frost of her presence pushing at the crowd moving around them. Not enough to force anyone off their path, but just enough to make someone cringe, someone twist, someone miss an eyeful of blonde hair. Like a dance, but not quite. There is no stage, after all, hasn't been for years.

Her smile is wide. It narrows her narrow slits of her bright green eyes. "No, we wouldn't," she replies. Slide in, then, into the gallery. Slip through the crowd. If Delilah is a bright, bold ship, Lucy is its shadow in the water. See how she stops quickly, alert to Delilah's sudden pause even though her eyes were on the spread. She steps to her sister's side like she belongs there, like there's no other place where it's right for her to be.

She turns, tilts her head, the fall of her hair shifting over her shoulders as she takes in the photographs. They are of people, some of them. Up so close that in some the depths of their pores, the grit in the creases of their face are clearly visible. Some are of places, things. The mountains frozen in a sunset in shades of grey.

"Here?" she echoes, turning back to look at Delilah, surprised and also hopeful (but trying not to be that last one). She's told Delilah about the people she's met here already. The coffee shops, the girl with the laptop, the place with the alert for other Awakened (other oracles, she put it, is how she always describes their kind). An impossibly tall man she ran into (literally) in a club the night her senses went haywire and then went quiet. He gave her an address that, given it's location at least, suggests it's the nearest Chantry. Maybe. Could be some other gathering place, of course. Of particular note was the boy she met when she and Auggie played a coffee shop somewhere. Tall and funny and a little weird. They seem cool, she said. He seems cool, she meant.

She shrugs. Unlike her sister, Lucy can lie. Lucy can shrug things off like she's actually shrugging them off. Sometimes. She's better at persuading, but if she needs to hide something (or push it down, stop it stop it, interest never ends well) she can.

"It'd be cheaper." In theory. "It'd be cool to have a place that's ours."

Delilah

And for a moment her smile is almost prim: a Valentine of a mouth it curls up with even more presentiment of sly (shy, but that's not right: careful, tremulous). Bold, yes, but at the whim of the waves beneath; get? All light-catching sails, all just-waking gold creeping across the ship's deck and - let's lay the metaphor to rest. For a moment her smile is almost prim at that Here? of an echo, though it's easy to read the sudden rearing of uncertainty in the dark flash of her eyes. Delilah doesn't straighten; her posture is excellent, often remarked upon by strangers - women of a certain age or young men who want to leer at a dancer's back. But she does lower her head like a bull about to spear the sky with its horns, her nostrils flare and she settles herself where she's standing - or would if there weren't fucking carrots and brownies right there. Lucy's hope. She doesn't want to dash it. She shouldn't dash it. She shouldn't have brought it up. But at the same time, shouldn't she have? Because -

"Mmn. Yeah. Though I guess," hint of a drawl, "that it might be more Auggie and December's if we really did find a place. A real place. A place to close the gate and hang the key - " - this shadow of confusion, she rubs her palm across her forehead. Her head is still bull-lowered, stubborn, "But who knew Denver had stuff to do huh?"

"This does seem cool. We should do a reading. Ask the needle and thread."

Lucy

Lucy knows that uncertainty. That uncertainty has kept them bits of dandelion fluff, barely settling in one place for longer than a breath before that breath sends them sailing on to some other place. It's not just Delilah's uncertainty. They share a good many things, these sisters, and one of those things is - for whatever reason, for good or for not so good - is more than a touch of uncertainty. It always seems to hit them strongest in the off-times. The morning will bring Lucy's turn, for instance.

Which is why the suggestion of a reading is met with a raising of Lucy's sweeping eyebrows and a widening of bright green eyes. Her eyes are not the jewel-bright green of emeralds. They're the green of fresh spring grass, of newly unfurled leaves and all those other green growing-type things that Lucy herself can never touch again.

"We could, yeah. Should, I mean." A place with a gate and key, wouldn't that be nice? Of course, Lucy's mind goes to overgrown gardens secreted away behind wrought-iron fence posts. The gate would take some kind of special sort of key, something old and rusted that - stop. Stop stop stop.

She looks around like she's casing the joint, when really she's just looking at the crowd of people. Too many to settle things in the here and now. But later, maybe, in the quite closeness of their current living situation. Picking up a brownie, she looks at the photographs all huge and too-real on the walls as someone bumps into her side.

"That guy," that guy. Lucy somehow manages to bring him up once (and only once) almost every single day. "He said he knows some musicians in the area. Somebody's an agent. I could play for..." she pauses, mouth hitching over to the side, nose scrunching. Because Lucy likes to sing and she likes to play guitar and she love love loves performing. But her body was trained to do other things. Her shoulders shrug, one after the other, like a wave through her body as she rolls them out. "I'd probably get paid more. Or at all."

Lena Reilly

Normally on Friday nights, Lena's working. DJ Halcyon has spent the last several months rebuilding her reputation after she had to no-show several gigs, and she's finally back to the point where she can set her own schedule a bit. She's secure enough in her position among Denver's deejay scene (high, for the record) that if she wants to take a night off she can without people figuring she's a flake and start thinking about booking her less.

And tonight, for whatever reason, she's decided it's a good night to take off. Maybe it was just a feeling she had, or maybe she was a little worn down. She does that sometimes; gets worn down. Not that she considers her job a monotony; far from it. But when you're a caffeine junkie there are nights that you get a little tired in the mind and soul, and some of her meds sometimes have energy-sapping side effects. She always makes sure to schedule some nights off so she can rest up a bit, go be around people (if not part of them) and get a life high off the energy.

And that's what brought her to this place. She loves Santa Fe; it's her favorite part of the city. It's free, creative, buzzing. It's her vibe. And that Withering Pules of her energy perhaps finds a bit more strength as she walks along, heading toward the same gallery that Lucy and Delilah are in. It's another twist of fate, perhaps, that they're heading to this place, and she slips inside wearing a little grey tank top and jeans, a couple tiny braids the only twists in her otherwise free-flowing hair.

Lucy

Lena walks into a gallery, following a small crowd, and even if she doesn't have her mind open to the presence of other Willworkers, she can feel something. Something different in the air. Something cold and softly creeping, threading, weaving. Whispering over bare skin and over the naked toes of the sandal-wearers.

A moment more and perhaps she sees its source. The tall woman with the brilliant (bottle) red hair stands out, as does the blonde beside her, and besides. They're standing near to a table covered in a black plastic tablecloth and boasting a spread of finger foods and little desserts.

"No," she says, correcting herself, turning to reaching behind Delilah to snag a bit of brownie, which she tears roughly in half. One piece is held out to Delilah, the other is brought up toward her mouth. "Manager, that's what he said. Somebody's a manager."

It's as she's turning back toward the conversation that she catches sight of the deejay making her way in with the crowd. Lucy's brows lift and then her chin, and with the motions she almost seems to grow. Like Delilah, Lucy's posture is excellent, straight and tall she is, and graceful is the arm (with fingers carefully holding onto that chocolate square) that rises up to signal to Lena that she's seen her.

"That's Lena," she says, and then louder, "Lena!"

Serafíne

'Course Sera's around. Of course she knows people. She knows people who know people who know people, and - in turn - she is known. The gallery with food is a hole in the wall sort of place. It is not precisely a side street but somehow it looks like it should be a sidestreet. It has that element, concrete and glass, all unfinished, that make it feel like it sprung up yesterday and will be gone tomorrow.

Some things are better that way.

There is food though and there is wine; cheap wine from a box but the better sort of cheap wine from a box and either way it'll get you drunk if you stick with it. Either way it'll get you drunk and the rest of it seems all haphazard. Canapés that have the exquisite delicacy of a well-worked miniature next to brownies next to a bowl of Lay's Garlic Bread Potato Chips and those chips taste like garlic bread, you want them to be bread, is how much like garlic bread they taste, and some clever bastard has left the bag nearby so that you know ahead of time that These Aren't Your Standard Chips.

Sera is around but not here yet.

Her friends are here, though.

They're normal. Dan, with a plastic glass of red wine leaning back against a support pillar beneath the largest piece in the room, a sweep of reds and grays that feels industrial without defining a single angle. He is talking to the artist and flirting with the artist with a certain degree of familiarity, and the flirting is intense but casual, like they might hook up tonight or some other night or maybe they've hooked up before, but it isn't and will never be a big thing.

But Dan, tall, surfing above the crowd. Dee with her black hair in a flouncy dress that is black with a cherries print and 1950s inspired with a liquid movement and a petticoat edged in eyelet lace beneath the skirt. Others, you know.

No one you'd notice.

Lena Reilly

She gets that little breath of cold tickling at her consciousness like the frayed ends of an icy cloth, and a little shiver runs down her spine at it. There's a furrowing of Lena's delicate brows, warm brown eyes seeking out the source of that cool sensensation and then...

She sees it. She remembers Lucy from that little place where they ran into each other along with Grace and Yun. And from the small but glowing smile that hits her expression, she came away with a good impression of the woman. She raises a hand to Lucy and begins walking forward in strapped sandals, making her way in that direction. Delilah is given a friendly smile, though a bit more reserved since of course they have not yet been introduced.

"Hey Lucy. Nice to see you again." She stops close enough to them to be with them, but not so close as to invade personal spaces. "You come down here often?" She means the Arts District.

Delilah

Delilah takes the brownie-half offered without thought; as if it's rote; as if it's some little swiss clock precision-timed habit right on the hour every hour or maybe right on the twenty minute mark every twenty minute mark although that doesn't seem very Swiss clock-ish or precise. Then she looks at the brownie and her expression turns from stubborn bull-lowered (she could hold the fading moons in her horns, couldn't she) something or other into something more guilt-touched. Considering. If she eats this brownie, then she can still eat later if she- Delilah nibbles on the edge and looks guilty as she does so guilty but with this frisson-edge of pleasure not at the rebellion oh no but at the taste at finding a certain balance or thinking she's found one. That guy, Lucy says.

That guy, that guy, that guy.

Does that guy have a name? Del smirks, but her smirks have no sharpness and dissolve before they're even half-formed because she'd rather smile even if the smile is rather demure and sly (coy?), because that's how she looks: syrup-sweet mouth and eyes that are dark but might as well be a shallow pool look right through them.

"This guy," she starts to say, but then that's Lena. LENA! There are good chips that taste like garlic bread. It's okay to have one, right?

Maybe two. Yes, two. Nibble on the brownie, fastidious, and there's a little smear of brownie on her front tooth when she smiles back at Lena, this flash of a quick smile that's a little nervous and a lot curious.

"Hi," she says, introducing herself, "I'm Del, Delilah, and we've never been here before ever. But it's kind of cool, yeah? Is it always this crowded?"

ooc: I am aghast that took so long; this post is typed in WIND!

Serafíne

Is it always this crowded? Delilah asks Lena and no it is not always this crowded. Sometimes it is more crowded than this. Sometimes the crowd dissolves into itself before it has entirely formed. There is something organic to it, some hidden movement that is defined by the cracks in the sidewalk and the brush-strokes on that collection of miniatures made to look like those stiff, cardboard-y 18th century portraits from rural and revolutionary American, with sugar-skulls substituted in the midst of those unnatural poses.

Those are on the other wall, so tiny you have to get up close to see them, so tiny that displayed on brick as they are, getting up close to see them is nearly the point.

Oh, hello. Here is Serafíne, inside the door see, and hugging several someones you-don't-know, and even though she has not yet managed to get anywhere close to the refreshments, she already has a glass of wine in hand, is how good she is at First Fridays and Gallery Openings and Drinking. She is holding that glass with a sort of careless care as she wraps her leather-clad arms around strangers and drws them in and exclaims and spins and is pulled in a half-dozen-directions because don't you want to pull her places, too.

She pulls herself toward those miniatures or perhaps she is so-steered by the artist, a middle-aged woman of moderate height with long, straight hair threaded with gray in a long tunic and a long skirt and some chunky jewelry, who is otherwise remarkable except: look at those things.

There are people in the place (most people in the place) who are unwilling to break that gallery barrier. Who stand back and sort of look because isn't a gallery like a museum and aren't you meant to stand like that in a museum and aren't the only people getting close occasionally art students talking about brush strokes who the fuck talks about brush strokes.

Sera is does not give a fuck about distance and holds her wine in both hands and slides right up to the miniatures and starts to peruse them, nearly nose-to-point.

There are others mounted too high for her to see.

She would hop but: wine.

Oh, clever girl, Sera pulls out her phone and starts texting.

Lucy

Delilah is health conscious. Truth is, Lucy is, too. That training, you know. That life before. Don't eat that, don't eat this, do this and you'll lose five pounds you don't need to lose five pounds but really if you want that part you need to lose five pounds. And there is the simple health of it. Carrots or a brownie, hm. Could have both. Could deny the short-term pleasure of the one for the long-term benefits of the other. Could could could. Which is part of why Lucy shares. A half for one and a half for the other, that's better, yeah?

This guy. That grabs her attention back from where she's watching Lena make her way through the crowd to get closer. This guy. Lucy gives Delilah this look from the corner of her eye, all yeah? Where is that going? To a tease? To a warning? To a reminder of what happens when Lucy gets her hopes up about boys?

But then Lena is there, and then it's the three of them making a little three-person island next to the snack table. There are others in the crowd, but even if they're noticeable Lucy doesn't notice them. She's standing next to her sister, the night is falling softly outside, and she is surrounded by people. Lifting so slightly toward the balls of her feet (hard to tell because those boots she wears are heeled), she practically vibrates with a quiet, intense but subdued excitement. The calm before a storm, or the last clear night before a snowstorm.

She does not take any chips that taste like garlic bread because fuck she's all out of gum and the nearest gas station is the Conoco down at 6th which is blocks and blocks from where they are.

"Hey," she says back. And did she ever mention to Lena in that brief encounter that she had a sister? If she did, well, here she is. Here they are. Two sisters like night and day, dawn and dusk. Light and dark.

Delilah tells the deejay that they've never been here before ever and Lucy gives a nod to that. "We're still pretty new around here."

Lena Reilly

Delilah says they haven't been here, and Lucy says they're new. Lena remembers that last bit from the last run-in they had; Lucy said that she hadn't been around here long. But there is still information here; THEY'RE pretty new around here, which means that the two of them are a unit of some sort. So she smiles to Delilah, the warmth behind that bit of reservation. There was a point that she was like this, long ago. It's been a long time since Sera's seen this side of her; in fact, maybe she never saw it. They didn't interact much before the Hydra thing (she can think the word now) and so she may have not seen the friendly woman that Lena was before. But wass there, and it is there now.

"Nice to meet you, Del." Delilah gave a nickname, and Lena uses it. Nicknames are how we want to be seen usually, at least when we offer it. "I'm Lena, like Lucy said. And hey, we were all knew around here once."

She gets a feel for that familiar Resonance of Serafine; it tickles on the back of her mind. And the friendliness falters, just briefly, before it comes back up. That's a conversation she hopes she doesn't have to have now, here in public. Because they're not going to be able to be around each other until they have a conversation. But she lets it go for now, because she's not going to get worked up about it before it's time.

"Sister?" It's a question to the two; Lucy had mentioned a sister before. "So did we maybe run into each other in New York too, or just you and I, Lucy?"

Delilah

There is a striking young woman with half of her head shaved and the other half's a gold wheat-sheath spill of oh just gold and more gold at least to Delilah's eye and, did Delilah know it, that striking woman is also named for an angel but in a way which is more glorious. Delilah's wide-set eyes (her eyes are wide-set, generous and large, the liquid measure of which are all too too open; there is an air of surprise even when she is not surprised, or there would be if that weren't a lie) wander that-a-way. She's so close to the wall. Delilah stares in spite of herself, abashed. A yokel, though she is not a yokel: still.

She stares, misses any faltering of friendliness (no nervousness kicking higher), and the nervousness in her greeting diminishes a little when she looks back at Lena. Delilah reaches one hand casually for another chip but they're a little out of her reach so she has to really stretch her arm and she doesn't want to lean because that would be rude or no leaning is okay but turning that is what she doesn't want to do so she is desperately not turning and reaching and the bowl why is it so far.

Another demure flash of a smile, lights a candle in her eyes though she looks briefly at Lucy before back at Lena. "I like being new," she says like a confession. "I would be new all the time if I could be old too. We maybe," and the nervousness is back. Because what if they did. What if she doesn't remember. What if Lena doesn't remember. What about that night at that one club and it was five seconds. Or maybe there was no night. Either way, she looks a bit stricken, like she's going to be thought rude.

Delilah stops just because the question was technically addressed to Lucy. Delilah's fingers wiggle just over the chips so close; she realizes she can innnnch. And knock the bowl off the table.

Great. Delilah drops to the floor, not like somebody just told her to do push-ups, but with a measured and rather weary (brief hitch, one moment leaning that-a-way) grace, to shame-facedly pick them up.

Lucy

The gallery space is a shared space, it seems. One half brick exposed, paintings tacked into the wall. The other white, so white, with large black and white photographs of people, things, places, animals. Some macro some not. They're big, too. There's a man's face right there, all shades of soft grey and white, and that face is near as tall as Lucy in her bare feet. Sera's side has one artist. Lena-Lucy-Del have a balding man with skin like fresh-turned earth, wearing a colorful linen shirt untucked from an old pair of jeans. One can imagine he and the woman on the other side don't get along well. One would be wrong.

The table is shared between the spaces, the one with the snacks and such that is. The two sides, they are usually divided by a partition (it's cheaper to rent together, see, cheaper to go in as a duo in a space so large instead of a solo in something smaller), but tonight that partition has been pushed along its track in the ceiling. The place is huge now. Spacious.

But not, because people. People sweep in and people disappear back out again. They crowd in close around Lucy and Lena and Delilah, such that when Delilah, reach-reach-reaching for the bowl of chips and instead upends it, someone nearly steps on her hands. Nearly.

Delilah is worried about being perceived as rude. Lucy? "I don't know, you know, I don't quite remember seeing you there. I mean, I do but I don't, you know? It was-" crash goes the bowl of chips and Lucy is sweeping downward, every bit as graceful as her sister, vibrant red hair lifting from her shoulders as she drifts down into a crouch. She grins upward at Lena. "It was a long time ago, after all."

Shoulder to shoulder, she starts gathering up the chips back into the bowl, angling so that no one else comes close to thoughtlessly trampling Del's fingers. And so, shoulder to shoulder, she leans in closer to Delilah.

Serafíne

Sera is texting Dan to come pick her ass up so she can see the miniatures she cannot see from way down here, and it is way down here tonight because Sera is wearing her battered old Doc Marten's rather than a pair of the ridiculous heels she always sports and Sera wants to see the miniatures that are higher than her head.

And Dan, poor bastard, gets the text and rolls his eyes and shoots her a look across the crowd but of course he's going to stop flirting with another of the evening's artist and cut through the crowd and go pick her up because that is what he does: whatever she wants. And he does't even fucking mind it.

So Dan's cutting through the crowd past Delilah and Lena and Lucy when Delilah knocks over the bowl of chips and then ducks down to start picking them up and god knows what it is, chivalry or resonance or just human fucking decency, but there's a tall, skinny, tattooed hipster crouching beside Delilah as she picks up the chips. He grabs the bowl from where it skidded beneath the table (he is tall and his arms are both: long and tattooed) and hands it to her and grins through his beard.

"Here," handing her the bowl. "Don't worry about 'em. Let people stomp on them, right? Call it art."

And he doesn't touch her but he's sort of urging her upright with his hands framed around her though if she insists on picking them up well he will let her and go. But: either way he straightens. Says, "Lena, good to see you," to the DJ, and there's no evidence of awkwardness on Dan's part, no awareness of it, just a quick and rather polite smile, the sort you pass out like Nerds on Halloween, and then he's off through the crowd.

Finds Sera. Comes up behind her and picks her up. She is probably going to insist on something absurd like sitting on his shoulders right? But whatever happens next is left for later and they don't linger long.

Lucy

Leaning in so that it's just between them, Lucy nudges Del with her arm. "You okay?"

Lena Reilly

A bowl tips over. Chips tumble into the air and fall to the floor. And Delilah and Lucy drop to crouches in order to pick them up. Lena joins them without even a moment's thought; it's not because they're doing it and she feels obligated. It's because the chips fell and they need to be picked up and the two need help doing it and she helps people do things. It's just part of who she is, the soles of her sandals bending as she goes down with them to lend a hand.

And then there are hipster hands there, handing over a bowl. Dan's here. Of course Dan's here, because she felt Sera. But she doesn't have anything weird toward Dan, he's a nice guy even though they've never really spoken. And she smiles to him faintly, lets him go on his way as she scoops up chips and pieces of chips with nimble fingers. Art or not, chips are not for stomping and she likes a very different sort of performance art.

"Don't worry about it," she says to Delilah with a smile. "With the amount of wine that gets slung around these places, I'm sure they've had a lot worse." Shit happens, after all. It's how you deal with it that matters.

Delilah

[and what timing, phonecall that I need to take! BRB and skip me and Delilah is all quiet and obvious about everything. She probably stops picking up all the chips too, after an aghast look at Delilah and a grateful smile at Lena and Dan. I will really post that when I'm off the phone.]

Lucy

Everyone, even complete strangers (though the tattooed man seems to know Lena) tries to cheer up Del, tell her that it's okay, don't worry. Lucy offers her a hopeful sort of smile. Not really cheer up, so much as, eh? see? Maybe they don't need to do a reading to tell if this place is an okay place to settle into. Maybe the kindness of strangers will be enough of a sell.

Anyway, they get the chips cleaned up. Mostly. They went skittering everywhere, after all, farther even than the bowl had clattered. Someone crunches on one and their foot slides a little at the loss of traction, but no one falls down. No one ever died slipping on a fallen potato chip. Did they?

Anyway, no one does tonight at least. Lucy rises, offering a cold hand to either of the other women to brace them on their upward climb to standing straight and tall again. Whether they accept the assistance or not, Lucy wipes her hands off on her pants, leaving little pale crumbs like a sort of edible dandruff on the black fabric.

"Friend of yours?" she asks, meaning Dan, who is off across the room by now, collecting the woman looking at the paintings on the other side. Or perhaps they're gone by now, with the man shuffling the woman out the door.

Lena Reilly

Surely someone has died while slipping on the oils left by a potato chip. Someone, somewhere. You would think that it's not the least likely way to die; it's not like a space toilet falling from the sky and crushing someone. But no one dies tonight and all is well for the moment.

Lena looks at the offered hand, and after a moment's hestitation she takes it with an appreciative smile. She rises up and lets go quickly, rubbing her fingers against the palm of her hand to get those deadly oils (but not deadly tonight!) off. "Thanks," she says with a smile and a sigh. She looks over her shoulder where Dan went, watching him escort Sera out, and looks back.

"Sort of. It's...complicated. He's cool. She's the complicated one." But she's not here to gossip about someone Lucy and Delilah don't even know. They'll meet Serafine and have their own judgment calls to make.

"Santa Fe's my home away from home," she says, switching gears there. "I love it down here. The vibe, the energy, the atmosphere. It's great. Reminds me of parts of New York, a little. If you want, I'll show you both around some time."

Lucy

[manip+subt]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Lucy

[five suxx for a quintuple botch I'LL ALLOW IT, JOVE, YOU ARE FORGIVEN]

Lucy

[let's pretend she was being PERSUASIVE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lena Reilly

[[I guess she could technically succeed! Unlikely, but...Per+Subt!]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Lucy

Lena accepts that hand, that cold cold hand. Lucy is also generally averse to physical contact with others, but for reasons other than the ordianry. Her touch is so cold most expect to pull their hand away and see frost limning their fingers, or to feel a certain kind of stiffness. Holding Lucy's hand is like sticking their own inside a freezer, only in this case there's a body inside. Sure, her skin is soft, pliant, is everything that living skin should be. But it's cold.

It's something that she's not really used to. How does one become accustomed to the look people get when they touch you? That look of surprise, or sometimes disgust. That look of ick ick ick what was that?? So, while she is usually careful not to make that contact, she is still polite and thoughtful, and she offers her hand to Delilah who she's known for ages, and Lena who she has not, but who is cool all the same. And Lena, oh. Lena Lena what are you doing, she takes that hand.

And she rises and she lets go quickly and she rubs her hands together and Lucy's eyes, those bright green things, they drop to the motion and then slip back to Lena's face. Not even a falter. Remember, we said that if she wanted to Lucy could hide the things she wants hidden? She is a daughter of the darkening twilight, after all. A child of the dark times, a woman with no few mysteries to keep hidden away.

She smiles. The man is cool but the woman is complicated, and oh look a subject change. Lucy is not about to press. A glance to Delilah, taking in her appearance but not lingering there, and then it's back to Lena.

"You already said you would," she says. "And I can see that. It reminds me of SoHo."

Delilah

Maybe the chips will later be re-imagined as a rune-casting, as a chance-tumbled oracle; they are all oracles, aren't they? Lena crouched; of course Lucy crouched; Dan, tall man with long tattooed arms and his smile; Lena's smile, oh, Delilah's lashes dart down and she ducks her head a little, brim of her woven-up black and white fedora sloping low, though she tips it up with her thumb a moment later when they all get up, and she's a bright little wash of gold, peering back up with rue, though some of the mortification accompanying that aghast look she'd cast Lucy have faded. Everybody is so friendly; maybe the chips were a sign, moon-wise.

She doesn't straighten until after Lucy; maybe if it were earlier, it would be the other way around those unconscious Swiss clock time measured urges but it's not earlier so one has to follow the other, do you see?

She's the complicated one, Lena says, and Delilah says, "She didn't say it to me, too, Lucy." Delilah puts one finger under the eyelid of her left eye and tugs it down, sticking her tongue out (kitten-neat), then she crinkles her nose like she's going to sneeze, golden girl biting her lip not to laugh.

"I'd be happy to take you up on that, Lena. I mean, Del's the one who's going out and meeting," boys, she almost says, but they're not actually teenagers, "all sorts of people. I feel like I've done nothing but sleep since we got to Denver, even though," puzzlement, confusion, "that isn't true."

"Is this a good place to stay?" There's something very earnest about that word:

Stay.

Delilah

ooc: LUCY'S THE ONE. gosh darn it fingers, they're not ONE PERSON.

Lucy

[[OH AREN'T THEY??]]

Lena Reilly

Whatever Lucy might think from the rubbing of her hands, the cold doesn't bother Lena one bit. As a Cultist she's a woman of extremes, although her extremes are different from Sera's extremes or of any other Cultist's for that matter. They're all their own, and that's what makes the Cult what it is. The point is, freezing skin doesn't get to her. It would perhaps be different if it was particularly warm, perhaps. Lena prefers the winter. Viruses are usually stymied by cold; heat gives them life, lets them grow. And what's more, cold is a particular sensation. Where heat can sap strength sometimes, cold braces. Reminds you that you're alive.

She laughs, a bit sheepishly, when Lucy notes this is the second time she's made the offer. She can cover it though, even if it's that kind of cover when you know you were caught forgetting that you had, but you're giving an excuse that everyone knows isn't legit. "Well yeah, but that was just you..."

Yes, she and Delilah basically say the same thing at the same time. She blinks a bit and laughs, and that allows her to relax a bit. Not that she was tense, but...well, Lena being relaxed is a thing by degrees when the crowd is this size. (We mean the others in the gallery around them, not these three.)

Del asks if this is a good place to stay, and Lena...she nods. There isn't any hesitation there, though the quirk in her smile, the wry twist there, says it's more than just a Yes or No. "The people here are good, mostly. Almost entirely. The energy is good. The city is fantastic. There are things that have happened that are less good. You two may hear about them, or see some people who are affected by them." She pauses there, as if unsure of what she wants to do next, and then goes for it...places a hand on her breastbone to indicate herself as one of those people. "But I'm still glad that I'm here. If that helps."

Lucy

They may not actually be teenagers, not anymore (and what a time that was for each of them), but Del pulls down an eyelid and sticks out her tongue at Lucy, and Luce answers by crinkling her nose and sticing out her own tongue right back. They may not be teenagers, and they may not always act like adults. Some part of them will always be children, in a way, with each other at least.

Even though there's a New Friend right there, and strangers milling all around them. The look melts into a grin, because Delilah and Lena are right, the offer was made to one half, not the whole of the pair. It makes her happy to hear the clarification echoed from two different voices. More signs, she thinks. More signs for the better.

She hopes. Maybe this time her hope will not be misplaced.

Lena explains that the people here are good, the energy is good, and Lucy nods a few times, looking from one oracle to the other. It's something she's already picked up on. When she says that some things happened that are less good, Lucy's gaze slants over to Delilah. They've been around, they've seen things. They are things. They have caused things to happen or be fixed or or or. They are Awakened. They are what they are, and things happen around them, just as they happen around all of their kind. When Lena assures them that she's glad she's still here, Lucy can't help but grin.

"Well yeah," she says, a tease in her voice, "but that's mostly 'cause you got caught in the Hotel California, right?" Did she tell Delilah that part of that conversation? About Kalen who settled in and Grace who settled in and even Lena who settled in. Drifters, wanderers, they all settled in. And a joke about a place that no one can leave once they've checked in. She's joking and she's also trying not to give Delilah puppy pleading eyes. Because it may be her time to lead, but she'll never lead Delilah anywhere she wouldn't follow, and vice versa.

Still looking at Delilah, she asks Lena, "Do you know where there might be some decent, inexpensive, pet-friendly housing?"

Lena Reilly

She grins a little at the little interplay between the two. It seems like a familiarity between them that she finds endearing, albeit in a somewhat wistful way. The strangers around them...for Lena right now, they've faded away. Not that they're not present for her, but she's okay in crowds. It's the close one-on-one contact that she sometimes finds to be too much, too close. With these two though...she likes them.

She notes that look over to Delilah when Lena mentions things. They all have them, of course; you can't be part of their world and not have had something happen. It's the way of things; the good and the bad, it's all that much more intense for them because they're connected together. One heartbeat, one life force, but separate. And knowing that--no, not knowing. Feeling it. That makes things stronger.

The grin quirks a little bit when Lucy makes the 'Hotel California' joke again, and she shrugs as if to say, What are you gonna do? "Long as I get my free coffee and a continental breakfast every now and then...eh. I can deal. And I might be able to help you out with that, actually. I've been looking around for apartments, I had to break my lease a little while back. So I've got a lot of data saved up about places to live."

Lucy

"That would be so great," Lucy replies, attention peeling away from Delilah to land entirely on Lena. They have done their sort of casting, and it seems like it was a favorable reading. The people are nice, good, friendly and helpful. Lucy already knows where to find the nearest Chantry house (she thinks, she's pretty sure, she'll find out soon enough) and people are always really secretive about that sort of thing for some reason. She understands the reasons, that doesn't mean she doesn't like them.

But it's nice, and this street feels like SoHo, and not that Lucy needs a place to feel like New York to like it, but it certainly doesn't hurt her opinion of the place.

"Maybe we could make a day of it sometime. We could!" she starts, lighting up before she catches herself (no, stop, shh), tugs on the string and brings herself back down to earth again. When she continues she sounds more sedate. "Maybe we could be neighbors. Do you like cats? Or dogs?"

Lena Reilly

Lena sympathizes with Lucy's reaction. It's the kind of sympathy that under the wrong light could look like a jaded Been there, seen that, saw it go wrong situation. But that's not it; she has been there before, but it's not the same. She sympathizes because she gets the feeling (right or wrong) that Lucy is looking for connections. People to have that sort of tie to, but she seems guarded. Maybe because of the cold, maybe for other reasons. But that's how Lena reads the situation, and she understands.

"Well, I don't have a cat or a dog, or any pets really. But I like them all." She reaches up, runs a hand through her hair. Talk of animals makes her think of the bird she and Sid rescued. She wonders how he's doing. She hopes he's well. "And you never know, maybe we could. Long as you don't mind strange hours from your neighbor. My work means that I tend to be a night person and I don't sleep much in any situation, so..."

She shrugs. It is what it is.

Delilah

Delilah has been quiet. Her quiet isn't an uncomfortable quiet; far from it. Lucy is right there; how could she be uncomfortable? Lena seems quite nice. Delilah isn't difficult to make happy, but she is quiet. Watching Lena and Lucy, trying to avoid that hopeful look in Lucy's eye, her own expression more wary, still yet cautious, mouth set and chin set too, and look at her. She just grows so solid; she could be solid, even quiet as she is - quiet as a lick of light, just-encroaching, pale against sere grasses. She's watching Lena and Lucy, trying to avoid that hopefulness, so she's also watching the rest of the crowd, remembering the brownie she's still holding which she tears into little pieces and eats, crumb by crumb, licks her tooth clean of chocolate at last.

"That would be very helpful," she says. "Some advice on where to look. It's always cool to meet a Map-keeper. And..." As to neighbors, and strange hours. "We're used to all manner of comings and goings; they don't bother us. Not likely."

"Lena, it was so, so nice to meet you. Lucy, I'm going to go look at that over there." Her smile curves into its demure little scimitar; it lifts her cheekbones and there's an uncontained wash of color, pale brightness, to accompany the smile. "Sorry," for drifting away,

which is what she does. It's not her time, and she is restless.

[ooc: and I fell asleep at the computer, gagh, I am sorry! So here is Del out, but NPCable by Lucy for necessities :D]

Lesson #4: Terrible Student

István

The Brown Palace this time.

This is where they would have ended up after leaving Lux's closet the All In if what happened in that motel room hadn't happened. If they hadn't ended up on the goddamn bed with the magic fingers. If the Tremere hadn't lain atop the Toreador and bitten her a second time. So far as Lux knows the second time was not the sudden stop at the end of the fatal fall. He has managed not to let her see it so far but they've spoken on the phone more often than they've seen each other in person and he hasn't sent her that letter yet.

There's no explanation for István looking as if he put some effort into his outfit tonight besides: René is the one who put in the effort and István just demonstrated the ability to dress himself. He's wearing a pair of loafers and a pair of jeans, sure, but neither came from Sears. The loafers are sturdy respectable things and the jeans are - holy shit he's wearing white jeans. And he's wearing a gray t-shirt underneath the blazer which is olive instead of his usual I'm On My Way To A Board Meeting blue. And there's no sign of the waistcoat or dress shirt or suspenders or tie or fuck knows what else they wore back in the 1850s when István first started buying his own clothes and which he tends to put on before he goes to meet Lux. He tucked in the t-shirt and is wearing a belt (belt or suspenders, István, you don't need both.) At least he's not buttoned in like Fort Knox tonight.

He will wear loafers without socks and he will concede that okay René he will shelve the Bond villain facial hair since it isn't winter anymore but he will not go outside without combing his hair. One must draw the line somewhere.

Whether Lux meets him in the lobby where he stands for nearly half an hour or whether she comes upstairs to find him after he's remembered she's a fucking anarch and she'll show up when she damn well pleases they wind up upstairs together. Their room is on the highest floor and offers the largest view of the city and István if he did not come up before her immediately crosses the room to the windows to draw the curtains. If he is already up here when she jimmies the card key into the reader and lets herself in he's stood by the windows with the lights dim behind him looking down on the city and will draw them when he hears her enter.

Christ. If he were alive she would be able to see him flush with increased pulse and see him struggle to contain his breath. The latest in a long line of creatures to lose themselves in love with her does little more than fold his hands behind his back and straighten his shoulders and gaze at her with measured warmth in his eyes when he's got the curtains where he wants them.

Warmth or not his tone doesn't speak of anything other than his deciding tonight was going to start with him in Teacher Mode.

"You did not warn me when we did first begin this," he says before she can get far into a quip about his clothes or his smooth face, "that you would be such a slow study." Before she can interrupt: "Command me. Eh?" He drops his hands from behind his back and gestures to her. "Show me you've learned something."

Lux

Command me. Before she can interrupt.

Lux pauses in what she was doing, but only for an instant. There was no quip about his clothing (yet [?]) when Lux opened the door to their room fifteen or so minutes after István set himself by one of the room's windows. Down in the lobby they must have missed one another by minutes. The Brown Palace Hotel is opulent and graceful and condescends to offer a number of hideyholes so perhaps she looked in at the bar or restaurant or spa (Turkish baths) first. Maybe her timing will just be a mystery, but there was no quip about his clothing (yet [?]) when she opened the door to their room and slipped inside like a dagger do you see into a sheath because that's how comfortable it is to slip inside or a hook through an eye for a necklace do you see because that's the only thing to do.

Even the curtains know that the Brown Palace Hotel is opulent and is elegance and they're heavy when they're swished shut but they also barely whisper and there's no hitch to it because they're solid guardians against a bright-spangled city, and by the time the curtains are closed Lux has put her bag down by the bathroom and crossed over to a cherry wood desk set between two of the other windows. Did he close all the other curtains or are they yet open?

She is sitting on the edge of the desk and unwinding a scarf from her hair and from her throat - the scarf is ivory and silk and the shadow of her fingers through it is a smudge of not-quite-shadow - and she was indeed going to interrupt, the corner of her mouth suggestive of a smirk, but she can't interrupt, can she, because he's too quick, and that's when she pauses for an instant.

Razor-flick of a glance. From his head to his toes. Slower when her gaze wanders up again to find and meet his eyes and she finishes unravelling the scarf and it is such a lovely thing a fall of cold moonlight on colder glass because such is silk.

"Hmm. Translate?" Middle finger; the edge of the beginning of a conspiratorial smile which sluices away. Before he can: "I'm not going to, you know. Use it on you, or other kindred. Ever. Once," the edge of a smile returns and she glances down at her toes, "I'm no longer such a sloooow study, that is."

István

All of the other curtains are closed. He had drawn one set that he might stand there with his hands in the pockets of his pants alone with his thoughts. Might be his thoughts were focused on how half-dressed he feels with no buttons hemming him in. Or on the quandary of the early risings and their relation with the eclipse. The ramblings of a madman or the bubbling up of blood last year.

Whatever he was thinking he was slow to turn around but he needs only draw one set of curtains to choke off the last of the light breaching the room.

And she's sat on the desk when he bids her force her will upon him. When she lifts her middle finger the corner of his mouth threatens to smile but the rest of his face is stern. He folds his hands behind his back again and slowly paces the distance from the window to the desk as she goes on.

Then she tells him she does not intend to use it on any kindred ever. Cant of his head. Oh really.

At the desk he takes a hand out from behind his back and rests its fingertips against the desk. Stands over her but does not lean to do it. His other hand holds itself behind his back and he is watching her face when she looks back up from her toes.

"On who, then?" he asks. "The Kine? Why go through all of this trouble for to order around the Kine?"

Lux

[I am so good at hiding things. It's really amazing. Isn't it? Manip + Subt. -1 diff 'coz blooood. Totally going to be boss. Right?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )

István

[perc + subt: oh yeah girl you're a great liar -1 diff cuz auspex]

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Lux

For the record, the creature flipping István off and lounging with nonchalant grace on the desk is wearing a skirt which is all layers, a cloud of dove-grey tulle over a sheen of ivory satin, tied at the waist with a broad satin bow that's also dove-grey, that sort of grey which is rainwater at its most glorious silver, shoes which are ornamenal and frivolous, heels that look like they're at least partly woven of silver-mesh, tied at one dainty ankle. Her top is black; the back of it drapes low, would leave her back naked to the small of it if her skirt weren't so high. Naked, except for a bit of lace.

Now that the record has been straightened, given a visual, let's go forward: Lux doesn't seem to feel the need to stop flipping István off just because they're conversing and he's come near and she's looking down at her toes.

"I suppose. Maybe I just feel like knowing the thing. Maybe I just like learning," she lies; passionately. "Doesn't there come a time in every immortal woman's life when she should see how many Disciplines she can mistress?"

"Shouldn't want to be slothful." Beat. He can see clearly that she is not saying something; can see, clearly, a lick of hatred or anxiety or both, under the passionately, braided-up with it.

"What, did you only learn it to command other Kindred?"

Let's talk about you.

Lux

[Odds, yes.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )

István

Her finger stays aloft so the hand that is not anchoring his balance to the desk comes out from behind István's back to wrap itself around the offending digit. He still has not translated the gesture. But then he didn't know what 'suck' meant as a pejorative either.

Even if the Tremere weren't adept at lying and detecting lies he would be able to tell that that is what she was doing. Her eyes are still aimed down at her feet. Still aimed and yet Lux can feel his refusal to believe her in his silence.

Around her finger his grip is loose but insistent. He's wanted to touch her since the moment they saw each other through a body heat-fogged mudroom window. Had whiled away most of a night touching her before both decided they had better go out and slake their thirst before they did anything else. Now that he's fallen he can think of no greater torment than to have her take away that touch and yet so far as she can tell he's enamored but not hopeless in it.

This is not the first time anyone has looked at her with such intent. But the lights are on and he's close to her and István has never bothered pretending to be anything other than a corpse around her. His hand is cool around her finger because the room's thermostat is set to 62 degrees in the absence of guests. Because he had stood at the window for a quarter of an hour waiting for her.

His eyes flick down to her lips but don't stay there. He releases her finger. That studious cast to his gaze evaporates when she asks him a question.

"It is no matter," he says, "why I did learn it. I did not teach it to myself. You did ask me to teach it to you." That hand once wrapped around her finger finds the curve of her jaw and it's gentle even as it turns her head towards him. "Hmm?"

Lux

He releases her finger; Lux puts her hand down, edge of the desk against her palm, fingers curling. He touches her jaw to gently lift her head; Lux looks up at him all at once, a slash of a look, do you see? Both eyebrows raised, mouth compressing surprisingly firmly but no snick of a smile or smirk at first. Not until - "Hmm?" - an innocent echo.

István

Lux is like all others in that her emotions are occluded from him. He can tell overt passions. Anger or terror or boredom. But sometimes not even boredom. Sometimes he mistakes silence for interest when really the other person is just too polite to tell him to stop talking. Always has been like this even in life even when he had a reason to want to know what others were thinking.

Or maybe he hadn't. Books were his first love and the natural world his true.

Yet here she sits petulant and near-silent and István seems patient with her because he is patient with her. Because he has taken from her twice what she has only taken from him once. Because he loves her. He told her as much already but how can he be crying 'love' already when he's only drank from her twice.

"I have used it more on other Kindred," he says and lays his hand against the side of her face now, thumb against her cheekbone, "than I have used it on cattle. Cattle are weak and frightened of everything. Your presence, it is enough for them to do as you wish. Kindred, why do you tell me you will not use it on Kindred? This is hmm."

Lux

Lux doesn't believe that friendship, comraderie, love, are things that one can only feel if one is blood-bound or blood-ensnared. If she did, what would she be? Something completely other than what she is. But blood forces things into immortality; doesn't it? Blood is a curse; blood is a treasure. Blood is love.

She drank him once and that means something besides now she can learn the Discipline(s) of his Clan.

"It's not always enough," Lux says. Heat. "What I wish and what I want. And I tell you I won't use it on Kindred, because I won't, so don't ask me to try. I don't believe in it. If you want me to command you," she reaches up, sets her hand over his hand on her cheek, leans into it like she's welcoming the caress; then she pulls his hand away but keeps it too.

"Even for this. No."

István

Her lean into his palm has his fingertips curling into the hair at the base of her neck a second before thinner fingers grasp and pull them away. The ink stains on his fingertips are faded and maybe she can see the flash of color as she guides his palm away. Like heavy smokers' yellowed skin it seems the blue will never leave him. Not until his entire corpse turns to ash.

Even to learn Lux will not command him.

He grips her fingers and brings the knuckles to his lips. They're always dry even when he's kissing her. Not dry enough to chap and bleed but the creature does not waste blood to appear human. Humans enjoy moisture on their eyeballs and inside their mouths. They generate heat. They flush and they sweat and they react to stimulation.

Lux sees the point of this but István never has. She even breathes out of habit sometimes. She had had to coax him to draw a deeper breath in order to share a cigar. He's been dead five times as long as he was alive. His body has forgotten nearly everything and the blood returned to him more than he'd known he'd forgotten.

"You want I should call for room service?" he asks above her knuckles. "You can make practice on the bellhop? Darling--" Oh. He was joking before. Now he's not. He's tightening his grip. "--you can't promise this. That you won't use."

Lux

Her response is instinctual: "I can."

Instinctual, but not immediate; Lux watches István's clean-shaven tonight face for the expression which goes with the tightening of his grip. Her head is still canted slightly, arrested as it was when she leaned into his palm before she took his hand away and he took her hand to his lips.

The instinct, understand, comes from whatever place it is that Lux's politics come from, comes from whatever place it is Lux's will has been diamond-sharped, diamond-hardened, cut through steel without a chip; somebody says yes, then somebody else has to say no.

She can't promise.

She can.

"Does it matter to you why I want it? I thought it didn't; and not all cattle - really, darling, cattle? - are scared. Tell me more about the Discipline of Domination, hm? Do you frighten the other person's will away; does your spirit seduce it? Do you just blot it out with sheer force? Has anybody ever pushed back and turned the tables on you?"

István

The shake of his head is a small thing and yet she's looked at him. Canted sure but she can see that he does shake his head. Of course nobody has ever turned the tables on him. If anyone had he either wouldn't be standing here right now or he would have gotten better at wielding the power himself. Arrogant creature that he is.

"You are the first I've met," he says, "who I did find difficult to command, and yes, darling, once I did blot out your will to do this thing. That night I did tell you to dance. I find it difficult to force you to do anything. Others, though, eh? My will does, how you say..."

He glances down at her hand like to assure himself it's still in his grasp and kisses her knuckles again. When he looks back at her he could laugh at the fleetingness of his English but István is not the laughing sort.

"I do not like how this 'blot out' does sound. The will of the other is still present, yeah? You are just..." He pulls a pensive face and moves their clasped hands around in a searching gesture. "... forcing yours onto it."

Lux

"Try again," Lux says, and she is frowning; a line between her brows. "No dancing or screaming."

István

[int + empathy: DO YOU HAVE NARROWER PARAMETERS THAN THAT BECAUSE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

István

Oh no. He's not falling for that one again. His eyes widen slight and brief and he runs his thumb across the back of her ring finger. The knuckles he'd been kissing.

"I don't want to," he says, drawing out all the vowels so it sounds like an anxious song.

Lux

"Aw."

This shadow of a smile; it lifts from her mouth to animate her eyes; dredge out that gleam, sublimated, of something lucent - something that disappeared earlier when her lashes went low and she examined the toe of her ornate filigree metal shoes. She isn't wearing any rings on her right hand tonight so it's just bare skin his thumb is feeling, silked and soft and thin. Lux is cool tonight less cold than he just cool.

Then: "Please," Lux says. "Tell me to turn or stand or - " - there. Line still between her eyebrows, in preparation, see? Tension a coil of a thing at the nape of her neck a whisper of a thing through her shoulders even though she's still affecting a nonchalant pose. Tugs, gently, her fingers out've his; or begins to.

István

With the tug István releases her fingers. His right fingers are still anchored on the desktop beside her so his left now have to find a way to occupy themselves.

"Or?" He puts his now-empty hand down on her knee because why not. Because it's there. He frowns a frown of his own when his loud-sensed palm feels the fabric of her dress. That frown dies fast when he decides to run his hand light up the fabric and back down again. There's a leg under there somewhere. Focus István. "'Or' what?"

Lux

"I don't know. Sometimes a hard stop is bam-boom inspiration," Lux says. The tulle has an interesting feel to it, doesn't it? Not quite scratchy, but nearly; resistant, a fabric for volume and also for drift - to float gracefully during a dance. Whisper, whisper. Layers, layers. "Or as you scientific sorts call it 'eureka.'"

István

It is interesting. He can hear the rasping of the fabric against her skin and against itself and it would take no effort for him to ruck it up over her knee but his eyes are on Lux's face as she talks. Even as his hand keeps skimming the skirt he's watching her. It falls different over her hip than it does down her thigh.

The sash may just be for decoration but he'll have to investigate that later.

Her eureka moment makes him smile. Would almost be one of those rare grins of his because no Lux no one actually says eureka and he finds it charming and funny and cute that she refers to him as a scientific sort but he's focusing. Didn't he just finish telling her it takes effort to get her to do anything.

Or maybe he's bracing himself. Who even knows.

"Okey," he says. "Yes! I am inspired! Very good, with the stopping so. Hit me."

[manip + intim: fuck you iron will you piece of shit.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lux

Okey, he says, and tension is already taut beneath her skin, already tautened, tightening, already pulled so sharp; but now it vibrates, hum, and you could play her if you had a bow, a sharp note or a high one, because nonchalance is a lie. Hit me, he says; Lux stays quite still.

Eases, very slightly [go down a third or make a fifth], and flicks István on the chin. Like so. Flick.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

István

The Tremere wrinkles his nose like no he's not going to smile at that little flick of a reminder that he couldn't move her that time. Can't exert an effort to push the discipline into working after all. There goes that hypothesis.

"What was that!" he asks amused in that understated slightly-manic way he has that made believing him to be Malkavian so long so easy a thing.

Long-suffering sigh. Like she's the one not taking this seriously and not him. István takes firm hold of the flicking-wrist with his left hand and his right hand ceases its loitering to slide her left knee aside. Stands between her ankles like the problem was proximity.

His hold is firm but he doesn't sound like he's taking this seriously anymore. So long gone without a pupil that his skills as an instructor have gone to rust. One must have discipline in order to instill discipline into others, Dr. Virág.

"I did not say 'Tap me,' I said Hit me."

[trying that roll again yo]

Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )

Lux

He didn't say 'tap me' - Lux smirks - he said 'hit me.' The smirk fades.

"Hasn't anyone ever flicked your ears in study hall, darling?" Her tone and context say that it doesn't matter whether or not study hall was a thing when he was alive or not; study hall transcends all centuries. And perhaps it does, for men; they've had universities and colleges for centuries and centuries. Monasteries have desks set in rows. Maybe some of the great illuminators flicked each other's ears when they were being bullies.

"It hurts; it's not a tap. It's too sharp."

He doesn't sound like he's taking this seriously anymore; she eases just a little more, tension a-sluicing away. The skirt is voluminous; when he slides her knee to the side and settles himself between, it slides back so it is against his thigh, but one of the layers of tulle has wisped upward like smoke and found itself frozen in a fold. Beneath the tulle, the satin catches the warm amber lamp-glow of the room, some of the ambient light which creeps in from under a window left un-curtained (just a fall of something sheer, not those heavy drapes), and shivers against it.

"I think it counts."

But it didn't count.

"Again?"

Like he didn't just try again.

István

Again?

He gives her a Look like isn't she tiring of this yet doesn't the sound of him repeating himself start to nag at her like so many gnats droning on on some hot night impossible to escape. Hot nights are the only ones in which István is not corpse-cold for his body absorbs the ambient temperature. If it were a hundred degrees in here he'd feel febrile but not clammy and sick like a normal person. Just dry and hot.

The creature has enough blood in him to last a younger vampire weeks and yet he hoards it. Could warm his palms so they were not cold against her.

That Look gives way to a huff of a laugh. He's gazing at her like he wants to kiss her. No desperation in the gaze. A yearning. He's lost interest in forcing her to do anything. Why would he want to do that when he can slip his hand up her skirt. If he attended a learning institution that did have enforced study periods it was not a coed establishment.

Doesn't matter. Both of his hands are on her thighs now.

"Maybe I cannot force you to do something you would do on your own without so much fuss," he says. Trying to ease back into seriousness. "That must be what is the problem. I could not force you to smoke last time, either."

Lux

There is a lot of skirt. Lux sits up straight when István pulls it up, pushes it back to expose her knee, and the topmost two layers of pale grey wisp higher, even more like smoke, gathered in front of her torso - a halo of translucent costumery; if he pushes the skirt itself up any further, the tulle will touch her chin and she'll push it down in quick-swift gesture as sharp as it is annoyed. The layers don't cooperate. The ivory satin, though, at the bottom; that feels watersmooth and cold against his knuckles. Her thighs are smooth, too, if more tender-soft on the inside -- until he finds her knives. Lux sits up straight while his hands slide upward, follow; her head is still canted, and who knows what her expression means, or what the faint curve of her mouth really signifies.

The city's dangerous: this skirt is just perfect for concealing knives holstered that have more heft than a switch-blade or a comb-knife, both of which she also carries on occasion, because you never know. The easiest thing to carry is a stake, strangely enough. Those thirty-point bamboo knitting needles will do in a pinch and nobody thinks they look like a weapon, especially not if there's yarn wrapped around them.

"Is that when you - ?" Because he wouldn't tell her. Then: she laughs. "Wait, I've only slapped you - twice, isn't it? - and each time it was with much fuss. Try again," she says, and she holds him by the upper arms, and her tone is one-part quizzical, one-part urging. The laughter's gone, but so is most of her tension.

István

[jess wants a roll first]

Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 9) ( fail )

Lux

[BUT IF I DO IT.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (1, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( fail )

István

Three times is not a charm in science. Three hundred may be. But István has his hands on Lux's thighs and instead of finding bare flesh he's found weaponry and beyond a brief downward flick of his eyes the Toreador can read nothing of his reaction. Alright. Not surprised to find her armed beneath the skirt. Maybe she usually carries her armaments in her purse or her boot. It isn't as if he's submitted her to a pat-down every time they've shared space together.

He leaves them there for now. If he can't move his hands any higher without knocking the tulle up so high he'll have to try a different tactic.

Thwarted. Hands on his arms. The blazer he wears is cotton and not some horrid synthetic blend that American designers are so fond of. She can feel the tone of his muscle and the impression of bone through the material. Beneath the blazer the t-shirt is thin and does not cover much more than half of his biceps.

"Okey."

And whatever he was about to say catches in his throat. Like he knows before he even says it that it isn't going to work. That he's tried too many times. Desensitized himself or her or the power itself against this sort of thing. Sometimes a scientist knows before he tries something again that it's going to break. He can do it anyway or he can walk away.

"Hit me."

That final flick before the fuse blows. And he laughs a quiet laugh because ah, hell. How often does he find someone he can't force into doing something. Rests his forehead against hers while he considers this. This could be part of the lesson. How one deals with disappointment et cetera et cetera. István straightens again. His hands are still on her thighs.

"Take these off," he says. It isn't a command. It's a request and amusement-stained besides. "You will hurt the bed if you do lie on it with knives on."

Lux

Lux doesn't like to be commanded and she was certainly a restrained fury of a thing the first time he used it on her in his warehouse. But she asked him for a reason tonight and she is as disappointed as she will ever be able to be that somebody's Dominate didn't shoot-off properly, a firecracker that failed. He knows before he says what he's going to say that it's not going to work. That he's not going to be able to place his will over hers but he's a scientist so he finishes the test and Lux had, in spite of herself, grown tense again; he could feel it through his fingers, could feel it through her fingers, in spite of her efforts not to show, but she is still also sitting straight. Now her spine eases into what seems to be a more habitual slouch and she closes her eyes as he laughs. Opens them when he touches his forehead to hers, but only because she's going to rub her nose against his in a quick-sweep of a nuzzle, her mouth compressing in that surprisingly firm way it has before a smirk or a smile and what is it going to be right now?

Lux tests his strength by

s

l

o

w

l

y

pushing his arms, sliding her hands down to his forearms in order to do so. The stupid godamned skirt is everywhere. "I am on the desk, not the bed."

István

With the pressure István's muscles turn to bands. If she chooses to test him truly he may well resist but she can feel in the Tremere's body none of the supernatural strength he has taken on before. No blood forced into the muscles. No elemental wizardry. He has not used such darkness in her presence before but she's seen the result of it in the attic of his haven.

He lets his hands slide back down her thighs and over the knives strapped there but will not yield them altogether. Palms and fingers stay at her knees and the soft flesh on the insides. This won't do for them what it would do for humans but he did lay her on her back once as if he intended to see just what it would do anyway. He enjoys trailing his fingers over her flesh.

"So you are," he says. So she is on the desk. His eyes flick down to the sash again before resting on her own. "Okey. This is a lesson, so: if you do push too hard so many times without your person bowing, as I did just now. The rest of the night, your person, he will be... as a reed before a wind, yeah? Or a computer that you have given the wrong key so many times and the computer does say 'Eh! No more! You are locked out the rest of the time. Try again when you are not so clumsy.'"

Lux

Lux makes a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. How reflective she can sound; as if she has nothing better to do, as if she never does anything other than, reflect on ideas which are largely academic but might provide illumination to beguile away the dark hours; as if she were a true creature of academia, marble-skinned silk-skinned muse of a thing even as she's using with her gloom-loved hair and the pensive tarnish of her gaze. Her eyes stay fixed and intent upon István's now, anchored and anchoring, but she is looking right through him too.

Until: flash of amusement - shook-foil shining, and the edge of a quick smile. "'Eh! No more!'" Her mimicry is imperfect and mocking, but meant without malice - for the fun of it!

His hands are on her knees now; the journey there back down past the knives (up to, as well) she did react to, but imperceptible reactions are imperceptible; if there's something of smoke in her eyes, it means absolutely nothing of fire (hunger; she is a monster-woman), because aren't her eyes always subject to smoke and darkness. Her fingers have curled loosely around his forearms, just above his wrists, but she releases him now in order to smooth her skirt down, and then to brace both palms against the desk's edge and push herself back -

"Do machines often say such things to you, darlingest? Call you clumsy before they lock you out for good? What do you do then?"

- flex one leg, pointing her toe as if she were actually a dancer it was second nature to stretch so. Here comes the serious question; her gaze is still anchored.

"And ... Here, tell me this. Why do you believe this Discipline comes easily to those bloodlines which it comes easy to? What is it about them? I mean, what the Hell's the common factor, Isty baby?"

Edge of a smirk, but it's the same edge as a piece of paper and it would cut the same; barely notice it. Absent.

István

Knowing now as she does what he is no one would blame Lux for thinking always that István is hiding something from her. All she would have to do is find every letter he had ever written her and look at the words he had put down in a hand that did not shake in a language he could write fluent while speaking as an immigrant and maybe she could find the spaces that don't match up with what he's said.

He talks as much as he does because talking so much distracts from what he isn't saying. This is a simple enough tactic. Even Lux asks so many questions and it keeps the other person talking and he has noticed how she rears away from questions as all their kind rear away from flame.

So she takes her hands from his arms and she leans back on the desk. His eyes find her lips again and he finds her charming and she knows he finds her charming. But his expressions are unfulfilled things. Maybe he'll smile but most of the time all she has is those promissory notes at the edges of his mouth and his eyes.

Right hand stays on her knee. Left hand floats up her thigh and smoothes down the tulle and takes hold of her hip. Feels the bone through the skin and the fabric and if he can tug her closer to him well he's going to tug her closer to him. Otherwise there's a waist and ribs to touch.

Question after question and at a last he looks up at her. She can hear him exhale because he's thinking of responding but does not actually respond. A deep sound but empty. He has to draw in air again to answer but that's an unconscious thing. The thoracic cavity is a vacuum. It does most of the work on its own.

"Think of the clans to whom it does come, eh? The Blue Bloods and the Keepers. Necromancers. Warlocks. Some Lunatics do wield, I hear, but if I have ever met one I was so lucky as to not learn if he did or did not know this. These clans, love, they... eh. They think themselves the, how you say, the big dogs. One must have a strong spine to survive in these clans. They are cannibals. No mercy for weakness, you understand, and liberty isn't something they value overmuch. One who calls these clans their own, they learn early not to think themselves free. Eh? Those who are not free do find it easy to take from others their freedom, I think."

The hand that was on her knee comes up to brush her hair back from her brow. Tuck it behind an ear.

Lux

Lux slid herself back further from the desk's edge and István; now he tugs her closer to both again; her eyebrows rise a fraction, and maybe she's going to turn it into a game. Lux turns most things into a game, or seems to- even war is a game. The desk is of a rich deep colour, a bloody colour, if bloodless wood can be bloody; it is smooth to slide on, see.

Lux is not smiling now because that intentness which so often sharps her gaze is present, and she might look troubled although she is not precisely troubled; it is something less easy to pin down than that. She doesn't move when he tucks her hair behind her ear, but gives him this sluice-of-a-look, rake-of-a-look, up-and-down and down-and-up and then she glances at the ceiling.

"What about Auspex?"

István

Ah hell. She wants to talk philosophy now. It isn't an obvious thing but he can see that sharpness in her gaze. Maybe he feels a portent in the sharpness. A foretoken of a conversation that's bound to happen but he can't read the shape or threat of it. He's hiding something and she's looking to find something.

Closeness blots out particulars of the body and its language and he leans his weight on his right hand once it's done arranging her hair. Maybe their arms cross paths as he leans. His left hand finds the sash his curiosity has coveted all night and gives the bow a tug.

"What about Auspex?" he asks. Don't be an ass, István. "Is not the same, eh? It does overpower those who are weak but it isn't meant to push at others so. It's, eh... it's more personal, it belongs to you. You do not act on another even as you are reading the aura or the thoughts. Very power beings can attack with the thoughts but no. This is not the same as to dominate another."

Lux

Lux braces her palms against the edge of the desk again and slides back; this time, slowly enough to have some measure of stealth, especially now as he leans his weight on his right hand and -

This, István, is how the skirt works. There is a sash; and isn't it beautiful? Isn't it everything coolly radiant that a dove-grey occult-grey satin sash could be? Sure. The sash is tied into a bow; the bow is over her right hip. When he tugs the bow, it starts to come untied. Little tiny loop compared to big, big loop, and the whole satin waist loosens a little, begins to come undone. That's how the skirt works: satin waist cinched tight around and around (twice, for Lux) and then a bow and when it's untied the whole thing opens up.

Lux straightens again; catches István's left wrist with her right hand.

"Indeed?" she says, the gleam in her eyes malevolent now, though that's sublimated by: laughter. They've dropped from the ceiling, which she'd studied for a good few seconds, to look him in the eyes again. "I know! I meant why do you believe Auspex comes easily to those bloodlines it comes so easy to, old sport."

Old sport: savored.

"I'm comparing and contrasting, you see," she tells him, earnest with a show of demure in the downward cant of her head.

István

"Because all of the people in all of those clans who do excel in the natural senses are crazy," he says, "and without it they would die off so fast."

He thinks he's so funny maligning his own blood like that. As if that's the only thing he can find his clan to have in common with her clan. He who has intimated even if he has not outright confessed that he would leave the Camarilla if the Camarilla and the Tremere were not bound so tight as they are. No desire in him to join the degenerates but the anarchs he can get behind perhaps.

"The gathering of information is not so harmful as the forcing of another to do as you do say."

His left hand is tracing her ribs now. The fabric on the outfit's top does not do to his fingertips what the fabric of the skirt did. Different input from the articulation of the bones in her torso than the muscles of the thighs. He hasn't seen her bared as she has seen him bared and he hasn't a living male's hunger constant at the base of his belly. It isn't an impossible thing to converse and touch at the same time.

Still: her neck is bare. His eyes find it instead of her lips now and his hand traces up her midline to smooth over her collarbone as if he'd found something there.

"I am glad so that the Fiends are not among those who do learn to dominate others. What they do with what they know already is enough to, eh... give to me concern."

Lux

Lux did not intend to release István's left wrist. Who knows what he'll do next? But then he abandoned the bow and it caught her eye because hadn't her eye been downcast and demure and she cannot abide the imperfection. He reaches for her ribs as she slides further back; he finds and traces her ribcage when she is as far from the desk's edge as one can be without falling off the other side. This is because she wishes to slouch (it is a perilous and precarious thing, or looks it: how recklessly she leans) so she can fix the bow.

The bow needs to be untied and then re-wrapped re-cinched tight in order for her to do this and she's deft and quick. István's fingers tracing a line up between her breasts to splay against her collarbone and smooth there gets a reaction as his hands on her thighs did: this quickening of attention, the sublimation of a lick of hunger: there is no hunger (she is a monster), and her eyes are always just so dark and wide and intent.

All suggestion of malevoldence has vanished; but that might-look-troubled not-precisely-troubled something-less-easy-to-pi-down it's complicated enigma of an expression has returned.

"Who isn't concerned by what the Fiends do with what they know already?" Lux says, carelessly; it isn't the point. "They're assholes." There: a spark, surge of sudden and remembered fury; "They're jerks. Yes, jerks: the worst thing one can ever be; so much worse than a criminal or a tyrant. They are tyrants, though, aren't they?" Lux doesn't know a lot about Fiends.

There's another question, one which might be more to the point; it's on the tip of her tongue. But she withholds it for now.

István

"Mm..."

Ill omen that he has to stop and think before he speaks. That means she's wrong. Or he thinks she's wrong. Or he's thinking of how best to tell her she's wrong whether or not she is actually wrong. The creature is slouching so near to the desk it's a wonder she hasn't toppled off yet but István would catch her if he thought she was going to topple off.

Maybe. Possibly.

As he considers this his hand goes to the side of her throat. His thumb to the corner of her jaw.

"Long ago I think they were. They did own much land and they did keep to their castles in the forest but I do not think now that the young ones have this. Eh? A tyrant does need to have something over someone else if they do wish to hold them down so."

Both hands plant themselves on the desk now either side of her the flesh a pale shout against the blood-dark wood and if she's leaning back he's leaning over her. If they were on the bed he would be leaned heavy on her but they're barely touching if they're touching at all.

He looks at her lips as he poses his question. Doesn't look back up to her until it's laid there for her. It isn't hunger in the strictest sense of hunger but wanting hums under his skin all the same.

"This is why you say you won't command our kind so, when you do learn? You don't wish to be a tyrant."

Lux

"Do you believe," says Lux, as soft, listen close, as a whisper of some metal thing, wrapped in silk. Pauses; flicks her glance heavenward, again, as if there lies something worth seeing or listening to. Languid creature, and this isn't the question that was on the tip of her tongue before; that question stays in the wings, waiting its cue.

"Do you believe," again, and her mouth curves, "ma petite autruche! My darling cello - " and she grabs the lapels of his olive green blazer, and uses it to pull herself back to his edge of the desk, so that he's held between her knees, just so, " - that a tyrant needs his or her castles? His or her dirt, stamped with his or her name?"

"Of course I don't wish to be a tyrant." Her fingers clench into fists on his jacket then she releases it in order to brush dust (imaginary or real) from his shoulders. But is he still leaning? Then she does this all at an angle, what the fuck is gravity going to do about it: Lux is a vampire.

"I'd rather be a warty toad made out of the last dregs of the saddest bottle of gin ever drunk at the end of a black-out boozey night - "

" - but," she places her fingers against the side of his neck, as she is finding the right place to vary the pitch of whatever he says next just so and play this or that or this and that note. Minute adjustments. Lux isn't actually a cellist but she's dabbled. She runs the edge of her other hand across his ribs

swipe. Or maybe he's ticklish? Some vampires might be ticklish still.

Frown; a small frown. "They're not cattle, you know. I wish to be the personification of tyranny to no one. Hey, can you turn people into toads?"

Yes, she does smirk.

István

Strength in his spine that she can't feel in his arms and the Tremere pushes himself back to afford her the leverage to haul herself closer to the edge of the desk. He does not move his feet because he does not want to be far from her but he is not leaning quite so heavy when she begins her combat against gravity.

A hand leaves the desk to rest on her working shoulder. Fingers test the dress's strap. When she brushes at his jacket he turns his head towards her hand and she cannot tell if his lips part because he is about to speak or because he is about to bite at her hand. Slow movements. A flash of light against his teeth but aren't his teeth always white and sharp. They are not fangs yet. His eyes have not gone pupil-dark when he looks back at her.

They hood when she touches his neck. He doesn't shudder but she hasn't touched him there tonight. Air doesn't push through his vocal cords to make a sound but she can feel a low note of pleasure in his throat. An affirmative. Yes. Do this.

And then a smile at the swipe. No he is not ticklish. His heart does not beat beneath his breastbone. He is cool beneath his clothes.

They're not cattle. He smiles a conciliatory smile and she wants to know if he can turn people into toads.

István slides an arm around her lower back to hold her still. The hand upon her shoulder gone to the side of her face. He kisses her full on the mouth. Like that smirk will tide him over until blood wells.

Lux

He kisses her. She kisses him. They kiss, not Kiss. They can continue to kiss for as long as they'd like to kiss. They don't need air, although it is a pleasure to breathe and feel a kind-of breathlessness; something to counterbalance that wick of wanting which is really, which is always, only hunger. Lux enjoys playing at breathlessness; why not? Lux enjoys a lot of things, undead as she is; frozen-forever, eternity a moment chosen by somebody else. She leans back and back against his arm at first, the need for it to keep her still prescient on István's part, while her fingers apply pressure the side of his throat, play their way down to his shoulder again and the edge of his teeshirt (really). And then she decides to grip his coat again and press forward instead hold him tightly between her knees, and then she decides to bite him without drawing blood her teeth dull but still. An impulse she follows with a push: avaunt, temptor.

They're definitely not kissing then. Or they're no longer kissing. Or that's the end.

"Oh, I see," she says, drawling; the word catches in her throat, her voice having gone to smoke in a bottle, like that scent after you blow out a candle and the way it roils and feels like nothing at all but looks so nice to touch. "You think that you can get play Houdini and your greatest trick as an escapist is - " - a gesture, careless and cutting, meant to encompass his trick.

"Well it's not."

István

Teeth on his neck startle a sound out of him no pain because her teeth cannot puncture his flesh unless she really chomps down but the sound not so loud or wracked as when her teeth were fangs and she was taking pints and pints from him.

He did not come to her full up on the blood of kine but if she wished to take pints and pints from him tonight István would let her. Anything she asked of him István would do and yet she doesn't know this. No way for her to know this when she's asking him if he can transubstantiate living beings into smaller living beings.

They part and they part because she parts them and his eyes are dark-lit for his wanting of her. No idea how he can want of her when he doesn't know what he wants. To drink her up or sleep inside her bones. To never be far from her hand around his wrist or her fingers on the lapel of his jacket. Have hers be the knife that cuts his final night. He doesn't fucking know what he wants of her. That's part of the experiment.

His eyebrows raise and then furrow at the cascade of words stuttering one behind the other. Raise again when he unravels it.

"You did expect an answer, so?" he asks. Joking as he adopts a more languid posture stepping back towards her from the distance he'd staggered after she'd pushed him.

Nonchalant, nonchalant. Leaning on his left hand now that that arm is not around her waist. His right hand tries the sash again.

"Darling, I'm not a magician. No making toads of people." Surely she's rebuked the hand seeking to disrobe her. It goes to her knee again. "I did think I could make a toad a person once." He leans in closer. Kisses her neck. Can't he be sweet when he wants to be. Kiss on the corner of her jaw. Kiss just below her ear. "Not so."

Lux

The creature watches István come near again without blinking, though her gaze cuts briefly to the side (muse). Marks his shadow, marks the pattern on the carpet. Plush: it would probably feel good on her bare feet. The gaze cuts back (snicks, switch-blade un-latching just so to catch at light and make it flash) when he jokes. Lux can joke too; raise an eyebrow so precisely. He leans on his left hand and Lux covers that hand with her right - a light touch, an almost not there touch; consider the knots of his knuckles the bones of his fingers. But wait: his right hand is trying the sash again and her hand leaves his left where it is planted (solid [stolid]) on the dark bloody-coloured wood wood that glows with some bloody promise of a thing (always tell the truth, Washington says, or is it Lincoln? All those American folk heroes) and catches his wrist. Again. Rebuked.

He did manage to undo the bow again and as he leans in closer she's frowning downwards, sitting up and fixing it again. Stills, when his mouth touches her neck. Stays still, when his mouth finds her jaw. Her eyes shut when his mouth finds that spot just below her ear.

"István," she says, low, like his name is a suggestion; something that might be a good idea, but then again, might not. Unstills to finish, with a sharp snap of a gesture, re-tying the bow.

"Do you really," Lux braces herself against the desk again; perhaps she puts a hand on István's chest, prepared to push him away or pull him nearer. She has not yet decided; just as she has not yet decided if she's going to pull her legs up and go over the other side or push herself forward and force him that-a-way: she wants to stand. She's tired of the desk. (She's not, but she wants to stand anyway; to move.), "Do you really truly mean to tell me that the gathering of information is not so harmful as the forcing, etcetera?"

If he meets her eyes now, they're amused; lucent. Sublimated laughter, for all the question is serious. "I always expect an answer; and you cannot distract me. What about pumpkins?"

István

His lips are moving against the place where her ear becomes its own flesh when she decides to pull away from him. Blade-sharp thing that she is István does not yank himself away. Must be he wants her to slash him. Wants her to draw blood.

Irritant that he is he finds amusement in her having to stop what she's doing to retie the bow. A hand on his chest and his chest is just as cool as the rest of him but his eyes do not have that faraway locked look a corpse's would have. He's present. He wants her to pull and not push but she is a restless thing and he knows this. Knows she can be still and she does not always want to be still.

Who knows what he means to tell her or what he doesn't mean to tell her. So much of what he says he says just to get a reaction out of her. To distract her.

What about pumpkins.

"I do not trust them," he says. She wants to stand. Alright - he steps back. Left hand trails up her elbow up her triceps up the back of her neck. "I would never make a pumpkin a person."

Lux

He steps back; it's a tempting invitation to stand instead of slide across the desk and stand on the other side. Guess which option Lux chooses, after a second?

Standing at last, she fixes the layers of tulle so they fall over satin again like a fall of a suggestion of charcoal smudged storm-clouds but mourning but morning dove breast grey but fog grey rising up onto her toes to do so,

and she watches István, but doesn't interrupt him.

She just said she always expects an answer.

Expectation is at least half the fun, of course.

István

Alright. She's standing. Excellent. That doesn't mean he's going to answer her.

Maybe he doesn't understand the question or he knows she expects that he will answer any question that she poses to him and is testing the limits of his beholden state. She called him golden once. He tells her often enough he isn't a gentleman.

They know nothing about each other's lives. Their human lives the lives before their frozen states and István does not see the point in talking about them so he doesn't. Maybe forty years ago when it was nearer enough to her than anything else he had played at an interest in the harpy's childe's life. That was forty years ago.

István runs his hand back down the way it came. Ends at her hand and takes a hold of it. Last time he danced with her it was because he'd commanded her to dance and she had dragged him with her. Is he trying to dance with her now? He holds her hand in his and his other arm goes around her back hand rested in the small of it. But he's not moving. Not him or his feet. He doesn't hum.

"Kine do make pumpkins into people," he goes on. "When I do first come to Chicago, I see the faces and the wisping wills in them and I ask René why this is that Americans do put ghost-lights into their pumpkins and he say--" Here comes a Dr. Jacobs impersonation. "--How the fuck should I know? I am smoking a cigarette, leave me alone."

Lux

Most of her back is bare; not so low, though; not with the skirt still fastened. He feels tulle; he feels the satin sash, smooth and conspiratorial against the pad of this thumb, then his palm. He's holding her like he's waiting for the music to begin; waiting to be lead, when isn't he the one who's supposed to lead; poised in the moment before the strings. He's not her cello now; Lux regards him, steadily and curiously but doesn't yank her hand out of his and doesn't push back or spin out or push him or (yet) laugh. No; she doesn't laugh at all at his Dr. Jacobs impersonation. She listens intently, avidly, to his anecdote.

Then she replies, cupping his jaw in her hand; a caress which would move to his cheek and thence to his hair if not for the fact that he has shaved and that's new, so his jaw it is, then his chin, the edge of his mouth: "Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications."

Perhaps he has distracted her after all, for now.

István

Maybe not waiting. Maybe offering her the chance to lead if she would so desire to lead and when she does not when she sits still as the cello sits before the cellist István glances down at their feet and starts to dance at a tempo near enough to what he must think a waltz's tempo is. Not a Hungarian folk dance. He did spend nearly a century in Vienna.

He can talk and play at waltzing at the same time. Great success. It means that he can keep up this shameless whirling-dance of the Germans even with her hand on his face. The touch of her fingers to his skin is not dampened by blond hair tonight. As his eyes threaten to close István leans into the caress. Tightens his hand on hers and pulls her tighter to him.

All their years together and René has never convinced István to learn French. But René also has been telling him all their years together that they're in America, he needs to speak English.

So they dance for a few moments silent in the wake of her quotation. He wants to bite at her but he does not. He holds her close like this and their soles move across the carpet and his chest rises against hers just before he speaks.

"In the universe," the physicist says, and kisses her jaw, "in all of the things we know, we only have one absolute." Her temple now. "Everything ends. Eh? If I do say in one moment I think the force of one's will on another is more dangerous than the sharpening of one's senses... this is not an absolute. This is a thing I say in a moment when I am thinking of how I would kiss you before I would talk of things madmen and bone-sculptors do do with their nights. "

Lux

"So it's just a line?" Lux says - insouciant or disappointed, you decide, after a beat. Lux speaks the question against his neck: matter of fact; grazes his skin with her teeth because she wants to.

István has, by holding Lux so tightly against him, ruined the waltz's purity of form. Once, it was a scandalous dance; once, it was thought to be too near a thing, too close, mon Dieu, how is it possible, so indecent, where is the form? The form is to whirl: spin. Lux likes that kind of party; look at her fucking skirt. It's not just an invitation; it's a thing that wants to float.

Once it was a scandalous dance; intimate. Now, why, doesn't it just depend? He's ruined the purity of its form by holding her so close that she feels when his chest moves against hers in preparation of a word; she's been regarding him sidelong, her expression inscrutable, but her mouth slightly curved. Lets her head drop back when he kisses her jaw; there's an invitation in that, too. Half-closes her eyes when he kisses her temple, then begins to disengage. Everything ends.

So it's just a line? We're back to where we started. This is where we started. She disengages, but not without kisses the side of his throat and speaking against it; grazing his skin with her teeth and pulling away in what would be the same breath if she were breathing for anything but speech right now. Lux: she squeezes his arm like she's just had an idea, which she has.

"Sweet philosophe." Fond, that. "I'll bite." As she's backing away, toward the nightstand, her gaze amused. "What are the other three - four? - things that you trust?"

István

Once it was a scandalous dance. Something the nobility would sneak away to attend when their own balls grew too boring and with their sneaking they civilized it. Expectations now when one prepares to waltz and István does not know how to move his feet or his legs or his hips to bring the dance into a modern age but maybe he did once. Maybe he did once know how to take a woman's hand and waist and move her through a room laughing with the smell of ale and heated bodies on the air.

He knows to release her now when she ends the silent shuffling. He near-shudders when her teeth find his neck but don't find blood and he lets her drift to the bedside table with the ghost of the pressure of her hand on his arm.

Sweet philosophe, she calls him. István folds his hands behind his back and watches her. Absorbs the question and the want behind the question and glances at the curtains. Poor job closing them earlier. He steps across the room to adjust them now. Like he does not want to wait until the dawn is upon them to remember that the sun will seek to push through the dressings and end them.

"I trust quiet," he says. There. The curtains will let nothing in. He turns away from them and drifts towards the other side of the bed. "And darkness." There he stands his hands behind his back again and he considers her with his head at a slight cant because he gave her four last time so this is the last one and what would the last one be if it weren't something she could tug a thread and unravel.

"I trust you. Viol. There. Seven, yeah?"

Lux

The décor is not modern but there are modern amenities. By the desk they'd just been at there's another piece of furniture between two of the windows, drapes closed by István for privacy's sake or protection's sake or Lux doesn't know what sake, and atop that piece of furniture there's a flat-screen television set. The remote is on the nightstand's drawer and having found it Lux turns the television on. Mutes it.

István's on the other side of the bed; Lux's glance sweeps from the flat screen to him. She changes the channel, multitasking at its finest, to one of those channels in the thousands which is nothing but music, but whatever music is on is still muted.

Attentive.

He trusts quiet and darkness and her.

Lux absorbs this; her gaze does not flick away, but it does draw back tidal see the tide at night whoosh away but the sea's still there all dark and horizonless except for stars (and a certain insistance that it wouldn't be so bad, drowning; it wouldn't be so bad, being drawn in, and it's not like there's a choice anyway, because there's a force to that pull), if there are stars.

"I don't think any of those things are very trustworthy," she tells him frankly, and maybe she is going to laugh.

István

The muscles around his mouth tighten as he suppresses the urge to smile at the threat of laughter he hears in her voice. Though he lets his eyebrows loft some she has to look in his eyes to see the Tremere finds this amusing. How is she ever going to trust anything that comes out of his mouth when half of what he says is something he said just to see how she would react.

"Of course you don't think so," he says. The television is silent and nothing moves on the screen and so he does not attend to it. "You say to me you would not command another of our kind, either. My trust is not the same as your trust. Eh?"

Lux

"Can you guess what I do think?"

István

"Ah, love, I never can guess what you do think."

Lies. He guesses all the time. István squints one eye at her like that will help him see her better and then sits himself down on the edge of his side of the mattress. The bed is high up and a woman of average height would have to boost herself to sprawl upon it. István is tall but he's not so tall as to call her 'little one' anymore. He hasn't called her that since she rebuked him the night her mortal refused to answer his phone.

"You did say to me once you do not trust mathematics. Very funny, this."

Lux

Unmute. Some classical music station which Lux doesn't want. She clicks forward and gets rock. Clicks forward again and gets something that's more the ticket: more swank and slink and longing, a crackling phonograph. She turns the music down very low, because after all, they don't need it to be loud to hear it, and then tosses the remote on the bed, which she does not sprawl on at this time. There's a plush bench in the same striped autumnal colours (wealthy colors) as the rest of the room, excepting the bed, which is cream white. Having abandoned the remote, she kneels on the bench; climbs across it so she is on István's side of the bed, then rests her elbow on the mattress's corner. Her arms are graceful when she stretches them out, and she is a sprawl of a long-limbed thing, and she is laughing at him now.

"But darlingest boy, golden creature, there was a condition to my mistrust; I only mistrust mathematics if they're inconvenient to me, huh? I think everybody should employ that condition, mathematically. So long, poverty." So flippant; she is not remotely taking herself seriously, and there's a smirk in her voice or the suggestion of one on her mouth which invites mockery. She isn't self-mocking. "I'll tell you what I think."

About poverty? Mathematics?

"I think you're lying."

Oh.

"If you trust me, quiet, and darkness, you'd prove it, wouldn't you? Turn off the lights, mute the music, and show me something trusty."

It's a challenge, but one taken about as seriously as the 'everybody should interpret math according to their own convenience' solution to world poverty.

István

As she leaves the remote lain and takes up her place at the edge of the mattress the fair creature gates his fingers across his midsection. Crosses one ankle over the other and she can see they're bare where the hem of his pants don't drape over the tongues of his loafers. He hasn't any more need for socks than he has for undershirts. It isn't as if his blisters won't heal so soon as they form.

The soles of them have barely touched the pavement. Their thread is factory-new. They don't fidget to keep time with the bluesy music come from the television.

Hasn't she got it all figured out. Economics, you're keeping people in poverty. Begone.

She thinks he's lying. He flicks his eyebrows. Now why on earth would he do that when he knows she's going to pose another question. This one sounds rhetorical. If he doesn't act then he's proving her right. Proving himself a liar. He appreciates paradoxes but he would also jump out the fucking window if she asked him to.

When he sits up it's slowly. His eyes intent upon her even as he's guiding his feet down to the carpet. Even if she ends up leaving he isn't going anywhere else tonight. István steps out of his loafers one two and nudges them under the bed. Two lights burn in the place.

As he traipses from the bed to the door he picks up the remote. Gives it a curious examination cursory and without tactile exploration. He'd watched her use it but he does not himself use it. He walks it over to the television and pushes the biggest button to turn off the thing. Sets the controller down atop the stand responsible for the thing.

Turns off the light on the desk. Crosses to the door and turns off the last glowing lamp.

Quiet. Darkness. He can still hear and see her in spite of it.

István turns from the corridor light straining beneath the door and locks his hands behind his back and walks towards her as if he has all the time in the world.

Lux

Lux follows István's progress with the barest minimum of movement necessary to do the deed. Her elbow stays on the mattress's corner; her knees stay on the plush and elegant (Noueau) bench, so really it's just a turn of her head; track him to the television, mark the remote's new position; turn her head again in order to track him as he passes by the mirror, by a recliner, across the carpet which is indeed soft and also plush it's a good room blue-blood approved to the corridor light, though she has to look over her other shoulder to do so.

Prop her chin up on the knuckles of one fist. Elbow sinks deeper into the mattress but not so deep because it's notuncomfortably soft. The throw which has been, get ready for it, thrown across the end of the bed has tassles, and one's in danger of tickling her and being pushed to the side, but for now she resists any urge to do away with it. She's not about to interrupt a show.

It's quiet now and dark enough; she doesn't find either of those things trustworthy.

István

Quiet and dark are constants at least. A creature who adapts to quick and dark is better able to react when something comes into the quiet or comes into the dark. A creature who can move in quiet and dark without being scene is a creature who can live a long time and while István is not a creature inclined to stealth he has lasted this long.

Hardly leaves his haven though. Hardly speaks English for as long as he's been in this country. Maybe the only things he trusts are natural laws and these constants.

Even with the room dark as it is Lux can see the shape of him can make out the impression of his outfit can see he still has his hands locked as he paces barefoot towards her. Hard to tell if he's amused or amorous or both but she can read a possible future in his eyes. He's studying her.

Trusty sounds like an imaginary word to him.

"The gathering of the knowledge on its own is not so dangerous as the forcing of one's will on another," he says, "but what one does with the knowledge, eh? You are right to ask for clearness. To teach one to force one's will, this is both."

Lux

Even with the room dark as it is white jeans will get you attention; will glow like a ghost. The Brown Palace Hotel is probably as haunted as The Oxford Hotel. She'd ask Nathan, but she doesn't know how to measure levels of haunted, and what would she do with it anyway? Supposedly the Discipline of Auspex might allow her to see or to feel spectres and shades; she is still working on it; so wrapped up in the sensuous world it has revealed (here all this time) that its more visionary uses- well she's yet to get drunk on those.

Even with the room dark as it is Lux is a pale thing, a suggestion of shape, twilit silver screen sort've thing; skirt, naked back, shoulder, sweep of dark hair, suggestion of darkness around the eyes, under the dark eyelashes, around the dark mouth; suggestion of darkness along the contours, clenched in the fist she's resting her chin on; shadow along her throat, but that would be the sweep of her hair.

"So what," she says, because game. "Your will; that's the trusty something you're going to show me?" He's already told her that he can't (?) use Dominate on her tonight; she widens her eyes at him. "All right, what is your will? Reveal, sweet - "

A beat. Her mouth snicks up; "Would you dislike being called a magician?"

István

Instead of trying to find room on the bench beside her István sits at the end of the bed so that he can face her. Keeps his legs angled so that he has to prop himself up on a hand. She can see the shape of it stark against the white duvet. His skin is pale in death but not bone-white like this.

"A magician is a person who does wear funny clothes and performs tricks for audiences, no?" he asks.

He shifts on the mattress so he isn't quite so awkward in his posturing. Lounges facing her. Reaches out a hand to touch her face in the dark. No fumbling as a human would fumble for want of a light because he has no want of a light. Only her.

"I do not dislike more than I dislike you calling me a strange bird. How I can dislike something that is not true, eh? Come here."

Lux

Lux studies him; the shape he makes, long, across the end of the bed when he lounges, and when his fingers touch her face - why, he can feel the faint smile as well as see it. Perhaps feel it better than he can see it, becaues it's faint; a shadow of; an echo of. If he touches her brow, she lowers her head and closes her eyes; if he touches her cheek, her lashes sink but she doesn't close her eyes; if he touches her cheek or her jaw or both, she turns her head to the side in order to catch his fingers between her teeth and hold them. The look in her eyes is --

well, isn't it just awfully dark?

"Come where? I am here;" a smirk, "I thought you had a care for the bed and its injuries."

Beat; premonition of laughter. Presentiment of it; dangerous glint of it, gleam of it. He think he's not a strange bird? That's cute. Anyway, she straightens up so she's still on the bench at the bed's foot but she's not leaning against the mattress any longer, and where she's going from there --

István

Of course he doesn't just rest his hand there and leave it rest there. Open door as that smile is he reads the landmarks of her face not as one blind in the dark but as one appreciating. Praising her silent as he claims to trust the silent and aren't they both talking less now that the lights are off anyway.

Not much breath from either of them but the rustling of the fabric and the movement of their limbs against the furniture is loud enough. They can hear everything. This corridor is private. They're hundreds of feet above the pavement and the street run under the window. It's getting late. Everything without is quiet compared to noonday when they with both be dead asleep.

His eyes shut with her teeth on his fingers. Strange pleasure though they aren't fangs. When he opens them again he finds her smirking.

"I had," he says of the care for the bed. She would hurt it with those knives. István does not rise when she does. Just lounges there assured of his space on the bed and her here in the room and he watches her do whatever it is she intends to do.

Stab him maybe. He doesn't know what she intends to do. He stays where he is.

Lux

-- nowhere yet; mysteries. Lux reaches down to take his hand from the mattress's edge to the sash of her skirt and the satin bow which feels like cold moonlight might feel of it were solid.

Figure that one out, scientist.

István

Interesting.

One of István's eyes squints. Not the same one that squinted at her before. Not an obvious squint. He considers the placement of his hand upon the sash and considers her face and then he pushes himself up onto his elbow so he could cup his chin in the heel of his other hand if he chose to.

Doesn't sit up as he does this: runs his fingers over the edge of the satin ribbon to feel if it changes the way that the skirt changes and reads the tension in the thing that says it's a bow wrapped around and round and he eases it out of its bow slow now instead of tugging it fast like a schoolboy about to run off soon as it's undone.

If Lux does not stop him István undoes the sash.

Lux

Lux doesn't stop him. Her lashes are low; her gaze, shadowed thrice-over. The bow slips into shapelessness and freedom and, no longer tied, the sash loosens, loosens, and the waist of the skirt gives and slips down over Lux's hips. She pushes it down with a (precise) sweep of a gesture, and climbs out of the skirt and onto István's bed or onto István if there's more István than there is bed at hand. Without the skirt, her top is revealed to be long enough to fall over her hips, to brush against the upper regions of her thighs, though not long enough for anything approaching modesty in public. The knives are still there; dark against creamy skin. For her next trick, she'll put his hand on the knife holster and raise an eyebrow.

István

No stirrings flush his skin or force his breath to come faster. He does not anticipate anything because he does not have that chronic itch that mortal men have. Doesn't hope for carnal knowledge of her and yet he does enjoy the feel of her body against his. She knows he finds a novelty each time he touches her because they have written to each other all these decades but they haven't sat up night beyond night caressing each other.

She climbs out of the skirt and he sees her legs bare and he trusts the darkness because it means the sun will not scorch them. Her legs bare and she climbs up onto the mattress and he's so near the end of the bed he has to roll onto his back when Lux straddles him.

Quiet between them and that amusement is gone from his face. Studious now. This is new for him. He isn't frowning even as he takes up the hem of her top to see - what, if she has knives strapped beneath it. One of his hands stays where it is and the other goes to the holster and he answers her raised brow with one of his own.

That metal bangle of hers didn't thwart him hidden as the clasp was. Moment of wordless jest over he takes his other hand off of her hem and undoes the holster slow as he undid the sash. Does not just toss it off the bed but gives the thing to her. Frees up his hands to lay them on her thighs.

Fangs don't grow. His body is dead beneath her. His palms are still cool. There are no less than four places he could bite her right now to drink and yet he does not bite her.

Lux

[DEX + ATH.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )

Lux

[Lucky.]

Lux

[+1?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN8 (7) ( fail )

Lux

He has no radiant warmth for her to cleave to or to seek to steal. He isn't going to feel her fangs sinking into his throat for all she, unstudied and impulsive but no less sure of her actions for all that, has tonight caught his fingers between her teeth, grazed his skin in an expression of - affection or desire or don't you want or isn't it nice to want or I want. He has no heartbeat to sound against her skin like a dinner bell no pulse to insist her hunger attend to business and yet she still finds it enjoyable to be like this with István. To see him on his back and to - and see, the spare sweep of her eyes is shadowed (thrice over again) by reverie which is quite deliberate in the moment but was not inentioned until the moment began - consider the planes of his face and how the shadows rest there-upon. To rest her weight on him or press it against, her hips aslant and cocked and it is as pleasant in the moment to lean over someone as it is to have someone lean over one. Lux is full of anticipation - cultivates it because anticipation whetts each moment and she is a creature who, at least pretends, is given to the sensual. Tonight she has not unbuttoned his blazer or stripped him of his outer layer even if he is wearing a teeshirt beneath and that would be amusing to see.

He can barely feel the pressure of her fingers against his side through his clothes but that's the point. There appear to be no knives under her shirt and her underthings are as pretty and tactile as one would expect from a Toreador who likes good clothes and whatever flash of skin he sees is unmarred because when her sire came for her the moment was (it seems) chosen well. She doesn't help him with the thigh-holster, but lofts her chin and slants her gaze downward to watch with attention as he undoes it and then looks back at his face when he hands her the thing instead of tossing it aside.

It's quiet. It's dark. He's supposed to show her a trusty thing (prove that he trusts her - it's an impossible challenge and so nothing but a game because games are just ways to delay the denouement of impossibility).

All right. Maybe she will stab him. The sharp cant of her head is inquiring, and a strand of hair falls across her eyes like a punctuation. She discards the holster but keeps the knife (it makes a small sound as it's pulled from the sheath: praticed) and dangles it carelessly over István's head. No. First she flips it up and over; catches it, just barely, by the hilt, and then she dangles it carelessly over István's head. His eye, maybe. Maybe this isn't what he meant? Lux crinkles her nose; perhaps he can read her intentions in the tension of her body.

István

Even a creature as removed from the whole of everything knows enough to state with certainty that one cannot conjure up trust. Well - alright, semantics again. One can certainly use the blood and the power of persuasion and the unholy magic that their lot possess to force others to feel trust for them. He'd locked himself into a state of selfless trust for this creature straddling him. She thinks he isn't quite so far gone. That's just as well. She can keep right on thinking that.

But Lux is not enthralled to him and she will never be enthralled to him and he would not have her be enthralled to him wind-free being that she is. They settle on the bed and it isn't as if an angel has climbed atop his hips but István doesn't look at her so soft when they're sat beside each other. Hadn't looked at her so soft when he has held himself over her and rested his weight on her and moved as if he sought to fuse their flesh.

The dark does nothing to hide the tenderness in his expression. He hands to her her knife holster and then he rests his hands on his hips and as Lux debates what she's going to do with it the Tremere runs his hands up her thighs and under her top.

What the hell is she wearing. He furrows his brow in thought and tests the band of her underthings.

And then there's a knife over his head.

He stops abrupt with the flash of it catching the ignorable light from the corridor. Soft snap as he releases the band and slides his hands up higher. So she wants to make a game of this. He's supposed to show her he trusts her when there is no way to really show such a thing. So she's dangling a blade above his eye. That won't kill him but the tenderness in his gaze sublimates into something else.

It'll hurt like hell if she drops it and he may tear apart the room. But it won't kill him. So he keeps his head still. His eyes on her face instead of on the blade.

He starts to peel her top off of her.

Lux

Lux is not a sadist.

They say that the antitribu of her clan so refine their appetite for cruelty that they become addicted to it as her clanmates are addicted to beauty. Lux can be quite cruel but she has no appetite for it -- when she is compelled by hatred to do a thing, her inclination for revenge slants to the poetic and the Byzantine. But Lux is not a sadist: as lovely and neat and sharp a line as she might carve from István's eye down his cheek could be; as appealing as the well of blood before the line healed would be, the smell of it and the sight of it, the languor of it and the drip of it; as appealing as whatever surge of reaction he might have or not have is to her, the idea of him suddenly doing any thing -

- well. Lux does not finding the prospect of actually giving István physical pain appealing and does not find the idea of ruining his eye and watching it re-knit (or not) attractive. István lets the band of what in the hell she is wearing snap against her and he slides his hands up higher and her mouth curves, an echo, responsive. He can feel her ribs expand as she takes a deliberate breath; usually when somebody's feeling her up, she's about to eat them, and so there are certain instincts (liar).

His hands slide down and he takes up the edge of her top and she, with precision, lets the careless dangle of the knife above his eye become more careful, brings the point so it is just above his pupil, and her lips are parted in rapt concentration: do you see? She wants to see what his eye does. He's pulling up her top and she doesn't seem to notice unless it spoils the steadiness of her hand and it's not doing that yet.

Pause; because of course. Is this trust? This isn't trust. This might be a little trust; probably it's also arrogance. Lux tosses the knife to the side, and turns her head to look at it with interest - a certain readied alertness in the line of her, feigned, because oh dear gosh what of the poor bed did the knife hurt it; her profile is sharp and fine and it would probably be a good moment to finish taking her top off, just yank it over her shoulders and head, mess up her hair.

After a beat, her eyes snick back to István's face.

István

Not until she chucks aside the knife does relief come to István.

Pain and pleasure share pathways in the brain but István is as much a stranger to pain as he is to pleasure he being a creature who has nourished his brain on expanding his knowledge and not on testing the limits of his flesh. He has a knowledge of anatomy and knows how and where to bring about both pain and pleasure but he does not enjoy torturing other creatures any more than he enjoys others torturing him.

The danger of the bond then: if Lux had wished to carve him up he would have let her and he may very well have enjoyed it. May have learned to crave it. A reason why ghouls do not cast off their shackles even when those shackles attach them to the most cruel of domitors.

Lux may not wish to shackle anyone let alone a warlock but wouldn't that be a way of proving his trust.

The tank top slinks up her ribs over her breasts over her shoulders and he guides it down her arms with care born of appreciating her form. With knowing he does not have to rush. The only urge he feels is the urge to quell an eternal hunger. To run his fingers through her hair when the disrobing musses it.

A hand at the back of her neck draws her down to him. If she lets him draw her he guides her mouth to his. Locks her to him. Runs his other hand down her bare back with his cold hand. He does not leech heat from her. She has little to give him and their bodies don't work like that.

As he touches her Lux feels a blood-gifted warmth come to him. He stirs beneath her. Makes a startled noise deep in his throat when the sharpness of his senses couples with the life in his flesh but only renews his kneading of her. The kiss deepens.

He's awful glad she didn't stab him.

Lux

Lux does let him draw her down for a kiss just as she let him undress her. Nudity, or near nudity, has never meant much to her except a certain pleasure in the feel of air on her naked skin. Lux has an artist's interest in the body, even her own, when she doesn't have a monster's hunger for it, a connoisseur of beauty's unsatisfied hunger: do you see? It's always hunger.

Her hands touch the mattress on either side of his head, then slide up and across the duvet, a whisper of sound, circle his head in a pale and cool halo. Lux is a lovely thing, animated, animate; a lovely thing who laughs against his mouth when he makes that startled noise, though her laugh disappears into a thread of smoke, sublimated, see, once she registers his sudden warmth even as he's seeking to deepen that kiss and her back is beginning to curve because though she's still kissing his mouth she is also poised between drawing away and sinking into.

So Lux turns her head to the side suddenly, sharply; gazes at - let's say her skirt on the bench. Her hair's probably in István's face or sliding along his shoulder when pulls her left hand from the mattress in order to rake it back and away. His hand might still be on the back of his neck; she isn't yet pulling back, just turning her head, and now there is a certain radiant warmth to suck from him, and does he feel different now that he's pretending.

How long until she's going to ask him a question.

Not very long at all now.

István

When István chooses to force blood into his tissue it is only so he will not frighten humans with his appearance. So that when he takes a pen from their hand or gives to them a cup of coffee they will not notice and draw away from the death-cold in his fingertips. Flirting with humans in dim-lit bars isn't an occasion for which he makes the sacrifice. There is a reason why he wears suits out in public. The cold of his chest and arms won't leech through the fabric when he wears so many layers.

Lux can feel when the corpse beneath her adopts a liveliness. He is not overwhelmed but kissing her and touching her and having her sit astride him are all different sensations now. That laugh against his mouth provokes a smile. Her hair whispering across his shoulder and face tickle at him.

While her face is turned away from him István traces his fingers across the small of her back. Reads the articulations of her spine through the skin. He exhales slow into her ear and the breath isn't like a draft from a mausoleum door. It's warm.

He must be able to sense the question's coming. He's not stupid.

The hand that had been holding the back of her neck trails down to trace the side of her throat.

Lux

Quiet and darkness, darkness and quiet; are these really things to trust? Quiet and darkness in the hotel room, but wasn't it the ambient gleam from corridor's light that told him there was a knife? His fingers across the small of her back has her arching her back arching herself into István so his blazer scratches across her skin and she is rapt-up in the attention such a thing deserves; she does it slow, though, to enjoy the feel of the gesture, to make it sweet. But she keeps her head turned; doesn't shiver at his breath on her ear, doesn't give any outward sign that it is a pleasure. His fingers tracing her throat don't cause her to turn back, but she does rather think it's time for a new position, so she slides down and lowers herself (drapes herself) so that she is lying (lounging, a certain irreverent lift of an eyebrow) atop him and she can fold her hands across his chest just beneath his collarbone and rest her chin on them.

"Do you," her voice comes out low; a clot-of-a-thing, like it doesn't remember how to be words or want to be words, and she doesn't need to clear it but she does wait a second until her articulation is clearer, "feel as if you've worn trust like a badge, pretty creature, that you've won the game," her eyes flick toward the knife, back, "and proven its existence? Are you quite satisfied?"

István

As she slides his fingers drift up the side of her face and into her hair and when Lux settles herself down upon his chest which does not boast a beating heart but no longer feels as a husk lain in a coffin István contents himself with raking slow rows through the Toreador's mane.

He tucks the other arm behind his head to see her better with her low like this. Adjusts the way his knees lie to make room for her.

"What," he asks and he never has breath in his voice but this is the first time he has ever sounded breathless, "because I did put down the light and not move for you not to drop the dagger into my eye? This is trusty to you?" He smoothes her brow with his thumb. "Ach, my love. I do not think I did prove to you a thing. You possess standards higher than this, no?"

Lux

"So you are not quite satisfied?"

He should thank her hands for keeping her chin from digging its point into him; that would probably be uncomfortable. Her eyes dredge up something that approaches amusement, but of course her gaze is still thrice shadowed.

István

"Eh..."

A sharpness to the noise that sounds a note of contemplation. He would thank her hands if he could. If he thought the stab of her chin into his bone would be unpleasant. Maybe she's amused. This one has joked with her up until the moment that his fangs have plunged into her neck before.

In general he is satisfied. Brooding angst and immortality did not come for him at once. Dark night after dark night is not a curse for him.

Still stroking her brow: "If you were satisfied with the trustiness, you would not ask me this. How I can be satisfied when you are not satisfied? Hmm?"

Lux

"Easily, I imagine," Lux says, with the sudden kissing curl of a grin; she slides off him entirely now, so that she is on his side. Not bench-ward, but mattress-ward. "As easily as a drunk finds a bar in a new city," she expands, helpfully, "As easily as the dead sleep during the day. As easily as - "

Lux keeps one arm flung across István's ribs. " - what's another easy thing, dearest boy?"

István

"I will not give to you an easy thing," he says.

Hah. Take that.

With her lain on the bed beside him he has a different view of her near-nude form and his hand can touch flesh he has not seen even in the darkness before. Without the light he has to trust his fingertips to read reactions in her bare flesh but that's the point of darkness. Sight can betray a creature just as easy as anything else Lux has named. If she had dropped a knife in his eye his sight would be half as much use to him.

"That will make you think to yourself, Ah, he does agree with me, that it is easy for István to be satisfied when I am not! And this is not true."

Lux

"But Ist, my pretty little scrap of poetry, sweet," (hunger), "blue-eyed boy," so she murmurs against his side. "Don't you know, I think it is true already."

Lux props herself up on her elbow, inches up so she is looking down at István, more or less, and reaches for his hand. If he gives it to her, she places it on her breast, and then leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth, from thence to the side of his jaw, the patch of skin just beneath his ear: lingeringly.

If he doesn't give it to her, she doesn't do those things, but looks at him without blinking, weighing some impulse against another impulse, her lashes swept low.

"You should hand me my top; that's not too easy, is it?"

István

Of course he gives her his hand.

Once placed he does not leave it lie motionless but touches her with an academic's restrained interest. The touch is not clinical. He does not think of her as only a body. He wants his hands on her to feel like a lover's caress and not the manipulations of a scientist.

Does he draw a breath in when she kisses those tender places where no one ever kisses him? She's lain against his side. She lifts some when he draws a breath in.

She asks for her top and asks if it's not too easy and that breath comes back out in a shot of laughter.

"It is not," he says. Hand still on her breast. "Tell me to, and I will hand you."

Lux

The creature doesn't verbalize a 'no,' but a 'no' is clearly an unspoken answer to that suggestion.

Unspoken because instead: touch of her nose against his throat when she nuzzles him - gently; tenderly, even - isn't the monster good at playing this game? Isn't the sensualist adept at indulging her senses? Can't he feel the soft sweep of her lashes against his ear when she blinks?

See, she kisses him again on his throat, but lightly enough that she is barely letting herself touch him, barely allowing him to feel it; she might as well be a thought as a real flesh and blood (demon) creature beside him. A nightmare: but so lovely; so contained in her energy.

Kisses her way down to his collar, to the edge of his shirt which she pulls away so she can place another lingering kiss on his skin, has pulled herself up again like any classic picture of a vampiress or a lamia, so that she is leaning over István and her hair is falling over her shoulders and into his face and -

- no. She's not going to tell him to. She told him he should. He wicked himself into warmth so she's going to steal it by touching him and letting him touch her and pushing herself into his touch and not-quite touching him because she likes to draw desire out and up and watch it strain and they don't feel desire like human beings because they're dead, they're frozen, they don't have any of that, but it doesn't matter. There's still a wanting, and Lux is good at wanting, and that can go on for a good long while. Minutes, at least, until -

"But István," like the continuation of a thread of conversation. "I already told you to show me something trusty, and it seems you think I'm still waiting for that."

Where did her top go? She reaches for it now; its over there by the pillows and the knife.

István

"Mm."

He takes her wrist to stop her. Not like iron so she cannot loose herself if she wants to but he could make his grip like iron. Like the oldest pillar outside the oldest gate. Something that could withstand battering rams and gunfire and atomic hellfire. He is still flesh but he can survive everything but sunlight.

Their existence is a curse and a blight but he does not see it this way.

"It does seem this way so, yes."

He wants her lain beside him again. Will put her on her back and plant a hand and its arm beside and over her if she will not fight him. If she will not fight him he parts her thighs again still fully clothed the buckle of his belt cool against her belly.

He kisses her on the mouth then. Pulls back with his fingers in her hair to find her eyes.

"My starlight: I would drink from you tonight. I would drink from you before you did ask me what I did trust. But now you ask, and now it is a thing. But I would not drink from you just to prove to you a thing. What would that show you?" He takes his fingers from her hair to trace her jawline. Pause over the place that would throb with a pulse if she willed it to. "That you are a fool, darling boy. Fine. So I am a fool. Let me be a fool because I love you, not because I wish to prove this to you."

Lux

[Don't freak out, Lux.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

István

[perc + empathy: WHY YOU FREAKING OUT]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Lux

So:

Lux is on her back. Hadn't fought, any resistance had been for resistance's sake; because her instinct is to rebel, not to accept; but she'd accepted, allowed herself to be stopped then rolled onto her back; parted her thighs when István's knee or second hand made the polite request and allowed him to lie between, even though the belt buckle has edges against her belly; is cold. No colder than he usually is and she doesn't mind that.

So: Lux is on her back, and her left knee is up, her hand on István's forearm - the one he uses to brace himself. Her mouth - well; it's a compelling shape in the dark just after his has left it.

My starlight, he says, I would drink from you tonight;

that has her eyes going wide and watchful and dark and dark and dark and her body still beneath him and a lick of tension in her shoulders. Her eyes are wide with a visceral reaction - a thoughtless and thoughtful alarm; a confusion of impulses which she leashes. They are difficult to read, those impulses, just because they were so confused and so many, and her ribs expand beneath them because she draws in a breath.

He can feel, in the way she looks at him, how angry she is; angry at herself for wanting to feel his teeth and angry at him - he can hear it in her voice. Lux's fingers did not tighten on his wrist and lay there still, as if she is not angry. He can see in the way her gaze rakes from his eyes across his face to the shadow of his collarbone past to where his body presses against hers then back up to his mouth and then his eyes that she is considering something.

"Tell me, what do you think you're going to gain by this?"

István

It would be easier if she would grow so angry with herself or with him or with the power of the blood to tie the two of them together that she would push István off of her. If she didn't want his teeth on her more than she wanted her freedom. Even if she never drinks from him again it is an imposition and a burden to have another enslaved as he just told her he would enslave himself. A damnation.

And he is a warlock besides. Caine only knows what he could do bound to her like this and Lux doesn't believe in Caine or his dead-dreaming dormancy or Gehenna. István hasn't ruled out Gehenna as the cause of all this madness. The early rising and the blood bubbling up and the pregnant corpse.

Must be Gehenna for him to want to do this to himself.

She hasn't pushed him off of her. His fingers are still in her hair. Gravity is yanking at his and the darkness has taken away the places where shadow falls across his face because all it is is shadow and his body was young when Death came for him but his mind has not been young in a long time. If either of them should know better it should be him and yet he'd fingered his own clan as one of the ones who find it easy to become tyrants.

So what does he think he'll gain.

"A fourth drink," he says. Jesus Christ István. Before she can hit him for joking: "Chains, darling, so long as you do live and I do see and feed from you. The love turning to hate if you abuse this and I do not have the strength to resist you. Torment I cannot imagine, if you no longer do live. The threat of, eh, implicating you if Vienna does learn of this and does suspect I am acting as a spy for the Anarch Movement and they do decide to torture me instead of kill me." A drifting in his gaze. "Knowing that I did only pass fifty-and-one-hundred years without loving another so that none of that matters."

If she is not so angry that she would knock aside his hand he touches her face now.

"Say no, and I will not do this thing. But my gem, I do trust you. I do trust this: if it is a mistake, if you cannot rise each night knowing I did do this thing, it will end. Eh? Everything does end."

Lux

No. Lux hasn't yet pushed him from her. Lux hasn't yet moved beneath him, not since he said he wanted to drink from her tonight and a third time and bind himself, excepting when her ribcage expanded because she stole a breath and held it. The undead creature watches him without blinking, still wide eyed but the expression in her eyes gone all to quicksilver; which is to say, quick as a star fallen from heaven, fleet, see, ephemeral; which is to say, potentially poisonous, something to muse madness along; which is to say her eyes in this uncertain light are such a darkness clotted silver, the green of them lying beneath a patina of lustre; such intentness, such absolute fixation. Watch how they narrow when she mentions Vienna and the Anarch Movement. Watch how her mouth compresses afterward.

None of that matters, he says, and Lux flicks her gaze away and turns her head; begins to, then decides not to, looks back at his face and that's when her fingers leave off playing at being a loose bracelet of his wrist; graze the back of his hand and the shape of his fingers before she presses her palm into her forehead, grinds it on her third eye.

"What the Hell is that supposed to mean? 'It will end'? Doesn't it bother you, knowing that you're - "

"Don't you - "

"Look. You said you wanted me to undo you, unlace and unbutton etcetera, didn't you? What would good little István, saint of scientists say, rational-ish foolish creature that he is, write to his just abso-lute-liest delightful-iest penpal Lux if she wrote him about you?"

István

This creature allowed her to believe for decades that he was Ventrue. Felt no offense when she considered the possibility of his being Malkavian either. It wasn't as if he lied about his clan but omission is as much a form of lying as anything else. She would not have trusted him if she had known what he was.

He thinks she trusts him about as far as she can throw him now. István would not trust her if she trusted him any more.

If good little István ever did exist as anything other than a fabrication Lux can rest assured that he isn't lain between her legs right now. His belt buckle loses its chill as it leeches heat from the space between their bodies. István is still as warm as one of the undead can be warm.

In the dark she can glean whatever she'd care to glean from the sadness tinging his smile just before he leans down to kiss her again. He feels the urge to rest his hips heavier on her and so he does. Knowing she will accuse him of trying to escape questioning by distracting her as he does István still trails his hand slow from her face down down down her torso to where her hip bends.

She knows damned well what he would write. Can imagine it on the page before her in his dignified immigrant's cursive if she lets herself. Can hear it in his imperfect voice.

Dearest Viol,

Though I have no doubt you know this to be true already, I must remind you of the warlock's capacity for deception. They speak in riddles when dealing with outsiders, riddles being the safest language they know. Don't tell me you trust this creature or I'll have to insist upon your having your head examined.

Lux

[But maybe what I care to glean is halped by EMPATHY.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Lux

Lux doesn't say a thing for what probably feels like a long time, even for a pair of immortal (conditionally so) creatures. Her palm is still on her forehead; even when he kisses her again, her palm stays on her forehead, and her response is absent and inattentive but it is a response. That absence, that inattention, doesn't match the look in her eyes at all, which stays one of fixation: deliberate and pensive and, alas even, broody, because that's what quicksilver does a pair of eyes.

The point is she doesn't say a thing for a very long time and she drops her hand so it's against the mattress above her head instead of on her forehead and she watches István and says nothing.

Until: with an imperious tilt of her head.

"If you drink from me tonight," and he's already bloodbound, but she doesn't know it. "If I let you. I want you to tell me now, before you're -- " Her voice wavers; doesn't she play the scene perfectly? Toreador. Live their drama. " - I want you to tell me now," a note of urgency, "unless you don't wish to - whether or not you thought of this before you came to Denver. Whether or not you do believe libertas is essential to our - to our being - and whether or not - do you think yourself a better canary than ostrich or raven?"

István

The Tremere has no idea what it is she's wearing. His experience with underclothes is not and has never been extensive. All he knows is that Lux lies still and silent beneath him and she submits to his kissing her. That she hasn't pushed him off of her yet even as she lies with her wrist to her forehead like a woman swooned away from the conversation. If she did not wish to bother with it anymore she would be gone from it.

So István kisses her. He puts his weight down on his elbow instead of holding himself up over her. He slides his hand beneath the band of this lace nonsense she calls underwear and pushes it off of her hips. Has lean more of his weight on his elbow to free the fabric from her legs and she still hasn't spoken.

She drops her hand. He has no light to see what it is he's doing but his hand feels its way up up up the inside of her leg. Cool air around them neither having touched the thermostat and the belt buckle leaves her belly just before his fingers find her.

Lux tilts her head. István cants his.

If. If. I. Whether.

He glances down once because he cannot see what he's doing but it doesn't really matter if he can see or not. His senses of touch and sound still serve him and better. Could have been a pianist or a surgeon in life with his brain but he chose to be a scientist instead.

"I have no use for carrion," he says, "and you've heard me sing. Why is it you try to make a bird of me, so? Hmm? Humans make ghost-lights of pumpkins, they put the birds in cages." He already thinks himself to be in a cage of sorts. He doesn't draw such a lazy parallel himself but she saw it already. "You think I came to Denver because I wished to be near the mountains and the desert only, hmm? That I did arrive and I thought to myself then only Ah, look, it is open here, the air is different here than in Chicago, they change so."

He glances down again to redirect his thoughts.

"Viol," he says, "I did know I loved you before I did come to Denver. Knowing and feeling are different though, eh?"

Lux

He pushed the lace nonsense off her hips and down her legs and she was not helpful. Perhaps he pulled at her knees in order to free her legs proper: she wouldn't resist. Perhaps he left them slid down her thighs: it doesn't matter. Lux was pensive, and whatever it is the Tremere chose to do (play at having a mortal's hunger like a lunatic) not half as absorbing -- though she'd given him a quick cut of a look (startled). Guess when. That: before the imperious tilt of her head and the (let's presume) arrogant cant of his. Before she finally said something, and wasn't dissuaded from saying that something. Because: why would the creature be? She is not human. Even when she decides to whett the edge of her hunger (ill-advised), vitae burnt up in a spark so she can play too. Consolation. He glances down to see: what? It's dark. Dark curls against pale skin against white bedspread but nothing's white because it's dark and a shadow has a color and we're not going to pay close attention.

Lux watches István's face with her dark eyes steady, the cast of them different now, nearer what was in them by the desk before she pushed him away. Should've gone over the desk. This was supposed to be a lesson in the Discipline of Dominate, damn it.

Not a fucking moral quandry.

So she watches István's face even when he looks down and she smirks when he says she's heard him sing ("I have not") and the smirk dissolves into a much sweeter (musing, distant) expression because of things which we will not be paying close attention to.

Her attention is so narrow that it feels as if there is a certain distance to it, do you see? Because she is so watchful: it required a certain measure of distance, for all it's intimate too.

Knowing and feeling, blah blah, Lux undoes his belt buckle, catches his wrist, and says - still this low thrum of urgency -

" - but do you believe - truly - that libertas is essential to our being? Wouldja rather have a choice or - "

There's no end to that question; it's an aborted attempt at expression.

István

The belt's buckle clatters as Lux feeds its tongue back through its teeth and István kisses her not as if that's going to be the end of their fucking moral quandary. It's an impulse. He follows it.

And when she catches his wrist he stills. So much of one's manual dexterity is governed by the ability to flex the joint. It doesn't trap him but his eyes find her face all the same.

His hand abandons its exploration of the blind spot between them to rest upon the jut of her hip.

"One in his right mind does always have a choice," he says. He kisses her again. "Without this libertas, we would cease." And again. "But libertas, eh? Libertas is dangerous. Better to have libertas with danger than pax with slavery, is this what your Rousseau did say?" A third time. "If I do drink from you knowing what will happen, that I may lose my liberty... You did not force. You are not a tyrant. I..."

Words. They're all he has to go on now.

"I do choose. Not slavery. Love. Hmm? Even if it is with danger."

Lux

Nothing is fair. It's not fair that Lux is undressed and István, who wore less layers tonight, is still fully ready to go out and about. Lux is extremely dextrous; the buckle is undone, the belt slipped away; tossed off toward the knife and her top. She undoes snaps his jeans, tugs them around the time his hand has gone to her hip. Lux has surprisingly generous hips, for such a young woman but then she isn't a young woman and she was a mother before she died, though it's difficult to tell. He kisses her and she pulls at his blazer: off, off, off, off, off, off, and then she pushes the teeshirt up or begins to because that is around the time she grows quite still again. Without this libertas, we would cease; and a kiss, etcetera - it all stills her.

He chooses. Not slavery. Love.

Lux sighs: it's a sharp sound, and it could mean anything - it doesn't sound exasperated. Her gaze shifts off to the side again, considers the mirror, full of darkness angled as it is.

Suggestion of a smile. She says, "On ne connaît que les choses que l'on apprivoise, dit le renard. Les hommes n'ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Il achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands." Emphasis; a frivolous emphasis. Lux considers the edge of István's hip with her fingertips; considers the line of it downward, then traces a latitudinal line across his skin somewhat below the equatorial line. "Mais comme il n'existe point de marchands d'amis, les hommes n'ont plus d'amis." Lux fixes her eyes on István's, and says, forlornly: "Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi."

Her fingers leave his hip; find his hand instead and twine. This is partly because she sinks her teeth (draws no blood) into his hip instead. Doesn't her hair feel nice, spilling across him like that?

Adds, solemnly: "Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l’oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé."

"Do you know what that means?"

Tugs on his hand. Tug, tug.

István

So she divests him. He does not make the task a difficulty. Not even when she sighs. By the time she sighs there is nothing left for her to take from him. His shoes stand beneath the bed and he wore so few stitches tonight. They're all tossed aside. In the darkness she can read the shape his form makes above hers. He combed his hair before he left his haven and without her fingers gone through it so it has hardly moved. A shock has escaped the comb's oppression but it is a small shock.

She begins to quote a work István has only read in translation and he kisses at her face and jaw and neck. Her fingers touch at his hip and he lowers himself onto her both of them bare. Eyes fix on eyes.

René would understand the quote and the reference. He would agree with her that in this moment István is more like the fox than he is like the king or the flower or the pilot. Or the prince. He would never argue that István is the prince but then René did try to leave István once. He went back to him. He is a ghoul now. If he tried to leave again he would die. René understands the fox.

A tug at his hand comes after the question and István leans on her. Leans into her. He gasps and tightens his fingers in hers and slides his arms around her shoulders like he can possibly get any closer to her now.

"No," he says. He doesn't speak French.

Lux

He gasps; she laughs - even if she is still speaking french at the time, the laughter informs her voice and dredges up some a new thing in her eyes; a new line of shadow; a different dark, something which becomes a gleaming. She laughs and she flinches and when he slides his arms around her shoulders (don't you know, you can always get closer) he can feel her - well. It doesn't matter. Suffice to say the creature, in pretending, seems quite intent, quite deliberate; that she even lets her body pretend to be a line of a yearning, and it isn't all a lie. She is hungry, and she hungers, and he feels so good to her, and anyway -

"It means - " a pause; see how she watches him? She doesn't need breath so when her breath might be taken she only pauses; the pause ends, a caesura, and becomes " - that I know you for a - " another caesura; this time she bites his shoulder. She still does not draw blood. She will not draw blood. " - fool," she whispers into his ear, and bites that too, holds the lobe between her teeth before she laughs.

"But if you want to drink from me," tension, whisper of it. He can feel it now better perhaps than he could before; the way she flexes and then her spine goes stiff, and how she tries to hide it by holding him close and closer.

"I guess you can; as long as - " - quick to add a condition. Or to begin to. Gotta figure out a good fucking condition. Or maybe she's just going to say: nobody knows.

István

A bed vibrating when he did not expect it to vibrate once sent István leaping to his feet. If he had any expectations of what would happen when he sacrificed blood to resurrect a body that could only appear so human when the being within it had started to forget his own humanity they are not overcome now but he must have figured it would be the same rush as takes one over when fangs pierce the skin.

István is wrong often. He gasps and she laughs and he answers her laugh with a sound that would be a prelude to panting if he had need of air. But he can laugh at himself. This is funny. They're dead. They have no need for removing each others' clothing and fusing themselves together.

Among the many theories of dance is the one that posits humans began to dance as a means of expressing vertical what they desire horizontal. This theory doesn't resonate with István. He doesn't know how to dance any more than he knows how to speak French but he can learn.

This is strange. This is pleasant. He holds onto her and he moves again and he does not gasp this time. One arm around her shoulders will suffice. He wants to touch her face as she speaks. To look upon her to see how this strangeness affects her.

She watches him. He too flinches. Her teeth knock another panting breath from his throat when she sets them into his shoulder, a quick low moan when she sets them into his ear.

Much of what comes out of this creature's mouth seems to make little sense but it's rare he makes a sound over which he has no control. She flexes and holds him closer and his fingers tighten in her hair. Do nothing to keep him from groaning.

She guesses he can drink from her as long as. Now he laughs. Rough but warm. He doesn't have enough hands. Away from her hair so he can take hold of her thigh.

"Hmm?" he asks. He kisses the corner of her mouth like that can draw it out of her.

Lux

Lux does not make a lot of noise; she laughs, and a certain sort of movement catches her voice in her throat; stoppers a word so it's a word that doesn't know what it wants to be, the beginning of this, the ending of that, nonsense; but she doesn't make a lot of noise, and when he laughs and pulls his fingers from her hair to take a hold of her thigh, she follows that hand with one of her own and pulls his hand away, or up, over her ribs, over her breast, up to her shoulder, and then she - what the fuck does she do? Lux wants him beneath her; that's what she does. Starts to disengage; then instead uses her legs and her hips to flip him, so. Catches both of his wrists in her hands and holds him down, but with a lick of wariness.

"As long as - " a pause; she is so intent. Ardent; he can hear it in her voice, and it's dark instead of gleaming. " - oh, as long as you promise you'll learn to carry a tune. As long as - "

" - nobody has to know." There; she said it. How do you like being a dirty little secret, István? Her gaze is cool and contemplative: when she voices that condition.

The corner of her mouth curls; she sounds more ardent still: "And as long as you bite me somewhere new, huh?"

István

Any creature who would let him set his fangs into her once let alone thrice would have to suffer a sort of madness herself to think that he did so without some sort of sinister motivation. Even if it were only to experiment on himself. Even if half of what he said was earnest. Lux finds coercing him too easy. He has opposed little of what she has wanted since the moment he stepped in from out of the cold and rearranged the stars on her chest.

He had walked around with stars stuck in his beard the rest of the night. He has met her strange places. Shown her the creature he staked not because the creature was a menace to the night but because he learned of this creature and its menace after his ghoul was nearly killed. Given her his blood that she might learn a discipline she claims she has no desire to use on other Kindred.

When she flips him the Tremere does nothing to resist her. It wasn't trust that had him lie still as she dangled the knife over his eye. Not pure spineless trust. Arrogance. Whatever she chooses to do to him the once-gold son of a bitch thinks he can weather it.

Most Kindred fear the blood bond for the power it gives one over another and what does he think. That it's nothing to fear. It can break just as any other chain can break and won't he just learn so much from it.

Tendons and weak muscle flex in his wrists but only to test his range of motion with the Toreador's fingers around them so. He moves his hips beneath her huffs as he moves inside her but after that initial test he lies still. An ignored hum between them. Controlled and his expression is controlled and he smothers a smile at the first request. His hair is in disarray.

And nobody has to know. And he bites her somewhere new.

"No one will know," he says. Firm in this. Arrogant. He is the master of his own destiny the captain of his own soul they're all going to burn in the same Hell regardless of who kills whom first. "I promise. Eh? To sing for you only." He shows her the palm of his right hand even if she still holds down his wrists. "May the fires of Sol take me."

Lux

[He moves his hips beneath her huffs - ] Lux's eyes slide shut but before they do one who is attentive might see how the contemplation in her eyes has shaded into something as ardent as the note of ardent dark in her voice when she speaks her conditions and [ - as he moves inside her - ] a sound scrapes against the back of her throat. Barely a sound; he only hears it because he is a vampire. Her eyes open again and so it happens that they're both still and that's when she says as long as this and as long as that and he smothers a smile and she looks at him and his disarrayed hair and that must be why the corner of her mouth curled so

(magnetic [c'mere]).

No one will know. Lux is in fact still holding István's wrists down although the pressure eases and her hair's a fall of gloom over her shoulders silk-strands clinging to her pale shoulders and falling across one of her eyes. I promise. Eh? he says, and her hips roll: oh, slow, intent. Then again, but less slow, more forcefully.

To sing for you only. Another sound scrapes against the back of her throat and catches on her teeth -- but becomes a gleam of laughter. He's showing her his right palm. Lux, laughing, releases his wrists so she can sit up, rake her fingers through her hair and hide her face behind her arms.

"So no one will know you can carry a tune? You know, mon petit renard, that is not what I meant. Certainly nothing to swear yourself to Sol over."

István

Slow as a tide rolled in and István doesn't gasp again but his lips part. His eyes shut. His wrists move inside her grip and when he speaks because this is not enough to shut him up his voice is a caught thing.

Every time she laughs his laughter wants to come up out of nothing to answer her. He gives her a promise and she gives him his wrists. As she sits up he lies still a moment watching her testing the way they move when they move at the same time. Oh. Okay.

The Tremere puts his hands on the Toreador's hips not so much to steady her as to steady himself as if the mattress isn't firm enough beneath him and his laughter at her rebuke of his promise is more a curl of smoke across his lips than a deep thing born of his throat. If they're going to play at being human they may as well play at having human mindlessness in this. Of being unable to stop the rolling once begun in earnest.

She makes him laugh again. One arm slides and locks around her waist while the other acts as an anchor so he can sit up. Hair falls across his brow and he lets it. Without product in it she can smell that he uses baking soda or apple cider vinegar or something else innocuous to wash his hair. No chemicals ride on the undead thing's scent.

"Not the carrying," he says. "You know not the carrying."

Neither sweats and neither pants and this is not a mindless thing. Not a helpless rutting thing. They are not human. They can play at it all they want and he does urge her don't stop with his arm around her but that's because their union is a pleasure and not because it is a need.

His eyes travel down again. Gauging where he's going to bite her. Can he reach Lux's collarbone? If he has to take his anchor-hand off the mattress to brush back hair from her shoulder he goes ahead and does it. Kisses her there on the length of bone prominent beneath the skin. He can reach her collarbone. Yes okay good. He puts his hand to her breast as he kisses her neck next.

"The--" Small exertion-noise in his throat. "--no one knowing I did drink of you so."

Lux

He urges her don't stop and she doesn't stop, poised and controlled thing that she is. Because isn't this fun? Lux may not burn as a human burns but she burnt blood for him and for this, sharpened her hunger and her senses are already so fine it is a fine thing to play with them. When he locks an arm around her waist and sits up, Lux inhales him slow and drops her hands from her hair and ceases covering her face and she touches him -- it's not important where. But her hand finds the back of his neck when his lips find her collarbone and when he cups her breast her throat works and when his lips find her neck her fingers curl into the back of his. There's a certain anticipation -- call it what it is: longing, an alertness at odds with how languid certain of her actions are. Anticipation has her turning her head so she can nuzzle him, brush her lips across his temple or --

But who cares? They're also having a fucking conversation; her voice is low and full of shadow-silk and it is for the most part steady; intimacy in it because she wishes there to be.

"Oh," she says; "You say so now, but," a pause; a rake of fondness; not sublimated at all, "I have not forgotten that you," a clot of silence, "are a sneak. And words, you twist around like those strands of salt taffy, and," and her voice hitches; we said 'for the most part' steady. "Poor simile because - the taffy doesn't convince you it's some," another pause, "thing else. Explain how you were mis," pause, "taken." Clot of laughter; it untangles before it leaves her throat.

István

His hand comes up from her breast to find her throat like she hasn't already told him bite her somewhere new. And he listens to her not because he has no choice with lips so near his ear but because yes: they are having a fucking conversation.

No ragged breaths or sharp sounds so near her but Lux can feel when he trembles with the shock-current of this gone up through his bones. His arm is a metal bar locked across her back but the hand at her throat is gentle. Probing but can't she feel how capable he is of being gentle. Sneak that he is. Liars can be gentle when they want to be. Monsters too.

Though he turns his head towards her wrist to press a kiss to the soft flesh there that is not where he sinks his teeth. Up-up-up her forearm to her elbow and back to her shoulder. Her chest. Fingers in her hair and he gives some answering almost-laugh. Agreement even as he holds her tighter to him.

Yes Viol very sorry he did mislead you. How many decades you thought he was anything other than a usurper and he still hasn't come out and said it. Confessions are cloaked in the same chicanery as anything else. Spend enough time pretending to be something else and the lies come as easy as the blood-letting does.

Lest she forget that this is a monster making love to her István bows his head. Dark and quiet in here. It doesn't matter where on her chest he bites her. He does bite her and it's a sharp hot pinch at first but then the blood comes and nothing else he could do to her body could compare to this.

Lux

He sinks his fangs into her and she flinches as if it is a shock. István's arm is iron around her lower back and how close he holds her but her instinct is to flinch and pull back and then her instinct is to want him to drink. Lux does want him to drink from her. Lux wants what comes after that brief fisson of pain - and the rapture of it threads through her voice as she moans. Lux closes her eyes and is it kind or cruel that God (this is the story they tell) gave the first murderer this mark that he could murder and those he murdered would think it as near to heaven as ever they'll get and those who murder they also feel this. Ecstasy; god how she wants him to keep on and her fingers are in his hair and

later. That's fucking right.

Later.

After they've made a bloody fucking mess of the sheets and themselves. After István is done drinking from her subclavian artery and where ever else he wanted to drink from. Later and after. Let's say Lux is on her back again and István let's say he's using her as a bed because that seems like something he'd do. The gleam in the creature's eyes is not idle -- and her expression is complicated (stricken by varying moods). But not idle. Neither is the sweep of her fingertips up his arm. Neither is her strength when she pushes him away and rolls to her feet and stretches long and without selfconsciousness. Was Lux ever selfconscious about her body? When she was alive, did she have more of a concern for it? Notice it more?

"So, little fox, do you feel like a million bucks on bankruptsy day? Didja teach me what you wanted to, oh, say, 'meant to' rather!, teach me?"

Her mouth curves up so slow slow slower than honey; her expression remains complicated, stricken by, who knows; her eyes possess a certain clarity, after-rain green, but they're also clotted with tarnished-up dark; the lights are still off and her face is shadowed, so.

A languid breath because she can; a glance toward the mirror, the desk; and though Lux certainly is listening for his answer, that doesn't stop her from heading to the bathroom to turn on the shower. Hot water, shampoo, soap and light.

István

But István does not want to use Lux as a bed. Once the after started he tugged back the duvet and the top sheet and he really only had to let himself fall onto his back to get into the bed but he does get into the bed. Mess of the sheets doesn't compare to the mess of the duvet but everything in here is white and the maids have seen worse. He lies on his back and he coaxes her down with him cradling her shoulders with his arm and keeping his lips against her brow and he holds her so tender it's not as if a different person is here with her.

This was the third time though. This is the first time he has lashed himself to someone like this and of all the fucking creatures to whom he could lash himself he chose an anarch.

She's right to think he's hiding something. He was hiding something. Comedy of errors: maybe she thinks he's playing at the staggering importance she now has in his mind. How every fiber of him wishes to be good to her. It's easy for that love to sour. Cruel domitors can make vengeful husks of their ghouls.

Every trip of his fingertips across her bare skin whispers his love for her. Lux is smart not to trust him. He'd said as much earlier: if she trusted him he'd be concerned.

He doesn't want her to get up. Sure as shit doesn't want her to leave but this is what he wanted. This unrequited torment of loving someone who doesn't love him near as much if she even loves him at all.

Her blood stains his chest and his face. He rubs at the space between his useless pectoral muscles as he watches her. In the dark she can feel his adoration. Christ.

"You are a terrible student," he says as he slides out of the bed. He follows her into the bathroom but not into the shower. He intends to clean himself at the huge sink in front of the unforgiving lights. Washcloth and soap and water. Fond even as he's teasing her. "I 'meant to' see how well you are learning. All I did learn is that you do argue with your teacher when he does ask you to demonstrate and that I can't command you. We will have to try again another night."

Lux

"Maybe I want homework, darling. Maybe you are terrible - "

- a cut of a glance. It could be amused. The sentence sounds like there was more to follow but she doesn't finish the sentence. Sometimes it's best to let things stay incomplete and longing for completeness.

The shower does not afford her privacy as it is a glass casket of a triangle in one corner all the tiles white while the bathroom's floor is also tiled white but a white marbled with grey and elegant little diamonds of black. The sink is black wood colonial legs white fluffy towels between and silver fixtures and elegance elegance elegance the lighting fixtures are curved like lilies and there is no ornamenture and the light is soft if unforgiving.

Before she stepped into the glass cage [stage], she claimed - deft, precise - one wash-cloth from under the sink and the bottles of shampoo and conditioner on the sink. Lux sets them on the little silver shelf attached to one corner above the shower's faucet and then, as István has followed her, tells him to hand her one of the bars of soap, and then she turns the shower on. The creature startles when the water strikes her.

Needles.

But the warmth of the water eventually smooths tension from her shoulders and of course it washes away all signs of what the Anarch and Tremere got themselves up to and the soap smells good and the creature likes to wash her hair and to have the water soak it drag it make it heavy pull her head down even when she has to close her eyes against suds. She scrubs vigorously and with attention. If he does decide to get into the shower and wash thoroughly, she makes room for him; if he stays by the sink as long as she stays in the shower, she says nothing of it; if he leaves to get dressed before her, though he planned to spend the day in this hotel room, she says nothing of that either.

But the water does not assuage her (beast) thirst.

Which is why after she dresses, after she blowdrys her hair (another find under the sink) enough that it is not dripping, will not drench her bare back or spot her skirt, Lux drops a cool and glancing kiss on István's cheek, pauses and inhales, and then leaves.

The night's not young, but there are hours yet and the bars are still open.