Do you get hungry?

Lux
Nate's place. Pancake o' clock. A text: I'm here!

Nate
Several seconds after the text finds its phone and the phone's owner reads it the front door buzzes as the lock disengages and Lux can let herself inside. Through the foyer to the elevator that will take her to the ninth floor and down the corridor to Nathan's apartment.

All this time they've known each other and he's never unlocked the door to his apartment before he's confirmed it's her through the peephole.

When Lux arrives at the door a shadow comes before it and then Nathan unlocks the door and lets her in.

"Hey," he says.

The television in the living room is paused on some video game's menu screen. The place is relatively clean but for the proof of recent remote work piled up on the coffee table. A bottle of beer sits half-drunk next to his smartphone on the counter.

He's still carrying a torch for her beneath his breastbone but he's got enough self-respect not to let it burn in his eyes.

There's still no sign of the cat.

Lux
Lux has a single paper bag in her arms hugged against her breasts. Looking through the peephole the hall is in miniature and somewhat given to distortion. Lux is cradling that paper bag and her weight is on one leg, hip cocked but a certain unmeasured grace even in this. Nate's shadow under the door she notices because her attention is sharper than one would think now because the world's a thing of many parts and she can see them now but she is actually looking down the hall, so a delicate profile. The peephole makes the hall look darker than it is saturates it but her skin's a lick of paleness and her hair's a lick of shadow and her mouth's a lick of pink and the bag's not a lick of anything but tonight's jacket is the same as last night's jacket and it looks like the shadows of it are ink and when Nate unlocks the door to open it Lux looks away from whoever's wake her gaze was pulled by and there's a certain contained consideration and almost-smile that's just one expression becoming another expression becoming this expression:

Her expression brightens. Her eyes don't brighten; they're always tarnished-up, they darken the better to be an edge against the sublimation of lucency- liveliness.

"Hi there!"

"Remember, no lying. If they're disgusting, don't protect my feelings. Feelings that are protected never get to be butterflies, like those silkworms that never finish turning into moths- or fucking something."

And into Nathan's apartment she goes, and towards the kitchen too. Because why wait? It's late; shouldn't eat right before bed.

Nate
He looks like he wants to laugh at her analogy but he doesn't actually. He doesn't take the bag from her but holds the door open. She knows her way into the kitchen. It isn't far. Once she's there he shuts and locks the door behind her.

It smells like he cleaned in here recently but the place never looks like he doesn't clean up after himself. A vague lemon scent clinging to the sink. The ashtray on the counter is clean but for the ghosts of charred-on ashes he couldn't scrape off.

A couple of photographs have taken up residence on the refrigerator since the last time he was here. They must be from when Hannah was out here for winter break. One of them was taken during the daytime. Nathan is wearing sunglasses and has his arms around the shoulders of a tall blond girl who can't be more than eighteen years old. They are out in the desert somewhere. The girl is beaming a smile but Nathan is trying not to scowl. In another he is sitting at a table with several other people who look as though they could be or could have been Marines. The girl is sitting on a bay window behind Nathan with another woman. Nathan isn't paying attention because he's playing poker with the other guys and there are cans and bottles of beer taking up space in the shot. Both of the girls are waving to the person taking the picture.

The photographs are stuck to the door of the icebox with a magnet. There's a greeting card underneath it. Looks like a birthday card but it's hard to tell with the photographs overtop of it.

No lying.

Nathan sits down at the island counter with his back to the living room and reaches for his beer.

"People eat silkworms, in Asia," he says. "Actually, they eat a lot of insects in Asia. I ate grilled grasshopper one time. At least I think it was a grasshopper. Your cooking can't be any worse than grilled grasshopper."

Lux
Lux puts the paper bag down on the counter but doesn't begin to unpack it yet. First she drifts over to Nathan's refrigerator, pausing to look at the (new) photographs there before she opens it to see what he actually has.

A look over her shoulder, the curve of said shoulder rising, a horizon for the kissing curl of a grin to dawn over, see, it just puts more darkness into her eyes( or maybe that's the fine slope of her eyelashes).

"Really," and a shake of her head, toss of her hair, hand below her left breastbone. She's still wearing that poesy ring on her left ring-finger, but she's wearing some spiky piece of plastic around her thumb and on her right hand another ring-set, stacking metal rings with chips of obsidian like cthulhic eyes set within. "What did grilled grasshopper taste like?"

"People used to kill silkworms with a needle, stopping them mid-transformation; maybe they still do. Poor insects. Say, what do you think about smashing images?"

"Where are your pans, Nathan, darling?"

Nate
What did grilled grasshopper taste like?

He starts to pull a face but then he has to admit to himself that it wasn't terrible. Makes a noise like 'Eh?' but doesn't assign words to qualify it. If he ever finds himself in China again he'd probably eat some other type of cooked insect. Being more adventurous than he looks and all.

He has to stop and think if he even has pans. Look at how clean the stove is. He doesn't cook. His refrigerator has cheese and mustard and leftover takeaway containers and milk and beer in it but not a whole hell of a lot else.

"Uhh... cabinet by the stove."

Once she starts in that direction he says, "So the guy who usually eats your pancakes and tells you he likes them, you think he's lying?"

Lux
"Mm." Assent.

Lux doesn't disappear from view. He's right there at the island countertop, drinking his beer and watching. But she does crouch by the cabinet by the stove, balancing (balanced [precise]) on the balls of her feet. Lux is not a dancer, but undeath has given her a preternatural relationship with her own body, how it is weighted, how to use it, so that everything's a dance, fucking really.

At least the skillet looks like it's a decent size; Lux regards the bottom of it critically, a perfectionist. Sets it on the stove, and then opens another cabinet, one that looks likely as far as plates go.

"We've been together for a long time; I suspect him of humouring me and he's got a poor sense of humour. Do you hate strawberries?"

Nate
The skillet has been used a few times but its bottom is not charred. The stove is electric. It's cheaper than gas. There are a lot of units in this building. Some of the tenants who have lived here for years and years and years still have gas in their units but those are the ones who refuse to move anywhere else. This building is older than Nathan is.

There's a ghost who roams the hall. He hasn't confirmed that this ghost roams more than one hall but sometimes this ghost finds a way into his living room. Nathan doesn't like this ghost. Just before he wakes up knowing that it's there a low-frequency noise hums its way into his dreams. Now that Lucy's gone he doesn't have kitten feet jammed into whatever limb or organ she happens to be sleeping on when the ghost arrives. Fucker never stays long enough for Nathan to figure out what it wants.

"I've never thought about it," he says. So now he thinks about it. Takes a drink of beer as he does it. "Nah. Strawberries are alright."

Lux
"What about blood oranges?"

Now she begins to unpack the bag. Look, the batter is already made, in a big tupperware container with a cobalt blue lid. Look, also, another tupperware container, this one round, something pale inside. Look, yet another tupperware container, this one with something that looks pink-tinged, blushing, and hey, what the fuck, two more containers. And a pat of butter, good thing she brought one of those.

A rattle, rattle, crinkle, crinkle, and Lux holds up a bag of chocolate chips, question in her gaze.

Nate
"I've never had a blood orange. Are they different than regular oranges?"

Did she bring enough batter holy christ. Nate snorts when she pulls out two different colors of potential pancakes and then rattles the chocolate chips. At the implicit question he gives her a thumb's up.

Lux
Look! A blood orange: the rind hard, just any orange, but small; it fits in the palm of her hand. Lux holds it up, then tosses it underhanded-like Nate's way. Maybe he'll catch it.

"Sure there is. Unpeel it and see."

Only one of the tupperware containers has batter. The round one has - why won't he just see. Same with the pink-blushing one. Lux should've put her hair up before she came over, but she didn't, and now she frowns, pulling the mane of it back away from her face gathering it at the nape of her neck like willpower will keep it there.

"I need a pen," she tells him. And, "Didja develop last night's film yet?"

Nate
[dex + ath: lol he is not going to catch that are you high]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nate
The orange comes flying towards him and bless his liver he isn't drunk enough to have lost what little hand-eye coordination he can claim to have. It could have hit him in the face but it hits his palm with a solid slap instead. He turns it over to examine its rind and when she says she needs a pen he reaches over to where a plastic travel mug sits full of pens and scissors and who knows what else.

"Here," he says. Chopsticks. He holds them out for her to take and as for the pictures: "Yeah, turns out you can't develop super old film at Wal-Mart. I need to figure out where I can put a dark room in here. The closets are all really small and I need the guest room for when my sister's here." Hmm. Glug. "Maybe the bathroom."

Lux
"You don't need that much space; as long as you can stand and there's enough room for two tubs and a place above them to hang the photographs," Lux says, gathering her hair up and twisting it, then slipping the chopsticks up and then down, folding the whole thing into a messy knot which looks like it wants to slip its prison and tumble to freedom, but it doesn't. Fixed. "When's your sister coming?"

He might've mentioned before, but it went out of her head if he did. Rush of water, pipes burbling, when she washes her hands, attention following the water on the sink's bottom. Water's beautiful.

Nate
"Uhh..."

Shit. Beer's empty. He climbs down off the stool and takes the empty to the sink. Rinses it out as he talks. The recycling bin is underneath the sink. When he dumps the empty into it it thumps.

"Her last final's on a Friday, she's flying out after it. The sixteenth, I think. She has a finance internship with some aerospace energy blah-blah company out in Fort Collins for the summer."

Crack goes the refrigerator.

"She's double majoring in finance and international relations. I told her she needs to be in New York or D.C. if she wants to get into law school with a fuckin' international relations degree but does she listen to me? Noooo." Crack! goes the new beer. "'No, screw you Nathan, I'm coming to Denver.'"

He leans against the counter instead of sitting back down.

"Anyway, she's staying in the guest room. Speaking of things that give me ulcers: do you know a Laurel Hensley?"

Lux
[Charisma + Expression! For the fun.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux
He gets another beer. Lux; she has outted his spatula, and she's knifing some butter into the skillet, and when that beer cracks open, she gives Nathan a quick cut of a look, eyes ingenue wide, desolated, a somewhat nonchalant exaggeration-

No, screw you, Nathan, I'm coming to Denver:

"You're not planning on filling up on beer when you've very nearly got pancakes, are you?"

Wistful. Anyway, she's staying in the guest room and speaking of things that give him ulcers and a sharp smirk at the segue. Fire beneath the skillet goes on; electric means she doesn't even need to steel herself 'lest she flinches. Not that she would: such a little suggestion of flame. If she can stand lighters night after night after night...

"Mmhm. Blonde, wasps under her skin, doesn't have to be bad company, occasionally irrational. Thinks the world's full of shitty people treading on shit and being shit but at least she's trying in her shitty way to put shitty people behind shitty bars that are shitty and unjust."

"Bad taste in men."

Some shudders are subliminal; under-the-skin.

Nate
He's not planning on filling up on beer is he.

"Psh," Nate says. Points at the Tupperware container with the batter. "You watch how many pancakes I eat. I don't fill up."

Those are big words coming from a guy who subsists on cigarettes and coffee most days. Who eats because he has to and not because he enjoys it. He forgets to eat some days. One of the many perks of being human that he doesn't realize is a perk. He doesn't feel hunger because he's more numb than he wants to admit. Doesn't know that vampires feel hunger all the time. There's no getting away from it.

Maybe Lux had hoped not telling him anything would mean he'd never get addicted to the stuff even if he got to keep his pulse. Nathan isn't thinking about what Lux does or doesn't want because his desire to please her isn't a conscious thing. It's an awful far cry from his hollering at her the night of the bombing but that's all past them now isn't it.

As for Laurel she has bad taste in men.

"... why."

Apparently Nate knows about her bad taste in men. Or this one particular man. Ghoul. Whatever the fuck he is he sneaks into the reporter's brain now and he's covering his eyes with his hand.

"Why did you have to... ugh." He takes a bracing swallow of beer and clears his throat. "Jesus Christ."

Lux
"Perhaps I can add beer to the batter." Speaking of the batter, she moves it over to beside the stove now. The first pancakes aren't going to have chocolate chips. Lux is: deft, when it comes to pouring the batter out. Most vampires aren't exactly practiced in the kitchen and Lux is no exception. These are fun to make, though. "I'll try not to make a mess." An offhand aside, because

[Let's roll for our first FLIPPING PANCAKES LIKE A BOSS flip which will occur later. If Errin can 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 anything can happen. Dex + ... Ath, I guess.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nate
Making pancakes isn't difficult. Nathan learned how to do it without burning down his stepfather's house. Not that his stepfather wouldn't feed his little sister but Ron was out with the cows at the crack of dawn and Shira wasn't to be bothered before she came downstairs so he did know how to cook once.

You stop doing anything for long enough your muscles lose the memory and your synapses let go of the data. Nathan would fuck up pancakes if he tried to make them now. So he just watches Lux and she can't see what his expression is doing with her back to him but maybe she can feel it.

"Good," he says. Offhand teasing. "I got enough fuckin' messes already. Get a load of this: actually, wait. Back up. Do you know anything about like... telepathic mind-control making-people-hug-each-other powers? Because she claims someone did that to her at a strip club last month and now she's saying... I don't even know what she was saying. I met up with her this afternoon to talk about something else and she tried to warn me. About you."

He sounds concerned but in the way that folks tend to sound concerned when they're talking about someone who's losing her mind.

"And she told me she was gonna call you to talk to you about something she thinks you did to her, because if she met you in person she was gonna beat you up, and she was definitely going to beat up this person who did... whatever to her, at the strip club, and I--"

The sentence turns into a caught-in-the-throat noise of confusion and annoyance and frustration. He chases it down with beer. Maybe he's the one losing his fucking mind.

Lux
[Doo-dee-doo.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Lux
Lux is bent over the skillet with an air of rapt attention: fixed, watchful, when the little bubbles begin to bubble in the batter, not smiling as yet but there is such an air of expectation - if one is going to cook food one cannot eat one must then have a load of fun with the process, mustn't one? There's even a certain something economical, dainty, about the way she spins the spatula in one hand, waiting for the right moment. Little cat about to dip her paw into a stream and flip out a silver-fish oh shit now do it now!

The pancake flipping action is deft and precise and perfection. Up, over, up again, over again, and Nathan is asking Lux about telepathic mind control that makes people hug each other and the Anarch's smirk is sharp, again, less those delicate little green thorns that surprise you with how sharp they are, more something you know not to touch even though it gleams so prettily; except Nathan sounds concerned, doesn't he. Pancake goes: flip, over shoulder, caught under other arm, behind back, flip to skillet, flip from skillet, flip into a plate: yay! The next pancake is much tinier and gets the same treatment and then another one so she is juggle-flipping them watching their progress with her eyes wide and any pleasure in them just the surface because Nathan continuing causes a change - or must be.

Her knuckles go sharp and white(r), but the skillet is heavy and she perhaps lost her grip.

"And you," hold the word for a moment; hold it like she doesn't want to let it go. You --

But she lets it linger like: do you want to finish that thought. If Nathan is paying attention, he'll see there's a sharp line between Lux's eyebrows; a certain sign that she's troubled or maybe that trouble's in the shadow of her eyes.

Nate
"I..."

He's watching her in that tired-eyed way he has of watching things. Takes an awful strong interaction for any kind of emotion to bubble up out of him. This isn't that interaction. It doesn't matter to him what happens to Laurel.

"... couldn't come up with a compelling enough argument for why she shouldn't go after either of you. I mean one minute we were talking about how she's refusing to come forward as the person who was sitting right next to Kragen fuckin' Kingsmith when he detonated a fuckin' car bomb that killed two people and the next she's telling me this other shit and I tried, I told her it was a bad idea, but Amber's been doing the same thing and it's not sticking. So I..." Bitter huff of a laugh. "I told her to tie up all her loose ends and not to fuckin' haunt me if she goes after either of you and gets herself killed."

He wanders back towards the stool and parks himself on it.

"I don't know what I should've said or done, but I... I figured you should know."

Lux
[... doo dee doo.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Lux
"Wait wait. Wait. So you told her that, why yes, I did do 'something' to her, and that if she tried to do anything to me, she'd likely find herself in trouble; that's what you told her? This woman with more ire than brains? This dumb fucking innocent? You implied that I was something more than what I seem to be? Why?

"A real swell compelling argument for not going 'after' 'either' of 'us' is: nothing happened. You hugged somebody. Deal with it. I don't even know what she thinks I did to her; bought her a drink. Heavens."

Lux is a passionate creature; she sounds angry. Adds, putting the plate of pancakes in front of Nathan, that line between her eyebrows sharper, the trouble more certainly trouble now - trouble leavened by some unhappy thing:

"Amber told me Laurel was angry. She mentioned the strip club when we ran into one another, some guy who did some sort of thing to her." Laurel did indeed mention that, didn't she. "There isn't a 'hug' power, no. There is an ability where one looks into someone's eyes and speaks a command and that command must be obeyed."

Nate
Nate shakes his head when Lux asks him if he confirmed Laurel's suspicions. That isn't what he said and that isn't what happened but he doesn't interrupt her. Maybe he can tell from where he's sitting that she's super fucking pissed.

He appears to have lost his appetite. He doesn't even glance down at the plate. He's looking at her face in her eyes as she's telling him about this ability. Leaning heavy on his forearm and holding onto his beer bottle but he's not leaning on the bottle.

"That's fantastic," he says. "I didn't know what the fuck she was talking about. I asked her what she thought happened, because it sounded fucking batshit. She thinks you and some guy both did..." He brings up his spare hand to make a wiggling motion with his fingers. "... whatever." He frowns. "That sounds batshit. You realize that, right? I didn't imply shit, I..."

Oh no Nate you just told her not to go after Lux or this Eurotrash person because she'd get herself killed if she did. He sighs heavy and brings his hand up to rub his brow.

"I... am an idiot."

Lux
Lux can lean, too. After she turns off the stove, which she does for now. Three pancakes is enough, even if a pair of them are silver dollar, little: trapeze-artist pancakes. She peels off the lid of one of the other tupperware containers, the pinkish one: inside there's cream and sugar and pink-stains and strawberry slices and a plastic spoon. Lux does own utensils, but they're nowhere she was going to find them tonight. Lux nudges the tupperware toward Nate, and then she leans on the counter: like so.

"Keeping the Masquerade is difficult," Lux says. "A regular pain in the neck or a stake through the heart or a pitchfork in the ass," and a lock of hair has escaped the chopstick prison, trails across her forehead and over one eye, touches her mouth and dances toward her collar. She hasn't taken off the black jacket. "A torch in the - where's a good place for a torch?"

A beat. "Really, what does she think I did to her with - " finger-wiggle, an echo. "I don't actually know how to do what the man at the stripclub did."

Nate
When Lux doesn't renew berating him he frowns a suspicious frown and takes his hand away from his eyes. Sits up on his own power instead of using his elbows as anchors. What's a good place for a torch.

He doesn't know. The hem of a garment maybe. Or the hay at the bottom of a stake after the witch has already been lashed to it. Maybe the angry mob used the torches to light roofs under which people hid. That's not the point.

"She told us she was talking to him and the next minute was across the room hugging some woman she'd never met," he says, "and I--" Ghost of a laugh. "I laughed at her. I didn't mean to, I just..." He reaches for his beer. "And the words she used to describe what she thinks you did to her were, uh... 'made me the president of her fucking fan club.'"

Yeah. He hates this. His beer is almost gone and he just opened it. He looks like he's never going to stop frowning.

"What the fuck does that even mean?"

Lux
Lux cups her chin in the palm of her left hand. She was leaning, not sitting; now she's just leaning on her elbow, watching Nathan frown and drink and ignore the hot plate of delicious pancakes with a rather forlorn air. Lux; she can be so arrestingly pretty. Elbow on the counter, chin in her palm, gloom-caressed tress cutting a shadow across her cheeks, skin so pale as to be nearly translucent: cream. Pretty isn't the word most people use for Lux; isn't her mouth arrestingly pretty, too? When the curve of it is delineated by sulkiness? Sulkiness is such a petty word for troubled, and yet.

"I don't know," she says. "But I suppose I'll look forward to hearing about it whenever she calls or I run into her in some bar." Brief pause; faint sliver of a smile. "Even if she does beat me up."

Lux goes to rake her fingers through her hair, forgetting it's gathered, and it starts to come undone from its knot as a result.

Nate
Nathan doesn't believe Laurel can beat up Lux. That's what the frown on his face says now. Dubious but not certain in his doubt. He's never seen either Lux or Laurel on the offensive. Only seen Lux move about in shadows and Laurel run her mouth.

Once he told Lux that he wasn't afraid of her but that didn't mean he knew what she was capable of. Hard to be afraid of something when you don't know what you're looking at.

He watches the way the light swims in her hair as it starts to unravel and he blows out a booze-heavy breath as he looks at his dwindling bottle.

"Yeah," he says. "Have fun with that."

Glug. It's dead.

Lux
"If it's not fun, what's the point. Thanks," she says, chin heavy in her palm again, gaze not fixed on Nate for once because she's considering something that isn't present, looking off to the side where the light hits a wall spins a shadow. "For the head's up."

The sharp line between her eyebrows has eased away, leaving just a suggestion. She swallows; see, she's even breathing tonight, regularly. Breathing, because one needs to smell if one's going to cook.

Because it's good to breathe. To suck cold air into her lungs. To suck something down besides cigarette smoke.

Nate
"Yeah. No problem."

He gets up again and rinses out the bottle and puts it under the sink. Doesn't go for the refrigerator again even though Lux knows he keeps beer in the vegetable crispers. Instead he opens up a cupboard and takes out a glass. Fills it with water from the tap and takes a swallow before the Tupperware containers remind him that they're there.

Might as well put the batter in the fridge and clean up the minor mess she made.

Nathan's cigarettes and a cheap Bic lighter are stacked one atop the other beside the ashtray. Not that she's looking that way. She's looking over where the light doesn't push back the darkness.

Lux
The creature doesn't say much of anything at first. Not too many minutes have gone by, or go by, and she's just considering the wall. There's no reason for Nathan to think that Laurel wouldn't be able to beat Lux up except that he knows she's a vampire and vampirism has to count for something, doesn't it? Probably does; shouldn't it?

But the sound of water and the refrigerator opening gets her attention, followed by a lick of surprise and she straightens:

"Hey, what are you doing? I'm going to make more with chocolate; these ones are going to get cold. Eat already. Are they good when they're cold?"

Nate
What is he doing.

He stops whatever it is he's doing and pounds down the rest of his water. Eat already. He looks over to the sink and then looks at the counter and remembers oh yeah he's got milk in the fridge so he grabs the carton before he closes the door and pours out a glass. Closes the lip of the carton and puts it back and elbows the door shut.

Are they good when they're cold.

"They might be."

Maybe he should use a fork. He opens a drawer and grabs one and sits down. The ambient temperature hasn't leeched all the heat out of them yet and the plate hasn't soaked it all up. He slides the plate closer to him and puts the milk glass somewhere he won't knock it over. Uses the edge of the fork as a knife even though the fork wasn't designed to cut. Nathan knows how to use sharp things as weapons. Knows how to use a gun and his fists too it's just that his brain and his body have both lost their edge. He's not a marine anymore.

"What is the Masquerade, anyway? Is there a handbook?"

He has to take more than one stab to get all the pieces of all the pancakes onto the tines. The little one escapes at first but he gets it.

Lux
Did Nathan just spear all the pieces of all the pancakes on one fork? Lux watches with her eyes just a touch wide and interested and prepared to be amused and they're the colour of smokey green glass or sea-glass all coolly radiant and it's just a detail because principally his question reacts on her in other ways. She'd straightened and now she slouches again, drawing one of Nate's bar-stool chairs around the counter scrape so she can sit on the kitchenside in case more pancakes (joy) are required and also because this way she is facing Nathan and they're not doing an awkward television show blocked conversation. The food looks awfully good - that shade of golden brown trimmed in cream - and there's something considering to the lift of Lux's chin. Maybe now if she tried it she'd be properly motivated to keep it down.

"No handbook, I'm afraid." Amber asked something similar. Maybe everybody does. Lux rests her chin in the palm of her right hand again, elbow on the counter. Her other hand is on the counter, and she's running the edge of her thumb along the poesy ring. Lux could be as still as a predator; as still as nothing, as the moment after one thought and before the other; she can be so still. But why? She's still all damned day.

"Or if there is, I haven't seen it and it sure doesn't come with the invitations." There. Flippancy quota fulfilled. Time to answer the question for real, though to give her a place to jump off from first she asks, "Do you remember what I told you about it before?"

Nate
Nathan did just spear all the pieces. He doesn't know how else to eat pancakes. One layer at a time maybe. But he's a man, damn it. He eats a lot and fast when someone takes the pains to make food for him. And she can see that she did not screw up the recipe or the execution of the actual cooking because if Nate found the pancakes unpleasant his is a face that knows how to scowl better than it knows how to smile.

But Nate is also an adept liar. So many times in the past month he has lied as easy as he draws breaths. He takes for granted sometimes that he is still breathing. The alternative would be to dwell on how easy it would be for him to be lain in a pine box now if his body were recoverable at all. Odds are more like it that if he were to die he would disappear on top of it. He doesn't like to think about it but that car crash was the tamest violence to happen to him in the last year.

No handbook. Of course there isn't. He snorts at the idle apology and takes another bite.

Does he remember what she told him about it before.

"Uh," mouth full. He clears it with a slug of milk. "Kind of. I didn't write it down or anything."

He was also fresh-home from the hospital and had been drinking. Memory is fallible enough without trauma and alcohol muddling everything up.

Lux
Lux inhales; it's sharp, like swallowing a rose, getting the edged leaves and two of the big wicked thorns with their tips all ruddy caught in the throat.

Doesn't exhale. All of that air gets fashioned into words, and she stops playing with the ring on her finger, stops resting her chin in the palm of her hand, folds her arms over the counter and leans over them, yet more insouciant. Gaze doesn't go dark becasue it's already dark, even with that lucence. When she shifts, the lucence just gets sublimated, swallowed up, disappears, replaced with a certain anxious weariness.

"Fuck. Very well. As before, it's all, always and forever, off the record. The Masquerade is a law - " - a pause - " - about not fucking telling people that vampires exist, the assumption being that if people did know, they'd go torch-happy and murder us all as we slept. It's a fancy way of saying we pretend that we aren't what we are and everybody's happier. It's really important. If you breach it, terrible things upon terrible things for everybody involved."

Nate
"This includes normal people like--"

He doesn't even want to say her name. Nathan takes after his parents this way. Once he's shut himself of a person it's as if they've ceased to exist. Their name and their memories only come up in cases of necessity. Sometimes in the case of too much libation.

"--like if someone isn't a ghoul. What are the terrible things upon terrible things that happen to people who aren't ghouls who still..."

Lux
"I guess nothing too terrible happens to them," Lux says, after a moment's thought (or gathering; doesn't she gather herself? Precise, balanced, careful instead of careless). "They die or they die and the people they might've told die or maybe they find themselves ghouled to an unpleasant regnant and used to uncover other possible breaches - but - "

Lux: sluice of a look. "You're thinking about Molly. Don't. Molly has friends; as long as she doesn't open up a club or something she should be fine."

Nate
Nate scoffs.

"No I'm not."

And he appears to think his fork is a weapon because he cuts off another pancake wedge with more force than he'd used on the last few bites. Doesn't put it in his mouth. This conversation is distracting him.

"It's: okay. You guys have a constitution, and there's sides, and the sides all have different tribes, or whatever you want to call them, and you're not on either side, and carrying garlic around won't make any difference. And being a ghoul is a fate worse than death. Especially if your name is Kragen and you're going to spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary when the cops catch you. I do remember some stuff."

Lux
Nate scoffs.

Lux raises an eyebrow. He says that vampires have a constitution and Lux takes it to mean vampires have a good physical constitution. True. There are sides. Yes. Different tribes, a still look, because part of what Lux wanted him to remember was which clans she thought were dangerous for him. Flood's people and the reflections. Avoid those. Being a ghoul is a fate worse than death; she smiles, a blooming little thing, at that. The smile disappears when Kragen (dirty napkins) is mentioned but that's what his name does.

"Good. Clans, not tribes. And I am on a side, just not either of the ones we discussed."

Nate
Nathan's eyes flick skyward like he's committing this to memory. Alright. So Sharks and Jets aren't the only sides. This is going to get fucking confusing and he's already sobering up.

When he looks back at her he scratches the side of his head and processes this before cutting a less aggressive bite of pancake.

"Clans," he says in a low voice. Like he's going to be tested on this. Looks back up after he's swallowed that bite. "You were right to think your friend was bullshitting you, by the way. These pancakes suck."

He's joking. If he weren't joking she would think he was dead serious. His eyes can be mischievous when they want to be.

Anyway:

"How many sides are there?"

Lux
Her eyes widen; he's joking, but her eyes still widen and Lux unfolds her arms to swivel so that her back is to the reporter. Ex-Marine. Once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine. Tips her head back like it's heavy, or maybe just the falling out've chopsticks heavy coil mass of her hair's heavy, the better to sidelong look at him.

But then he asks a serious question and Lux gives him a serious answer.

"I don't know. Each clan is its own side; each Sect is its own side. There are three Sects, four if you count the 'we're-not-a-sect Sect.' Plus some 'Independent' clans. It's not really a two-party system; it just fucking feels that way sometimes."

The answer is serious, but the bar stool swivels. This is the first time Lux has used Nate's barstools. She decides to give herself a fast spin. And then another. And then another, catch herself, pleased, then spin slowly, watching his apartment smear by. Catch herself again, this time with her elbows, "And so what? You want me to make the chocolate ones now?"

Nate
Nate wears the look of a weary student. He was a weary student. Got mostly Cs in high school because he couldn't bother showing up half the time and half of half the times he did show up he was stoned. Because he would rather make out with girls under the bleachers and smoke cigarettes and hang out with his friends than study. At least he got As in English and history. At least he tested well. He was a smart kid he just lacked focus.

It's worth mentioning that he got good grades in sixth and seventh grade. They were talking about putting him in an accelerated track and maybe letting him skip his freshman year of college when his mother left his father and moved them to Nebraska. Oops.

But he looks like a student whose eyes are threatening to glaze at the thought of how much there is to know. He could live another hundred years and not know all this stuff is what that look says.

"I mean, you might as well," he says to the matter of chocolate pancakes. When she stands, if she stands: "If you're a ghoul, you know, right? It doesn't just happen?"

Lux
Lux reaches over for the bag of chocolate chips and opens them, and there's that closet-close smell of chocolate chips now, raw and a little chalky but with a sweet undertone, and she pours the whole damned bag into the batter unless some reporter stops her. That's enough, right?

She is standing; did stand, in order to pour the chocolate, and now to stir. Her gaze flicks from the batter to Nathan, and she says, "Yeah. You know. How you know depends on who made you, but ghouls - as I think I mentioned?" Lux frowns; she doesn't remember this one. "They don't age. They're strong and they're fast. They have access, limited as it is, to certain powers. You could cut off one's hand and maybe it would grow back."

Nate
This reporter isn't going to do any such thing. The entire bag goes into the bowl and he doesn't do a thing to stop her. He'll still eat it. Chocolate is delicious.

He polishes off the plate she'd given him and chews in thought as she tells him more about ghouls. He doesn't remember half of what she told him. This is why he writes things down. His memory sucks.

"And there's no way of telling if you're talking to one, right? Like... they can go out in the sun and they don't look as old as they actually are. I mean I can't tell Amber's..."

He clears his throat. When he met Amber she wasn't a ghoul. Or was she. He doesn't fucking know. He'd thought Amber was kind of an asshole until she came back for him but not all assholes are ghouls. Most assholes are just assholes.

"This is giving me a headache."

Lux
"Ghouls don't have any tells at all, as far as I know," Lux says. A reflective pause, and then: "Unless you can read their aura."

"Do you want to stir?" Lux vaguely recalls liking to stir when she was a kid. Nathan isn't a kid. Still, why stop liking something just because you're too old to technically like it?

This is giving Nate a headache. Lux's mouth quirks up. "I'm sorry. If I could make you forget everything, I would; just as, if you wished it, I would happily try to find some way to stop your ears from hearing shades."

Nate
That question confuses the hell out of him. He can't figure out why he would want to stir. Not a lot of baking went on in the Feld-Amherst house when he was little enough to find memory-cementing pleasure in a parent asking him to do something necessary and yet difficult to fuck up.

Nah man I'm good is what that confused expression says without him opening his mouth. He kills his glass of milk and reaches for his cigarettes.

"I was pretty doped up when we had that conversation," he says. Taps out a cigarette. "I, uh..." Lights it. Takes a breath to get the thing going and blows it back out filthy. "I meant what I said, though. You know... about that, and about the other thing."

Lux
His confused expression says nah man I'm good so Lux nods, gravely, and stirs the chocolate chips in, watching the process as she does because it looks interesting, there are so many textures, it smells really rather good and it's not cookie batter but still it's neat.

"If you ever change your mind," she says. "Tell me. I still don't know what all I can find out, but," a shrug, something tight. The eclipse hasn't happened yet; she hasn't had strange occult whatever the fuck reorganize her nights and give her an extra hour and turn the Sabbat into more of a ravenning lunatic Power.

"But which other thing?"

Lux puts another dollop of butter on the skillet. Turns the heat under the stove on again, tick-tick-tick electric range fwoomf purple-blue flame.

Nate
Which other thing.

"Uh..."

Christ. How did he put it. Maybe he dreamt this conversation. He had one eye covered and the light was down and he'd had people in and out of his room all day. All month. That weekend before the Monday they thought they were going to end up cutting the eye out was a fever haze of shit he can't remember if it actually happened or if he dreamt it. Like Carole and Molly having a conversation at his bedside or his father arguing with the doctor out in the hallway. Ghosts everywhere.

He doesn't want her to investigate turning off that sense. He'd rather learn to control it. That hasn't changed. He remembers telling her that. This was just medication making him stupid, not a fever.

"I don't know. I don't know what I was--" A harsh inhale and a quick exhale. "Do you get hungry? Or thirsty? Or anything like that? I feel like a dick eating in front of you."

Lux
[Here.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Lux
Does Lux get hungry?

Nathan asking her that question in this context causes her to still. He might not even notice it; she isn't dead still, just - there is a stilling, isn't there? The first thing when Lux can feel herself as herself again, comes swimming out of the day-long dark - filled intermittently with dreaming, but usually there are no dreams, just nothing, just being nothing -

The thing that wakes her and wakes in her as soon as she is conscious of her Self again is always hunger (thirst). It's a wanton sort of hunger, too, tugging her toward abandon now that she's out've oblivion -

Does she fucking get hungry? Or thirsty?

Or anything like that?

"Don't feel like a dick eating in front of me," Lux says, after a pause. Wistful: "I don't get hungry for pancakes but I like to see people enjoying things."

Nate
Even entranced by her as he is unless she does find a way to erase his memory he won't soon forget her asking him if she hasn't acted vampire enough for him.

He has no idea how vampires are supposed to act. So far as he can tell she's only one of two he's ever met and she looks just as human as anyone else in this pot-smoking thin-aired granola-crunching city does. No way he would ever mistake her friend Flood for human but Flood had made it clear from the moment he grabbed him by the hair in the dark and -

Anyway. He isn't afraid of Lux. Moments like this are when he remembers how little he understands her. His plate is empty and his glass is empty and his cigarette isn't even half gone and Nate is watching her like he isn't quite sure how big of a mistake he's made.

For some reason he starts thinking. Maybe about things he enjoys. It's a small list. It's gotten smaller since he got rid of the fucking cat. Nathan swallows a lump out of his throat.

"Okay," he says and takes another drag.

Lux
Lux hasn't remarked on the absence of the cat. Perhaps she thinks now that it is older it is suddenly a lot cleaner about its toys; it's not as if little Lucy Lucifer ever came out to see Lux. Lux reacts to animals with caution now; the first time - after Charlie turned her - she ran into a dog it was a shock to her and a sorrow. Jangled her up; made her leap. Made her Beast leap, too; it felt so strange. If Everett's dog hadn't been rent to pieces with him, she would have tried to take him home - a ghoul-dog - give him blood and - and she doesn't know. Animalism isn't a Discipline she's ever thought about wanting to learn. Why talk to rats when there are so many people who are like rats anyway?

Lux dolls out some batter. "How many more can you eat?" she asks, half-turning so she's almost speaking over her shoulder; a pause, and then, "Nathan," another pause. No, no, shh, Lux, don't. So instead: "Doesn't it concern you, knowing what my side might want?"

Nate
Alcohol has the tendency to amplify whatever mood a person is already in if it doesn't turn it altogether. Someone who seems happy and even on the surface can turn teary and violent after too many drinks. Nathan is not one of those people. He's gone quiet but he isn't about to go morose.

How many more can you eat?

"I don't know," he says. "Two."

Nathan.

"Hmm?" around the cigarette. Doesn't it concern him. Hard ashen breath out and he considers whether he ought to light another one. He hasn't got much left on this one and his lungs aren't numb the way they tend to get when a drunk has smoked enough for one sitting. "Uhh..."

He's such a witty conversationalist tonight.

"I don't understand the question, and I'm not going to answer it."

Lux
"Since I'm the one who," Lux says, and pauses. "Since we're associated, don't you want to," Lux says, and pauses again. Hold on; she needs to concentrate on flipping pancakes like a boss. There's a lot less artistry this time, but she does flip them VERY high. High enough that, the first time, the pancake batter - well, she chose to flip too soon - and the batter splatters on the side of the skillet and the counter and gets her hair, too. A little. That's fine; another dollop. UP, UP, UP, UP - yes, much better.

Two pancakes coming up. They're lopsided and huuuuuuuge. Well, one is huuuuuuuuge, the other one is just lopsided.

Wait, shit. His plate is all the way over there. Lux makes a hand-me-that-plate gesture and so the littler pancake is a little more cooked than the other one. Dollops butter on top of them both and slides the plate in front of Nathan. The big pancake is - really big. It's face-sized. It was actually two pancakes that fell in love.

"Perhaps I should have made an 'N.' Or a fedora for 'reporter.'"

Because reporters totally wear fedoras. With little cards tucked in the brim, too.

Nate
Nate passes her the plate.

"Reporters don't wear fedoras anymore. Douchebags do."

He reaches out his hand for the plate and it smells pretty good. The next time he walks into the apartment he's going to be confused by the mingling of cigarette smoke and floury chocolate.

"So, wait: if I'm not anything to you, other than... some guy you decided to bum a smoke off of one time, how come you aren't in trouble for violating the Masquerade? Or does your side not give a shit about telling people vampires are real?"

Lux
[I HIDE THINGS TOTALLY.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nate
[perc + subt: knock it off, jesus]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Lux
"You're not just some guy I decided to bum a smoke off of one time," Lux says. Hasn't she been saying this and saying this? "You're somebody I chose to like. You're somebody I just like and I," she doesn't want to say or seem to mean love (or thinks she does [feels a strong affection for]) so she chooses another word but there's a hesitation or something about the cut of her glance, "care about. Fuck. And," laugh, but Nathan can hear something taut beneath it. She might be in trouble if anybody official found out and wanted to make an example of her. Then again, she might not be. Then again, she has worse skeletons in the closet than damage controlling how much Nathan knows.

"My side cares because it's bad fucking news, letting the villagers know. I'm not in trouble because mostly nobody knows; and anybody who does know, doesn't know you're not - an acceptable - well, all they fucking know is you're 'mine,' so whatever happens, it's all my problem anyway."

Nate
Nate rubs his scar like the damned thing has become his divining rod for bad business. It doesn't work worth a damn for telling him when shades are nearby but it seems as though he was not joking about the headache. Tension headaches are a bitch. Could also be caffeine withdrawal. Or sleep deprivation. Young Mr. Marszalek does not take care of himself.

"You do realize this makes no sense, right?"

Doesn't mean he doesn't love her too. Doesn't mean he doesn't want to keep her out of trouble. Just means Nathan considers himself a rational person and her explanation isn't rational. She can keep right on saying it but that doesn't appear to help him.

"Why would you put yourself in that situation if I'm not an 'acceptable'... whatever. You like me. Okay. Fantastic." This doesn't sound fantastic to him. He sounds nervous. "Lux, I don't like shit hanging over my head. When I was in the hospital for a month and the doctors kept saying they didn't know if I was gonna lose my eye or not, I kept saying they could just take the damned thing out if it would get me out of there faster. Maybe I'm a coward or something, I don't know."

Yeah. The guy who came home from Afghanistan with a Purple Heart and a unit commendation and stared down a Lasombra who was aiming very hard to destroy his sanity before telling him yeah I'd kill you if I could after he threatened what's left of his family is a coward or something. Nice try Nathan.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be saying or not saying or... knowing or not knowing. Or what questions I'm supposed to be asking. Or who out there knows what about whom and who I can and can't talk to. You know? And I don't wanna go the 'mind eraser' route or whatever it is you said earlier, so if there's something that needs to happen so this shit starts making sense..."

Fuck it. He lights another cigarette. It's worth mentioning that his hands aren't shaking even as he becomes less sensical.

Lux
He's not eating the chocolate chip pancakes but at this point in their conversation Lux isn't noticing that. Does she realize this makes no sense? He doesn't like things hanging over his head. Lux listens, intently. Maybe he's a coward. Her lashes sink to kiss her cheekbones; demure, their shadow; delicate. Rise, again. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be saying or knowing or.

"I didn't put myself in that situation," Lux says, and she sounds wistful. "I put myself in another situation and - this - situation happened around it. One deals. Do you want to be inarguably 'acceptable'?" Don't say yes, Nathan. Lux is studying him side-long. "Do you want - " a pause. He gets less sensical. Lux drapes herself across the counter and rests her chin on her arms, which are folded up.

Despair.

Nate
Nathan sighs hard and digs the heel of the hand holding the cigarette into the orbit of his eye socket like that's going to make anything make sense. His other arm lies lank across the countertop and he sits like this for several seconds as he thinks.

A pause.

"I didn't want any of this," he says. Takes his hand away from his eye to drag from the new cigarette. "What do you want?"

Lux
Despair. Despair is dramatic. Despair is sincere. Despair is all-consuming, delineates the droop of her eyelids, the shadows beneath her eyebrows, arrests the shape of her mouth, the slope of her shoulders, the fall of her hair which has finally decided it's completely ousting the chopsticks so one falls to the kitchen floor and the other's going to follow in a moment. Despair is not followed by any sighs or any other outward signs of forlorn.

"A time machine," she says. "But an interesting one, not that silly blue police box with its inconsistent doctor."

Nate
Nate isn't going to bother with a fork for the chocolate chip pancakes. He sighs another hard sigh and sets down his cigarette. That's what the ashtray is for. So he can eat and smoke at the same time. Disgusting.

Instead of a fork he rolls up the smaller of the pancakes and takes a bite out of it.

"If you're gonna start making Doctor Who references," he says, "I'm gonna kick you out of my kitchen."

And then we totally have Nate and Lux watch The Time Machine on Netflix or something.