Honor and Duty v. Love of Humanity

Nate
It started with a phone call last week.

Nathan had received an invitation to go to lunch with the lead detective on the downtown bombing and he had accepted it and once he was there he had found the man in a state of slow-burn obsession. Had sat through a grilling before tossing questions back at the man and grasping what it was he was starting to figure out.

"There's a guy on the Denver PD," he'd told Lux when finally the call connected as a call and not as a voicemail message, "Rex Cutter. He's dealing with the 'Brazilian gang' situation and got wind of Richthofen somehow. Just figured I'd give you a head's up."

A head's up wasn't going to suffice and Lux is still rising early these nights. They could go to the library at DU like they always do when they need someplace late. But Nate wants coffee and something to eat.

So they're at some independent coffee place that's open until midnight and has lots of overstuffed chairs and sells beer and booze and boasts live music and you can barely hear the conversation happening right next to you let alone behind you. Nate isn't dressed for work but he doesn't have a lot of Trying To Impress You clothes either. It's jeans and a polo shirt for this guy. His hair has been combed but not recently cut.

Greetings have happened. He's drinking an Irish coffee because of course he is. He's still completely fucking in love with her and it doesn't come through with any shows of physical affection but he's gazing at her in this soft-eyed idiot way that she's never seen before.

Ball is in your court, Miss Lux.

Lux
[Ugh. Let's Perc + Empathy this because maybe she'll botch and be happy.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Nate
[manip + subt: MAYBE HE'S PLAYING IT COOL]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Lux
[Maybe Conscience is like: Eh, whatever.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lux
He just figured he'd give her a head's up. He'd heard the surprise bleeding through her voice over the phone. Not that he was calling, but at that phrase 'got wind of Richthofen somehow.' The surprise is like sugar melting in a drink. Doesn't define her tone but it gives it a certain something. She wanted to meet.

She'd've wanted to meet regardless. This isn't like before when the supernatural forced its way into Nathan's awareness and he mentioned it to Lux and she gave him a crumb or two of details and then was apparently content to never speak of it again. This isn't like that at all and it's not going to be and now it's not just in too deep it's can't go back too late on those lessons of hers but it was always going to be too late wasn't it that is a precaution against future regret (that cold lick of hatred - it is easier to hate than it is to love).

Lux liked Nate. She just liked him. So of course she'd've wanted to meet up. So of course they do meet up.

He wants something to eat so they're here in a place where the sound system isn't perfect and occasionally it causes Lux to sweep a glance toward the musicians or the tangle of wires near the speakers or the speakers themselves or instead of that glance she looks at one of the nearby tables as their conversation becomes briefly unavoidable but most of her attention is on Nate at least his coffee smells really good.

Lux has an elbow on the table and her cheek on her fist and she is slouching, precisely poised between careless and reckless grace, and under the table the toe of her right shoe is against the toe of whichever of Nate's shoes is nearest, and now that he's got his coffee and is settled, she says:

"You should let me make you pancakes. There's a guy I make pancakes for but I think he's lying when he tells me they're delicious and I don't know. They'd make me sick to my stomach; I'd just want to curl into a ball like a python, you know, not easy to throw but all knotted up."

Nate
"I'd let you make me pancakes."

It's still in that offhand way he has of making comments his voice as exhausted as the rest of him looks but the enamorment of her. That deepening of feelings he'd already had. Feelings that make a person start inventing words.

Men can go on at great length for so long as they want about how they respect women and never think of them as anything other than friends but Nathan is not an asexual creature and so much as he does respect Lux and never thought of her as anything as a friend look how much good that did him. Lux isn't a woman. She's a monster. And she decided to start telling him things thinking it was going to keep him safe.

They're at a bit of a crux point here.

He's having a carrot cake muffin for dinner. It's probably technically a cupcake because there's icing on it but he doesn't give a shit. Shannon has been dead for six months. She was a huge proponent of eating whatever the fuck you wanted whenever the fuck you wanted.

It pisses him off that she's dead but what are you gonna do.

"I don't do syrup though. I used to be able to but I watched two of my buddies chug syrup when we went to Toronto on leave one time. There was like a twenty-dollar bet riding on them finishing a bottle each. Lawrie puked afterwards. Can't even smell the stuff anymore."

Lux
"You know I don't know if I've ever actually tasted maple syrup," it is true in this moment, because in this moment Lux is quite deliberately turning her mind toward sensations she hasn't had for decades. How does one remember a taste? How long does one remember a taste? The word, sweet, what does it start to mean when nothing is sweet and nothing is bitter on the tongue? Blood is sweet and blood is bitter, but there is no range. The moment of consideration makes her eyes darken, not with mood but with shadow because her lashes sweep lower; because that is how consideration works. Sharpens. Then her mouth curves, goes crooked. Lux has a lot of constrained energy tonight; a lot of vivacity regulated into something more languid.

"Mon pére made crépes with powdered sugar and cold cream and strawberries that looked like roses peeping out've snow, the way he'd heap everything on when we could, but crépes aren't as fun to flip! Why don't I make you pancakes tomorrow night?"

He has an opportunity to say no tomorrow night's no good. Somebody opened the door to come inside while she asked the question and Lux glances over her shoulder to watch whoever it is go toward the counter, then she sinks back into that slouch.

All right.

"So what'd you mean, he was wise to -- oh no, you didn't say that, 'got wind of' Richthofen?"

Nate
That's an easy answer.

Nate finishes attacking his cake-muffin while she talks about how her father used to make crêpes and washes the detritus out of his mouth with a preliminary swallow of coffee. He winces at the bitterness of the coffee after the sugar-punch from the cake-muffin but it isn't a pained wince. At least he isn't the kind of depressed that makes everything taste like ash.

The more he learns about this vampire shit the more he appreciates being alive. It may or may not be meaningful that the more he learns the more he finds himself having direct encounters with Death and narrowly escaping.

"He started connecting dots," Nate says, "and went from the lynching to the reports of skinhead infighting from last year from there. And he asked if I could shed any light on it for him, because he thought the idea of neo-Nazi versus Aryan supremacy was fishy, and I told him no, there's actually a lot of white power lunatics around here and they come up from the city to fight the Latinos all the time, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary going on at Richthofen. I think he bought it but I can't tell."

Lux
"He must be from out of town, or a boyscout," Lux says, and her voice is musing. Because the truth of Denver's history, much of which she's seen, is that there always have been problems with the white supremacists, class struggles, race struggles, political conservatives behaving like tyrants (Isaac's fault, no doubt). "Or maybe a maverick. I've always wanted to meet a real live maverick. What the Hell is a maverick anyway?"

Her tone is careless; the way she is looking at Nate is not careless. "Why was he asking you? You didn't cover Richthofen and you haven't been covering the gang violence; or have you?"

Nate
"No," he says.

And there's no defensiveness or caginess to him. Even if he were hiding something she'd be able to tell. He's so taken with her that he wouldn't have done anything to endanger her anyway. Maybe indirectly but he had lied about this even if exposing the truth went against his deeper instincts. Protecting people from certain death goes deeper than exposing the truth.

Nathan hasn't thought overmuch about why he lied to Cutter like he did. He never thinks overmuch about why he does the things he does.

"He's the lead on the car bombing, though. Dude seemed pretty wired when we met up for lunch. He doesn't seem like a maverick though. Mavericks are like - did you ever see Top Gun?"

Lux
"Sure. I've been told I'm a deadringer for a female Iceman," Lux says, without batting an eyelash. "What d'you think?"

Nate
"Nah, Iceman was a douchebag. Point is, Maverick got his call sign because he didn't play by the rules. Like, ever. That's what a maverick is, it's somebody who doesn't give a shit. This guy isn't like that at all."

Nice save, Reporter Boy.

Lux
Lux's gaze doesn't darken because Nathan mentioned the car bombing, or, as some terrorists might describe it, the five second scribbling on a dirty napkin. Tonight she's wearing a black leather bomber zipped mostly up what looks like nothing beneath it because of the way the shadows work because of the way her skin is revealed where it is revealed because of the way her necklace lies between her breasts a jetty-spill of some dark not-quite-rosary and her earrings are crosses, too, ridiculously ornate and heavy against the fine-drawn loveliness of her skin and her jaw and the clean line of her throat. A clot of smoke or decadence against someone who isn't decadent. There's nothing to suggest decadence in her expression just a certain keen attention and actual self-possession which could draw a line in the sand or punctuate an invitation depending on who was doing the looking [the invitation is always open (Fall, already)].

The point is that Lux's gaze doesn't and didn't darken when Nathan mentioned the car bombing and it doesn't darken now to hear that this guy isn't a maverick or that Nathan doesn't think she's the spitting image of a female Iceman.

There's this quick-spark of a smile, sublimated by attention instead. She's listening, but she's also curious about how Nathan eats his cupcake. Frosting first, tearing it into pieces, what: these details aren't important but she wants to know them.

"Iceman is misunderstood," Lux says. And also, "Mm. Why did he contact you? Just wanted a friend?"

She sounds dubious.

Nate
For the record: Nathan removes the bottom part of the muffin and smooshes it onto the top part of the muffin and breaks it in half and eats the halves like a sandwich.

Iceman is misunderstood. Nate snorts and doesn't contest the allegation.

Why did Cutter contact him.

"He wanted me to put in the paper that You Know Who was the prime suspect," he says, "even though his department hasn't released that information to the press yet and if I did that without any evidence that would be called libel and could get the entire Post into a lot of trouble."

Lux
"How'd he react when you said no? Maybe he's on the verge of becoming a maverick."

For the record: Nathan's mode of eating a cupcake strikes Lux as fairly originaly; she's never seen anybody do that before. She'd seem more interested but she is already looking at Nathan like he interests her. She's never not looked at Nathan like he interests her, like he's somebody who could be interesting, somebody who was or could be a thing.

But what does she know? Cupcakes aren't her thing.

Nate
By now he's used to the way Lux looks at him. Like she's studying him or like she can't figure him out. In the beginning he'd mistaken it for a different kind of interest but now he doesn't have a fucking clue what it means. He likes that she looks at him with so much interest in her eyes but that's because he's enamored with her and it feels kind of nice to have the person with whom he's enamored think he's interesting enough to watch so closely.

He is going to be pissed right off when this entrancement loses its grip on him.

"When I reminded him it was libel and that he needed to do things the old-fashioned way, he agreed with me. I think he's just overworked. That makes people go a little unhinged but not enough to break their moral compass. Not without extenuating circumstances."

Yeah don't talk too quick there kid how many people do you know who've gone corrupt in your life?

"Anyway, he was trying to see if I had any dirt that I hadn't published yet. I guess he figured since I was in town when the Richthofen thing happened I would know something. Like there was a vast media coverup or something, I don't know what he was thinking."

Lux
Love is fickle. There is no such thing as true love; there is no such thing as love. It's all chemicals, and impulse, and anyway, it's fickle; it's beautiful and then it abandons you and that part sucks. Some would say that Lux is good at Love (not loving), especially the abandoning part that goes along with it; look at her - of course she is: blood-foam-war-love creature if ever there was one. When she pulls Nathan's irish coffee over to her like she's going to steal a sip but is really just going to breathe in the scent of it for a moment it's a fine thing, and he'd be completely within his rights to smack her hand and take that coffee back because she's not going to do anything else with it.

"What are you thinking? I mean, Hell, Nathan, are you all right?"

Nate
The rational part of Nate's brain is paranoid. He doesn't realize all it would take is a bit of blood on her thumb touching the inside of the cup and his coffee washing over it for him to become addicted to her. But he knows blood has something to do with how they snare humans. Extrapolation. Both Lux and Molly have told him more than they ought to have.

"Am I alright?" He hasn't been arrested for punching someone in the face yet. He hasn't been primed to go on the defense yet. If anything the question confounds him. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

Lux
The question confounds him and Lux waits a beat, like waiting is going to clear something up and make his mind work differently. Then her mouth quirks. "Because - "

- and the word catches on a hook of silence, snags and half-unravels; because everything. Because he's thinking about vampires when he's talking to the cops. Because he's noticing connections like that now and he's not going to get to talk about them. Because he was shadow-wrapped just a couple of weeks ago. Because everything, everything, everything. Because she suspects she needs to tell him more.

Because, man. Because.

Nate
Nathan notices the pause and even if he himself doesn't shed too much light on what's going on inside his own head half the time he does have an understanding of how other people operate.

Think, man. You've had a lot happen to you recently. People are going to ask questions like this if they're paying attention to you.

There aren't any chinks in his armor for her to wriggle through so he just sets down his crumb-flecked pastry plate and drags his coffee back across the table.

"I think it's really weird," he says, splitting his gaze's time between her face and the surface of his drink, "that Amber and I both have to keep keeping things from people like, say, Laurel, even though Amber is... what she is, and I'm..." Well he's not exactly safe is he. Lux keeps calling him hers. "And that Molly claims not to be anything like what Amber or Kragen are - Amber said she'd punch me in the face if I ever compared her to him, by the way, don't tell her I said their names in the same sentence."

What was he saying.

"If you want an honest answer," he says, now talking solely to his coffee, "I wake up most days wondering if today's going to be the day something shitty happens. And I know enough now to say 'Hey, there's so much shitty stuff that could happen that I can't even imagine how shitty it would be.' So that kind of sucks, but what're you gonna do."

Slurp.

Lux
He pulls the coffee back. Lux lets it go, watching the play of shadow ripple across the liquid's surface. Someone yells something obscene nearby, and a reaction to it ghosts across her face but she doesn't actually look, just has that attentuated awareness delineating the precise degree of carelessness in her slouch.

Amber and Laurel and Molly and Kragen and all these people claiming things, or being half-in-the-know, or

"Do something fun," she says, and Lux is not actually somebody who thinks of nothing but fun, enjoyment, partying, pleasure. "Go somewhere for general outness. S'what I do. Meet new people, you know," and she touches her toe to his shin, the pressure gentle but firm, a push, a tease, "or write a book."

"Have you started to do anything with the hauntings? Last I recall you were thinking about starting to haunt other haunted people, make some situationally similar pals."

Maybe it's strange that, given how safe she wants to keep Nate, Lux hasn't tried to steer him away from finding more out about that aspect of his life and though she texted a be careful message the night following the eclipse she never, and never will, told him or implied she wanted him to get another job, to stop poking around.

She values freedom, after all. Values will to do something, to change the world. Whatever.

Nate
The under-the-table prodding and the suggestion that he do something fun both make him smile. It's rare that he does smile. The kid must have gotten his cheeks pinched one too many times when he was growing up. Maybe. His mother's parents were both dead but the extended family lived on. She had siblings. Someone had to have been a cheek-pincher.

None of them knew he heard ghosts. Lux has known for quite a while and she has encouraged him to hone that sense but this is a problem he has had his entire life. He hasn't learned how to live in one world while making sense of the other. He can barely get through an entire day without hearing whispers in his ear. He's a beacon of light for those who don't know they're dead.

It would solve a number of his problems if he could find a way to pay his rent while helping usher lost souls off to whatever the hell is beyond this world and the one in between. Oblivion probably. Maybe he doesn't do them any favors when he helps them move on.

Nate could do a lot more good in the world if he embraced his gift. Reporting is a dying art and he is the sort of person who would wind up dead in a ditch in pursuit of truth. The only reason he hasn't doggedly gone after Kingsmith is he promised more than one person he would keep himself safe. It's real hard to be safe and be good at the same time.

"Turns out those sorts of people are either really hard to find, or they're crooks. Who'd've thunk it." Sip. "I, uh. I'm gonna get back into interviewing other veterans and their families. A woman who knows someone who told her I used to do that wants me to come out so she can talk to me about her son, I guess they just sent back his remains recently and she... wants closure, you know. So."

Lux
[CHARM SCHOOL?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Lux
"Do you believe in closure?"

Nate
"No."

His tone makes it sound as though he would consider the pursuit of resolution of ambiguity to be as ridiculous as any other fairytale quest known to man. If she had asked him if he believes in dragons or communists or peace he would have given her the same answer.

"But plenty of other people do. I'm not a doctor or anything, but it helps sometimes, you know, talking to someone who made it back in one piece." He must be echoing something his therapist told him once. He did see a therapist for six months when he first moved out here. He lied to her the entire time but he did keep all of his appointments. "All I do is sit there and ask questions about their experiences and they talk about it and then I write a stupid essay that goes on the Internet and people read it and sometimes they talk about it and reach out to each other and shit. If that'll help her, who gives a shit what I think?"

Lux
"I do."

To go with the black leather bomber jacket with (imagine) nothing beneath, she is wearing an 18th century ring on her left ring-finger. A poesy ring, with a star motif. Simple, metal. There is an inscription nestling against her skin and when her senses are very keen and she pays attention she can feel it, just as she can feel the quality and imperfections of her jacket's lining. When she inhales, she breathes in that savorful suggestion of studies and saddles and whips and oh leather has such a smell when it is gathered and hasn't been too weathered and she can breathe that in with deliberation if she so chooses.

"And I like the way you think," all smoke and silk and fondness; then a beat, and then a touch of wry, like a thorn that'll surprise snag on the thumb, those tender green ones which don't look dangerous but still have a bite, "about helping."

Nate
He sits back in his chair and examines the surface of his coffee. The way you can't tell from looking at it that it's choked with booze. The plate he'd set down earlier has only a few crumbs on it. Nathan looks a rumpled sleep-deprived slob but that's the environment acting on him. He barely acts on his environment. The ghosts that come to him don't do much in the way of acting either. The times they have are etched onto his body where anyone with eyes can see them. That scar on his face is never going to fade all the way away and neither will the ones on his arms.

"What can I say," he says in a deadpan as he looks back up, "I have a love of civil service coursing through my veins."

Lux
"How unsatisfying," Lux replies. Matches his tone, more or less. She can manage a deadpan but there's a touch too much irreverent energy (vibrance) to be a true deadpan. "You should put in for a change. Why not the love of humanity, needful and not? Nobody ever grew strong and healthy on civil service."

Nate
"You think I can put in for a transfusion?" he asks. "Like, is there a list somewhere I can get on? 'Hey, I'm tired of acting out of a sense of honor and duty, I wanna do the things I do out of love.'"

He's teasing her. If Nathan survives another half-a-decade or so he's going to be a right cynical bastard.

Lux
"Sure. Why not? But first you'd probably have to pay reverence to love. Go to its church, you know, hang out with its people, get in good and give yourself over to being got, and how good a thing's that to get anyway?"

Nate
"I dunno."

What would he know about love anyway. He can lie alone in a hospital bed and feel dead inside but not feel distress at it. Most people feel distress in the absence of pleasure. He'd thought about being afraid of her that night. If she had gotten it into her head to drain him dry he couldn't have done much about it but it would have been a painless way to go.

Nathan doesn't want to die. If he did they wouldn't be having this conversation. He has a loaded gun in his apartment.

"You're the one who suggested it, I figured you were some kind of expert on the subject.

Lux
"What, the love of humanity? I don't know if I'm all that good at it. I guess I've known a few people with that kind've affection though. Civil service; that has to taste like spit and vinegar and shoe polish, don'tcha think? Maybe brass, too. Do you think I'd make a good lover of humanity?"

Nate
Dont'cha think.

His whole life up until he left the Corps was spit and sweat and boot polish. You can't tell from looking at him because his hair is out of fucking control. He's got a tattoo or two that polo shirts and hospital gowns do a good enough job of covering up. He knows what civil service tastes like.

'Shit' is probably a more accurate description but Lux's is poetic.

"You've already got the appreciation for the positives down," he says. "Art and culture and philosophy and all of that happy horseshit. I guess if you can stomach the idea that individual contribution to societal advancement manages to overcome the, uh, capacity of individuals for selfish stupid destructive dickhead behavior and the fact that history makes it seem like humans only get more dickheadish the more of them are in one spot and the people at the top of the heap are the biggest dickheads on the planet then yeah, you could maybe be a good lover of humanity."

Lux
"I bet we could take fucking classes."

In lieu of a transfusion; Lux has been playing with (how guache; but, well, yes) the poesy ring, spinning it around slowly so she can feel the inscription like an abrasion, and she smirks at Nathan now.

"I guess loneliness is a good cure for 'dickishness.' Hey, have you ever been an artist's model?" A suggestive lift of her eyebrows; what the suggestion is, of course, is something enigmatic, though she leans close, crooking her finger, c'mere. And, "Wanna?"

Nate
Nathan starts to scowl that scowl of his the one where he looks vaguely afraid at the same time that he looks repulsed because he knows that this is a leading question and if he answers one way that means he's locked into answering another question that he doesn't want to answer.

Of course he's never been an artist's model. Look at him.

He c'meres as stiff as Frankenstein's monster and when she asks if he wants to he laughs. Of course if she asks him he's going to say yes. He wants to make her happy. He loves her. But does he want to be an artist's model.

"Are you stoned?" he asks.

Lux
"Ask my pupils," Lux says, widening her eyes at Nate, so he can better see if her pupils are drowning out the rest've the green, one assumes, or read redness in her eyeball. None of that, of course. "And that's not a good answer!"

Nate
He snorts but wouldn't know how to gauge the size of her pupils in relation to her sobriety anyway. The sclerae aren't red. Vampires probably can't get stoned anyway. What would he know.

Other than the fact that she has pretty eyes and an excuse to look at them has presented itself. He does look at her eyes. Then they're onto his bad answer.

"Why would I want to be an artist's model?" he asks. Sits back and takes his coffee with him. "It wasn't a relevant question."

Lux
"Because then I could sketch a portrait 'Honor and Duty, But Not Love Of Humanity, circa 2014,' naturally. Because then you can practice staying really fucking still. I once stayed really fucking still for eight hours. Caught a cold. Was just terrible."

Nate
The story makes him laugh. He isn't a fidgeter. He has no problem staying still. Staying still in the same spot for eight hours while someone is paying rapt attention to him and he probably isn't wearing a shirt.

"You could also just take a picture," he says. "The film for the camera my dad gave me came in last week. I've been using it on trees and park benches and photography-student shit like that, maybe shirtless selfies are the next step in honing my skill."

Lux
"Park benches?"

Lux crinkles her nose. Then hits the table with the palm of her hand. "Let's go get your camera and take some real photographs. Garçon! The check!" Up she goes, a wild scramble of suddenly coltish grace; it sheathes off into elegance as soon as she's straightened, reaching a hand to help Nate up too because he is definitely slower than she is.

Nate
Park benches. Yes. Confluence, man. The study of objects and their relation to the sky and the horizon. Buildings and shit are stationary objects. NO PARKING signs are of particular interest to him. NO PARKING and NO SMOKING and all the other NO signs plastered up everywhere. Nathan's photography is somewhat banal but he's only been pursuing it for a month.

Shannon was very good at taking candid portraits. The colors on her camera were vivid and the contrast was sharp and she caught people when they were talking to Nathan. Showing him around their home or sitting out in the backyard smoking. Half the time they didn't know she was there. He has a lot of photographs that Shannon took during the six months they worked together but he doesn't look at them even though she isn't in them. There's a reason he hasn't written much since she died but his father said the writing stands on his own.

Up goes Lux. Nate startles at the speed with which she moves and he chugs the rest of his coffee before giving her his hand.

It's a trap but he walks right into it anyway.

Lux
"Taking a picture's not the same as having an artist's model," Lux says, digging her heels in the better to help him get the fuck up. She keeps his hand; hers is warm enough tonight. Tonight's not a am I not vampire enough for you night. Soon, maybe. "It's empty. Even a good photograph; even a great one - it's just two dimensions," and Lux leans into Nate - it could be a hug; is almost the beginning of a hug; is a partial hug - and kisses him on his cheek. He might be tall but Lux has heels and she slouches but she's no slouch herself badum bum.

And she'll lead the way out into the open night air.

Energy. Energy. Energy.