Viol
Hey István. Time to live unlife on the Anarch side. The Bluebird District of East Colfax is where they meet up for their next lesson or conversation or whatever the fuck they're meeting up for. The All Inn Motel. The place is a hole. The kind've hole you might think twice about throwing a body into because shouldn't a hole be nicer than that? The place is a hole but it's just next to a pretty amazing club and Lux is meeting István after doing whatever it is she does at the club. Enjoy herself.
Not that she doesn't enjoy István, too. If he gets there first the bored woman at the front 'desk' (actually another room behind a bullet-proof [maybe] pane of glass) looks him over and gives him a key and a room number. He doesn't have to wait too too long.
If he doesn't get there first then he'll find Lux just recently arrived, opening the closet of questionable merit.
"Hi there, honeycomb," is what she says in either case, all conspiratorial. The room they're in doesn't smell like mold or questionable substances. The room they're in is actually clean (...enough), except for the scurf of seediness which clings to just about everything. There are no windows because it's deep in the interior of the All Inn Motel's building. There is a curtain against a wall though as if there might've been a window behind the curtain once upon a time looking into - another room or the hall. There's a queen-sized bed with a bit of a sag to the mattress and guess what happens if you drop a quarter into the slot.
The television is chained. The vcr plays video tapes and that is probably why it hasn't been stolen. The television remote is chained. Everything's chained. If István investigated (if István investigates, supposing he just arrived)) the drawers, he'll see a bible (no cross embossed on the cover, just the word: Bible KJV) and that's chained too, wouldn'tcha know it? There's an ashtray. Also chained. This place allows for smoking.
It's also thirty-six dollars a night.
István
Places like this fascinate him.
Though he does not choose to do so István can if he did choose to remember a time when every building in his world was built by hand and lit by candle and had the vague yet persistent air of never attaining a state of total cleanliness. Even as time passed and everything grew brighter and faster and merchants began chaining their wares to the room itself.
He arrives early because he enjoys the combination of solitude and novelty. When Lux arrives he is examining the VCR. It belongs to a brand of machinery with which he had only just begun to familiarize himself when the technology started changing. Maybe René had one in his living room back in Chicago. The clock always flashed 12:00 because René was an intelligent man but he could never be bothered changing the time on the damned thing.
At the sound of the door he turns and at the sight of the Toreador his visage shifts from one of dead neutrality to muted inquisitiveness. Something in his gaze that wasn't there before they drank from each other.
He heard the word 'motel' and wore jeans and a button-down shirt instead of a three-piece suit. Still wears Oxford shoes and his hair combed neat so it will not move without effort. Still looks sharp - the goddamn shirt is tucked into the jeans.
Lord knows what the woman at the front desk thought. Nothing, most like. You do this sort of work long enough you stop giving a shit what people do in the rooms.
Viol
The gloom-haired creature gives István a sluice of a look a rake of a look a rakehell-promise of a look. The promise is perhaps that she will be telling him to untuck his shirt. This is East Colfax, not Cherry Creek.
Lux looks not at all like she'd be invited to a museum event upper-crust schmoozer with metal slithering around her throat and that bracelet of hand-cuffs and industrial-sharp cuffs clasped and crawling high up her fore-arm a long button-up shirt that's a collage of punk-band posters accompanied with the washed-out photography of cold war propaganda slipping off her shoulder clasped at her waist with a tie and beneath that a black camisole silk because even so the night is warm and leggings, sure, leggings to go with the boots, annnnd
and there's the sluice of a look, the hi, honeycomb, as she slips in like a conspiracy, and then Lux says, "So does the bed work, darling? Didja give it a try?"
The conspiracy becomes this sharp suggestion of a smile; it finds her eyes, of course it does. He looks at her differently now that he's had her vitae wicking inside him; taking possession. Lux doesn't seem to look at him differently, but of course she does. Nothing's true if it's not vitae-fueled, huh?
She doesn't go to the bathroom such as it is to take out her earrings, she kicks the door shut behind her and instead wanders toward the closet.
The woman at the front desk, well. She probably thinks what the Oxford Hotel concierge would've thought if they'd shown up for another one-night room - that Lux is István's mistress (because of course István can't be Lux's mistress - fuck the world).
István
But the two of them don't give a lick what the concierge of the Oxford Hotel or the front desk clerk at the All Inn Motel think when they show up like this. Together the first time and separate these last two no one has seen Lux draped over him or the way István looks at her and their conclusions are drawn independent of observation.
As for the bed István spares it a glance as his back becomes accustomed to facing the window and shakes his head.
"No," he says. "What is to try, eh? It is a bed."
He makes nothing of the coin dispenser at the head of the thing. Maybe he thinks you have to pay extra for the privilege of sleeping in the thing in a place like this. Shit-hole that it is.
Her path from the door to the closet is trod with his eyes on her. He folds his hands behind his back and takes in her outfit.
"What is this you are wearing?" he asks. Oh lord. He's teasing her. "You do have so much metal on your arm!"
Viol
Did the guy with a button-down shirt tucked into his jeans just - ? Lux casts a look over her shoulder at István. Decides not to open the closet yet and instead turns so her back is resting against the 'wood.' There is no 'wood' here. Somebody could break a chair and try to stake a vampire and it might hurt but it wouldn't paralyze them wouldn't turn them into snow white in a glass casket. The look: it flickers.
"Are you telling me you think it's too much, Isty baby? I think it's just enough; or do you want one of your own?" Languid, not serious, is Lux ever serious? Sure she is; but first - ingenue. "Why don'tcha get on the bed and I'll show you what it does."
István
"I do know what is is that beds do, my gem."
Literal for its own sake. Because they have hours yet before the sun shows itself. He does not trust the curtains in this place.
Maybe he already drew sigils on the windows in his own blood. Blot out the rays before they can show themselves. The bed is large but it is also disgusting. Impetus enough to leave before they have to trust the motel staff and their own luck.
Protest though he does it is with half a heart. He sits.
"What if I did say I envied your metal?"
Viol
"I'd tell you that your eyes're too good at being blue to be so godamned green," Lux says, "and then I'd give you a shot at figuring out how to take it off. Do you have a quarter?" If István has a quarter, Lux takes it. If István asks her why?, Lux gestures with her armored [punk gauntleted (industrial couture)] arm, waving him off, and finds the requisite coins in a pocket for the coin dispenser. Clink. Clink. Clink. Damn. Need one more. Lux frowns and pats herself down again. A nickel, okay. And a dime. C'mon, baby, c'mon - there we go.
The vibrating magic fingers do work. They groan to life with at first reluctance and then with great mechanical fervor.
István
The ancilla has no need for change and appears perplexed when asked if he has any. Leaves the Toreador to sort out payment on her own.
It takes no command to convince him to sit but as soon as the bed begins to move he leaps to his feet with a speed belied by his build. Eyes narrow at the thing before they turn on her.
Strange sorcery. He puts his palm down on the mattress before deciding what next to do with it.
Viol
Her chuckle is a wickedness but he can hear it while his eyes narrow at the gyrating mattress. The Anarch finds István's haste in leaving the bed amusing. Signs of the chuckle are nearly gone when he turns his eyes on her however, the remnant just being a gleam in her eyes.
The mattress continues to ply its trade. "You're supposed to lie down! It's supposed to feel good. Magic fingers. Don'tcha like magic, István?"
István
"I do not trust magic."
Knowing what she does about him now the statement must seem a joke to her. But magic was not one of the things he told her he trusted the night Lux asked him for a list in the corridor of his haven. He never made it to seven that night. Maybe it was on there in the shadows where they couldn't reach.
"Why does one need a bed that dances so? 'Feels good,' she say."
After pressing down on the mattress again he suppresses a smirk.
"The lady goes first, yeah?"
Viol
"Who said a thing about trust?" Lux says, the lady goes first indeed. The mattress goes: sproing! prr prr prr chugga-chugga prr when Lux lies down across the sagging, questionable thing, not languishing a-sudden, or flopping, but sitting at the edge like a lady, her expression becoming absorbed, internal, and then she bounces back and lays herself out not careful of her hair so it's a dark halo of a thing that wants to be touched or painted yes painted.
"I said," there's a tremor to her voice; she catches it, and her next words are laughter-brushed, "don'tcha like it. You can like things you don't trust, can't you?"
Lux holds her hand out toward István; it's her left-hand, the arm with the metal bling. If he reaches out to take it, she turns her arm so that the inside of her wrist is presented for his inspection, or would be if it weren't all metal-shackled and hidden; if he doesn't reach out to take it, why, she does the same thing, the timing just means a different thing.
István
So he takes her hand. Sits down at the edge of the mattress and furrows his brow not in consternation but in thought and then he climbs onto the humming bed beside her.
"I suppose you are right in this," he says to the matter of liking what one does not trust.
He finds a place between her arm and body to rest himself and jockeys hands around. Finds the one not burdened by bangles and brings the wrist to his lips. No teeth.
"This is strange, no?"
Viol
The creature allows the other to settle in at her side. Head on her shoulder? Head on her upper arm? Her lashes cast a demure (& vibrating) shadow on her cheekbones while she watches him set her first hand down - her fingers tighten, ah ah ah - and then reach for the other and bring her bare wrist to his lips. Her eyes close; a moment passes. They slide open; now she is looking at the extremely ugly ceiling. The ghosts of old stains.
He asked her something; the mattress begins to vibrate less strongly, and Lux rolls suddenly (sharply) onto her side, hooking her leg over both of his.
"Perhaps; but is it fun?"
István
It's with a scientist's detachment that István experiences the strangeness of lying atop a bed whose box spring is vibrating with such dying intensity. The unit has possibly been in this room since Kennedy was still alive. It hasn't been used in years. The motor is dying and they can feel it as it dies.
Neither of them has grown accustomed to the sensation of a thing dying in their arms. István still frowns as the tone and power of the vibrations changes. That frown evaporates when Lux turns towards him. Locks his legs in her own.
She wants to know if it's fun.
Without the shockwaves come up out of the box spring the creature would be still. No inhale of arousal or stirring of limbs or flushing of skin as the men she's known would respond to her lying on him like this. That detachment he had exhibited their first night at the Oxford is gone now. Blood has changed that.
He works the arm not already occupied around her shoulders. Runs the hand held to her wrist up-up-up her arm to where it meets her trunk and lets it travel down her ribs and back. The other fingers finding purposeful work in combing her hair.
"'Fun,'" he says just to test the feel of it on his tongue before he commits to it and then, curious: "You are having fun?"
Viol
"Sure," she says.
"But I don't know about the bed. That was barely five minutes; absolute robbery, barely magical at all." Her expression is one of contemplation; distant. But it becomes more present and amused once he's got his fingers in her hair, like that brought her attention back; spark. "Of course I asked you."
Touching Lux's arm as he is means that he is touching fabric. Metal or fabric or bare skin at the wrist but then just fabric and later there is a whisper of silk-beneath rubbing against fabric when his hand finds her ribs and back. Her other arm is awkward around him now so she takes it back. Re-arranges herself so that she can sit up. One leg stays hooked (casually [languidly]) across István's - thighs, now, or maybe his waist. She sweeps her hair out've her face in a fluid (precise [careless]) gesture, head canted just so, flash of pale skin and glint of slither-metal.
"So," pause, "Teach," a deliberate noun, not a verb, "what is tonight's lesson? Do you want to stay here or do you want to go to the Brown?"
István
She asked him first. The creature smiles a lazy smile at the reminder and the repetition but doesn't answer her. How does one define 'fun' to a being that tucks his fucking dress shirt into his jeans. Lux does not provide him definitions without coaxing. Tonight he does not coax her. His fingers trace straight lines along her scalp and then she sits up. Bracelets catching dim light and flank moving beneath a hand that does not seek to keep her still.
As his other hand loses contact with her hair its fingertips slide down her brow her cheekbone her jaw. His thumb brief grips her chin and then he touches the metal on her other wrist. Still fascinated by the number and weight of them though his eyes are on hers as she speaks.
Teach.
Even if she were to attain mastery of the discipline Lux could never bid him do anything he did not want to do. Less to do with the strength of his will and more to do with the strength of his blood.
"Why would you want to leave this place?" he asks. "Here you can smoke."
But she wants to smoke already doesn't she.
István @ 2:32PMFOR SCIENCERoll: 6 d10 TN10 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 1 ) VALID
Viol
Lux does one thing with language and István hears another. Teach, she says, like it's a name, like it's a bite of a delicious apple, not a red delicious apple, the most delicious apple- red on the outside and moonlight on the inside and sweet with- Teach.
Hey there, Teach.
Her eyes widen deliberately; aren't they lovely? The light strikes them just so right now, dredges out that shadow and makes the rest this lucent sea-glass green. "István!" she says, and then - conspiracy again: "Didn't you know? You can smoke anywhere. I do."
Fuck the circle with its line; rules. Bah.
Then she turns her arm, the one with all the metal, the bracelets whose weight he's so fascinated by, and looks at his hand on the bracelets. She told him earlier that if he said he envied them she'd give him a shot at figuring out how to take 'them' (a misnomer; it's one bracelet; one cuff) off, and when she glances at István's face it's a skip-rock of query.
Go on, Teach. Teach. And gonna try to take it off?
István
It pleases him that she does not bend to his command so fast as she did the last two times and she can see the spark of inquisition in his eyes but he does not speak his observation aloud. This is interesting to him. Next time he'll exert an effort. That may be the variable missing. Lux is a stronger sort than one would think looking at her with her spun-glass bones and her indolent air.
He never told her that he did in fact envy this strange bracelet. Only wanted to know what would happen if he told her this. With such a flimsy grasp on the way English works he has to fall back on the rules of his native tongue. On Latin and German. More civilized languages than the one they speak in America.
When she gives him that glance István flicks his eyebrows. Alright then. Lain on his back still his hair still stubborn in its combed uniformity he lets his head cant to one side before he turns her wrist around to find the clasp.
"I do not smoke," he says.
István
[intelligence!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
István
[4 successes]
Viol
The bracelet-cuff is not easy to get off or on; somebody who was impatient or cruel might experiment by just pulling it. Couldn't a Toreador just break the bones in their hand and then heal them once the cuff was on? Probably Lux did not do that. There are four little places, cunningly hidden, where the thing unsnaps then clicks together; it's a complicated piece of industrial frippery, but István - he's got brains for something, doesn't he? If he unsnaps them all, the cuff opens up, unclasps like a hinge, and Lux can pull her wrist free. The thing is heavy. Very heavy.
"Why not?" is what she asks, of course. Now she's watching his hands on her bracelet; sharp profile, lashes demure. "And don't think I forgot the question; d'you wanna stay here or go to the Brown? I just rent rooms here sometimes." Not quite a smirk; not quite a smile. Almost, though. Nearly. "For the closets, you know. Wardrobe change."
István
"Do you have need of a change of wardrobe?"
Lazy in his examination of the bracelet now that he's freed her wrist from it. Or maybe it's the other way around. No matter. He is opening and closing the thing as if they have all the time in the world and he's content as anything to lie here with her leg thrown over him but the question still stands.
The bracelet will look ridiculous over top of his button-down shirt which is navy blue but István tests to see if the thing will close over his forearm anyway.
"I have no preference. This place will serve, I think." He puts his eyes on her face again and brings her now-bare wrist to his lips. "How it is that you are so difficult to command, eh? This is a quality all anarchists do have?"
Viol
[Percept + ... Empathy or Subt. Whatchoo on about?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Viol
Lux is considering her bracelet against István's shirt. It doesn't quite close; not unless he forces it. Lux is considering István's shirt against the bed's questionable bedding; she is considering where he has tucked it into his jeans. That and the words: Do you have need of a change of wardrobe?
Her gaze is tugged back to his face when he presses her wrist to his lips again, but this time she isn't lying on her back and he can see her, so she doesn't let her eyes close; still, a certain sea-change shift of expression - which lasts all of half-a-second, because his question makes her sharp-up, sharp as lake-light dripping from a stiletto's edge, sharp as that edge where light carves a shadow; see how she cants her head all inquiry. Pulls her wrist out've his grasp but only so that she can unbutton her own shirt button-down shirt.
It's large on her because she wears it like a dress, reminded of it when she finds the tie at her waist. The weight of the leg she's had slung so carelessly over István leaves him because she goes to both knees in order to untie the belt-tie, drape it around her neck, then continue unbuttoning her shirt. Her fingers are precise.
But there was a sharpness, wasn't there. An inquiry. "Yes," she tells him. "All anarchs are difficult to command; it's the only quality we all have in common." It's a ridiculous statement; she doesn't seem to think he needs to take it (completely) seriously. "I just do the thing thoroughly."
Frowning, now, in concentration or - who knows.
István
But she hasn't warned him that she intends to change the state of his godawful outfit yet. Hasn't given him any indication other than sliding off of him. Rising up onto her knees over him that he may read her posture from a lower point of view. István lies still having abandoned the task of clasping the bracelet over his own arm. All he does is watch her now.
Interesting fact about his ilk: they know the power of blood even before they know of the power of blood. The first bond that ever traps them is more powerful than that of other clans. Already he is locked onto her more than she is onto him.
"Well," he says. That explains it. "That does explain. I did think to myself, Ah, but she is so thorough with this, why, what."
You are not funny, István. With your tucked-in shirt.
Viol
"When did you try to command me and find it difficult?"
The question is a trap. The shirt is off now. Beneath it, thin silk camisole, finer indeed than anything else in this motel. Silk makes light fall in love with shadow. "Here," she says, "Try this on," and now the shirt (cool, not cold; she'd been blood-warmed lively tonight) she lets drop on István's chest, taking her cuff-bracelet back, not to re-clasp it put to put it in the closet.
When she opens the closet, there's a hint of sea-green, then a sharp brightness on the clasp of some square purse, beside which she puts the bracelet.
István
This shirt isn't going to button up over his chest male anatomy being different from female anatomy as it is but he is not so tall. He doesn't seek to joke about how this thing won't fit. It's large enough on her to serve as a dress.
As she climbs from the bed István lets his hand trace the camisole to its frontier and then sits up. Plucks the shirt from his chest and drops it onto his lap. Scoots across the sagging bed so that his shoes plant their soles on the carpet and starts to unbutton his own shirt.
The hem doesn't leave the waistband of his jeans until the last button and only then out of the necessity of undressing. He does her the courtesy of not staring at her as she stows her bracelet.
"That would be telling, no? Whenever you do meet a Malkavian or a Ventrue, darling, one you do not trust, they may try to do this thing to you." He tosses his shirt onto the bed beside him but doesn't don hers yet. "You did notice how this does work, yeah, since we are not bound so? How I did make you the first time scream?"
Oh no Lux pop quiz.
Viol
Lux has not turned back from the closet, considering instead that stroke of sea-green nonsense hanging on a hanger instead of the thin silk camisole the tunic and the high high suede boots. Considering instead whatever else she has folded up on the pasteboard shelf, smell of something inside that isn't altogether pleasant but isn't altogether unpleasant, stale-smell. He does not see her expression when she responds, but perhaps he can read her tone.
"Yes, I noticed."
She has on that slither of metal around her throat; lifts her hands to undo the necklace's clasp, let it slither off her neck and into her hand. Hangs up the tie. It's all very domestic and mundane.
István
As she divests herself of the rest of the metal about her neck the Tremere on the bed behind her picks up the shirt gone to a dress on her smaller frame and holds it up. Snaps the thing the way a housekeeper would snap a sheet to banish the wrinkles and examines it front and back before undoing the cuffs. Like his wrists are so much larger than those of whoever it is she stole the shirt from.
"A person you do have bound to you so," he says. "The eyes, you will not need them. If I do want for René to act, I can call him through the telephone."
Viol
The bedsprings go: bounce, wheeze, clatter. Because Lux just bounced back onto the bed. His navy shirt is ignored. One leg is tucked beneath her, the other is hanging off the edge, toe on the floor. Her gaze is a sharped up consideration of a thing, all still-shadows and a sublimated lucency; it's a different colour for those who can see such things with Auspex's clarity, isn't it- compelling creature that she is.
"Tell me about it," she says. "The Discipline of Dominate; what does it feel like to you, using it? What is it?"
She almost says 'to your clan,' but she doesn't.
István
What the discipline feels like to him is different than how it feels to his clan. They haven't spoken much of allegiances and the morality of staying with the Tower when one disagrees with most of what the Tower stands for but what he has had to say about it he has drawn from dead philosophers. People whose words he can hide behind because hey he wasn't the one who first coined the words "tyranny of political leaders" that was John Stuart Mill.
István is a utilitarian. Raise your hand if you're surprised.
So she bounces onto him and it turns his attention toward her. He has the shirt over his arms and pulled up onto his shoulders but he hasn't done the buttons. Death has locked him the amber of youth. His body is a spare thing. He's a product of his environment. Nothing presented itself in abundance back in the nineteenth century. Lamp oil was practically a currency in some places. Candles were cheaper.
"It is the ability," he says as he plants a hand near hers, "of making shape of the thoughts and acts of another from your own words. Of taking away their will and replacing it with your own, eh? You did feel this already. It is not pleasant and yet it is an easy thing to do on those whose spines are not so strong as yours."
Like bounty hunters who want to talk shit in strip clubs.
Viol
The Toreador considers him for a silent moment. "So it is a contest, and an unfair one," she says. Her chin is stubborn; up. She is considering, in fact, those she knows who have fallen under the power's sway; those she knows, or can guess, have the power at their beck and their call, have figured out how to sluice their will over another's just by looking eye to eye and commanding. How is she going to do that?
"What else is it? Tell me," and here, she smiles faintly, "seven things about it. How was it for you when you first learned it?"
István
"One day I do want to know why it is always the number seven with you."
Teasing maybe. May be he has an appreciation for numbers and doesn't understand why someone who has proclaimed not to trust mathematics has locked onto one that is not only a Mersenne prime but a double Mersenne prime. And a factorial prime. A lucky prime. A happy number. A safe prime. The number seven has all sorts of implications that she doesn't trust.
It's the lowest natural number that cannot be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers. This means more to him than it would mean to her but Lux can still hear the knowing smirk in his voice as he tamps down his interest.
"When I did first learn it," he says, "I..." His gaze softens. His smirk doesn't. It's almost sad. This is what he signed up for, man. Feelings. "You do ask me to make talk of an old time, my gem."
Yes she does, István. Deal with it.
He picks up one of her hands and traces the backs of her fingers. Turns more squarely towards her.
"I thought that I had learned something very terrible. That I was to be very careful, yeah? A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being, eh? Epicurus does say."
Viol
Lux had no such qualms about the Disciplines she learned early on in her (un)life, although perhaps qualms will soon come - now that she is forcing herself to different heights, learning more about heart-string pulling, how to compell love. Maybe now she'll learn to have qualms. She hasn't yet.
So she regards István's apparent poor time of it with interest- opens her mouth to say something, voice a question that hasn't had time to shape in her eyes probably, but changes her mind, tongue touching the sharp tip of a canine before curling like her smile curls, compression of mouth that is surprisingly firm.
"That's one."
Helpful, isn't she. Laces his fingers with her own.
István
"That was not one!" he says. This surge of passion is a show. A smile suffuses his being even without the muscles around his mouth or eyes beginning to crinkle. Lux can see it in a lightness about him. The firm but not tight gripping of her forearm. "That was in answer to how it was for me to learn this thing!"
Oh Lux you infuriating little anarch. He picks up her hand and kisses her inner wrist quick. Starts to work his thumb along the ridge where her radius lives beneath the skin. Where a pulse would throb if she were to will it.
"I will stop when I do reach your version of seven."
Okay. So:
"The most weak power gives strength to one word only. This one work does have such strength that you can bury it in a sentence so to keep it safe from others, yeah? As the power grows you can put into the mind a thought that was not there before."
And then there's a noise. Like a cat outside. István glances away and loses his train of thought and tries to get it back by kissing her wrist again.
Viol
Lux laughs at him. At his argument, at his protest.
The laughter has faded by the time he kisses her wrist again. There was a noise outside; now there's a noise inside, a back-of-throat sort've mm noise, followed by, "And when did you try this on me and find it difficult?"
Also go on. She likes his mouth at her wrist. Makes no move to reclaim her hand.
István
That noise in her throat does nothing to stir him because nothing remains inside to stir but he does react to it. It's a pleased noise and a pleasing noise and he could keep right on kissing the inside of her wrist but she wants more answers that have nothing to do with the list.
"All of the times," he says.
That's what she gets for interrupting yet another list. He'd like to finish the list. Let her know what she's getting into now that they've reached the point in their knowing each other that he scoots closer to her on the bed as they're having this conversation. Lets his legs rest against hers. Her free hand isn't on him but he knows the pressure of it on the mattress still.
It is a strange thing to him to wish another's hands were on him. If he brings to mind the last time someone ran their fingers through his hair it would not be so long ago but he has a wider span of years than others do. A hundred years is nothing for someone like him and more than others will ever have. Relativism is a bitch.
"If I did know how to do so it would be for me difficult to change your memories." That must be another thing about the discipline. It's possible to change another's memories and as easy as it is to command another. "Or to, how you say... mold you over time so that one night you would do whatsoever I did tell you to do without the making of an effort. With greater power than this, you can move your own mind into the body of the one you want to control. You must leave your body so to do this and you cannot take over the mind of another of our kind unless the other is so bound to you."
That has to be seven. It doesn't matter if it is or not. István starts to kiss his way up her forearm.
Viol
"Have you been 'so bound' before?"
He is kissing her way up her forearm. Her free hand still isn't on him. Firm on the mattress, although she still doesn't pull away; a sensualist, isn't Lux, a creature who seeks pleasure night after night, and isn't this a pleasure?
István
"We are all so bound on the night we do rise, darling. The bond does only need one drink."
This he says as he lifts his lips from their retracing of a previous path up her arm and pushes her hair back from her shoulders with the hand that had risen to keep pace with his lips.
István places his palm against her neck and jaw that the other side may be still for him and kisses her cheekbone and the corner of her jaw. The corner of her mouth. Like he's testing to see how much she'll take without either giving or pushing him back.
Viol
The bond does only need one drink. They've drunk from each other once; Lux does not consider the fact that a Warlock might find the drink more heady than she does. After all, what does Lux know of Warlocks? Very little indeed. When he kisses the corner of her mouth, he kisses the sudden corner of a smile which doesn't want to be a smile; it's an impulse, unbidden, and she cuts him a glance. Still has yet to push him away; still has yet to move to touch him.
"So one drink, and now - did you know it - you could take over my mind? Displace me? Why would somebody wish to do something so, well, silly isn't it? Useless."
István
It could very well lose its appeal if he were expecting reciprocation but there's a sort of pleasure in giving another pleasure. And she hasn't got the faintest clue that he's drunker off of her than she is off of him. Fingers sliding through her hair don't tell her anything they haven't told her before. His senses are just as sharp as hers and he is not a wanton creature but there is no sin in enjoying the evening so long as he does not breach his own moral code.
Possessing another's mind and body is a silly useless thing. István is near enough to her that that cut glance meets his eyes.
"I have no wish to do this thing to another," he says. "Some find it useful and not-silly to borrow the body of another when they wish to act. One can use sensory powers through such a vessel with not so much effort. I hear with very strong holds on another one can use the mystical powers. Perhaps some find Necromancy to be most sensible when done through a, how you say, a proxy. I do not know."
Viol
"If this Discipline is not one which speaks to you, not one which you enjoy," Lux begins, though her eyes have closed, briefly, because his fingers are sliding through her hair. Because she wants to close them so that while he replies to her she cannot see him, can only feel.
"This Discipline you are teaching me," and her eyes open again, and now she turns more fully toward the Tremere. Laces one arm around the usurper's neck, upper arm just above the elbow on his shoulder, fingers [balletic-] brushing his other shoulder, just so. He isn't captive. They didn't need blood to want to touch, to test.
"Thank you."
"But if this is not one which makes your heart sing, glad, oh, darling, then what is? What are you glad to possess?"
With vampires it's always possession, eventually.
István
He isn't captive. He takes the arm about his shoulder as an acceptance or an invitation or maybe just a concession. The Tremere keeps his weight heavy on the hand not combing back her hair but she can feel a shifting of his body towards her. As a celestial body appears from the ground to cover another.
From a greater vantage point one can see that the two bodies don't come anywhere near each other. It's all perspective. During an eclipse the body nearer to Earth does nothing more than move in front of the farther body. Even the Sun great as it is finds itself blocked by the Moon sometimes.
So what is he glad to possess.
"Is not the sharpening of one's senses one of the greatest gifts this state does give us?" he asks. Us - didn't she think he was Malkavian once? Up until an actual Malkavian named him for what he was. The Malkavians and the Tremere share many of the same disciplines. She thought he was Ventrue once too but that illusion is long gone. "I do find it useful to move more fast, eh? or to command others who would not listen to me so without it, but this..."
His eyes are traipsing across the bones of her face now. Fingers moved out of her hair to trace along her throat and her collarbone. Testing the edges of her camisole.
"I pity sometimes those who do not know it."
Viol
What a good answer.
One that (perhaps) finds an echo of sympathy in the gloom-haired creature with her arm around István's shoulders because, although he does not know it, it is still new to her.
Seeing more colours in the night seeing more movement in the dark noticing more in a painting, in a crowd, in an expression shifting across a face, being aware of what is going on so much more completely; it's still new. Tasting more hints of things, stray omens, hints of smoke, of that which would make one a connoisseur, when she feeds; it's still new. Smelling so clearly that fresh-packed gunpowder in a hidden-away gun is clear that a drop of blood a room away that perfume each individual note is almost overwhelming, can smell the way it reacts to body chemistry that interesting alchemy, smell a cigarette long after it's been ashed, lingering in the air, smell car exhaust and gasoline and sweat fear-sweat passion-sweat it can all be so very present; it's still new.
Hearing so clearly that occasionally she loses mind because there is too much because every wrong note is a scrape she no longer fails to notice the wrong notes and it's interesting, how many footsteps you hear when your attention is so sharp, how much more you hear in the voice of somebody you're listening to, so aware, aware, aware of tonal shifts, of what they want to hide, how much easier it is to pick out the nuance of expression, hear the hitch of breath, see the stutter of surprise, see, see, see, see, hear, hear, hear, taste, taste, taste, taste.
New, new, new.
And of course there is touch; isn't it nice?
István traces the line of her throat down to her collarbone down to the camisole's thin strap or perhaps its neckline and he can feel the movement which is really just a prophecy of laughter although she doesn't laugh at this time. Her camisole a fine French thing, stitched by cloistered nuns who haven't said a word in twelve years up in the Alps or something ridiculous like that, a suggestion of extremely fine lace along the neckline, the stitches which give it shape tiny and neat, but not machine-made. Details. That's what Auspex gives vampires. Engagement with the details.
"I won't disagree," Lux tells him. Arm around his shoulders and neck slides off, so he's less a captive (he's not a captive), but she's also shifted so she's closer to him, so she's using his shoulder as an arm-rest more deliberately, going to prop her cheek up with her fist at any moment. "Though I find it makes the world too much a thrall of a thing," her gaze slips from his eyes, which is where it had been resting, across the planes of his face, mouth, collar of her shirt on his shoulder, shadow where he didn't button it, ridiculous navy shirt off to the side why would he wear that with jeans and tuck it in. "Enthralling; a trap."
"Too much. It's dizzying. So you're not going to ask me to teach you how to be quick? That's a shame."
István
Oh that strikes him as funny. Not funny enough to laugh with teeth but she can see the spark of amusement in his eyes just before the flick of his brows. Every time it's as if he's surprised. As if even he expects himself not to have a sense of humor.
As if he doesn't notice how René allows himself a snort here and there when he says something amusing. How René who hates just about everything because it's such a fucking burden being surrounded by proof of others' idiocy doesn't look at him like something loathsome. He tried to leave once. That was a horrible time for them though. René had seen horrible things in Austria and had horrible things done to him. It wasn't the same as watching István do something horrible.
That was a long time ago. They don't speak of it anymore. When István laughs it isn't the laugh of a creature who's been dead nearly two hundred years. Not a rusted dust-choked thing. He's glad to still have his consciousness even if it is trapped in a body that will never age. Even if it can only keep pace with the modern age for so long before it starts to fall behind.
Took him long enough to sort out that dress shirts could be worn without the rest of the suit. That jeans were an article of clothing sure but they weren't formalwear. The two together he must figure is a casual enough outfit but jesus christ István don't tuck the fucking dress shirt into the jeans ever again.
"I do already know how to be quick," he says and holds her chin in his thumb to kiss her lips. The thumb smooths her brow a second later. "I do not know how to awe people, eh?"
Viol
Oh, no. If he's going to kiss her lips, she's going to -
Oh, she's going to answer him. "Why," she says, "would you want to awe people when you can just look them in the eyes," look me in the eyes, István; it's her turn to hold his chin, adjust him so that he is looking her in the eyes, directly, squarely, no side-long glances, no, and she rests her forehead against his, so, "and tell them what to do?"
Lux doesn't flip a switch that'll make whatever she's saying more Awe-worthy, that'll kindle an impression in his cold dead heart; or does she? The Discipline of Presence is subtle.
"Why is it the eyes?"
István
He can already manipulate people's thoughts and actions. Why he would want to be able to manipulate their emotions too doesn't make any sense. Even with their cool foreheads together and their cool eyes on each others'.
"You have to ask why the eyes?"
As they're close enough that they have no other option than honesty. His voice is always low and near-airless. It doesn't have to change now.
"I am going to tell you a secret, yeah? You do not need the eyes. Some people do not have eyes, yeah? So long as they attend to you, you do not need the eyes."
Viol
"I like secrets," Lux says, although she doesn't seem too thrilled about this one. They don't need the eyes, but it helps; it's the hook, more often then not, the way into attention; into attentiveness. Lux wonders, hard on the heels of her lack-of-thrill, about combinations, about --
She smiles, slow as honey. "I like secrets. What won't you teach me, István, darling?"
István
Well doesn't she just think she's sneaky.
Slow as honey she smiles and István is in no greater hurry when he puts a hand to the back of her neck to hold her still when he kisses her lips again. Old as he is he doesn't find himself crushed under by distant cars and the stink of cologne lingering in the wake of someone who's just left the room but a loud sense of touch is still new for him.
He leans in closer to her. Wants to lie her down if they're going to keep speaking of secrets but he already knows he can't get Lux to do anything she doesn't want to do without exerting quite a bit of effort. That's not his style anyway.
"What do you wish to know that you think I will not teach you?"
Viol
This time Lux returns the kiss, but it's a subtle thing, a nuance; he leaves her lips parted, like she was about to -
Doesn't matter; she licks her lips instead. He's leaning, leaning, leaning, so Lux leans back leans back leans back until her elbow hits the mattress, mouth compressing firmly and a sharp snick at the corner, it has to be a smirk not a smile.
"I don't know," she answers. "That's why I want to know. You're sort of a strange bird, István, sweet heart," like it's two words. "Can't decide what colour feathers you'd have, if they'd be speckled or spackled, water-smooth or downy. Maybe no feathers at all."
István
So he settles over her and he doesn't take care not to crush her with his weight because he does not weight so much more than she does and she's tougher than she looks besides. Their pelvises are load-bearing structures. He rests his hips atop hers and intends quite fully to while away an hour or more kissing at her neck.
If he pierces her throat one more time he'll fall so hopelessly for her that he won't know what to do with himself. It's an experiment of a sort. He's never been so bound before but the urge to drink from her again is awful strong.
He brushes his fingertips feather-light across her temple to smooth back the hair and then reads the bones in her face as she waxes on about the unknown quality of his feathers.
"I think if I were a bird I would have the black plumage," he says. "The males of the dimorf species--" He means dimorphic. It's close enough in Hungarian that he just drops it into his English and keeps right on talking. "--they do have brighter feathers to make attractive for the females. Maybe you are right in this, and I would have no plumage. I do not know." He kisses her again. "I did never imagine myself as a bird."
Viol
They've been awfully touchy-feely from the first, as if to compensate for the physical distance of a relationship via letters. He settles over her, a weight, a drape, and he can hear it in her voice when she next speaks, but she doesn't push him away; just shifts slightly, subtly, so the lay of his bones over hers is more comfortable, more fitted, and - all right, fine. So she does lie down completely a sprawl of a thing, amused by who knows what, and she slips her hand underneath her shirt so she can trace his spine with her fingers.
"I'm getting a real clear picture right now," she tells him, glance shifting (reverie [dream-smoked]) up and off to the side like she's seeing that clear picture now, floating in the air. "It's tall, gangly, long neck, long legs, and according to popular gossip it just sticks its head into the sand and thinks that hey, hey," and this time, Lux kisses István, "heyyy, now I've cunningly avoided danger... ous questions."
István
Whatever he intends to have happen running his hand from her shoulder down her side up her thigh to hook at a knee as he does isn't anything the camera is going to capture. The camera is already considering its way towards the door. As her touch shoots shivers up his spine he arches himself against her no small amount of restraint in the action but it is an impulse he does nothing to kill before it fires.
And when she kisses him he kisses her back. Even as he's refusing to laugh.
"I avoid nothing," he says. Kisses her again. "You are like a hawk, yeah?" Another kiss. "One who does wait until the ostrich does stick up its head and then." Another kiss. He meets her eyes to seal the joke. "I know nothing about birds." Another kiss. "And my neck is not long."
Viol
They don't have the same instincts that they did when they were alive. Lux enjoys being touched and touching, but it isn't the same; and how often does this scene resolve itself into predator and prey?
Midnight feasts, aren't you just ravenous for?
Bare skin gives way to silk gives way to whatever fabric her leggings are made of gives way to the scrunchy suede of her boots. He avoids nothing; she is going to protest, but he kisses her. She's like a hawk, this time she laughs against his mouth. One who does wait etc. and then this time Lux kisses him back so sweetly, fingers of the hand not toying with his back having found the back of his neck and then into his hair, with such wanting. That's how you want to be kissed: as if it matters. As if it's only you, and now, and this.
He doesn't know anything about birds. This time, she nips him, prelude to saying something but -- no. His neck isn't long; she sweeps her hand from the back of his neck so it is long against his throat, her thumb at the notch at the base of it, like she is taking a measurement.
"Your neck," she tells him. Begins to say a thing, instead: "Oh, I don't know, what the Hell were we talking about?"
Lux is not intending to abandon this particular line of inquiry, but she can't pursue it gracefully right now. Well-played, István; he's bought himself a moment or two.
István
One could argue that this little experiment of his is going to give him greater insight into the nature and danger of blood bonding humans. That he will understand what it is the people who are bound to him feel through no fault of their own even though this is all his own fault. This is what he wanted. Forty years of correspondence given over to intellectual stimulation and appreciation of personality and ideology but none of the bodily physical pleasures that come from loving someone.
Lux has not yet asked him why he wanted to drink her blood the first time. Only gleaned from the tone and character of his kisses against the inside of her wrist that he wants to feel love for her even if it is a love born of the blood.
Fingers over his throat don't course another shudder through him but she can read the pleasure in the touch in the way the light hits his eyes a softer way. How they hood and nearly fall shut.
His hand comes up to take the wrist and remove her fingers from the base of his throat. To sweep his thumb across the thin soft skin there. His fangs begin to grow even as he presses another kiss to the tree of empty blue veins there. He kisses his way up her forearm again. He isn't going to feed from her radial artery. Maybe later. The brachial artery is thicker and easier to find. Easier for her to grab onto his hair as he feeds from her.
So what the Hell were they talking about.
"Things, my starlight," he says, "that I do not wish to teach you."
And then he sinks his fangs into her flesh.
Viol
[Self Control for the road.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
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