once lost is lost forever.

Lux

Lux asked Nathan to call her on the what night was it well on that night when he calls her the call doesn't go to messages and it doesn't have to ring more than once before it's answered.

No ambient noise. She must be inside, not a club and not a party and not some place with a lot of people. It's just dead quiet. Not even any music.

"Hello?" A note of query, as if she didn't look at the caller ID before she answered.

Nathan Marszalek

And she can hear the blind adoration in his voice the second he speaks. It isn't as obvious as when she was stood in front of him last night and could see it in his eyes but the phone eliminates near all other distractions and more than she hears the exhaustion of work in him she hears the entrancement.

"Lux," he says. "It's Nathan."

Lux

They were friends, weren't they. He told her he trusted her, even seemed to, except when it came to the matter that's brought them here today. He called her after he was put in the hospital. He's kept her secrets. He even told her he heard ghosts when he hadn't told anybody else; who knows what the fuck their connection is, or was.

Wasn't romantic, but there are more kinds of love in the world than romantic love. More kinds of friendship than the kind which is a smokescreen for getting into your pants, getting at your throat (feasting on your blood).

And now.

He's still himself. He's still got his will.

But she -

He can hear the scrape of a sound across the phone. "You sound tired, kid," she tells him; a beat. "I think I promised you a conversation about that jackass. You gonna be at your place tonight?"

Nathan Marszalek

He doesn't know if vampires read the newspaper. If they have any reason to keep up with mortal affairs. If the mortal affairs are personal affairs but he hasn't given much thought to why exactly Lux considers his safety and the safety of his family to be a concern of hers. It irked him that she calls him hers.

Still may be irked by it but after their talk last night he seems to have let that go. He sounds tired but doesn't confirm or deny her observation. He always sounds tired.

As for his whereabouts tonight:

"I'm at the office right now."

May be he intends to stay there until Kingsmith is in custody. It's not safe for him to be at his place and it's not safe for his father for him to be at his father's house.

He left his fucking overnight bag in the guest room when he went in to work at dawn this morning but Lux has no way of knowing that.

"Do you want to meet me at my place?" Complacency doesn't suit him. Even with the emphasis on the verb 'want' he sounds pathetic in his lovestrickenness. "We can meet at my place."

Lux

"Why, that would be just lovely," Lux says, and though she sounds insouciant as ever, there's a tension in her voice; sorrow, perhaps, diminishing, "Unless you'd rather I came by the office."

Nathan Marszalek

"No, that's okay."

Brightness in his voice that isn't usually there. She can hear his desire to please her. Nathan is normally neither this accommodating nor this friendly. Last time she expressed a desire to see him he had droned his way through coordinating their schedules before telling her where to meet him.

"When are you coming by? Should I leave now, or...?"

Lux

"Or...?"

Eventually they will figure it out. Lux will be there before he is.

Lux: outside Nathan's building, head bent with her hair a glooming spill over her shoulders, shoulders pressed firmly against the building's façade but she is slouching while leaning, the sole of one boot also firm against the wall.

Nathan Marszalek

"... or at a specific time."

They do figure it out. They're both reasonably intelligent beings. Nathan's apartment is a five-minute motorcycle ride from the office. He arrives after she does because he has to park the bike and sling his messenger bag over his shoulders and walk a block from where he stashed the bike.

Anyone who ever decides to tail him will find he is neither an exciting individual nor difficult to lose.

He has his head bowed against the breeze until he comes upon the front of his building and when he raises it his expression goes from troubled to a softer sort of distracted. It's better than it would be if she had bound him to her with her own blood though. At least he can break this off and walk away if he decides he's had enough.

Nathan has no idea what he can and can't walk away from. He had started losing his temper with her the last time they saw each other though. Didn't like the idea of her laying down a claim on him but he doesn't really know any better does he.

If he's slept since last night he doesn't look like it was a long or restful sleep.

"Hey," he says as he pulls out his key. Lumbers past her to open the doors and let her inside. They're taking the elevator today. "So, uh... this is about Kingsmith?"

Lux

"'Sup."

That's what his Hey gets. 'Sup and Lux straightening, not sweeping her hair back but letting it do what it wills in soft fatale waves and elf-locks. How young she can look sometimes. How young and how beautiful. Her mouth is set with the lower lip a suggestion of trouble and because she might've been there before him but not that long before him there's only one cigarette butt on the sidewalk by her boot and the cigarette she's smoking now looks like it's just been lit. He's pulling out his key, Lux drifts away from the wall and ashes it against before tucking it behind one ear.

He wants to know if this is about Kingsmith. Once they're in the elevator, Lux folds her arms across her chest and lets her back hit the elevator wall harder than you'd think, but with a certain precision, a certain slouching grace.

"That's what you want to talk about; isn't it? Just how in the Hell did you meet him anyway? You must've, to assume it was him."

Lux

ooc: WAIT, scratch that how the hell did you meet him anyway question. I remembered Nate actually already mentioned that shit *grin*

Lux

"That's what you want to talk about, isn't it? Besides what kind've girl would I be if I didn't keep my promises. You're completely certain it was his work?"

Nathan Marszalek

Once her arms are folded Nathan hits the button for the ninth floor with the pad of his thumb. Doesn't lean back against the wall. If he leans back against the wall his fatigue is going to settle over him like a fog and he's going to be useless for the duration of the conversation.

"Well..."

He looks over at her wary of hurting her feelings perhaps or provoking another sharp turn of the conversation like he had provoked it last night. Implying that she wasn't vampire enough for him to talk to about Molly and Kragen.

"I..." He frowns. "You told me to call you and you'd tell me about him and what's going to happen. So I called you." A beat: "Look, before you say anything else, I've been thinking about what happened last night--"

Because of course he has. In the spare quiet moments he's had he's been thinking about her. He's looking her in the eye because it doesn't occur to him to look anywhere else. Maybe up at the floor indicator to make sure his stop doesn't catch him by surprise.

"--and I really am sorry. If I had any reason to think you'd... I mean I realize how stupid and small this must sound to you. But I went to him--" To Flood. "--because I didn't think she'd listen to you, and I had to do something. You know? If she got it into her head to run off and be a medic for a PMC terrorist operation, then..."

Ding. They're there. The doors open and he takes a breath and reels in his disjointed rambling.

"It's her choice, though. I shouldn't have done anything at all. I meant it, though, last night."

In they go. Both locks disengaged and the light flicked on and normally there's some sign of an animal fleeing the monster come in behind him but the place has been cleaned of jingly balls and other stationary toys. The water and food dish normally by the refrigerator are gone. He has sprayed the place with deodorizer. Not a trace of that cat remains.

"In the future I'll come to you."

Must be he didn't want to have to rehash all that now that he's not yelling and resisting her. He closes the door and locks it behind her.

Assuming she doesn't respond to any of that and she lets him just keep rambling on, Nate says:

"Yes, I'm completely fucking certain it was his work."

Lux

Look, before you say anything else

Lux does not interrupt him. Her arms stay folded and she does not have qualms about meeting Nathan's eyes with her own. Her own are intent and perhaps ardent fixed as they are and as open as they are (tell me a story). Under fluorescence the sort've dark that corrodes antique things, because immortal does not mean eternal and things change. Blacken. How Lux looks at Nathan, considering him closely. He says he's sorry. He said he was sorry the other night too before the end of their conversation-turned-argument and Lux is a calculating creature but she is also a passionate one: and not human. Hasn't been human for decades. Does she regret losing her temper? Does she regret?

Does it matter?

Here is the truth: Nate says he's sorry and Lux listens to him saying that he's sorry and she looks him in the eye when he says it. Looks him in the eye when he tells her what he hadn't the other night. Didn't think Molly'd listen, and so. Her choice, and so. In the future I'll come to you.

And those words get a reaction; a complicated one. She has followed him, stayed hard at his side, footfalls quiet tonight because isn't she vampire enough, maybe he needs her not to breathe around him, maybe he needs to feel how cold her skin is how rare it is her heart'll beat (what a squandering of blood), maybe he needs to feel her fangs on his throat and maybe, maybe, the point is she is moving quietly tonight and those words get a complicated reaction and the cut of a look.

"Okay," she says. "I get it." Because Flood has a way with women who should know better. "But why," Lux is still angry, still furious, still hatefull: can she hide it. Dampen it. Will it away. Yes. "Why you thought he would listen to you I don't fucking know. We don't like it when people start trying to find us. Doesn't feel safe. Isn't safe. I don't even know when - "

"Kingsmith. Here I am, getting off-course. What do you actually know about him and Dogwood? Did you know he was connected to - " a gesture. Encompasses the world outside. Night. Then herself, albeit with an impatient slice of a cut-off at the end. She is looking around, trying to figure out (wary) what's different. Lucy always hid from Lux so she doesn't immediately realize that's what's not right.

Nathan Marszalek

And she can rewind all the way to the moment they met and start to comb through their interactions to see where she might have failed him in his education. Didn't she have to breathe in order to smoke that first night that she bummed a cigarette off of him and spoke of saints and their parents and he informed her that Jesus is not a saint and everyone knew who his parents were because his father was God? Didn't she push blood into her skin the night he invited her out for a ride and they went out to the reservoir of all fucking places and she started to see how Nathan prefers open spaces and solitude to the city and the people in the city? She gave him a look that told him any advances he might have made in the dark that night would be unwelcome and he'd seen it.

Had to be something wrong with him that he met a girl like Lux and accepted her darkness right away. Psychic powers she could accept. That he truly thought her human until Flood attacked him in the park though. That he has never been close enough to a vampire but he has been close enough to corpses that he could tell the difference between a breathing body and a still one. She's kept that from him. It isn't because of Lux that Nathan knows that fangs at the jugular feels like ecstasy and not the cold-fire panic of dying.

He's used to her presenting herself as close enough to human that her unbreathing quiet at his side may unnerve him. If it does all Lux can tell is he's breathing faster than normal.

Neither does Nate know why he thought Flood would fucking listen to him. Must have thought it went both ways. Molly would listen to Flood.

Nathan doesn't know a goddamn thing about vampires.

As Lux speaks her mortal opens up the refrigerator and pulls a bottle of Budweiser out of the vegetable crisper and opens it with his bare hand. Kicks the door shut and leans against the counter and drinks deep of the beer. Frowns at the sawed-off question.

"Molly told me," he says. "She also told me he's a ghoul, and, uh..." A dry unhappy laugh. He shakes his head at the memory and rubs his forehead. "Dogwood. I know they're on an Interpol watch list and they've been implicated in, uh, terrorist acts in... I'm not sure where in Europe, exactly. I'm having a bit of trouble finding proof that they've done anything stateside, but it wouldn't surprise me."

Lux

Doesn't Molly tell Nathan an awful lot.

Lux doesn't just stay still, touching nothing, once she is in his apartment. Lux drifts over to one of Nathan's couches while Nathan goes into the kitchen to get a beer. He's leaning against the counter around the time she's stretching carelessly across the couch: long-limbed, fine-boned, a sprawl a thing, skinny dark jeans and tall suede boots and some sort've lace-top beneath her baggy slouchy je ne c'est quois coat which she hasn't taken off.

She doesn't put the bottoms of her shoes on the couch but she does prop her ankles up on the other end; maybe this means she can't see Nathan's face, or maybe this means she has to prop herself up on her elbows in order to look at him.

"Yeah. What do you think a ghoul is?" She knows she's mentioned them; as something that it's terrible to be. "You know how I said that if Kragen was involved you shouldn't worry, because the people in the car were probably Licks?"

Nathan Marszalek

Nathan just shrugs. He still doesn't know what a ghoul is. He doesn't understand the concept. Maybe he's read Dracula. Can give an academic literary interpretation of what it means to be enthralled to a vampire but not have any fucking idea what it means.

Never mind that he's enthralled by her right now. To continue using academic literary words. He feels very strongly towards her and anything she asked him to do right now he would do and yet he can't tell her what he thinks a ghoul is. So he doesn't.

They move on. He does know how she said if Kragen was involved it just meant the people in the car were probably Licks.

"Were they?" he asks. Not because he wants to put it in the paper. He just sounds as if they're having a conversation he who told Flood that they were friends but she'd get over it if something happened to him.

Lux

The creature doesn't know at this point in time who they were; she knows about the Fern, though - what it is to some of her clanmates and some of the Tower's slickest luminaries, those that're left. The creature doesn't know; so she swishes one foot in an I-dunno-way, but with some flamboyance if you please. Then, "Probably; or if not, they were ghouls. Somebody's allies. Have you have been addicted to something?" Lux has seen Nathan drunk a number of times; she hasn't pegged him as an alcoholic. She knows he smokes, but she clearly means something else. "Can't stop, don't wanna stop, just want more addicted?"

Lux

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Nathan Marszalek

That is a loaded fucking question.

She can see him giving the question some thought because she did ask him. Thinking about whether he had ever found himself so stuck on something that he could think of nothing else during the hours when he was supposed to be doing something else.

He takes another big swallow of beer and frowns.

"No," he says. "I don't think so. Is that what being a ghoul is like?"

Lux

Bare nod. Her coat slides down one shoulder. No skin just dark lace across skin. Shadows at her throat and the sharp line of her jaw, because how finely made is she and how delicately wrought. "I've never been a ghoul," she tells him. Her voice is steady, as intent as her expression in the elevator had been when she watched his eyes to see what was in them. "But so I hear. They're addicted to a vampire's blood. Usually one vampire's blood, but any blood will do." Tension: whisper of it. Whisper of it in her shoulders, coiling into a knot between her shoulderblades. "They get power from it but they can still go out in the day, you know? They don't need to drink any blood except vampire's, but," the cut-off is abrupt.

"They do need that. After enough time goes by, if they don't get it terrible things happen to them. All those years, temporarily immortal -- because ghouls don't age as long as they've got the juice, man," edge of a smile, briefly there and then gone again, "and if they don't got the juice, all those years come back on them. Maybe it doesn't mean death. Depends. Maybe it does. And there are still the cravings."

Nathan Marszalek

The juice.

Maybe it's the phrasing or the fact that he's thinking of blood as something one ought never have to see. He likes his blood to stay inside of him. He knows what it is like to see his blood sprayed all over the fucking place. The idea of drinking someone else's blood does come to him and if he grows paler Lux may not even notice. He's pale enough already.

"Okay," he says. The more he lets soak up the more smears around when he tries to walk away with a feeling of having absorbed it. His beer is nearly gone but if he kills it fast -

Fuck it. He tosses back the rest of his beer and puts the empty in the sink and goes to grab another one.

"Do you--?" He frowns as he kicks the fridge shut again and turns back towards her. Laughs another quiet mirthless laugh. Explains why he's laughing: "I just almost asked if you wanted anything to drink."

No Lux. You have not been vampire enough around him.

The second cap clatters onto the countertop and he doesn't take a slug from it yet.

"So... Kingsmith is addicted to vampire blood."

Lux

"Hey. C'mere," she says, when he goes to get another beer. It's an invitation because of course it's an invitation. Lux sits up so that she hasn't claimed the whole couch; rests her back against the couch's arm. Elbows rest there, just so. Her boots are on the couch now. Sorry, courtesy. Her knees are pressed together, but angled demurely toward the floor. Curled up: not careless, quite, certainly not care-free, but uncaring, because it feels nice to be curled up - and it gives him space.

"Yes," she tells him. "I hate it: that way he looks." At her, she means, even at fucking Flood, this shudder working its way out from under her skin, something that starts near the bone and she doesn't contain here in this company, I'm sure we can arrange something. "But he doesn't have a regnant; a source. He's not in a relationship like that. He makes his own way," and Lux, freedom-craving, freedom-loving thing that she is, just sounds - what does she sound? Inscrutable?

"And he hires himself out in that little War I toldja about because he likes to fucking blow things up."

Nathan Marszalek

He doesn't look like he particularly wants to c'mere but he also doesn't know he has a choice. If he really wanted not to c'mere he could have stayed in the kitchen where his beer is within easy reach and Lux is not but she tells him to c'mere and he decides that's something that sounds appealing.

So he traipses across the apartment to take a seat on the couch beside her and he drops himself down like he's completely entrusting his fate to gravity now. Runs a hand over his hair as he settles down on the thing. The apartment is neater than the last time she was in here. Easier to see how spartan his life is without newspapers and pill bottles strewn everywhere.

The few framed photographs he has in the living room are of his old Corps buddies. Or of himself and his 18-year-old sister when she wasn't 18 years old. Other ones scattered around that are difficult to discern unless Lux is really examining them and Lux is not really examining them.

She hates the way Kragen looks at her. Nate frowns a sympathetic frown and tries again to absorb what she's telling him. Doesn't take much to convince him Kragen likes to fucking blow things up.

"Yeah," he says with a scoff. "I noticed." A beat. A quaff. "So... whenever he shows up in a new city, or Dogwood does, or whatever, he has to find out where the vampires are all hiding so that he can get a fix. And there's no one... I take it most ghouls have a vampire who's... responsible? For them?" He looks at his beer again but doesn't drink from it. Most of his attention is on her now. "Is that what you want people to think about us?"

Lux

"It would make things easier," Lux says, about that little question of us. He doesn't have to be her ghoul to be blood-tied to her; to be a problem solved instead of a problem in the making, a problem making itself problematic. She doesn't tell him that. Doesn't explain what a blood doll is, although wouldn't he be an adorable one. Doesn't want him to think of himself as a problem, necessarily.

"As for the rest, basically. Most ghouls have a patron." What a word, Lux. "It's a close relationship, and necessary. I'm not too comfortable with it anyway."

"What do you want people to think about us, Nate?"

Nathan Marszalek

The young man's eyes widen out of confusion. Thinking and realizing he doesn't know how to answer the question and then frowning because he doesn't understand how he reached this point in his life where he was having to tell a vampire what he wants people to think about them.

"Define 'people,'" he says with a laugh. "Other vampires? I don't... know... I mean I'm trusting you, here. If it's easier for you to have other vampires think I'm... addicted to you, or whatever, then..."

He looks at his beer to gauge the contents of the bottle and takes a large swallow.

"I'm sorry. I don't know how to answer that."

Lux

"You don't like me calling you 'mine,'" she says, and it's a statement and a question.

Nathan Marszalek

Nope. He doesn't. He also doesn't like explaining himself or dwelling on the past or comparing himself to other people. Those are all things he ends up doing inadvertent when people make statements like the one that Lux just made.

"It's kind of weird," he says.

Lux

"Kind of weird?" Here it is; this spark of a smile, compass-needle impulse of a thing. "It's kind of a pain in the ass, not to mention vile; you are not an object. Nobody is; nobody with a will," but the smile diminishes, perhaps because of a steady thrum of passion [Rebellion] which darks her tone up. Lux leans forward, wrapping her arms around her knees which she brings up to her chest. "But do you get it now? You said you were thinking about what happened last night. Do you get what it means to me, and to you, this whole 'mine' thing?"

Nathan Marszalek

Weird was the least offensive word he could pluck out of his arsenal. 'Vile' is closer to what he thinks of it. Vile or oppressive or repulsive. He has no interest in being labeled like that. To be someone's friend or someone's lover or someone's child is different than belonging to someone. To letting another possess him without even the courtesy of leaving him as a pronoun.

He opens his mouth to answer and makes a creaking noise in his throat. Reluctant to answer in the affirmative but he's trying, Lux. He's trying to get it.

In the end he scoffs again and leans back.

"Assuming I don't do what I did the other night again," he says. "How important is it that other vampires think I'm yours? They... Can you--" Blind gesturing to the invisible society with his beer bottle. Vampires. Y'all. "--pick each other out of a crowd?"

Lux

"Sometimes," she says. "Not always. How important is it?" Musing, her tone; considering, and she hides her face for a moment. Just this: lovely fall of light across dark shadow-soaked hair, sharp shoulders, hands tight, a ring on her left ring-finger which isn't often there, a smooth wedding band of a thing. Another ring around her thumb. No movement. When she comes out've the pose, she drags her hair away from her face and says, "Because I placed a claim on you, that night in the park, I could take you from Flood; do you see? 'Oh, this one's yours? Sorry, won't take him for my own.'

"Not," a sharp frown, "that I -- this is just a glib example to simplify matters, do you see? I'm not setting out posters or registering you in a database. It just means I have an interest. You are still your own man," and Lux, she sounds so wistful as she says that. Maybe she's not her own man. Maybe it just makes it fucking difficult. "So it's important."

"Even when -- " Her eyes narrow. She may not be the child of lawyers, but she was the wife of one, once upon a time. "You're not going to do what you did the other night again."

Nathan Marszalek

Oh. Alright. So long as he's still his own man.

Nate doesn't have a waterfall of hair to push back off his face to illustrate his exhaustion and his musing. This isn't a difficult concept to grasp but holy shit. This time last year he lived in a world where the darkest truth he had to accept was that sometimes people's energy gets left behind after their bodies are rocked out of life and the trauma of it traps them here. Makes them haunt buildings and objects and people. That he's a fucking beacon for them.

Tough break, kid.

His eyes are closed beneath his palm when she asks for clarification. Or states a fact. It doesn't sound like a command but as constrained as he is it may as well be.

"No," he says in agreement. "I'm not. I swear."

Lux

He's sitting on the couch beside her, but her back was to the couch's arm. Her knees were between them, her legs, her arms; now she unfolds, uncurls, so that she is (whisper-quiet, complete in the liquid measure of grace) sitting beside him, by which we mean his eyes are closed beneath his palm when he asks for clarification when her arm touches his arm, because she's close. Cold beneath the scratchiness of her slouchy coat-sweater thing, like she needs to come inside from winter, like if you just set her in front of a fire it'll be all right.

The only fire she has is the fire in her mind. Call it a heart, but the heart doesn't stick around forever.

"I'm sorry," she tells him. Angry as she (still) is, as cold as her grudges can be (forever [hatred]), right now: she is sorry.

"So that's Kragen. A ghoul who murders other ghouls and vampires." Back to the first topic. Lux, she seems to be -- well. She is careful, in some respects.

Nathan Marszalek

It's like sitting on the couch next to a dead body. Ghosts can cause cold spots to try and grab the attention of one who isn't in the market for it but those ghosts have to be powerful and old. A young vampire doesn't have to do anything but just sit in order to feel like a dead body. That's just how they are.

Nate accepts her closeness and the press of her arm against his but he doesn't take his hand down from his brow yet. The butt of his beer bottle is resting against his knee. He doesn't have elegant hands. They're knobby and pale and they may have been calloused once but all he does is pound keys all day now. His veins are blue and thick beneath the skin.

Weary even though this barely affects him but between Kingsmith and Flood he's already lost one friendship and his peace of mind. Whatever budding friendships he might have had fractured along with a fist against a brick wall. He can't keep constant surveillance on his little sister or his father either. Lux can see his weariness but also his resolve. She's sorry. He doesn't know what that means.

"The entire state is gonna be looking for him," he says once his hand is down from his brow. He switches the beer to his opposite hand. It leaves the one closer to her free. "What's going to happen to him, when he's in custody? With the withdrawal, I mean."

Lux

"He'll become a problem for the Tower to clean up," Lux says. "He's old, so ... He will probably just keep aging until he has aged past a natural age. If he were younger, it might not be so dramatic, but still terrible."

Nathan Marszalek

The horror of foregone aging coming back on a person like a pendulum suspended past its prime is something Nathan can only imagine from having read novels and watched movies. It doesn't do for him what witnessing it firsthand would do. For writing for a living the reporter doesn't have the world's most active imagination. Focusing on facts instead of possibilities helps keep him sane.

Helped. Helped keep him sane. Those days are gone. It's not doing him any fucking favors lately.

"So... wouldn't it be better if the Tower got to him before the Feds did?"

Lux

Nate's hand, the one that's closer to her, is free, or was free, because she touches the back of his fingers with one of hers, like, c'mon, open up, let me in, and if -- isn't it when, at this point? -- he responds, she slips her cold-cold hand into his. Her skin does not feel like a corpses, but there's no warmth in it for him. Winter's all.

"Yeah. Or at least ... It would be best if Feds who are allied with the Tower got to him first. That way - " she takes her hand away, rubbing her palm across her forehead, following it with a slouch that lets gravity have its way with her, drag her back into the couch and down, half-slide off. She doesn't sigh. It is still an expressive slouch. " - he wouldn't just disappear with a pointless investigation taking up time forever."

"That's my opinion, anyway."

Nathan Marszalek

His finger jerks with the ice-chill of her flesh against it and the spasm yanks his elbow out of its resting position but the rest of him is not shocked by it. As she reaches for the rest of his hand Nate looks first over at her and then down at where an icicle has found its way into his hand. Refusing to melt even if it does leech the warmth from him.

Nate feels warmth for her even if he regrets ever giving her that fucking cigarette so he squeezes her hand and lets her keep it in his. Lets her take it back when she's had enough.

That's her opinion.

"Yeah," he says. It's idle agreement. This is outside his pay grade. Nate takes another deep swallow of beer and scowls as he considers the near-emptiness of it.

It isn't that he doesn't have anything to offer her. It's just that fleeting memories of a conversation in a dim-lit hospital room keep coming back to him. At the time he didn't know what he was offering her. He doesn't understand how Molly has spent this much time around Lux's kind knowing what Lux's kind is and still doesn't know what it is to have fangs plunged into her flesh but Nathan doesn't understand a lot of things.

He stands back up and goes into the kitchen again.

Lux

She could make herself warm, if she wanted to. She could even summon up a pulse, thready as it is. A false heart-beat, breath. She does not want to do that right now.

He gets up and goes into the kitchen. Lux stays on the couch, head tilted back, eyes closed. She does not feel safe here. Neither does she trust Nathan Marszalek, as she'd trusted him before, as she'd thought about trusting him before. It was silly of her. It continues to be a mistake; she can feel, behind her breastbone, that it continues to be a mistake, but she wants so badly for it not to be a mistake.

He's temporary; he's going to die one day, perhaps soon considering his luck (but he IS lucky).

He's temporary, and she doesn't have to be. Still she wants to trust him. He has offered to help her and be there for her on multiple occasions; she wants to trust him.

(Don't I always?)

Her eyes stay closed. Motionless. Dead, but not dead. Frozen, bespelled, enchanted; so still.

He's temporary, just as they all are, and her eyes are closed.

It's not that she has nothing else to say to him.

Nathan Marszalek

Nathan knows very well that he's going to die one day.

The number of times he brushed up against Death last year eclipsed the count of the average person and the last of those times he had told Molly when she asked that no one in his life needed to know about the fucking car crash. Maybe two weeks after the hospital released him his sister came out from California and saw his pill bottles and his back brace and lit into him.

What the hell is wrong with you is what Hannah wanted to know. Why didn't you even tell Theodore wasn't that the whole point of you moving out here holy fucking shit Nathan I'm calling him right now no don't take my phone I'll punch you in the fucking ribs.

So Lux isn't the only one who wants to trust him and wants to strangle him at the same time. Aware as he is of the fleeting nature of his own mortality he doesn't seem all that attached to it. Knowledge is a double-edged sword. He's never been afraid of Death. From the sounds of it the fucker's been around him than any live thing ever has.

At the refrigerator Nate takes out a third beer. Claps the door shut before he drains the second and adds it to the sink with the first. He's learning how to function at work with a hangover. When he doesn't shave in the morning his stubble is so blond it doesn't cut a shadow across his jaws anyway. He's going to look about eighteen for the rest of his life at the rate he's going.

His back is to her when he asks, "Are you staying?"

Lux

"Yes."

Lux doesn't know if Nathan is still under her sway; doesn't know if he still cleaves to her, devoted, still wants to make her happy, still wants to do things for her. Lux doesn't know. It isn't that kind of Art, the one she lost her temper and used on him. She hasn't played with it very much. He's the third, perhaps, or the second, and unlike the first she doesn't want to

(doesn't want to)

bind him.

He's the only one she cares about, for a given value of 'care.' He's supposed to keep her human, not make her want to undress his bones. His back is to her when he asks her if she's staying.

Can she leave him?

"You look tired. I could sing you to sleep," and a laugh. "I'm not a very good songstress. We could watch a movie." Instead of talking about: all this. A pause, and then, "Hey. About Amber."

Nathan Marszalek

Turned around even he looks tired. He hasn't taken off his jacket. With that laugh he shakes his head and pats his pocket to make sure his cigarettes are still there. Finds the ashtray on the counter and a lighter before he taps out a Camel.

He doesn't want her to sing him to sleep and he doesn't want to watch a movie but she can see he would acquiesce to either of those things if that's what she wanted. At least she can reassure herself with the knowledge that this like he is temporary. It may be a week or it may be a year but he won't have stars in his eyes when he looks at her forever.

About Amber.

Nate frowns and blows out the first drag and tosses down the pack and the lighter. Wedges the cigarette between his teeth as he shrugs out of his jacket and throws it onto the back of a chair. Pulls from the cigarette again and grabs up his beer.

"Yeah?" he asks.

Lux

"Before Flood sent out a picture of you," she says, and then stops just to see if he wants to interrupt her.

He doesn't. She continues, "Amber wanted to know if it was safe to talk to you about things. I told her that you were, so ..."

Pause; kissing curl of a grin. "Do you hate me for it?"

The grin doesn't quite reach her eyes; almost does though.

Nathan Marszalek

The knowledge that the picture Flood took of him went out by cell phone stitches a frown between Nate's brows but he does not interrupt. Flash of remembrance then not entirely unlike the flash from the camera. Oh right. That bloodsucking bastard took out his phone right before asking who he was to Lux.

And then Amber of all people wanted to know if it was safe to talk to him. About things. His frown doesn't so much deepen as it does tighten and his jaw drops by a scant matter of degrees. Just enough for her to read his surprise.

Son of a bitch, his expression says. He inwardly stammers for a few seconds. She's asking him another question.

"What?" The hand holding the cigarette rests on the island near the ashtray. "I... no? I wouldn't..."

That isn't anything he can promise but stood here right now stricken stupid by her presence Nathan almost said he would never hate her. Nathan doesn't know a goddamn thing.

Lux

[DOO DEE DOO.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Lux

He internally stammers, and then he's not much more eloquent afterward. Lux doesn't interrupt his trail-away until it's good and trailed away, and then she says, firmly, "So if she says anything, don't be surprised or too alarmed. Just be careful."

A pause; and then another smile. Lux is magnetic. Lux is glue. Lux is something you want to get closer to, something that drags you in. Lux is a force. What she says, what she does, it's all part of this-

Force. Fall, fuckers. Fall. Heaven's bullshit.

So here's that smile, and it's not an invitation; it's a matter of fact. Her eyebrows quirk and there's this dredged up edge of something a-gleam under the sweet line of her lashes; she says --

what she hadn't been planning on saying. This, mild: "You didn't know Flood sent out a picture?"

Is that why you didn't fucking answer me, you little shit.

Unspoken, that.

Nathan Marszalek

Just be careful. Nate nods.

And then Lux asks after another thing she didn't know he didn't know.

One of the tricks one picks up being around lawyers throughout one's formative years and joining the fucking military right out of high school: the path of self-incrimination is walked by volunteering more than a yes or a no when more than a yes or a no isn't fucking necessary.

She asks a closed-ended question and gets back:

"No. I didn't."

Lux

[Self Control]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )

Lux

"Mm."

He's smoking, but he didn't offer her a cigarette. Lux looks somewhat longingly at his cigarette before replying, not with some question designed to make him explicate his answer or to berate him again (for the first time?) for not calling her immediately afterward or for going after the vampire in the fashion that he went after the vampire. This time Lux thinks (believes [hopes]) that Nate has learned his lesson; that she has been clear, that Flood has been clear- clarity, clarity.

But she doesn't trust him. Can't. He already promised, misled, lied.

Doesn't know why he did it. She wants to trust him.

"Do you know, there are good things out there too. Among the ghosts and Licks, fucking crazy murdering pieces of vile cock-skin like Kragen and... Oh, I don't know. Do you care? C'mon, Nate. You don't want to see a movie. Didja get any film for that camera yet or are you waiting for me to provide?"

Nathan Marszalek

She's like a fucking storm in his living room sometimes. Rhetorical question after rhetorical question and then an actual question that she doesn't give him time to answer and even as he's leaning against the counter smoking Nate looks flattened by the barrage of it and yet he could stand here for another hour listening to her talk at him if it means she won't leave.

"I found a guy in Germany who sells this specific type of film," he says.

Before last night Nathan wasn't waiting for her to do anything and now he still isn't really waiting but there's a sense of standby in him that he hasn't felt since the government issued a stop-loss on him and fuck knows how many other Marines who were supposed to get out after three years and they didn't know if they were going back to Afghanistan or where the hell they were going. It's an honor and a privilege just to wait for her to make up her fucking mind with what she's going to do with him.

Blind love in his eyes even mingled in with the physical exhaustion and the worry mention of the film dredges up. The only reason he has the camera in the first place is because of his father.

"Fucker tried to buy the camera off me. I'm just waiting for the order to come in."

Lux

Lux doesn't ask rhetorical questions.

Not really.

That's not something that most people understand about her- Lux sometimes says things she doesn't quite mean, is careless with a phrase, but even when she's at her most careless, isn't there something deliberate about it? Provoking. That's another word for it.

He already knows what she wanted him to help her with.

(What a sucker. This noir thing doesn't lead anywhere good, just ask Gareth Miller.)

He already knows what she wants (doesn't he?).

She asked him if he cared. She asked him if he knew: that there were good things, too. She's looking at him, this sluice of a thing, such a fucking look, and it is the kind of look somebody'd like to have turned on them, blood-thralled or not, heart-strings tugged and manipulated - or not. Looks at him and says,

"Let me show you a site."

That's what they'll do. Fire-up his laptop, and Lux'll show him a site or three, regarding old cameras, old photography. She won't ask him about anything, and if she looks at him once or twice and remembered fury starts to surface, a pang against her temple, favors owed for what, for fucking what, then it's always fleeting.

Lux doesn't forgive. Not anything.

Lux

[WRAP!]