If István still had a pulse it might have picked up with the sight of a message from Lux on his phone a few evenings after their meeting at the All Inn Motel. Or maybe it wouldn't. He comes from a more refined age. An age when men only revealed their deeper emotions in writing and then it was with great care.
He has not been in the city long enough to begin composing letters to Lux. They have seen each other frequently and he is not nearly as charming in person as he is via letter but there's a bit of a language barrier. When he has the time to sit and think about what he wants to say.
As a writer he lacks finesse but he is an intelligent and passion creature. She knows this. The thrill of discovery has always driven him. He likes to see what happens and he thinks of unlife not as a curse but as a blessing. He has all the time in the world to read the literature he never got to as a youth and he will never run out of new material because the market is flooded now with science writers and novelists and poets.
They're not at the wine and cigar bar because they're trying to get to know each other better. They know each other plenty. Lux wants to know one specific thing. Maybe two specific things. But they haven't gotten that far yet. He wanted her to teach him how to smoke a cigar. He must have figured since she smokes cigarettes all the time she's an expert by now.
From a distance they look like a normal if very handsome couple enjoying a late night date. István looks as if he works in finance or marketing and can get through a morning meeting tomorrow by inhaling his weight in cocaine and Lux doesn't look as if she has to be up tomorrow at all. Nobody from a distance knows a goddamn thing. Neither of them are touching their glasses of wine.
"This is pleasurable, then," István asks of the cigar they're sharing. It's maybe halfway gone and he has withheld judgment this whole time, "the holding of smoke in the mouth and then--" He makes a loud exhaling noise. Manages to fit a question mark at the end of it.
Joséphe-AlixBefore Lux was Lux, before she was Joséphe-Alix, she was alive in a time when a woman smoking a cigar was something a woman only did if she was somewhat scandalous. If she had enouch cachet to get away with it. If she was going to be modern or a throw-back to wild times that were already beginning to dissolve into a dream of stultified complacency. Cigars were for men; perhaps some bad women smoked cigarettes. Of course they did; city girls. Perhaps Lux could, if she wished, recall a morning (do you remember the color a slant of sunlight made falling just so against a wooden floor, parquetry?) all in dishabille in the hall sharing a cigar with another blonde man instead of making breakfast and the door opening and there were staid shoes perfect hose there was a hem-line cut sharply, expensively, there was a woman who could make you feel caught-out even when you didn't care, and perhaps Lux could recall that morning puffing three whole smoke rings one into the other while the blonde man scrambled up laughing and horrified and -
But there is no purpose to this remembrance. The point is Lux is quite adept at smoking cigars; prefers them, occasionally, to cigarettes, because she finds there's more of a taste, there's more variety to the taste, and it's all about the sensation, isn't it?
"Why are you asking me, ván? Can't you tell?"
She is looking out across the city, wearing a contemplative expression. Not troubled, but Lux: she is so very poised sometimes that it means she's singular, regardless of the company. Singular, and contemplative: like so.
She cuts him a glance, waiting for an answer- see the gleam in her eyes as she does? Yes.
IstvánRight now he can think of nothing in the world more important to him than her. He finds the clash between his intellect and his impulses to be a curious thing. It is fleeting and foolish to love someone. A momentary diversion when framed against a broader life. Love serves no purpose when one is already dead.
And yet he feels for her the same kind of warmth humans feel when they look upon their beloved. It is a feeling humans have tried throughout the whole of their existence to explain. He doesn't try to explain it. He knows the feeling will go away when the bond breaks.
Yet he would normally amuse himself by batting her question about for so long as he could before she grew distracted enough to ask another one or grew pointed enough to try and pin down a proper answer. Now though he just takes back the cigar and takes another tentative pull from the thing.
Their mouths are dry, or at least István's is. The cigar is not sodden with saliva.
"How I can tell?" he asks. "This is the first time I do try the thing." Another puff. A frown. He smacks his tongue like he isn't quite sure of what it is his nerves are telling him. Cigar smoke is near overwhelming to one who could hear a conversation occurring a hundred feet away if he were to focus. "Is very strange. I do neglect my, eh... how you say, ízérzékelés, in English? The sense?"
Joséphe-AlixThe feeling will go away when the bond breaks:
Look at Malcolm Redknapp.
That's what happens when the bond breaks, István Jákob. The bond breaks and the creature left behind is defined by an absence; and why should it ever break? Why shouldn't he love, truly, forever? The bond can wear away; and doesn't that thought - ? What does that thought do.
Lux is innocent of these considerations; innocent, indeed, even of entrapment in this particular case; innocent of understanding, too, but the apple's right fucking there, ready to be questioned- fuck metaphors.
The creature tips her head back, as if it's heavy, allows her balance to become perilous, her slouch to become more languid, and she reaches over to take it back from him.
"So you're telling me you can't tell right away if a thing's pleasure or not?" Her voice is more musing than yet he has heard it; her gaze sweeps from the cityscape to his eyes to his cheek. "I can always tell."
"Your, ah, ízérzékelés," she tries, gamely, to pronounce that mess, "sounds like a sad sad case, István Jákob Virág. Do you mean taste?"
[Copy the word. Wits + Performance. +2 diff because Hungarian is Hard.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
IstvánMalcolm Redknapp.
The stories one could tell about Malcolm Redknapp are numerous but the one István knows comes from the lips of a creature one would not think could possess much sympathy for anyone anymore. And yet she was the one who brought back these three defectors and sought to make something of them. Even monsters grow attached to their wards. Redknapp's story is a reminder.
What it reminded István of he didn't volunteer to anyone. He hasn't told Lux that he met with Marguerite Hill. He hasn't told Lux his affiliation. That he is an apprentice of Clan Tremere. That if he so chose he could drain a body from across the fucking room. That he has in her presence even used his mastery of the elements to bolster his inconsiderable strength and resiliency.
Even only having the power of blood behind him he could not have taken down that wretched creature currently moldering under a blanket in his attic if he did not have some ancient and secret blessing at his disposal.
István continues to exam the cigar as she questions him. Of all the senses he ignores each night his sense of smell is even more withered. He does not know how to sniff anymore and it took her no small amount of coaxing to remind him how to draw a breath without swooping smoke into his dead lungs.
She can always tell if a thing is pleasurable or not. But she is not so repressed. She would have been a scandal in her day.
He smiles a fond and honest smile at her Hungarian pronunciation and then brightens at the translation.
"Yes!" he says. "Taste." And he frowns. The way he says the word one can hear every letter. "Uck. I think you are right in this. My taste is very sad."
Speaking of sad:
"What it is you are thinking when you look out, my starlight?"
Look out. He means when she turns away to gaze at the city lights below them.
Joséphe-AlixIstván continues to examine the cigar so Lux's hand (an imperative [request]) stays poised in the air. Then her fingers curl around his wrist and she pulls his hand nearer her, plucks the cigar out've his fingers. He says his taste is very sad and Lux (thorn [sharp as a violin note, sharp as a lake-light dripping from a stiletto]) gives him a sluice of a look. Her mouth curves, just so. He is studied. She is a scholar. He is her teacher: what a good student.
Before she says whatever she is going to say, she puffs on the cigar and then - "I am thinking about you" - she tells him, following the words with precisely graceful cut of a gesture. That isn't what she was going to say at all; she has decided not to toy with him over the matter of taste, decided not to flirt with him over things he has tasted.
The cigar smoke is dissolving still [a troubling of opacity, look how it falls out in curls and coils: that's Heaven] and it follows her hand, the cigar's end fading from a hot air-fueled smoulder.
"Can you guess what I'm thinking?"
She lowers her chin, giving him this interested look. Lucent; clear.
István[perc + subt: idk can i?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Joséphe-AlixHe is not telepathic. He does not, just from reading her expression, know exactly what it is she is thinking; yet still, he knows the way her mind works from letters upon letters, and he's spent enough time with her physically now that he must be learning her expressions too. She says that she's thinking about him; she is, although he's not the only thing on her mind. She says she's thinking about him, and seems to expect that he's not going to be able to guess what she's thinking about him. But it's specific. The other night: probably something about the other night. One of the other nights.
IstvánThe grip of her fingers on his wrist feels better than the cigar smoke does his epithelial tissue yet where she can read a sort of withheld confusion on his face when he holds the smoke in his mouth it takes a more precise sort of attention for Lux to read the foreign emotion in his face.
All emotion is foreign to him. When their paths first crossed he was a dead thing. A brain in a vat. No more grounded than the constellations in her hypothetical scenario. Would he view it as a gift or a damnation to be strung up as one.
Calling her 'my starlight' is a new thing. It's a fight to keep himself from feeling as if the center of his universe is the pressure of her fingertips against the place where a pulse once lived. His universe doesn't shatter when she lets go of him. It would if anything happened to her.
She is thinking about him. That isn't all she's thinking. He plants an elbow on his knee and his chin in the distal palm and looks at her. After all those letters all those years bled into decades he'd like to think he can guess.
"I did drink, the other night, but you, no," he says.
No wound or suspicion in it. It's a fact. He bit her once and then he bit her again and even as they lay together afterwards with his store of vitae was so much greater than hers and their bared skin familiar Lux did not give into the temptation.
"This does trouble you, I guess so."
Joséphe-Alix"Don't you find it troubling?"
The mood of that interested look she's giving him, the shade of it, shifts subtly; it is still lucent, it is still clear, but it is more focused too. The curve of her mouth almost-a-smile doesn't dredge anything out've her eyes; it's just a lovely shape. No: that's a lie. It means something, but a fleeting thing.
István"No."
He keeps his chin on the shelf of his palm. If they continue along this topic for much longer he'll sit back. This posture is reminiscent of hunching over a writing desk with only a candle by which to see. Agonizing over the words. He doesn't have a dictionary handy.
His written English is better than his spoken. By candlelight he can look up the conjugation for the verb 'to run' and fix the letter at the last moment. It's easier for his tongue to learn the past tense of one verb and attach it to every other verb. He does this in German too. It drives René up the wall.
"I find it strange, but it does not cause me worry."
Joséphe-Alix"Why not?"
Not cool, no; not at all. Not heated, exactly, but intent; intense. Ardent. Her voice is low and restrained, but even so: that bleeds through.
IstvánWhy does it not cause him worry.
Look at him: not an ounce of sharpness lives in his face anymore. Once he sought and fought delight in clicking the rapiers of their wits together. He has too much difficulty disarming her and so he learned from the most recent of their first encounters that evading her was the best of his tactics.
Once he grows accustomed to the love that's taken up every cell in his veins István may start bantering with her again. But Lux can see in the yellow outdoor light that he has driven the last nail into the coffin that will secure him in love with her.
She may make nothing of it yet for the math does not add up and she does not trust mathematics anyway. They have plenty of nights left to have that argument. They haven't finished this one yet.
István takes his palm from his chin and rises from his seat. Steps around the wrought-iron table in between the pair of chairs and the bench where she is now sat. As he settles down beside her he takes up one of her hands in both of his.
"When I do learn," he says to her hand, "how to feel so strong for you and think of other things..." He looks up. "I do say to myself István Jákob, this is foolish, this is the blood, you are not-- But I am. I love you. So I do not worry."
Good job, Science. Look what you did.
Joséphe-AlixLux is a Toreador. Lux is a Toreador who seems fashioned perfectly to be loved: or at least to be told that she is loved. I love you. Those words don't mean very much. He seems to mean them and if she can help what her expression does she doesn't bother to do so now. First there is the compression of her mouth, gaze flicking (knife-sharp, cut-quick) from István to the cityscape before returning. There is also the delicate line etched between her eyebrows, sharp, sharp. Her lashes drifting, demure, to trouble her cheekbones with a shadow, not quite dropping; this is how she studies him now.
As far as answers go, "No," she says. "I must say no, mon trésor en sucre, ma belle fleur de sang, because that is the absolute - " a pause.
"Before. At the All Inn. Why did you? Before. At the Oxford. Why? I'm not complaining, I was glad," a smile like a caress, suddenly; see how it sharps up her eyes, the lift of her lashes like she knows what she's doing, although she does not, not at all - and it dissipates into an edge anyway: "But now."
István"Now you are not glad."
He sounds amused by this but not in any way that would suggest this is a game. It is a novelty for him but it is not a game.
This is a thing he's done that could have consequences gone beyond dire. So far as he can tell she has no notion of his clan and even if she did she has not heard it from his own lips. He has only drank from her twice and twice means he's well on the way to a damnation he cannot imagine because he has never been in love before. He has never done this to himself before.
And she wants to know why he's done it. Any sane person would want to know why he's done it. It stands to reason that having done it he is not sane and she cannot expect sanity from him but if Lux or Viol or Joséphe-Alix has ever looked at him and though his mind shattered she has kept that to herself.
So long as she does not wrench it free her hand remains in his.
"Ah, because you do not trust. I... try, my gem, to explain. To speak to another with such strong feelings, it is like another language, no? But I did, for you, have a fondness before the night at the Oxford. And I did think to myself, why should I teach to you these things that could come back one day as a badness."
He's talking about Dominate.
"I could only teach this to another if I did trust the other, yeah? And I do trust you. You and I did write all those years, even now I think you do know me well. It is nothing to trust. I did wish to... eh." He glances down to consider the architecture of her hand before going on: "I did wish to know what it was to feel love for another. Bound so, I have only ever known loathing. Do you understand--" Amusement again. "--or must I write you a love letter?"
Joséphe-AlixLux's eyes stay on István while he tries to explain himself. Here she is: a fine-boned, finely-wrought thing of a forever-young woman, still as silence is still after a struck-chord from some stringed instrument has vanished up, one leg crossed negligently over the other, cigar held aslant in one hand while István clasps the other. Isn't her gaze intent, even enshadowed? Especially so? Isn't it interesting, watching lucence give way to something more opaque? Amusement again from István, and it finds an echoing spark in a smirk. Lux shifts so that the cant of her body is toward the Ancilla instead of away.
"A love letter, really? Oh, do. But I warn you I have a very good memory so if you show-off any of your scientific papers with the names replaced I'll know you're not just a sneak but a cheater, too"
Another puff-puff of the cigar, holding the smoke on her tongue for as long as she can. Her gaze leaves István. Back to the cityscape. On the exhale, "It isn't because 'I do not trust' that I -- look, ván, are you really going to cry 'love'? You said you found it strange, if not troubling -- whydja find it strange?"
IstvánA knowing yet pleased wisp of a smirk comes to him when Lux warns him of the consequences of attempting to pass off one of his papers as a love letter. The fact that he has published papers under assumed names for the last century isn't any great secret. What remains a secret is the fate of the researchers attached to those assumed names. It was far easier in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries to exist in the scientific community without appearing in photographic form.
He like the modern age is having to adapt to the speed of change. Hiring research assistants who can take credit for his work and have their entire lives ahead of them and will produce families and grow old and die is the best he can do now.
Not just a sneak but a cheater. The thought amuses him. Perhaps he is both. He is not the most introspective of immortal undead. Not much brooding in this one. He never saw the appeal.
As for why'd he find it strange.
"Ah, you mean when I did tell you so, on the bed with the magic fingers?" They both know he wasn't referring to the bed then. He doesn't wait for her to rebuke him. "I did mean strange in the way of... not familiar. When I was with you, I could not identify what I did feel then. It was..."
And he considers the limited nature of his vocabulary. Compares it against the vaster ocean of all the words he knows in the other languages.
"I do know what it is that the blood does to the mind and the, eh... the spirit, if we do have such things. The heart, if one wants to give to the classical philosophers the heart as to be the seat of emotion, eh? I am a, how you say, a man of science. Emotions, they are far from me. I have as much need for an emotion as I have need of a cigar, but... to close oneself off when there is so much time before oneself, eh? It is a very sad thing. So yes. Troubling, that I do feel drawn to you so. The reasons why for I should not have such relations with you number more than seven and yet..."
Joséphe-AlixHe doesn't give her a chance to rebuke him; so - if a rebuke was in the cards to begin with - she is silent while István hunts for words to describe what he's feeling and slowly lays them out. Her silence is attentive, and she extricates her hand from the clasp of his, swapping what remains of the cigar for its liberty.
"Oh really? Go on, then. It's always diverting to hear why one is somebody's shouldn't. But just seven shouldn'ts."
IstvánHis eyebrows lift in charmed mock-surprise. That smile still no more substantial than smoke. Affection and something stronger than that having a melting effect on his eyes. Could be the light out here. Tasteful and plentiful yet dim. The patio is largely uncovered and the stars overhead dapple the black sky but the stars can only do so much.
"Just seven."
His mind works quickly. He doesn't have to think so long before he answers because he told her the truth just now: he had the reasons all lined up in his mind the moment he bared his neck to her teeth that first time.
"Okey: you are an anarchist and I sit in the Tower. You are young and I old." Oh yeah. Because looking at them from a distance he is just decrepit next to her. Not. "You are a hedonist and I a scientist."
Does she feel the need to interrupt yet? There is plenty to rebuke here and he hesitates after three.
Joséphe-AlixHe hesitates and she does not think it is because he is uncertain. Because he knows what she will think of one of his reasons? Because he anticipates an argument? The hesitation does not make her smile but it is like a swipe of silver-polish over the darked-up tarnish of metal for the brightening (Starry creature [Morningstar]) effect it has on her eyes. Lux. Her mouth is a bright passionate thing and it looks as if she is ready to use it to speak bright passionate things but he hesitates and she does not take advantage of the hesitation -
or if she does take advantage -
István. He can't see her (not precisely) marshalling herself to reply. He sees her looking at him. Isn't that a thing? There was a time when a gaze anchored in someone's eyes could unseat the heart. Lux anchors her gaze in István's eyes. He wants to play at making love -- she can play that game.
His heart's already unseated but even so; perhaps she is trying to unseat her own heart; perhaps she is trying nothing, but looking because she likes to look and does not fear (willful, rebellious; reckless) looking. Perhaps István with his careful senses will note the slight lofting of her eyebrows.
If he keeps meeting her eyes while he says four five six and seven reasons why he shouldn't then they'll be complicit together in something. There's an air of that. Lux has rested her elbow against the sweep of the couch, her temple lightly against her thumb.
István"Because I do not think you were so fond of me as I was of you and the unbalance does always, eh, strike a blow to the one who feels so strongly, at the end."
That was the fourth one. A paradigm shift. No more superficial reasons. He shifts his body too keeps one hand clasped light over hers while the other arm rests itself against the back of the seat. The cityscape glittering behind them. From a distance they're a handsome couple. Proof of the American ideal that the young can still make something of themselves here. That the meritocracy hasn't really gotten its roots in.
Neither of them care what the kine think. He's looking into her eyes and maybe he sees the anchoring and the lofting and maybe he can tell she thinks he's playing a game.
But he doesn't look away from her. His caresses are an absent thing tonight. They're in public. He won't be touching her face or rending her garments or pressing himself to her. He has some sense of propriety small as it is.
"I did trust you, but that was before, and how am I to know if I will still trust you after having, eh, having teached you--" Close enough. Irregular verbs are a pain in the ass. "--to control others so. Perhaps my trust will have made a mess I cannot see before it does happen. I do not know. The unknown, eh? As much a reason to go forward as to not."
Two more reasons. She didn't interrupt before.
"You are a harpy's daughter, and so soon as I do hint that there are things I have not told you, you will suss them out, and I will... wish to tell you, because that is what the bond does, yeah? It is very foolish, to chain oneself to someone who wants to know everything about you."
The seventh reason:
"Everyone does have secrets. It is like... money, how you say, currency to our people. Mine, I could not tell you in writing. I do not wish to tell you now. You understand. It is a very bad idea for me to bind myself to you so. Not for you! You are golden. But, ah... yes. The unbalance and the future betraying of me by you and the you wishing to find out all of my darknesses et cetera et cetera. Very bad idea."
Joséphe-AlixIstván lists the reasons he shouldn't do what he's done and when he moves the cigar from one hand to the other to clasp her hand again her fingers react. They flex and he can feel the press of her knuckles against his palm and then without entirely loosing her hand she traces the edge of his hand with the pad of her thumb. The edge just by his thumb, what palm-readers call the mount of Venus.
It isn't a bad thing, to play a game. They can make plans operating under the assumption they're going to be around for a long, long time. Lux doesn't know how long she's going to be around. Not with Denver as it is. Not with things as they are. But it isn't bad to play a game: a game is a reason to stay present.Presence. The creature István decided to chain himself to has a lot of presence. That can be a quiet thing, a suggestion and a compulsion and, sure, chains when someone's already chained.
Very bad idea, he says. So much to argue with, but that isn't part of the so much. "Quite a list," she tells him, and the corner of her mouth quirks up.
IstvánSo much to argue with and yet she doesn't argue at all. It might concern him. If it does the concern stays off his face. She finds the base of his thumb firm and fleshless. Palmists would claim him a creature incapable of affection. Palmists would also find his hand cold and dry. Bloodless as it is loveless.
In life he must have been a cynic. Youths cannot afford to be cynics and yet he was engaged to be wed at the time of his Embrace. Perhaps it was a marriage of convenience. He was a scholar after all. Any woman taking on his name would know herself to be a mistress anyway.
Her mouth quirks up. His does nothing. Both of them complicit still.
"The should-nots are more interesting than the reasons why, anyway, no?"
Lux"No." Firm. Her mouth is still quirked; curved. "But darlingest István, lovely creature, do you know most of those shouldn'ts don't count? There is no young and old for us; there is only new and not new. And what's the difference between a scientist and a hedonist anyway?"
István"Only words, my gem."
It isn't a concession of defeat so much as it is a glinting hint of it. Like maybe this entire time he was just tugging her leg. Of course he had had doubt before he made the decision to drink from her the first time. That second time though. That's the one that's put the chains around him.
"The hedonist does act in pursuit of pleasure and the scientist does act in pursuit of knowledge. In this though I can already hear you thinking Oh, oh István, but do you derive no pleasure from the acquiring of knowledge and I do say to this, Ah, my love, I feel nothing. Perhaps some echo of excitement I did once feel in my life. And you, you do find pleasure in the smoking of a cigar. So many of the reasons why not, we can argue into reasons why."
Speaking of:
"You did not ask me what is this secret I did mention." He brings the knuckles of the hand he's claimed to his lips. It takes his eyes from hers for the duration of the action. "You are very quiet tonight, Viol."
LuxHe presses his cold lips against her cool knuckles. Could she have read 'this secret' in his eyes if he left them on hers? A look can be more of what a kiss is than a kiss. Letters mingle souls more-so than anything physical except perhaps blood. Caine's blood. Chains of blood. What a rush. What an impossibility. What a way to spend eternity. Lux, without István's eyes for her glance to anchor in, instead watches his eyelashes when they lower and the angle of his head and she laughs at him.
"I am not. You're just noisier. And the pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of knowledge are exactly the same thing, so there. Even God says so. All the derivative literature supports it, blue eyes; you'll just have to admit it."
He brought up his secret. Why she hadn't asked him about it. Lux didn't respond to that at first: just this accusation of 'quiet.' But now, "Do you want me to undo you? Unbutton, unlace, open-up, tear-apart, illuminate? Maybe I already know your secret, darling. Have you thought of that? Maybe if I'm going to compell you to reveal your self I want to enjoy watching you while you do it."
"I do," she says, thoughtfully, "want to know."
IstvánSo they go on. Does he want maybe she already knows has he thought of that. As they sit the arm that's across the back of the seat slides behind her shoulders.
A lovely creature such as herself has to be used to other lovely creatures fawning over her. Some creatures not so lovely pining. One night in a coat closet before their blood had mingled as it does now she wore an atrocious leather jacket with tweed elbow patches and leaned over him like some 1950s greaser and he'd found her charming. She enjoyed him enough to drink from his neck and to let him drink from hers. He has no reason to think she wouldn't enjoy him playing with her hair as they speak now.
It's an intimate thing on his own but they're speaking of secrets now. And she knows he has one.
Blue eyes tick down to her neck. Come back to her green ones.
"Guess," he says as his fingers sketch lines at the nape of her neck.
Lux"Guess?" Lux laughs again. "But wouldn't it disappoint you if I guessed correctly? I'd hate to be a disappointment," here, the suggestion of a smirk; Lux is a disappointment. She should've stayed a lady of the Tower, one of its ornaments. "And if I'm going to inevitably betray you..."
IstvánIt would not be pleasant for a warm mortal woman to feel a corpse's lips upon her own. He has not asked her if it is unpleasant when he kisses her. Not when he Kisses her for he knows that is a pleasure for her but when he presses his lips against her to express his affection and his longing. To cut her off as he does now.
The ghost of the cigar on her lips puzzles him and she can see him considering it as he leans back. It does not disgust him. He just doesn't know what to do with his mouth anymore. It's useless for exploring his environment anymore. His tongue has grown lazy. All it serves to do now is articulate and seal up wounds.
Anyway:
"You are not to me a disappointment," he says. Rearranges her hair behind her. "I do wish to hear you say it. It is a small thing."
Joséphe-AlixHe kisses her to cut her off, so perhaps along with the cigar-smoke ghost he tastes a still-born word, and his mouth can remember the shape of that later. Lux seems amused; her eyes are amused, anyway, surface-amusement like a gleam on a knife's edge, something that delineates the shade.
"Oh that's because the inevitable betrayal hasn't happened yet," Lux tells him. "Disappointment I'm certain will come, wearing bells." Lux is not concerned about being a disappointment; not at this time. He wants to hear her say his secret.
Games.
"You wish you were of my clan," she tells him. "Because you've worked out some arcane scientific scribble of a mystical thing which proves without a doubt that it's the best one," imperious: "Surprise."
"You believe in Gehenna."
"You enjoy," a pause, considering: what is she going to tell him he enjoys that is a secret he couldn't write her.
IstvánYou wish you were of my clan.
He laughs. Short and soft for the nearness of her sharp ears but it is a laugh all the same. A flick of his eyebrows that would be a retort could he not sense another guess coming. He is touching her earring as if to discern the shape of the thing with his fingers alone. As if he cannot see its mate on the ear nearer him.
You believe in Gehenna.
Another flick of his eyebrows. Closer maybe to the truth but he doesn't grant her a laugh this time.
You enjoy--
"Hmm?" he asks. Prompting.
Joséphe-Alix" -- drinking the blood of innocence," she says. "Which you then put into your hair gel, which is why your hair is so," infinitessimal pause, "shiny."
István"I do not put into anything," he says. Is he teasing her? He has to be teasing her. "The blood of innocence does naturally make the hair shine so."
Joséphe-AlixLux doesn't laugh aloud this time, but clearly: she is engaged. Vibrant eyes, vivacity contained and sublimated. "What's the blood of sinfulness do, I wonder." A beat.
"Do you feel undone and unbuttoned now or should I keep guessing?"
IstvánHis hand leaves her earring and rests against the side of her throat. Fingertips trace her collarbone. He seems sincere but they were just joking a moment ago. It may have taken this long of thinking on what she's said for his brain to filter it through so many languages and back again.
"If I did think your betrayal was inevitable I would not do this to myself. I do trust you. I do wish to, eh... let you undo me. To know and to be known, huh? This is why the bond and the chains and the threat of inevitable betrayal."
His thumb grazes the edge of her jaw.
"If you do wish to hear me say the secret, ask me to tell you, and I will tell you."
Joséphe-Alix"Inevitable," she says.
What happened to the cigar? If István is still holding it, she takes it from him; if he set it down on whatever trays cigar bars have for cigar stubs, she takes it up again. It spent itself out and needs to be re-lit. Where the Hell did that matchbook go?
"Tell me," and she turns her head to the side, just slightly; taps the edge of her jaw just by her earlobe.
For a given value of 'ask.'
IstvánThat counts.
She has to pick up and relight the cigar herself. He isn't interested in it anymore. They're talking about his life such as it is. Something she already knows about him. If she did not want to know she did not have to tell him to tell her.
He doesn't look scared. Doesn't look suspicious. He trusts her. It's as much the blood as it is his brain but he already told her: he trusted her before he bit her.
"I belong to a clan," he says, "that does fancy itself a pillar of the Tower. In 1998 they did call all of those who did go to the Sword to Mexico City to eliminate them. I do not know what would happen if anyone did leave now. Not to defect, but just to say Your truths, they mirror mine if the angle is just so, but I do not agree with you always. I did never try to leave. I think it is possible, but I was very far from those outside the clan who I did trust."
Maybe this is why he came to Denver. He didn't want to be a bastion for the Tremere. To serve as a vanguard. He wants to get the fuck out.
"I do know what would happen if I were to tell you what this clan does do with blood, or were I to teach you to do the things we do with blood. Do you understand what it is I am telling you?"
Joséphe-AlixLux listens to István confess his secret and she is both intent and aloof because after all this is a game. Secrets are always games. His hand is still on her throat; she is playing with a match, testing the tension of the wood, instead of scraping it into life.
"You want to be inconnu; independent? Apolitical. But you do not feel you can be, hmm?"
There. Match-scrape. Lux relights the cigar; puffs. Then: grins, like it's a charm to make seraphim abandon hallelujahs holy holy holy; "And that my first guess was correct?"
IstvánHe squeezes the back of her neck but it is a strengthless squeeze. Amusement stains his features. The first lightening of the sky before dawn. Black gone to dark gray. He doesn't burst out in laughter as he did earlier.
"No," he says, "I do not wish to join the hedonists. And I did not say I... well. I feel I can be, if I do so wish, independent. But, eh. You do make the nights of an anarchist sound so appealing."
Joséphe-Alix"'Degenerates,'" Lux slips in, after 'hedonists,' sharpness beneath, perfectionism precisely ennunciated.
"Do I? Well it is the only reasonable thing to be, but without the -ist, Ist, sweet creature."
What exactly does her expression mean? He's not going to get a chance to read it, because she takes the cigar's smoke into her mouth again, and then decides to lean forward and press hers against his, part his lips and breathe smoke into him: go ahead, taste. The hedonist says.
He doesn't need to breathe so he's not going to choke at the unexpected.
IstvánDegenerates does have more of a ring to it than does hedonists. He lets her slip it in. Override his own vocabulary. One will never learn the language unless one speaks to the locals. Explains why René's English is so much better than his though they have been in this country the same amount of time.
And her expression though he would study it does not tell him anything because so soon as Lux has gathered up a mouthful of smoke she's kissing him. Giving it to him. He does startle at the heaviness of the smoke on her tongue but does not pull back from her. He lets her part his lips and he takes in the smoke into his mouth as she taught him. Closes his lips when the kiss is over. Doesn't swallow the smoke down into his stomach like an amateur would.
When they sit back from each other he breathes the smoke that has not escaped out through his nostrils.
He doesn't cough any more than he chokes.
Joséphe-Alix"Do you know, I was wondering -- "
Lux stubs out the cigar, sharp gleam of a green dream in her eye hidden by the fall of her oh-dark lashes when she shifts her weight so she's no longer leaning against the back of the couch, but is balanced instead on the edge of its cushion, the better to pay mind to what she's doing in the ash tray, and then when her hands are free she clap-claps for István's not-amateur prowess. Pleased.
She lost her train of thought, apparently. Found this one instead:
"Say, did you ever make it down to Rapture?"
IstvánIstván is an intelligent creature and he believes in coincidence but not in those rare instances where a correlation is actually a case of causation.
It was not so long ago that René told him that the red-haired nurse who was so suspicious of him after Vex attacked him in the parking garage had warned him of a woman's interest in finding his associate. It was maybe something they laughed about. Or maybe István asked René why this woman was still alive. Or how. Sounds like more of a case of a 'how' than a 'why.'
He knows why. Because René has a soft heart and no alibi.
"Yes," he says with no hesitation. "The women on the stage did not wear clothes, it was very strange."
Joséphe-Alix"Didja meet any interesting blondes while you were there?"
István"Define 'interesting.'"
Joséphe-Alix"You define 'interesting.'"
IstvánThat makes him smile that ghost of a smile to which she is accustomed.
"Something which does arouse curiosity or hold the attention." A beat. "Yes, I did meet a blonde who did try to hold my attention. I would not call her interesting. I would call her annoying. Like a fly buzzing so, yeah?"
Joséphe-Alix"How'dja swat her away, dare I ask?"
István"Oh..."
Think think. Like it was so long ago he can't remember. It wasn't long ago. Just insignificant.
"She was talking to me for several minutes about my eyes having slime on them and oh, do not look at her friend, and so on like this. I was not talking to her, I was wanting to talk to Kali! But she did see me looking at her friend, because her friend did yell in a voice like so much air escaping a balloon and I was, eh... that did interest me, yes. So I did watch, and then she did come over and tell me if I did want to stare that that was why the other women were walking around with their breasts bare. Okey. I wait for her to go away and she does not go away.
"One of the research assistants that Doctor Jacobs did hire, she did enter the Rapture with other persons. I do not know why, but she was, eh... rapping her forehead against the table. Doctor Jacobs does say she was maybe not so happy to see me there being as I am her employer, yeah? I believe the word he did use was 'embarrassed.' This fly buzzing, she does see Miss Gardner hitting her head so, and she says to me that she does not look happy to see me."
Isn't this kind of a funny story?
"So I say to her Well then why not do you go and give her a hug? only it was not so much a saying to her as I did command her to, and then she did, and I did leave the place."
Lux[Dum dee dum: Self Control. Don't laugh!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Joséphe-Alix"Oh, blue eyes," Lux says, and then Lux considers Laurel for a moment. Whatever she thinks as she considers Lux decides to keep to herself; one can't reveal all of one's secrets, can one? Internal life should remain internal.
"And you're worried how I'm going to use that discipline should I learn it," a tease. Perhaps. "D'you know, that woman's still upset? I hope you two don't meet."
"Life's more interesting with a little mystery, huh?"
IstvánA tease. He doesn't read it as a tease. It's true. Of all the ways she could use it and here he is forcing kine to hug each other. Terrible.
"Doctor Jacobs does say your mortal's little red-haired friend did tell him to tell me that the woman is still upset, yes. So there goes the mystery of what would happen if she did find me."
Joséphe-Alix"That was thoughtful of her," she says.
Lux's eyebrows rise at 'red-haired friend,' because when Lux met Molly her hair was not red, but she doesn't inquire. Taps his shin with the toe of tonight's frivolous but lovely footwear, something Spring, glitzy, glamourous.
"But there goes the -- ? Where does it go? Into the mystery box of secrets? You didn't say a thing, ván. Just," a pause. Lux. "If she does find you and it is convenient be complete, hm? Be complete if you ever need to be complete; she might be not entirely useless; then again, she might be. I don't know. Be complete in whichever way," and the Toreador shifts again, leaning back against the couch back. Indolence, see. Elbow along the couch's back, head resting on her shoulder just so, precisely, fingers disappearing into her hair.
"Speaking of complete," Lux. Lux amused. "Do you know how completely enamoured I am of you?
IstvánSpeaking of complete.
He promises her nothing when she tells him that this blond bounty hunter may not be entirely useless but neither does she command him. She doesn't ask him to promise and doesn't wait to see if he will. All the request can do is lie there and maybe if this woman does find him he will be complete. She has seen how complete István has been in the past. He leaves them under blankets in his attic and goes on with his night.
And yet she claims to be completely enamored with him. Amused as she looks.
He can look amused too as he reaches to touch the knee on the leg to whom the toe that prodded his shin belongs.
"No," he says. "I do not know."
Joséphe-AlixPerhaps it is because she has seen how complete István has been in the past that she tells him to be complete whichsoever way he finds it most convenient (useful) to be complete should Laurel find him. Perhaps it is because she has a conscience and does not blame the gold-haired creature for trying to find ván, even if it is over something that seems inconsequential. Having one's mind enslaved, turned, pushed: it is never inconsequential. Lux hasn't asked István to tell her to do anything for a while; hasn't tested herself. Lux isn't going to ask him tonight. He touches her knee and she smiles at him, and if there is still a note of trouble (yes), then who's to see it? Lux plays at living in the moment and it is a moment right now and in this moment István is touching her knee and saying that he does not know how completely Lux is enamoured of him and Lux could just lick her lips couldn't she. Doesn't but the instinct: touches a tongue to the sharp edge of a tooth and then says,
"Good!" and here it is, the quick impulse-spark [light on a sword's edge, scattered; lovely and perilous, star-fall] smile. "Because I'm not going to tell you unless this love letter is very, very good. Though I suppose I could say if you're a monastery, I'll be your monk; isn't that nice? Or you could be a page, and I could be a word written on it; I think I like that better. Ink bleeds, doesn't it? Blots, too. Bleeding and blotted. Or why don't you be a cello and I'll be a pair of knees and a couple of hands and a bow. Naw. I think I'm going to get another cigar, darling."
Lux stands up; picks up her glass of (untouched) wine. Sluice of a look and, "I am fond," with what sounds like affection.
She's fond, and she'll return with another cigar, and they'll talk nonsense until they part ways which won't be long after.
And the next time they speak will probably be on the phone after the blood moon eclipse.
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