Dark Room

Nathan

This is the first time Lux has been to Nathan's house since he moved in at the beginning of the month and the reason why he moved in is lost on her since she cannot see the sun or how much of it comes through the windows. That was the selling point for him.

Technically this is not his house. He's renting it. That doesn't mean shit to someone who's lived in small apartments his entire life. This place has a backyard and a basement and a huge kitchen. The acoustics don't produce echoes like his old place did. When he and Hannah argue they only have to worry about their voices drifting through open windows.

Nathan and Hannah don't argue often but when they do it's an argument only two introverts are capable of having. This last one ended with her storming out of the house. Lux will not be meeting Nathan's sister tonight. She's gone to her biological father's.

Whenever Lux arrives Nate is sitting out on the front porch in an old wicker chair puffing on an electronic cigarette and staring off into space. The vapor smells like cupcakes. There's no way in hell he's ever going to wean himself off of nicotine at this rate.

Lux

They call it May gloom, the weather they've been having lately; even at night, the gloom is just a touch more gloomy, occasionally dense and furry with a sudden fall of drizzle or rain. Here comes Lux, strolling down the sidewalk with her hair loose and her jacket long, the street light catching on a drop of water clinging to this stray hair or that like so much ornament, crystalline beads, if there were sunlight there'd be a rainbow refracted -- her hair is damp but not wet and reacting to the damp by getting more buoyant. Has she an umbrella? Yes, but she's not using it. Is it a sword-cane umbrella? That would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? Does the rule of cool apply to Toreador? The point is here she comes, strolling down the street and when she espies Nathan on the porch of his house she lifts her imperious little chin instead of calling his name.

Here's a fence; there's a latch to the fence; she unlatches it and - "What is that?" - asks, glass-green gaze fixing briefly on Nate's electronic cigarette, and it can't be the first time she's seen one but she's surprised to see it (could smell it on the street) in Nate's hands.

Nathan

A lift of the chin begets a wave of his empty hand and the question of what's in the other begets:

"Vaporizer."

He offers it to her as she comes upon the porch. Slouched as he is the young man has to hoist himself up so he's sitting straighter and then he decides no that's rude he ought to stand to greet his guest. It isn't as if he's ever made much effort to conduct himself as a gentleman around her. Maybe at first when he aimed to leave her with a good impression of him but he'd gotten lazy after a while.

This weather is not kind to those with curly hair. His has not seen a pair of scissors since he left the hospital. If he spent more time in the sun the straw color of it would bleach out. He does not spend much time in the sun.

Whether or not she tries the thing Nathan stands. He looks for a moment as if he isn't certain whether to hug her or how he's supposed to greet her now but he opens the screen door and then the storm door. Guides her inside without much flourish. She's been inside his home plenty of times before. This is just a different home. It doesn't reek of stale smoke and there is still no sign of a cat. The furnishings look more comfortable when they can spread out like this.

"So how've you been?" he asks once the door is shut behind them.

Lux

Lux tries the thing. There's something intimate in that, isn't there? First she studies the long staff of it and shakes it to hear the slosh, then, a line etched sharp and delicate between her eyebrows, she brings it to her lips and pulls the mist into her mouth and her lungs. Her left eyebrow rises an infinitessimal fraction of an inch higher as she tastes (senses so high), and then she exhales suddenly -- the vapor this perfect Hollywood plume, so much whiter than cigarette smoke.

Handing it back, she says, "Nice digs. Looks like sunshine in a homely little box, perfect for baking apple pies and singing duets. Me? Oh," and this, see, because she has followed him into the house. Cautious. Careful. Isn't she lovely, poised as she always is? Sluice of a glance to take everything in. "I've been good." Beat; pause. The edge of a smile; the suggestion of pleasure, sublimated, an echo of that word: good.

"Are you getting a dog?"

Nathan

Once the vaporizer is back in his possession Nathan pockets the thing. He was barefoot sitting outside like he's impervious to the cold but he still scuffs off the soles of his feet before he wanders any further in. The floor is hardwood. He thinks the comment about baking and singing is funny but then she goes on.

Is he getting a dog.

"What?" It's worth mentioning that for the first time in months he sounds as if he finds amusement in something instead of forcing himself to approximate the feeling. Turns around to look at her with bafflement on his expression. They're going into the kitchen. "No?"

Lux

"Good. I don't like animals much, mostly because if I did my feelings would be wounded constantly. Why the fuck not?"

Lux doesn't lag behind looking at anything or everything, though she does stay sharp-eyed and alert, the insouciant slouch of her something sheathing a graceful edge. Just in case; one never knows.

Nathan

If she's paranoid Nathan doesn't fault her this. The only other door in the place is at the back of the house through the kitchen. Outside the yard is dark and occluded by a curtain. No windows on the side wall of the living room. Only the front.

And if she gets the impression that the young man isn't as exhausted as she's used to seeing him that isn't his imagination. He sleeps better at night here. The bruises beneath his eyes aren't as dark as they have been. When he opens the refrigerator he doesn't take out a bottle of beer but a two-liter bottle of diet lemon-lime cola. Because that shit is delicious and doesn't get him drunk.

As he fills up a glass she can see him suppressing the host's impulse to ask his guest if she wants anything.

"'Why the fuck not' what?"

Lux

[Does Lux actually notice any of this stuff? Let's try out the fancy -2 diff because of Auspex 2. Perception + Alertness. Still tiny and pathetic.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 4 )

Lux

"Why the fuck not get a dog?"

Tonight the creature looks around and there isn't much she doesn't notice. The imperfections in the grain of the hardwood floors aren't imperfections at all, but signatures; where people have tended to walk, where one floorboard is just a little less well set than the others, nothing one would normally notice, nothing even one who is sharp would normally notice.

For all her careless slouch, doesn't she maintain this air of -- what is it? It's a quicksilver sort of air, something to go with the gloom-caress of hair and eyes when her lashes lower over them and the lighting's gone indoors, something of -- oh, precision, an interaction with the space she's in (central to [the heart of]), restrained proprietry.

He's her host, eh? Lux knows all about being a guest.

Nathan

"Uhh..."

So he's getting more sleep and seems if not strictly happier then at least as if his bruises are healing. He would never admit to being a fucked-up creature even if his father and his sister and his girlfriend are all perceptive enough to notice that he is. Fucked-up creatures stay fucked up. Nathan doesn't want to stay fucked up.

Tiny bubbles dance up the sides of the juice glass once he's filled it with carbonated water. The plastic cap scrapes against its grooves as he screws it back onto the bottle.

"I haven't thought about it. We had a dog, when I was little. Like... five, maybe." He puts the bottle back in the refrigerator and claps the door shut again. Leans his back against it as he turns to face her. The appliance's face has become a repository for magnets and mementos. "I don't remember what happened to it."

Probably Shira got rid of it because the dog would bark at the same things that would scare Nathan but how the hell would he know that. She would have blamed his father if he'd ever asked about what happened to the dog they had when he was little.

"Besides, why would I get a dog if your feelings would get hurt every time you came over?"

Lux

"Aw, shucks," Lux says, faintly ironical, but with a rise of mischief in her eyes like a whisk of leaf-litter or a little curl of shadow kicked up by somebody's passage. Just poetry, it doesn't mean exactly what it says: the mischief falls back down again subsumed. "You're going to twitterpate me, Marszalek."

He's over there with his juice glass and his soda pop and once he's done with the ritual of getting himself a drink, she says, "So give me the tour. But make an interesting tour; not just a 'here's the living room' 'here's where I sleep' 'that's the bathroom.' Give it some," she snaps her fingers, "oomph."

There's a ring on her thumb, a smooth thick band of metal, and a stack of rings on her middle and ring fingers, photo-jewelry, each little round photo asymmetrically set chopped up pieces of a star chart showing the constellation Virgo.

Nathan

You're going to twitterpate me, Marszalek.

Is that a smile? No it's part of a laugh but still. That's twice in one night he hasn't looked as if he's just come from a funeral. Maybe then would be an opportune time to tell her she ought to break herself of the habit of calling him Marszalek but she talks so fast and he's so content to just watch her and listen to her and she wants a tour. An interesting tour.

He lifts his eyebrows.

"'Oomph'?" he asks. Picks up his glass with a wooden flourish. Like a ninth-grade drama student attempting to affect a debonair persona. No confidence or presence but maybe his ineptitude is a little endearing. "Alright, mademoiselle, allons-y."

Oh right. He speaks French fluent enough that when he's in a neighboring European country and doesn't speak the local dialect natives ask him if he's Canadian instead of American.

"This--" Big open-armed voilà gesture as they walk back out into the living room. "--is where I spend most of my time pwning noobs and not having to take care of a dog." He points to a nebulous area that is all doorways and shadows. They are not walking that way. "Sometimes I go that way when I want to go to sleep. Or if it's noon on a Saturday and my sister isn't up yet and I want to harass her about her plans for the day before I leave. I read somewhere that girls love it when you bother them when they're asleep."

There's a basement. Brilliant. He opens the door and clicks on the light. His most recent near-death occurred in a basement. He only hesitates for a second before descending the stairs towards the dim glow of the bulb.

Lux

"Ooo," she says, obligingly, at the living room. "Aaah," also obliging, at the nebulous area that is all doorways and shadows. Not all that nebulous to her; she can see well enough through gloom tonight. Nebulous: a word that feels like it should have stars caught in it; burning things that fall. He mentions his sister, though, so although there's this sharp smirk hooking her mouth upward and she says -

" - they do. But don't you just know you've got to pick the right moment. Miss Post also says: brush your teeth, warm your fingers, do not rest your elbow on any loose hair fanning out across a mattress, never, ever fling water - ice or otherwise."

Follow, follow.

Lux

- her shoulders roll forward. A smidge, a touch; a casualty of the slouch war, a couple with this side-long she's not around sort of look.

Nathan

The stairs cough and creak under their feet. Barefoot in the basement. Nathan is either an idiot or doesn't fear tetanus. Or both. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Once they're down in the basement though Lux can see it's partly finished. Carpet on the floors but no paint or paneling on the walls. Nothing down here to look at really.

"I feel like if I'm going to bother my sister while she's still asleep I want to do the opposite of all that."

This as they're still descending. Once they're at the bottom unpacked boxes loom around them. He has several bookshelves he needs to put together.

"The landlady says this was going to be a bathroom, like the plumbing's all sorted but none of the appliances are in."

He swings in a door to reveal not a gaping hole but a bare-concrete floor and bare unpainted walls. A door whose inside is painted black. A cabinet on one side of the room and two tables on the other side. Dry supplies on one table and trays and tongs on the other. An easel in one corner and a small utility sink in the other.

One roll of film has been exposed and dried already. It rests on the easel. Lux will recognize many of the shots as coming from their last excursion before the car bomb. Or Nathan's encounter with Flood. They happened in such a short span of time it's difficult for anyone who hadn't received a text message that evening to tease them apart.

"Tadaaa," he says in a deadpan.

Lux

There are many who claim or will make the claim that vampires do not feel. Many of those are vampires themselves, old and jaded and bored with everything, feeling the loss of their humanity and the imminence of their Beast, cauterized; Lux is not one of these.

Nathan opens the door to reveal a dark room! And Lux's lips part as if she's going to say something or take a breath, but she does neither (oh, no, neither of those things, especially not even the latter), has touched nothing, touches nothing now, but leans into the concrete room with bare unpainted walls as if it exerts a pull on her. There's leashed energy when she turns toward Nate, a vibrant edge to the turn of her head when she's done looking over the room and looks back at him instead directly.

She feels things.

"So what's going to be the first fancy of your muse?"

Nathan

In his moments of confusion and exasperation Nathan keeps coming back to the fact that he cannot understand what she wants from him. Their relationship is platonic and yet she is possessive of him. They are friends and have been friends for nearly a year and yet as of late he has felt a desire for her he cannot understand or even name. It isn't sexual. Maybe if it were sexual he would take that as a sign of improvement.

Better off because now he wants her around and he wants to please her. He doesn't want her angry at him ever again. When he tells her he wants her not to feel the way she said she felt in his hospital room one half-lit night he understands what it is he's saying.

Nathan understands more than he wants to about vampires. Sometimes he hates her for this but it wasn't really her fault. If it weren't for her he'd be dead. He has enough sense to recognize this.

It would be nice if Nate could not look at her the way he looks at her when they're alone but he can't exactly help it.

He indicates the easel and says, "That was." Is he joking? He must be joking. He thinks he's being cute. Nate crosses his arms over his chest and clears his throat and leans against the doorframe. "Nah, actually, I've just been taking the camera to the VA clinic with me when I go to talk to my therapist. The shots are pretty pedestrian but black and white film makes everything look like you know what you're doing, so."

Lux

"I guarantee that statement about black and white film is as false as something labeling something 'new and improved.'"

The creature drifts in to take a closer look at some of the shots from their miniature adventure, experiment with artful shots on the bus and around the city. Pale lamp glows silver, splashes toward white froth never quite reaches that simmer, and Lux takes a deep breath of the paint and fumes and darkness the smell of it then turns back around.

There's a lot more about vampires that Lux feels she has to tell Nathan. There's a lot more ties-that-bind she feels she has to do, to keep Nathan (and perhaps herself) safe. This is what happens, isn't it?

Lonesomeness. Different from loneliness; Lux is singular. It does not bother her. Occasionally when she goes out, even if she is in a fucking crowd, Lux stays separate from it and enjoys herself just as much as if she were the center (tugging inexorably on those around her, magnetic monstress).

"Gonna accompany those pedestrian shots with some less pedestrian text? Maybe make a book of it?"

Lux

ooc: uh, subtract the first 'something' from what Lux said. >.>

Nathan

If she weren't an artist he would ask her if she had any idea what a herculean effort she had just described. If she weren't an artist and if she weren't a creature whose existence struck him as a series of impossible things.

Even if others around him have become cynics and vigilantes the reporter still hasn't lost his faith in the system. It's an idiotic faith but plenty of people in his circle of acquaintances believe him to be an idiot. That's part of the package when one behaves as if he has honorable bones.

Nathan does not believe himself to be honorable. He barely believes himself to be a writer. His entire adult life he's been a reporter. That's all he is. Things happen and he writes about them and someone else publishes them and that's as far as his creativity and ambition go.

So he snorts when she asks if he's going to write anything to go with the shots.

"I, uh..." He clears his throat again. Still has his arms latched around his ribs. "A couple weekends ago I interviewed this woman, I'm gonna post the article on Sunday. Both her sons enlisted. A sniper killed one of them and the other one's living with her now, he's been in and out of rehab since he got back and he's only... twenty-four, maybe. Twenty-five, something like that. Younger than me. He sounded pretty surprised that anybody reads my blog. I was like 'Yeah, dude, I know, it's pretty fuckin' impossible to find literature on the subject, half the hits I get are from search engines.' Maybe you're onto something, there."

Lux

+4

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

Lux

"Sure. I've known a few survivors, a few soldiers and warriors or whatever they'd like to be called," Lux says, her smile brief and impulsive, a twinge, a butterfly's wings going flap. "You feel passionate about the whole deal, don't you? Why the Hell would you hesitate?"

Somebody else saying why the Hell might sound belligerent or antagonistic. Lux is just slangy, is just carelessly hurtling down conversation highway.

Lux

"Sure. I've known a few survivors, a few soldiers and warriors or whatever they'd like to be called," Lux says, her smile brief and impulsive, a twinge, a butterfly's wings going flap. "You feel passionate about the whole deal, don't you? Why the Hell would you hesitate?"

Somebody else saying why the Hell might sound belligerent or antagonistic. Lux is just slangy, is just carelessly hurtling down conversation highway.

Nate

One day Nathan is going to have a path and stick to it and not feel so confounded by all the things he can do with his life that he becomes paralyzed by the possibility. Stuck in the proverbial tree of options and starving for the inability to choose. He chose the service and then he chose the press.

It's a natural bridge. One he hadn't seen before. He looks at her now and he doesn't have an answer for her right away because he's thinking.

When he's done thinking he shrugs and stands away from the doorframe and gives her a smile. His smiles are a ghoulish thing for the pallor of his skin and the darkness of his eyes and the discomfort he seems to feel when he does smile because his smiles are so rare. One day they won't be. Maybe. That scar on his temple and its brothers on his forearms make each day he has seem a blessing.

"I don't have a good reason," he says. "Other than I've never written a book before and the idea kind of scares the shit out of me."

If she wants to be vulgar he can be vulgar too.

"Fuck it." He's been scared before. "I'll do it."

Lux

Lux isn't wearing glasses tonight. Lux doesn't need glasses and she doesn't usually wear glasses but sometimes she wears them, depending on the look, dependent on the outfit. Tonight's just not one of those nights, so she can't look at Nathan over the rim of her glasses, but she gives him a sluice of a look anyway, something that takes him in toe to tip and tip to toe. He'll do it, will he? Her mouth curves slightly, but the vitality (vibrancy) which sharps her doesn't give rise to any effusions.

"Good! Now where's the camera?"

He's still by the door to the little dark room and she wandered inside; now she eases around him, back into the basement proper. If the camera was on one of the dark room counters or the camera box was, that's in her hands and she's already opening it checking for a roll of film.

In the basement proper, "How long's your sister staying with you anyway?"

Nate

Now where's the camera.

"Uhhh..."

Alas it is not in the dark room because he goes to see his therapist once every two weeks now because his therapist who has not seen him before but took him on from his last therapist after she left to have a baby anyway this fellow is concerned about him. Doesn't think he's dangerous to himself or anyone else but you tell a therapist you don't really get happy or sad or angry and you drink too much and have a loaded gun in the house they tend to get a little concerned.

Now that he doesn't drink at all he gets sad and angry more often than he used to admit to getting. The therapist calls that progress.

"Upstairs. In my room. C'mon."

But then she wants to know how long Hannah is staying with him and he runs his hand down his jaws. Late twenties and the kid can grow stubble but not much of a beard. His stubble comes in so blond you can't even see it when he hasn't shaved. To the sharp ear it bristles against his calloused palm.

"Through the summer. She's got an internship out in Fort Collins started Monday and her semester starts... end of August, the twenty-somethingth. I think she wants to go back early to hang out with her friends, they're getting a house off-campus. I don't know. She's at Dad's right now."

Lux

If Lux did have designs on Nathan, they'd be clinched now. Oh ho ho, upstairs in his room, c'mon. Lux c'mons. Her hands find an easy place to rest in the pocket of her jacket although as they go back up the basement stairs she unlaces the belt so it's not cinched quite so perfectly against her waist, falls open and loose, the lines a clean sort of elegance, an edged sort of Hopperesque grace.

"Like having somebody around?"

Nate

"It's alright. She's fun, most of the time. It's... yeah. It's good."

If she's getting the impression that Nathan doesn't give too many things in his personal life a whole hell of a lot of thought then she won't be the first person. If he isn't talking about a case or a story or something he doesn't understand and wants to understand but doesn't understand why he doesn't understand it then he can talk all night. This though.

Up into the kitchen they go. He flicks off the basement light when Lux has reached the top and then he shuts the door and leads her into that nebulous area that is all doors. The one where Hannah sleeps is closed. His bedroom is ajar. It's neat and clean. He made the bed at some point today.

One day he will decide he wants to make use of the attic. Or he will use Hannah's room as an office. In the meantime the desk that used to be in his guest room at the apartment is parked in the corner. He turns on a light and goes to the closet and removes the camera case.

Lux

When Nathan has turned from the closet, he'll find Lux cross-legged with her shoes on his bed, one of the books from his nightstand open and in her hands. Her shoulders are curved inward, slouching, slouching, but her fingertips so precise where they rest on the book's edge.

She looks at and judges whatever he has on his walls, but he hasn't been moved for very long, has he?

Lux wants to know about Hannah. Part of her does. Hannah, daughter of her son. Hannah, who does she take after? Clay of my clay, she'd called Nathan; Hannah is no less so. Part of her is so curious.

Part of her is so protective.

But she doesn't want to see her. She doesn't want to know because her sire was right. So she's looking at the book instead while Nathan gets the camera case out of the closet, and asks without looking up until he makes a noise or indicates he's done faffing about in the closet, "What happened to your cat?"

She has finally noticed.

Nate

Nathan has a small pile on his nightstand. Mostly nonfiction. None of it has to do with current events or military affairs. Biographies or history. Plenty of ground to cover with both that doesn't skirt too close to his own life.

He's also reading Dracula. Given the state of the spine it's the first time he's attempted it at least with this copy. That's cute.

What happened to his cat.

He swallows hard and holds out the camera case to her.

"Nothing happened," he says. "I just gave her to someone else."

Lux

"Oh, is that 'nothing'?" Lux inquires, a rill of sardonic amusement in her voice like a twist of smoke from a candleflame - hear it? Or maybe it's for his choice of literature. Because of course, of course, she is going to tease Dracula out of the pile and lift it up, give him a look that's even more inquiring than her tone of voice.

Nate

When Nathan laughs this time it's a dry knee-jerk noise. This is like talking to his father but he doesn't say that. At least it's a laugh instead of a sigh. It isn't an answer. He walks over to the bed which is queen-sized because he neither wants whoever spends the night with him to be on top of him nor across a gulf. He sits down next to Lux and wedges his hands between his knees and watches her as she rifles through his pile.

Shrug.

"I've never read it," he says. Like that's an answer either.

Lux

The inquiring look doesn't become any less inquiring, or any less of a look. Her head is canted, just so. Her hair is beginning to dry, but still damp; an added gloss, gleam - caress of shadows; how is it so full of gloom even when the lamplight skims across it? Her skin is very pale tonight and her eyes are very green.

Nate

The light in here is low-wattage and dimmed further by the thick shade on his lamp. Sort of a red haze over everything for the paint on the wall and the color of the shade's fabric and Nathan's eyes are always wide. They don't look any wider as he's sitting there head turned towards her with the core of him aimed straight but it's easy to read him as being uncertain or guilty or contrite when he's doe-eyed all the goddamn time.

"What, is that breaking the Masquerade?"

Lux

"Reading a book? I don't know; is it giving you any true ideas?" Lux says, with the kissing curl of a grin - see how it slants? See how she leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees? If she was hungry, this is when she'd tell him to c'mere. This is when she'd kill him. Monsters.

The grin begins to fade, because the words strike a chord and quiet her. He has an opportunity to head whatever conversation's about to occur off at the pass.

Nate

And look at how he trusts her. How he loves her. As if he has never loved or trusted anyone who has hurt him. As if he has never been caught in the attention of a vampire whose hunger he could not gauge.

The grin fades after he's started answering. Which means it's good that Nathan is not a verbose man. But it also means he doesn't cut her off in time. Because he does notice but he doesn't think to swerve away from whatever is about to happen.

"Sure," he says. "That people in the Victorian era were repressed as hell."

Lux

"Since you've learned about the Masquerade," she cuts a graceful gesture with one hand, as if she's conducting music, "Have you thought about how you'd kill a vampire?" This sounds like it's a leading question about Flood, but isn't meant to be. She realizes this, perhaps, or maybe just thinks it, and says: "I mean: have you wondered about the methods?"

Taps the back cover of Dracula with two fingers, then sets the book down.

Nate

When he wants to he can lie. No one has caught him in a lie yet. Some people he does not try to lie to and Lux may be one of them but how would she know if she has never caught him in the attempt. Could be that right now he's telling himself he'd better not fucking react.

He made it through basic training in the Marine Corps and three deployments afterwards. Of course he can keep his fucking expression neutral when he wants it to stay neutral. The only time Lux really sees him get scared is when he's dealing with the supernatural. Harder to deal with the supernatural when you don't have your squad and your rifle and your orders with you.

"I thought about it before I knew about the Masquerade," he says. Scoffing a bit like he knows how ridiculous it was. Take a guess what incited him to start to consider it. "Uh... since, I'm pretty sure if a vampire and I got into a killing-each-other contest I'd be fucked no matter what I did. So. No."

Lux

"'No' what? No, you haven't wondered about the methods because you'd be fucked?"

How inscrutable is the creature watching him now?

Nate

She's had more practice at being inscrutable than he has. But he doesn't start to snap beneath the pressure of her gaze the way he had that night in the car. He can't lie to her. Her blood doesn't prohibit him but it does make him feel warmly towards her.

"Correct," he says.

Good. He's reverting to answering questions like he's on the witness stand. This should make this conversation less painful.

Lux

Lux's gaze falls away. He should have a stuffed animal somewhere, something besides a book she can grab and hug. Ah, wait. A pillow will do nicely. Lux reaches for a pillow, snags it by the corner, hauls it into her lap and then hugs it close. She doesn't need to move but she does because all day long, the sun chains her down she's imprisoned without recourse. Now, now, she can be alive again, be something again, be a presence and a Presence, why wouldn't she make whatever little movements she could -- just to feel? Clockwork. Cold. Cold, but something's burns her into wakefulness anyway, something lives beneath her skin and behind her eyes -- something gives her that natural pull. Tug. Fall, darling. Do vampires have souls? Does anything?

"I want you to know that stakes do work, after a fashion."

Nate

[perc + empathy: lol conclusion-jumping time]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lux

[I have a new dice of subterfuge. Let's test it. Am I enigmatic?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nate

On another night he might have guessed that Lux herself had suffered a fate that's entered into public mythological consciousness insofar as putting down vampires go. Sunlight and garlic and crosses and stakes. As if all of those are absolutes and it is so easy to drive a stake into the heart of a creature that very much wants to stay upright.

Lux is enigmatic tonight. Clutching his pillow to her chest and confirming one of the myths. He hasn't done laundry yet this week. His pillowcase smells like his hair. He doesn't wash his hair everyday but he doesn't stink. The pillowcase just smells like oil and vanilla chemicals and breaths he leaves behind in his sleep.

She wants him to know that stakes do work.

He absorbs this and he frowns and his eyes flash a question that he doesn't voice. Why would she want him to know that.

Receipt of the information comes in the form of deepening frown and a nod. No words.

Lux

"Don't you wanna know how they work?" Lux says, mouth quirked.

Nate

This feels like a trick question. Nathan just stares at her and she can see the rise and fall of his chest is no different than normal but he looks wary now. Like no matter what he says will be the wrong answer and he isn't willing to give her anything other than a Yes or a No now.

He opens his mouth to make an attempt anyway and breathes out a voiceless mirthless laugh.

"Am I going to need to know how to stake a vampire?" he asks.

Lux

There is an infinitessimal pause.

Then, "You should know," firm -- firm as a metal sheet; diamond-hard, glint, under all that sweet silkiness. "You should know it doesn't end us. Fixes us in place if you get the heart, if you strike true enough and hard enough, and then we can't do anything. We're still. We're still in there though. We're not gone." Pause. "You can keep a vampire like that for a long time. If you don't feed and water it, it'll get all ... well, dessicated. If you ever just happen across a staked vampire..."

Nate

This is the part he needs to know. That pause tells him more than anything else. Like when a shade has been nattering at him for minutes at a time more and more insistent even if he can't understand and then silence falls over him like a shadow.

He didn't cry much when he was a very small child and he stopped screaming out of fear so early. Shades were everywhere when he was growing up and he was so bright and kind to them. They got rough sometimes. No one ever told him how to make them go away. He had to sort that out on his own.

When his eyes move down to the held pillow and back up to her eyes the stitch between his brows tics but does not tighten. Go on, he doesn't say.

Lux

"You can unstake the vampire. I mean, if it's me, you should unstake the vampire. But not immediately, because ... It will be hungry as soon as you pull that splinter from its heart. It might be nothing but hunger, famished and possessed by the need." Lux doesn't swallow. But she pauses again, the fall of her glance thoughtful. "So if you do unstake it -- I suppose I mean me, because otherwise just call me -- " The beginning of a lift of this smile. " -- either make sure it's restrained or feed it first. Somehow. Just don't go pulling stakes out of all these staked vampires you might be casually coming across, okay?"

Nate

She can hear him breathing through his nose. Over a decade of smoking has left his insides poisoned and withered but he'll recover. He's tougher than he looks. He's also breathing faster than he wants to because he's imagining a scenario in which he'd find a staked vampire and the staked vampire might be Lux and if it isn't he's to call her but if it is he can't even smile to meet her beginning-of-a smile.

Nathan is a writer. Reporters aren't exactly known for their creative storytelling ability but they have to have vivid imaginations to fathom scenes at which they were not present and portray lives and personalities of which they are no part. He can imagine plenty of scenarios he may find himself stumbling across a deathless corpse with a wooden spike through its heart.

His mouth is dry. If he can remember where he left his drink he doesn't want it anymore anyway. He swallows the dryness out of his throat. Clears it next.

Restrain her or feed her if he finds her like that. Christ.

"Okay."

Lux

"Beheading is pretty permanent," she says. "So's fire and sunlight. I don't know if the ash sparkles as it's blown up up and away," let that word hang -- linger. Flippancy, but only the slightest veneer; it's just a gleam of flippancy, not actual flippancy. Lux tests the weight of the pillow in her hands, coming out of hugging it, fluffing it up until it is fluffed to her standards.

Nate

"I've seen bodies that've been burned before," he says. He's addressing his hands where they're knit between his knees. Talk of beheading and fire and corpses gone to ash makes him think of things he doesn't tend to think about. "The ash just kind of sits there even if it's windy."

Pedantry to meet her flippancy before he picks up a flippancy of his own.

"I'm only at the part where Mina and Lucy are writing letters about all the guys Lucy's rejected." By the way. "So if someone gets staked later on, you know, I haven't gotten that far yet. Spoiler alert would be nice."

Translation: thank you Lux for letting me know all of this I don't know what the appropriate response is here but I appreciate your candor all the same why can't I ever have a normal conversation when I've got a woman in my bedroom.

Lux

"Oh, I didn't realize Dracula had a surprise ending," Lux says, with a smirk. She tosses the pillow at Nate's face. Somebody who tosses pillows at people's faces can't be a monster. That logic holds, doesn't it?

"Well you got your camera out and everything. Are we going to take some photographs? When is your sister going to be home?"

Nate

[THEY'RE TOTALLY GOING TO TAKE SOME PHOTOGRAPHS AND JAMIE IS GOING TO BED FUCK SHIFT WORK]