December is extraordinarily kind to vampires. Dark early, dark late, and the nights lit up brilliantly by an extraordinary array of lights the kine leave burning as a ward against unyielding darkness, to coax - somehow - the sun back into the sky. Stores stay open late, and people crowd the sidewalks until midnight, or later, even on ordinary nights. The Tuesdays, the Wednesdays of the week.
Not here, though. Not in some Chinatown backalley, the well-tread pathway known to no more than a handful of the business' select clientele, full of sagging plastic bundles of rotting waste from the noodle shops and thrift stores and 'wholesale' import-export imporiums the move adventurous San Franciscans might favor with the holiday dollars. And the massage parlors and 'karaoke' bars, girls in Elf costumes lingering in the picture windows over narrow warren of alleys and avenues.
Still, Luce picks her way carefully through the alley, threading between the dumpsters and slumps of brackish water glittering darkly from the potholes yawning through the broken asphalt, negotiates a familiar set of stairs, and stands in the wash of crimson light at the bottom landing, apparently aloof from it all, this tall, narrow, androgynous creature, pale blond hair half-hidden by the loose twist of a woven pashmina, black and gray, the pattern shot through with silver thread.
Names are exchanged. Or rather: name, one to vouchsafe her presence among the elect. Luce offers polo a neat little curtsey to Polo - narrow, just a dip, really, of her head and willowy, and a faint, faintly smoldering little smirk to match, a touché of sorts as Polo admits her to the place.
She walks in briskly, the long sweep of her stride confident, uninterrupted tonight, because she is not wearing suicidally high heels - but rather dark, low-heeled boots no more than calf-high, wrapped in a plethora of pewter buckles and leather straps. Loosening the wrap from around her cropped hair to settle in cool coils around her white neck, she scans the interior slowly. Pausing, here and there as if she had been - snagged, by some particular confluence of images, rarely the ones one expects, she searches out her summoner, one pale brow arched - rather smartly - over her gleaming gaze.
ZazhThe Garters is rather Torrid tonight.
the vast expanse of the 'Lounge', has been emptied of all tables and the booths tucked so deeply into the walls have been shuttered and closed off from view by once invisible slats of iron gray. If not for the seams, one would think the walls complete and uninterrupted. The support beams are the stark reaching stilts of Herons in water, pushing down and up at the black ceiling and floor which have been matted by the sharp application of some light-diluting substance. To present the illusion of walking on shadows or star-free twilight.
Toward the centre, a good fifty feet inward (A studded, brief glimpse of Deja Vu for the same distance it had taken them to get to Henry, amid the support beams of a dirty and empty Warehouse) there is a small assortment of folding chairs, the kind used for temporary seminars and the kind of cheap surplus that comes with a Self-help affair. An odd choice for those clientelle who normally frequent the place.
Within those chairs, an assortment of people. Creatures and Cowards. Cravens and Knaves. Harlots and Queens. A little over a dozen in total, they seem to fill up the room with their various presences, enough that to draw any closer would leave a 'cosy' sensation bridling the neck and lungs:
There is a woman with hair the rival of Monroe's and Paige's, falling in lush curls of swallowing black about her curvaceous and pale framework. Her features are baroque, indelicate and harsh, the vague presentation of an acquiline nose and a sharp chin giving her the alluring presence of Crows and Murder. Her dress is a modest affair, a rich and palpable velvet that encircles the neck and flows down and across her shape without effort to squeeze or primp. Both hands lay atop a crossed knee, one over the other, decorated as they were in the fluttering jewellery of the presenting...as well as the that well-known onyx band that indicates a Member.
Near her, three seats away, like some bubble of social respect, the wide load of a man threatens his chair with collapse. His suit is pristine white, the black undershirt beneath a seismic bulge that strains the buttons, albeit not to dangerous proportions. His hat is a Miami vintage fedora and his features, a chubby suggestion of Chinese and Korean mixture. He is surrounded on all sides by a seemingly fawning and loyal collection of trim Trophy girls, wrapped in various cosmetic enhancements and the low cut, side-slit dresses to show them off.
Near that, there is a couple. A Man and a woman well into their fifties, aging gracefully. Their attire is timeless, classic, from an age that never existed or has yet to exist. Flared lapels and tumbling ruffles. Both are bald, their skins a rich caramel and their features slack and turned forward. One hand from each, encircles the other's, a binding that is both symbolic and relentless.
But a few among the crowd, haunting the attention of the new arrival. Each is facing forward, murmuring to their seat meats or not bothering to speak at all. Waiting, it would seem...
For before the arrayed chairs, a vast Stage sits. Black and circular, three times the width of those that had once populated the Garters. Behind that stage, a curtain that saws backward, forming a triangle with the stage at it's peak. In the air, a softness of ambience, droning but not irritatingly so. It lulls and hovers just out of ear-shot, threatening to madden anyone who might seek to pay it too much time.
He is there of course.
Dressed in a double-breasted suit of dark gray, the under-shirt an aquatic blue, the black tie near buried nuder the fold of a buttoned collar. One knee is crossed over the other, while an arm strays casually over the back of an empty seat beside him. Not that that is much of a concern. Much like many of the other patrons, he is separate from all. A bubble formed around him, three chairs deep. His hair is newly trimmed, buzzed right down to the scalp with little more then a light fuzz to decorate it. His features are not slack, but relaxed. The sunken black of his eyes are gone, leaving behind the crystal clarity of the Zazh he once was.
He is watching the Stage. Expectantly.
ZazhThe Garters is rather Torrid tonight.
the vast expanse of the 'Lounge', has been emptied of all tables and the booths tucked so deeply into the walls have been shuttered and closed off from view by once invisible slats of iron gray. If not for the seams, one would think the walls complete and uninterrupted. The support beams are the stark reaching stilts of Herons in water, pushing down and up at the black ceiling and floor which have been matted by the sharp application of some light-diluting substance. To present the illusion of walking on shadows or star-free twilight.
Toward the centre, a good fifty feet inward (A studded, brief glimpse of Deja Vu for the same distance it had taken them to get to Henry, amid the support beams of a dirty and empty Warehouse) there is a small assortment of folding chairs, the kind used for temporary seminars and the kind of cheap surplus that comes with a Self-help affair. An odd choice for those clientelle who normally frequent the place.
Within those chairs, an assortment of people. Creatures and Cowards. Cravens and Knaves. Harlots and Queens. A little over a dozen in total, they seem to fill up the room with their various presences, enough that to draw any closer would leave a 'cosy' sensation bridling the neck and lungs:
There is a woman with hair the rival of Monroe's and Paige's, falling in lush curls of swallowing black about her curvaceous and pale framework. Her features are baroque, indelicate and harsh, the vague presentation of an acquiline nose and a sharp chin giving her the alluring presence of Crows and Murder. Her dress is a modest affair, a rich and palpable velvet that encircles the neck and flows down and across her shape without effort to squeeze or primp. Both hands lay atop a crossed knee, one over the other, decorated as they were in the fluttering jewellery of the presenting...as well as the that well-known onyx band that indicates a Member.
Near her, three seats away, like some bubble of social respect, the wide load of a man threatens his chair with collapse. His suit is pristine white, the black undershirt beneath a seismic bulge that strains the buttons, albeit not to dangerous proportions. His hat is a Miami vintage fedora and his features, a chubby suggestion of Chinese and Korean mixture. He is surrounded on all sides by a seemingly fawning and loyal collection of trim Trophy girls, wrapped in various cosmetic enhancements and the low cut, side-slit dresses to show them off.
Near that, there is a couple. A Man and a woman well into their fifties, aging gracefully. Their attire is timeless, classic, from an age that never existed or has yet to exist. Flared lapels and tumbling ruffles. Both are bald, their skins a rich caramel and their features slack and turned forward. One hand from each, encircles the other's, a binding that is both symbolic and relentless.
But a few among the crowd, haunting the attention of the new arrival. Each is facing forward, murmuring to their seat meats or not bothering to speak at all. Waiting, it would seem...
For before the arrayed chairs, a vast Stage sits. Black and circular, three times the width of those that had once populated the Garters. Behind that stage, a curtain that saws backward, forming a triangle with the stage at it's peak. In the air, a softness of ambience, droning but not irritatingly so. It lulls and hovers just out of ear-shot, threatening to madden anyone who might seek to pay it too much time.
He is there of course.
Dressed in a double-breasted suit of dark gray, the under-shirt an aquatic blue, the black tie near buried nuder the fold of a buttoned collar. One knee is crossed over the other, while an arm strays casually over the back of an empty seat beside him. Not that that is much of a concern. Much like many of the other patrons, he is separate from all. A bubble formed around him, three chairs deep. His hair is newly trimmed, buzzed right down to the scalp with little more then a light fuzz to decorate it. His features are not slack, but relaxed. The sunken black of his eyes are gone, leaving behind the crystal clarity of the Zazh he once was.
He is watching the Stage. Expectantly.
LuceWhen her attention is arrested - first on the baroque woman; and then on a junction of gleaming metal and pristine white suit and girlish thigh framed in crimson silk - her hands go still on the loops and whorls of her pashmina. Meditative rather than spasmodic, a certain sensation of arrest in her sharp, pale features, a certain distance in the saturated blue of her gaze, as if she were staring into some horizon, just at the edge of sunrise. All she does in those moments is breathe; steadily always, the tidal rhythm of working lungs. The look of someone captured between one place and another, just on the edge of expectancy.
It passes; she finds him just as she finishes unlooping the wrap, whips it off from around her throat. Beneath it, she is dressed with a certain sharp if rather more casual style - a crisp white blouse, silk and cotton twisted together in the weave. Silk for softness and sheen, cotton for that hot-iron crispness. The collar is wide and plunges, baring and framing her shoulders and throat just so, plunging in a low vee to a what seems a complicated array of seams, just this side of modesty. Over the blouse, a black, Edwardian style underbust corset. A Vintage piece, something some young widow wore through her confinement and mourning, the seams edge with hand-tatted French lace, black as the velvet panels embroidered with faceted jet beads.
The corset covers her torso from hips to the widest point of her ribcage, just beneath her breasts. The garment gives illusion of an hourglass shape, constrains her movement, so that she must turn her body from the hips rather than the waist, lest the boned garment remain in place while she moves, but the laces in back have not been tightly cinched. She has just one body, and two hands, after all. Where the corset ends, the tail of the blouse, bright white against black jeans, so fitted they might be painted on. And the boots: solid heels an inch or two in height, buckles wrapped and fixed up her calves.
She is not silent; boots on dark on the shadowed floor, but she does not announce herself. Remains quiet after that exchange of words at the bottom landing of those filthy concrete stairs 'til now, and quiet now. If her heart were still beating, it might be in her throat; the sharp cast of memory of another long walk along; and another one, long before that, like shadows mislaid over the present.
But her heart does not pump the blood through her body; and her cells do not demand the oxygen from the air she breathes so steadily. No kisses tonight, by way of greeting. Luce simply lowers herself into the empty metal chair beside Zazh, without a word.
Zazh"Mmmm, demure, this evening. A rarity, in you."
Accusation?
Zazh remains in his chair, a subtle thing this evening. The slackness of his features speaks of composure and yet there is the smallest shift of attentions as Luce glides in effortlessly to settle by his side. His hand, the one laid across the back of the chair (her chair now) drifts up to pluck at the protruding line of her blouse's lapel. Not harshly, more for recognition of the garment. His eyes do not trace, however, the framework or skein of her. He does not avert his gaze from the Stage,. He simply brushes fingers across one of her shoulders, as if dusting her off, before removing the arm completely to settle into his own lap.
"Dennis sends his regards."
Dennis. The Bartender's name. Known either by the name-tag the Hotel forces him to wear or the fact he was willing to give it up to Luce because she was such an 'Impressive girl'. He had called several times in the last week, since his first taste of something extraordinary. Half of the messages he left were devoid of the smooth play by play of what the Shark often took for granted. They were stumbling and filled with abbreviated stops and conversational filler words such as 'Like' and 'Uhhh'.
The Stage hums briefly, a presence felt and seen just behind the curtains, which part slightly under a delicately small hand, the press of an oriental eye to the seam, a quick thing that vanishes back behind it nearly as quickly as it arrived. Around them, the crowd continues to murmur and giggle, sigh and breathe. The collision of perfumes, sweats and colognes are a cloying thing, wafted away by the suction of state-of-the-art humidity control.
"...and his Regrets, though he wouldn't admit to such."
Luce"My father taught me well."
A familiar sliver of irony in the tone; he will not see the upward lilt of her blond brows over her gleaming gaze, nor the supple curve of her little mouth, hooked at the corners. Baited, perhaps. But he might sense movement in his peripheral vision, the way she turns her head to study his profile, as he watches the stage. And he will sense, too, the curl of her left shoulder beneath his fingers, as he dusts her off. The way she squares them and sits back against the fixed metal curve of the stark little chair as he removes his arm to his own lap.
"Which is not to say I listened, regularly. The blood will out, though. So they say."
Her own scent is closer; crisper than the meglange of sweat and perfume and colonge. Cleanly artic, her subtle application of Chanel. To the pulse points, with a certain living irony that pleases her when she thinks of it. Overlaid by the rich odor of tobacco. Not her usual cloves, but richer, finer. Decidedly cuban, eminently masculine.
"Does he." No lilt of question ends the twinned words. Just a hint of aspersion beneath them, a wintry kiss. This twist of vinegar beneath the skin of the thing. Her eyes are now averted, too, toward the stage as the curtains part and the crowd breathes and signs and murmurs, hearts beating all around them. She edges just closer to him, not moving so much as dipping, insinuating herself minutely closer to his ear. "If the two of your are such dear friends, perhaps you should advise him that his desperation is unbecoming. Redirect him to some more suitable target."
Zazh"Your Father. Yes, gifted fellow."
Murmured, just off the cusp of the corner of his lips. His hands play across his knee, the obsidian band on his finger slightly loose, bouncing with each movement he makes of the pinky it's attached to this evening. His nostrils flare around the scent of her, picking out bits and pieces of her evening and preparations. If he notices the difference of her Tabacco tastes, he seems to keep it to himself.
"...One has to wonder perhaps if you had listened more..." He drifts off there, cutting the thought apart like the middle of a snake. A simple shrug, eyes remaining where they are as the Stage begins to warm to the possibility of performance. The black all around them is made richer, deeper, as the crowd begins to settle and the lights of the stage rise minutely, casting diffuse glows to it's outer edges. A subtle orange, like frozen amber.
"Young Mr. Walker-" He makes no hush of his words or his intentions as she whispers and he replies "-will do as he pleases, when he chooses, regardless of my intentions. I explained as much to him during my last visit to the bar. Should he choose to not listen, well...I'm certain a woman with as much of a bite as you house somewhere in you, can figure a way to run him off..." A heartbeat. A deep breath let out in a gusting sigh.
"Or ruin him. Either way, he's a mask with no substance. Hardly anything but a waste."
Zazh's eyes flick outward then, beyond the stage, toward the right, where one of the walls is suddenly illuminated by a strobe of light. A cycle of rainbow colours, blinking like some eye in mid-swing of mood. It settles eventually, onto a glittering crimson which stares balefully out at the crowd. They, the crowd, shift in their chairs, adjusting subtly to themselves. Zazh, for his part, turns to regard Luce for the first time that evening, his hand reaching out to grasp her right leg, just above the knee, fingers tucking into the space where the inner thigh begins.
"Play at intimacy." His features, are a sharp contrast to the gesture made, a seriousness both commanding and sudden, even as his gaze ratchets off into the crowd. Each of the more than dozen, seems to be showcasing a form or measure of the same...intimacy. The girls around their white suited patron, begin to preen, standing or climbing across him to press over-sexualized attentions into his every crease and fold.
That velvet clad woman adjusts herself minutely, the pluck of fingertips pulling at the fabric of her dress, which falls away from both her legs, cutting a dangerous line all the way to her hips, bare legs powerfully sculpted. Nutcracker long.
The couple in their fifties, draped as if in a new world's fashion, lean close, tete a tete, hands in one another's laps, clasped and comforted, their breathing suddenly growing synchronized.
...And the Stage begins to whisper, murmur and gossip. The amber light begins to grow, just so. Just so.
"...Why did you come tonight?" It is a blunt question. Like a lead pipe. Filled with little of the suggestion and guile that he is known for. His eyes remain on the stage, hand unchanged or moved from her leg, though his attention seems to have drifted to include her and exclude their surroundings.
Luce
"My grandsire, I should say," she murmurs her correction quite as he murmurs his comment, though her eyes haunt the audience while his gaze remains fixed on the stage. As if they were in a booth at La Scala, the night of some gala premiere. Her attention on the crowd at play, his expectant on the velvet curtains, waiting to rise. "My father taught me nothing except how to love and how to bleed."
She indulges herself in a wintry little smile as he speculates about what might have been had she listened more; followed by a brief, quiet hmmph, a twist of asperity mingled with a note of deeper humor, the sort that belongs in the mouth of a woman older than she has any right to be.
-
"Tch," that note of asperity sharpens on the subject of young Mr. Walker. She looks quite deliberately away from Zazh in that moment, her chin high, the long sweep of bare throat to bare shoulders made architectural by the strict, clean lines of the blouse that frames them. "I trust you learned what you wanted to learn from him. Did he give you a play by play accounting?" The question is nearly flat; just a curl of something glittering near the end of it, which dissolves into the back of her throat. She offers a narrow movement of her shoulders; sensed rather than seen in his peripheral vision. "Don't believe a word he said. Men have such delicate egos.
"And do you know, I did not give him the means to contact me." Her earrings - little art deco columns, white metal, white stones - swing freely as she cuts a brief, sharp look at in his direction. "But he calls. Every night, stammering." The diamonds shimmer engagingly against the white column of her throat. "Such a bother to have to run him off. He's certainly not interesting enough to ruin."
-
Her attention now lingers on the baroque woman, the way the strobing rainbow light on the far way bathes her features; the way each cycling color highlights some looping curl down her back, turns her mouth pale or crimson. Something shifts, her gaze cuts aslant, upwards fixing on the cycling light. And she does seem fixed - sitting up, just forward. Not slouching. The corset is too firmly boned to allow her to slouch, boneless as is her wont. So forward, shoulders rotated away from him, but moving with each breath - like a butterfly, impaled by a pin through the thorax on some gentleman's collecting tray, wings still somehow moving.
His touch pulls her from her trance; or perhaps the way his attention shifts to her, for the first time all evening. She cuts a winging glance back, swift enough that her cropped hair - the same loose platinum waves she wore this week last - swings wide. Her eyes drop first to his hand on her thigh - a certain stillness about her, yet, a curve to her mouth that is almost inherently private, more consideration than smile.
Then he speaks, and her gaze flicks up to meet his. Her pupils are dilated, huge, making her eyes dark and hungry things. The stillness about her lingers, for a beat of his heart. For two, as his gaze leaves her for the crowd. Another moment's deliberation before she uncurls her right arm, and slides it along the back of his chair. Her fingers are cool against his neck, against his shorn scalp, drifting in lazy patterns that seem somehow - exploratory. Speculative. The light caress of her fingertips is counterpointed by the heavier sweep of her thumb - over the ridge of his head, then the faint declivity at his temple.
"You made your expectations quite clear." Her mouth is a supple, crimson curve. Her eyes are gleaming in a way that makes the answer both exactly right and entirely wrong.
Then she shifts, closer to him, stretching through the spine, replacing her thumb against his temple with first the bridge of her nose, then the faint sweep of her mouth. Naturally, her body follows. Her quadriceps contracts under his grasp as she shifts sidelong - from the hips rather than the waist - leaning across the line of his arm, into him, curving like some clinging, carnivorous vine, the drape of her body stiffened by the corset.
"Have you ever played hounds and hares?" A slender pause, as her mouth drops to his ear. "The simplest hunting game. I played it with my grandsire, every summer night. Just after the evening meal. You remember how the pieces move. The hunting hounds only forward, the hare wherever she wishes." She makes a noise in the back of her throat, rich with memory. "I nearly always lost."
The quickened curve of her cheek suggests that she is smiling, though he cannot see it. Then she catches the lobe of his ear between her teeth. Bites, hard enough to sting, though not hard enough to break the skin. "I played the hare like a hound, you see. Only forward."
Her mouth drops again, to the hollow beneath his jaw. And she opens her senses, wide enough that this close she can almost hear his heart beat. Taste his pulse beneath his skin. "And maybe I wanted to see you again." Another cool, strangely private little smile, felt rather than seen. "Why did you ask me to come?"
Zazh([i]checking something[/i] Perception 2 + Alertness 3. +1 Diff for distraction)
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
ZazhThere is little reaction to her mention of a 'Grandsire' (An odd phrase, archaic perhaps?) or the mention of her father's teachings and lessons. Comments abound within the borders of Luce's words, but he seems distracted or rather...caged. As if protective of his memories, his thoughts and his very reactions, something Zazh has never been much for doing.
His features cast a flicker of something at the word 'Love', an almost distasteful twinge that clatters about his mouth with the awkward sending of meat fouling a vegetarian's pallet. Corruptive but straining to be courteous enough not to spit.
* * * *
"I believe what I will from those worth believing." Yet still distracted, his gaze leaping out into the crowd, further through the cracks and sections each member leaves between each other. Bubbles of distance that cloud the air not with bodies but with personalities. "Mr Walker was kind enough to provide what few details I wished but alas, they did not provide me with what I wanted to know. At least, not in answers. Questions a plenty however. He had become quite fetched with you however and I saw no reason not to be honest about contacting you. Further, no reason to deny him your presence. As I said before...you would find a way to deal with it."
* * * *
Then his hand is along her thigh, sweeping slightly upward, the measure of an attention grasp and a suggestive caress done in inches. He haunts the mid-way point, knuckles ribbing outward one by one as if a coin were rolling across their scarred tops, gently kneading the cool flesh beneath. A pause, sudden, as if halted by some memory outside of the intimate moment.
He meets her gaze with something like the frank glimmer-dead regard of scrutiny. The sort she might have been more used to within the confines of his Sedan, that first night they had come to know one another. It lasts a moment, not because Zazh is distracted or satisfied but because Luce is curving closer. Unfolding into his side with the subtle, practised intimacy of a concubine or a courtesan. She brushes fingers and hands across his still skin and leans outside of his view, until her (pretend) breath ghosts his cheek and tickles his ear with the brush of words.
Hounds and Hares, she says. A game of chase and capture. A game of prey and predator and how she lost so very often. Trained to be the prey and to be so very masterful at it. Enough that her trick was never to run or hide but to be in the open, pursuing the pursuer. Attentive in her attentions. Demanding of the same.
She nips and the sharpness of it is felt only in his forearm, resting against her hip, in the sudden hardness of his grip around the inner thigh, paused as it is at an indecent height, that shows off more leg than even fashion can explain.
Her senses flare and there is...a haunting flicker of quickened hearts. Rapid pulse. Diluted from the norm. she must be used to. She hums into his throat, an answer and a question. A teaser and a response. To which the only reply is the turning of his head, his lips pressed to her ear and the intake of breath, so easily audible at this range, readying for words that do not come immediately. Not until she has bent a little further, lips near the cord of muscle that protects either side of the carotid artery.
"I asked because I knew you would not want to miss what comes next..."
* * * *
The Lights do not rise beyond the diffuse. They remain low and hazy, like the composure of a bedroom scene or a dreamstate. The air is lit enough however, for the particles of floating and wafting scents, dust and glimmer to be visible to those watching. The crowd within their chairs are animated and still. Servants to each of those with egos demanding such luxuries, fawn and roam hands over the bodies of those who hire and lord them while the more intimate and structured and subtle, shift in their place and bubble. Expose themselves in one manner or another, physical, emotional or sensual.
The woman in the Velvet Gown flicks fingers across her dress once more, the motion near invisible to decipher and yet when they lay back down, the velvet is parted not just to expose legs but the firmness of stomach and the under under-swell of generous breasts. She breathes in deeply, head tilting off to one side, eyes shuttered closed.
The dance of her curls is a subtle thing, shifting and rolling across one another like some mounted tide. They plummet off her curving neck, exposing the pale surface to the vague orange glow. One of those hands, well-manicured and lacquered the same velvet at the nails, drifts up and across that curve, brushing her ear and sliding into her curls with the slow precision of the newly wakeful.
Nearby there is a man in a power suit. Blacks over whites with a blue pin-stripe tie. His shark like habits have been slapping the three empty chairs in all directions, keeping most eyes and attentions less than rational, at bay. His hair is the same slicked suggestion Zazh is/was fond of wearing and his youth is carved into a vaguely attractive mien. As the red light flares, his body language slides from a statuesque rigidity into a relaxed slump, hand rising up to loosen the tie and unbutton the shirt. To let the coat drift away to either side. His breathing has grown a little bit more and the grin he displays is shark-worthy.
The crowd is humming now. Nearly audible in it's tensions and Zazh lifts his head, almost away from Luce's attentions though not quite, to regard the stage. His hand remains within the meagre space between her legs, inching no further up nor back down then it was while the other plays plays it's index finger down the length of her arm, from the protrusion of a wrist bone to the tip of an elbow.
"Correction: I knew you would not want to miss Her."
The Stage has a body now.
She is dressed in a primeval green sari, lit with a wintry silver trimming. The veil is all-encompassing, gauzy and timid where it hides her features. Her shape is indistinct beneath the long stretch of excess, artfully and effortlessly draped through the fingers of her hand, which rests on it's opposite shoulder. She stands at the stage's centre as a ghost of fog drifts out from behind her, shrouding the hem of the Sari and her feet beneath. Providing the illusion of hovering. Gliding.
The lights carve patches of momentary brightness upon her form, which moves with the most supple and delicate of steps, never breaking the illusion of levitation that has her shift from one place to another. Her arms raise, gliding out from beneath the excess of the Sari, bent and swirling into the beginnings of a Dance. A subtle series of motions that, with the help of the obscuring cloth, draw the attention to the brief and expert slivers of exposed skin that glide in and out of the audience's view.
Avskaya((peeks? mind someone joining?))
LuceI'm usually pretty open, but they're at a sort of private club and I'm not sure that your character would know about it or have access to it? Sorry! :(
Avskaya((aaah is okas =) thanks anyho ))
Luce"Did you," she returns, low-voiced, definite, even wry. Not because he requires a response, but so that she can move her mouth against his neck, feel the surge of his pulse beneath her lips. His grip tightens against her inner thigh and she shivers. This narrow movement of her body, seated somewhere deep at the base of the spine - radiating upward through her lean frame. Her thigh tenses beneath his hand and she holds a breath, then another. Some veil of desire, feigned or real imprinted with a tincture of delicacy. The bone-deep fear of the hare, when the hound's jaws close around its neck. There's no way to tell. It is all the same when the body moves.
Her eyes close; lashes soft against his cheek, the half-smile incising its way across her mouth again. Her cheeks curving with it, wide enough that he can feel the scrape of her teeth over the cords of his neck.
When he turns back to the stage, she wakens from the intimate space between them. Lifts her mouth from his neck, brushing her way lightly along his jaw as she follows the sweep of his attention toward the stage. She remains close, cheek to cheek, her attention sharpening on the stage as as the shrouded woman emerges onto the center of the stage. There's a brief lilt of her head aslant, away from him, as his finger traces the sweep of her forearm. This sort of delicate sigh.
And then she goes quite still.
Her cool fingers on his scalp, her arm draped along the firm line of his shoulders, that sensation of arrest once more. She only moves to breath, and that is done shallowly, some latent firing of muscles, rather than the usual sense of deliberation. Of the pleasure she seems to find in the recursive act of breathing in the fucking air around her.
"Who is she?" - she manages that much, leaning ever so slightly forward, moving not from the hips or legs, but through the spine. A sort of viper's weave.
Zazh"Dame Quadra."
He hums beside her, their roles switching with the alacrity of subversion. He brightens a grin at her reaction, settling back into the chair with a slow and languid calm. His hand returns from the edge of her thigh, dragged almost reluctantly across the curve of flesh and instead wraps kindly around the rear of her, settling in along her ratcheting spine, fingers finding the vaguest of grooves in the corset where her vertebrae protrude.
"A Marvel of wonders so vast and deep, you would turn to nothing but screams and ash if she whispered just the right word and do so with the welcome of the pleased and dying young."
His attention is on Luce, even if their intimacy seems to have been...broken. But then, he was never much invested in it. Beyond her ministrations (which were considerable). His posture says relaxed. His radiance sublime when his gaze drifts up toward the stage where Dame Quadra moves with flawless and almost lazy grace. Born to it. Bred for it. Perfected in a thousand dreams.
"I've visited her wake in dozen times before, never able to catch her act myself until this moment. Elusive and unresponsive to the waving of bills, like any true beauty. Like any Marvel should be. She is a stone age vixen. A calamity of the renaissance era and she..." A hand lifts to brush at Luce's hair, a finger strolling the length of her ear, past the lobe "...will haunt you, my Luce."
The Sari divests more and more skin, the generous curvature of a womanly form, perfect for Motherhood, the Dance and Seduction, carving out the air, sending explosions of that illuminated dust cloud hovering over their heads out in splashes and whorls. The silver trim continues to flare under those brief moments of refracted light, while the green seems to absorb the attention. Demanding one attempt to guess at where next her movements would take her.
At once, Dame Quadra is from one side of the stage to the other, her arms and hands drifting out as if to caress...cling...enfold some unseen lover close to her, only to dismiss them in a pool of fluid, exhausted content. Moving then to the next tableau of intimacy, the flashes of skin growing more daring. Less guarded. More open and inviting.
The crowd is responding now. Their intimacy flooding the air with a near tangible thrum. The woman in the velvet dress has divested much of it, laid open to bare skin, beneath the clutching layers of a latex halter and pair of hugging shorts of the same colour. Her neck cranes forward, chin raised, as if in presentation, sucking in deep lungfuls of air with every movement of the woman on stage.
The business man nearby them, has doffed his tie, whipped it free to settle to the ground and his jacket shrugged off onto the back of the chair. He leans forward, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to the elbows, which rest on either knee. The predator is out in his slack jawed gaze, openly covetous as the dip of the Sari, plunges the excess away from Dame Quadra's shape for a split second, revealing the flash of a curved body below. A moment. Only a hint. To keep the interest.
The large man in the white suit is stock still. A sharp contrast to the undulating movements of his four bought girls, who do not so much as clamour over him as they do drape and run their hands over the white of his clothes, their eyes locked on the Dame's framework.
"She does so love to inspire..." A wistful thing. A gentle thing, Zazh remaining in his chair with an appreciative sigh, well outside of Luce's perched view for the moment.
LuceAnd she is captured; her eyes rapt, still hungry, but paler now, pupils contracting as they are washed with the reflected lights from the stage. Her arm is still wrapped around his shoulders, but the slow, deliberate caress of her cool fingers has stopped. Still as the rest of her.
"My father was a dancer." This does not have the same weight that her stories seem to have. The same deliberation. She throws it off as if she were speaking to herself; or some old friend at her shoulder. Just a sidelong lift of her chin back toward Zazh, her gaze forward. "They say he was great in his day. That he should have danced the Rite of Spring. This - "
She draws in a sharp breath, finishes the thought with a certain shake of her head. Shoulders curling forward just so, the faint, sharp articulations of her vertebrae moving beneath the trimmed velvet of the corset under his hand. "I've never heard of her before. And she's just here. Under the streets of Chinatown." The creature does not seem precisely conscious of his finger tracing the shell of her ear, talking right through the touch, though her senses are wide open, sharper than any human's, and her body still responds. Another shiver that blooms, opening through her spine, following the sweeping upward to her shoulders. She could hear a mouse beneath the floorboards. Feel the faintest whisper of breath against her skin.
"You're quite forgiven." She breaks eye contact with Dame Quadra just once, cutting brief glance back over her shoulder at Zazh. The edge of a smile evident in the lift of her cheek, the hook curve of her red mouth. "For Daniel. David. Whatever his name was. She's exquisite. I can't begin - "
Zazh"Mmmm, that's nice."
His finger traces the length of her ear. The Hand flips and brushes knuckles down the steep incline of her neck until it strikes the collarbone. Fingers rise to cup her chin as she turns through motions of truth. Honesty. Laid bare by the mesmeric clutch of Dame Quadra's motions. It's as she turns toward Zazh, a brief thing that her senses leap out to catch it.
The vaguest of hauntings. Emerald in his eyes where once there was only black. A paleness to his skin that is like marble, carving away wrinkled lines and leaving behind a goatee of purest black. Red threaded leathers and-
"You're missing it."
His hand turns her chin back toward the Stage and settles onto the back of her neck, where a finger roams the exposed vertebrae there, absently and gently.
Dame Quadra's movements bring her to the edge of the stage, floating dust gushing outward in a broad wave that seems to sweep through the air over their heads, vanishing into oblivion as the wave moves beyond the reach of the lights. She seems to address the audience fully now, not lost to the dance, but hovering on the Stage's edge, the dry iced fog spilling out over the lip and down into the black that shadows the floor upon which the spectators settle.
Her hands raise. One, then the other, flipping upward to present palms to ceiling. The Sari hangs in parts and raptly, the audience is attentive. They regard her with something like absolutes and certainties. Lust and abandon and the sheer longing that comes with a night well spent in the sheets and the inevitable hollow that dawns within the one-night stand. A yearning to maintain that physical connection without the heat to make it instinctual.
She is that filling. That hollow undone. The green parts and bares a hip, the wrap of the Sari, slung low enough to flash the hollow of where hip ends and the inner thigh begins. The excess is folded effortlessly in a sweep of the other arm. The gesture is repeated and the other hip flashes into view, presented with the rolling thrust of a lover's beckon. Her arms sweep downward to brush aside the front, exposing the swell of breasts to either side, while the strip hangs infront of her body, fleshed naked now but for the veil, hood and that single, undone length of greenish material hovering before her.
"...You are so very lovely."
He leans forward to lay an almost chaste kiss along Luce's bare shoulder and fits in snugly beside her. Luce's peripheral catch the flare of that same marble flesh. A momentary flare of emerald eyes, brilliant and terrible, cut to perfection while they regard the Dame upon the stage who stands, vulnerable now, bowed to her knees with the Sari draped carefully over either shoulder. More a blanket now than anything, hiding her suddenly frail framework. The Hare laid to net, while the Hounds look on with laboured breath.
"Would you like to meet her?" She Luce turn a glance fully to Zazh, she would find him as he was. As he has always been, except for those moments when he is not. The smile is there, the scrutiny gone. A brow is perked and the devil widens his eyes in silent question.
LuceYou're missing it.
Luce is staring at him then, her brows drawn together, faintly, as if she were working out some puzzle from a distance. Staring over someone's shoulder at their crossword, trying to come up with a seventeen letter word for snow. Her lips are just parted, her eyes enshadowed without the reflection of lights from the stage to illumine them. She has the poised, searching look that comes to her sometimes, and is breathing out around it when he turns her face back to the stage and the dancing Dame.
He can feel the moment she's caught again. The tension it pulls forward in her spine and shoulders. The way her mouth shifts from little crimson O of query to something sharper. Hungrier, but still open. When he tucks himself in against her, fits his frame against her tautly string body, she half-turns her head, with a distraction that suggests, she somehow momentarily forgot his presence. That she has been pulled by into herself by his murmured words, without quite catching them. Or by the warm of his chaste mouth on her shoulder. Her skin cool, her scent the mingling of Chanel and cuban cigars and the bright, clean note of the freshly ironed blouse, crisp against the background.
She turns when he comes in close, though this time her gaze does not leave the stage. Her shoulder curves upward after his mouth, as if she yearned for another, and she curves her cheek to his as he fits himself about her. The gesture has an animal feeling to it; she just wants to feel skin on skin.
But oh, her mouth curls. "The whole of the second act at once. Now La Danse Sacrale - L'Élue - " she murmurs out of the corner, sitting further forward, until she is just perched on the very edge of the folding. "Do you know, they say that Saint-Saëns stormed out of the premiere before they made it to the first scene, he was so angry over the misuse of the bassoon in the first bars."
Would you like to meet her?
- has her turning sharply back to him, attention torn back from the stage where it had been fixed. She stares at him for a long moment - her eyes touch his own eyes, his cheek, his mouth. The gleam of amber light as it plays over his near-shorn scalp. Then back to the perked brow, the devilish gleam in his eyes. The moment is long, he scrutiny so close it is nearly ascetic, this astringent contrast to her willing indulgence in the pleasures of the dance.
For all that, there's no hesitation when she nods, just once, in the end. "I would."
ZazhThe applause about deafens Zazh's response, which is a full bloom grin and a mouthed
'Of course you would'
Before he too is turning to regard the Stage, hands raised to clap loudly and offer a operatic 'Bravo!', complete with the kissing of fingers and a laughter both enthused and delighted. The patrons to all sides are flushed with the night's exertions and show it in their enthusiasm, clapping and leaning forward collectively. Some rise to their feet, while others remain where they are sitting, the passion of the moment setting couples to remain intimate a moment longer after the performance, as if Dame Quadra had filled their hollows, albeit momentarily.
She is draped in the remains of her unfolded Sari, legs bare and hells swelled outward to catch the flowing lengths of the pieces on either curved housing. She offers a hand clasped curtsy both slight and voluminous, plunging the small crowd into another frenzy of applause, before turning, gathering up the Sari's trailing lengths and proceeding across the stage and beyond the curtains where she vanishes from sight.
Zazh leans back in his chair with a hefty sigh and a delighted grin. It lasts for a moment and only a moment, before he is turning to glance at Luce, hands moving to re-button the top piece of his double-breasted jacket (undone at some point during the performance). He climbs to his feet and offers her a hand.
"I hope she will be amicable to visitors..."
He lifts her to her feet, as much as the gesture is want to do and offers her a hand out to indicate the aisle. The buzz of murmurs and whispers about the crowd has obliterated the need for social bubbles. Couples freely intermingle with others and somewhere in the background, the creaking swing of doors open to reveal the presence of one of the Bar's tucked neatly into it's alcove, a red vested waiter standing at attention and awaiting the first of orders.
* * * *
It is a minute or more of them standing at the Curtains that obviously leading into the Lounge's back areas. Zazh and Luce walk to the curtain and a cleared throat summons a very small girl. She could not be any older than 13. Asian, Chinese and destined for great beauty. Her features are cast in a suggestion of smiles though the look she gives is as deadpan as anything in entertainment today. She is dressed in a simple black dress, high at the neck and long at the hem. Modest and without much flare, her wrist decorated by a fake black lotus on a soft band.
She glances back and forth between Zazh and Luce, brows rising a fraction of an inch in the process.
"We're here to pay Respects to the Dame and her performance."
The girl stares. Blinks, a moment longer and then, without a word vanishes back behind the curtain. Zazh doesn't say a word or offer any indication of a gesture or attention toward Luce, beyond a glance and the curl of a smile. Byb then, the girl has returned. She moves her entire body into the curtain, pulling it aside for them to enter into the broad Hallway of the back.
It is a dark stretch, without lights, illuminated in the distance only by the subtle glow of an open door thirty paces beyond. The yellow illume is low, but not unpleasant. A vague and hazy shadow drifts across the play of it, scattering the floor of the hallway.
...And Zazh pauses at the fifteen foot mark. He unlinks his arm from Luce's own and turns to regard the young girl who is following a few steps behind them.
"Is she well?"
The young girl hesitates and then nods. Slow to quick. As if each bob of her head cut a chunk of uncertainty from the gesture. Zazh chuckles and fishes into his pocket, turning toward Luce with a nod at the open doorway.
"She's expecting. Go on ahead. I trust you'l be on good behaviour."
Luce"The very best."
So she assures him, with an upward lilt of pale blonde brows that serves to mark the return of her cool composure. Though still distracted in the aftermath of the performance, the resurgence of ordinary interaction among the audience, the appearance of the waiter in the far corner of the bar. The walk across the floor to the stage, with its hushed curtains, was enough to knit her back together. All the scattered little pieces. Her heels are low tonight, and she walks with a certain sweeping - energy at his side. The full, certain length of her long, long legs. Elegant, sure on her feet as some great cat.
She seems entirely returned to herself, enough that she cuts a sharp, wary look from Zazh to the attendant, and back again, her eyes gleaming in the faint light as they flicker between the two.
"Thank you - " a tip of her pale head to the girl, deliberate, and she walks ahead, down the dark hallways, toward the open door. She stops once half-way there, cuts a look back at Zazh, brows pulled together, the faintest line visible between them. Then continues, pausing at the threshold to offer a little knock on the door frame to announce her presence.
"Dame Quadra. I hope this is not a terrible intrusion," Luce begins, low-voiced, the shadow of her (native?) French layered over the words more heavily tonight than it might usually seem. " - but your performance was so exquisite, I had to meet you, and offer my complements in person."
Zazh"How expectant."
Her voice is soft and low. The sound of slower fluids than water, rushing over landscapes. It drifts out to cup the chin, inspect each cheek and brush slender fingers across the lips without the Dame pulling up from her chair a hint.
Room's interior is nothing but soft pillows and exquisite hanging murals. Tibetan would be the prominent guesswork on much of the orange and red dyed fabrics, layering symbols and shapes in a variety of patterns that play on the ancient and archaic. The ground is layered by platforms, steps leading up to the soft plush of the far right, where the highest level is a stretch of flat ground that could be mistaken for a bed in all the throw-pillow madness. Golds and Reds seem to be the pervading colour, with that splash of a dark green Sari the only true rebellion, hanging on the wall beside that 'Lounging' area.
The Dame herself is dressing. The knock, doing little to disturb her routine. She is naked from the waist up, heedless and careless of whatever eyes might spy her, a true Dancer's unabashed attitude. The Jeans she is pulling on are snug and fit to the curves of her body, flowing and ending half-way down the calf, in rolled up flaps. Her feet are bare, the toes painted a rich green, much like the nails on her fingertips.
Her breasts are full. A motherhood in waiting, natural and effortless. Her skin is the pale chocolate of the Indian landscapes and her features the sharp cut and dark pooling hypnotics of the Exotic. Vaguely blushed cheeks beneath khol rimmed eyes, not too heavily applied for that would take away from the stunning depth of her gaze.
Flecks of brilliance, like white stars on a black backdrop, Dame Quadra lifts her gaze to regard Luce, a near literal twilight for a stare. Her hair hangs about her shoulders and cheeks in sectional pieces, four braids dividing four curtains of straight black locks, two to the front of each shoulder and two to hang down her back. The large gold hoop earrings dangle prettily from her ears, complimented by the rooms decor.
"Enter." A smile. Vaguely impish as she plucks a small T-shirt up from the back of her dressing table chair, plain red. She faces Luce, a curious scrutiny about her, gaze narrowed and grin oven of silk.
"Ilda did not mention you were so very lovely." The faintest of accents. Lilts of rhythm. Suggested, not forced. "What brings such an offering to my door tonight?" The Dame pulls the T-shirt over her head, down her body, obscuring her shape briefly with the final tug, before the release of her hands almost snaps it back around those curves.
Luce"Tch," the creature makes a noise in the back of her throat, the quietest sort of correction. Her pupils contract, adjusting to the interior lighting, and she sweeps a gaze over the murals and pillows, the riot of red and yellow, like some sunset gone mad. Luce stands just at the entrance, her fingers lingering on the cheap framing around the open door where she'd knocked to announce herself. "You are far too kind to me. A candle against the sun." A certain curve of her painted mouth, engaging, attentive, her blue eyes lingering - admiringly - on the Dame's charms quite as carelessly as the Dame shows them off.
Invited, she steps in. Her boots are heavier than is her usual, black leather, covered with bands and straps up the calf. She walks lightly for all that, navigating the paths through throw pillows.
They are opposites in almost every way. Luce, tonight, in black and white, her skin as pale as the face of the moon. Her golden hair is still dyed that silvery platinum, so that only her red lipstick - smudged, now, around her mouth - and the satured blue of her pale eyes break the black and white picture. An icy, ethereal counterpoint to the Dame's rich, earthy beauty.
At the mention of offerings, Luce shakes her head. Minutely, negative. "I wish I had something to offer you, beyond my complements. I'm afraid I - was not expecting such an extraordinary evening, and came quite unprepared.
"I'm called Luce. Or Marie-Hélène, if you prefer. A guest of Zazh, if you know him."
Zazh"Kindness is freely given and should be generous." She pauses while she speaks, hands settling on her generous hips as Luce makes her way into the room. Her gaze remains upon Luce's features, even as she turns to step into the woman's path. Of heights, Luce has a couple of inches on the Dame herself, who steps into Luce's personal space with the hint of spices. Cinnamons and cloves and vanilla hints. Her breath is sweet, as she takes up the last ten inches of space between them.
She studies, scrawling across Luce's features like some artist eyeing a canvas. Her hands hover, almost eagerly beside her, crooked as if ready to grasp at a moment's notice and flexing in the tension to resist. She hums while she looks, dividing Luce's shoulders and breasts, her chin and clavicle. She leans to and fro, side to side and dances her gaze trimly across the near non-existence of Luce's hips. A soft sound escape's the Dame's lush lips as she brings her gaze back upward, a smile beneath those strangely twilight eyes.
"Mmmm, Luce, I think. Delightful and appetizing." Familiar now, the Dame turns back toward her Dressing table, moving with slow and languid steps to pluck up a slender decanter of dark liquid.
"Zazh..." A pause, a glass pulled forward from the table's edge. Considering. "The name is unfamiliar to me. Should I know him?"
The red wine pours, filling the glass half-way. A glance, coy and suspicious, cast back over her shoulder.
"Would you like some?"
LuceThis sort of scrutiny has a familiar patina, and an old one. Luce's nostrils flare sharply as the Dame closes the distance between them; and while the other woman dissects her whip-lean, hunger-haunted frame - the sort usually achieved only by starvation, addiction, some extreme exigence of indulgence or asceticism - her own pale gaze remains on the Dame's star-laden eyes.
Moving as she moves them, watching the impression of trance about her, an immediacy, an absorption in the information of her senses, which has her blinking, thrice, when the Dame turns away, retreating across the space toward the dressing table.
Luce follows, of course. Picking her way through the throw pillows and cushions, "Perhaps you know him by some other name. We all see to have so many of them. Put them on and off like garments, discard them when they become more burden than pleasure. That's the romance of America, I think.
"Though the romance of remaking oneself is quite nearly gone. For the ordinary among us. You're not American. And far from ordinary. You belong someplace - " a flickering glance upward, over the exotic tapestries, secondhand murals, the silk pillowcases. " - greater than this. You would bring down the house in Paris. Even today, they would riot for you. Like they did for Nijinsky. Like they did for Satie."
She circles closer to the dressing table in the Dame's wake. More comfortable now, her long, pale fingers draping lightly over the spine of her chair as the Dame looks back, coy, suspicious, offering wine. "If you're offering, I won't say no."
LuceAuspex 2: perception + empathy. Dif 8 -2 for heightened senses.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( fail )
ZazhThe Glass is handed out toward Luce with a bemused tilt of her head, chin tucked slightly to her chest. A hand rises to brush across the top of her breasts, feathering gently in place. The twilight gaze remains with Luce's features, her smile hardly delicate. Not a hint of such things about her, except in the dance and that is practised. Practised to effortlessness.
"You think me worthy of Paris and such is sweet." The Dame pulls a second glass across the menagerie, pouring more wine into it's curved goblet. "Truth be told, Paris bored me greatly. The people gushed too excess and many of them thought their passion was their master." A pause. "Mistress?" A grin. A smile. Both. "Much of Europe is that way. I thoroughly enjoyed Berlin. Das Gefängnis-" A brief German lilt on the words "- was particularly entertaining. The clients quite spectacular in their fantasies."
"You are precious." A hand reaches out, touching upon Luce's cheek, strolling down to point her chin upon two fingers and a thumb, gazing into her eyes. "To compare me to such greatness, but such large heights and bright stars are for those seeking the attention. Mine is not to worship. Mine is to serve..."
And she leans down then, brushing Luce's lips with her own, inhaling the scent of it with a slow and deliberate demand.
"Mmmm, I think I could fall apart with you for a time..."
A cleared throat, brings the Dames eyes up and those features blink slightly, almost blanch, leaning back from Luce to regard the man in the doorway, who fails to knock. Zazh stands in the portal, his hands folded before him. His smile is almost kindly, were one unfamiliar with him. He glances down at Luce, the smile threatening a grin before returning his attention to the Dame who has...subdued considerably. Her own hands huddle before her and her eyes slip shut, bowing as she did on the stage to the crowd.
"My lord-"
"None of that." Zazh says, a hand raised. "I'm a Sir only." The Dame offers a small nod and a slowing of her own breathing. "I wished to convey my deepest appreciation for this performance. Had I known you would grant us an exquisite effort, I would have tried thrice harder to procure this engagement."
The Dame offers a benevolent smile, but remains quiet. Zazh turns his attentions to Luce, head tilting off to one side, that grin threatening once more.
"I trust you've made acquaintances." Not a question. "I'm pleased, as one is want to be in the presence of such beauty and taste. Tell me, Luce. What think you of the Dame?"
Luce
Luce holds the wine glass lightly in one hand. By the bowl, rather than the stem. There is no fear that her hand will warm the vintage too quickly. And she does not intend to drink it, though she does swirl the glass quite expertly. The wine washes up the sides of the glass, tracks its way back down in stranding legs, which she admires in the wash of warm light, while the Dame pours another glass. The action releases the vintage's bouquet, which Luce inhales with a faint smile, a guarded indulgence.
"Paris is perhaps too satisfied with itself, I will grant. But if you are in love with the city rather than your own place in it, whatever you think that is - well. It has a certain unmatched majesty. Spend one night running from the Arc de Triomphe to Sacre-Coeur. One cold, autumn. Make it wind-lashed. Smoke in the air, the threat of rain. Traffic wild.
"In and among the stacked cars, up the dark, winding streets of Montmatre. Pretend you're being chased. Then let him - or her - catch you in the shadow of the great cathedral. After that, every time you catch a certain scent, on certain nights, on a dark street, the sharpness of the coming winter in the air, you'll feel a certain - electric - spark of recognition, somewhere deep in your body, the sort that begins someplace you cannot name, and sizzles, quiet unexpectedly, up the column of your spine."
Then, "Really? I've never liked Berlin. Too many Austrians, I've always found." The Dame reaches out to touch her cool, pale cheek. Luce cants her head, curving into the touch, as if she craved nothing more than someone else's hands upon her. Perhaps it is true. Her eyes darken as the Dame lifts her narrow little chin. And, ahhh, her pale brows rise, in perfect, perfectly challenging little arcs above her darkening eyes.
Still she continues, this time in a fine Russian, though a well-tuned ear will hear the French influence, even as the Dame bends to brush a quietly demanding kiss across Luce's crimson mouth. "And Saint Petersburg? How did you find the clients at the Gulag?" The Russian is heavy on her tongue. It is a language that lives in the chest and the throat. Just speaking it darkens the timbre of the voice.
The Dame is so close that Luce reaches out, settles her left hand on the curve of the other woman's hip. Long fingers splay back over the curve of the woman's jeans, but the thumb is forward, and finds the seam between denim and skin. And settles, just there, like a seal.
She sweeps the wine glass away from her body, and is leaning into the promise of the kiss with the flash of a smile that bares white teeth, so briefly, in her red red mouth, when a certain someone interrupts.
With a cleared throat.
The Dame backs away, blinks, almost blanching. Luce's hand remains on the other woman's hip. Grip firming, in that first, fractional moment when the Dame begins to pull away from her, relenting a moment after. Then and only then does she glance toward the door, over her shoulder at Zazh, a quite deliberate look.
And she watches him, steadily over that shoulder, over the crisp, square line of the framing collar, her pale cheek curving soft above it. Mouth hooked in one of her invitingly private smiles. The siren sort, which says only - come closer.
And nothing about the rocks below.
"I have not been so thoroughly complimented on my loveliness since I made my debut in society. And then - " a curling shrug. " - hot eyes and cold mouths. They cared not a whit for me, wished, only, to ingratiate themselves with my grandfather." This, all, over her shoulder to Zazh, as if an aside, before she turns back to the Dame, the precise line of her spine to the door. The corset's laces zig-zag narrowly up her spine, dark against the crisp - and in this rather warmer light, quite nearly translucent - white of her blouse. Her gaze drifts, lingeringly, over the Dame head to toe. "She's charming of course. Pas question."
Another low, back of the throat sound. "Hound and hare both, I think." Mouth moving with the same lazy precision of her gaze.
Somewhere in there, she cuts a glance back to Zazh. Her body follows, turning at the shoulder and the hip, to incorporate both Zazh and the Dame in her field of view, though she focuses on Zazh. His mouth, the incipient grin, and then the gleam in his eyes.
"And it's remarkable," fine chin rising toward the Dame, "how you require your audience to participate in the dance. To expose themselves as you expose yourself back to them. It turns what would be a voyeuristic experience into something - " a pause here, a sharp look between the pair of them, pale eyes quickened. Gleaming. " - entirely different." She transfers her wine glass from right to left hand, lifts her right thumb to her own mouth, slides it along the bottom curve of her lower lip, firmly enough to wipe away any lip stick smudges from her earlier - ministrations.
"An exchange," A subtle upward lilt of her brow, "of sorts, on some essential level. "Transactional instead of merely - reactionary."
Then she turns back to Zazh entirely, ambles over the few feet between them, her glass of wine held carelessly in front of her torso, her hand cupped around the bowl of the glass, still, rather than the stem, so that it looks like an apple in hand. She stops a foot or so from him. Close, but not too close, and reaches out across the distance between them with that same gesture - her fingers curved toward her palm, thumb out, to wipe the traces of lipstick from his skin. Following the path her mouth took; temple, to ear, to jaw, to neck.
"I would not want to forget my courtesies."
Holding his eyes the entire time. This sharp, lively intelligence gleaming in her own gaze, spiked with a hunger as essential as his own.
"Am I meant to call you Sir, now?"
"No."
A sudden harshness. Brief but vicious, at the implication of the word 'Sir' on Luce's tongue. The flirtation of it is castrated within that single word and Zazh's attentions find Luce's gaze and features, as if suddenly keenly alert to the possibility of-...something. As if by whatever means or measure that had traded between the Dame and he were not to be interpreted. Guessed upon. Estimated or Considered. His features harden, briefly as the word and then settle once more a hand rised to brush his own cheek with errant fingers, where Luce's own had graced.
"Courtesies are as Kindness. Kindness and Generosity. To serve a purpose and superfluous after that purpose is done." His gaze finds the Dame who remains where she is standing, watching the pair of them with a practised warmth. A spectator's attentions. Those strange twilight eyes glance quickly at Zazh a vague smile lighting her features that is more automatic then it is genuine. Trained-
"She is that though. That and more. Never fails to surprise or present to her audience who are only ever asked to share themselves with her as much as she does with them. They are often asked but never told and I've yet to hear of an performance where they did not obey..." A pause. "Succumb?" The grin returns.
"I had explained some to Luce just before your performance that you were a difficult woman to find. I had not imagined to find you sweeping through San Francisco."
"His Lordship-" The Dame begins, turning to place her glass back upon the Vanity surface "-of ElkWhimsy spoke highly of the grounds surrounding this territory, Sir. I thought it prudent to pay a visit and see the rather-" A flickering glance, cast at Luce "-Raw beauty it had to provide. I must say I'm hardly disappointed."
"No, of course not." zazh seems to reassure, gaze also traversing Luce in the familiar manner he seems to possess. "They do make it a thing of ease within this realm." A lingering heartbeat longer and Zazh's attention fixes on the pair of women, equally.
"...And what, pray tell, Dame Quadra, do you think of My dear Luce?"
Zazh's eyes remain on the Dame for a long hollowing moment, features dead pan. the Dame, weathers it well, turning her attention from Zazh after a moment to regard Luce. The swell of her breath pulls her hands up to rest on her hips matter of factly.
"Educated. Elusive. Welcoming. Flirtatious. I would say, Sir-" And then back at Zazh who is grinning by now "-that she's a Threat and you might be careful."
Zazh laughs, glancing at Luce.
"She is at that." The laughter simmers but does not quite diminish entirely. He seems about to say something...and then changes his mind, turning to the Dame once more.
"Well...we shouldn't keep you from your appointed rounds outside. Many an admirer methinks that wishes to provide you their own compliments." A slight incline of his head that he somehow manages to make look like a full bow. The Dame returns it with another flawless curtsy. When his head raises, a brow is perked. He flicks a glance at Luce.
"Unless of course you would prefer to stay and entertain the Dame further, My dear?"
LuceAuspex 2: +1 dif for prior failure, -2 for heightened senses.
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
LuceLuce goes sharply, hauntingly still in the face of Zazh's sudden harshness. Her eyes are on his face, in that moment, lingering. Cool, then, and entirely still. So still she holds even the regular rhythm of her breath. Stops her ministrations mid-sweep of her thumb, and soon drops her hand to her side. Leaving behind the faintest trace of her crimson lipstick.
The stillness eases by slow degrees as the pair converse. It erodes from her. First the return of breath, then the brush of her thumb over her forefinger, rubbing off the remnant lipstain from her fingers, this slow, meditative gesture that is more about the touch of skin on skin than anything else. With it, the return of her self-possession. Quiet, as the Dame comments on her reasons for visiting such an outpost, quiet and prim as a child haunting some adult party, slipping through the crowd to drink down every word and sight.
Her pale eyes drop to the glass of wine, in her left hand. The surface not-quite still. The light gleams through it in concentric rings of bright and ruby dark. Luce's little mouth is still, nearly pursed, until the Dame is asked to venture an opinion on her. Then she looks up, pale brows lifting, mouth edging higher with a certain banked energy. That secret smile she wears so well.
"Tch," gaze fixed on the Dame, now, unfocused, somehow. Edging though never quite reaching trance-like. The corrective sound is low in the back of her throat, ripe with humor, which feels both immediate and long-standing. "Hardly a threat. I'm purely decorative, you see. Not remotely functional."
A flickering look drops her eyes to the wineglass again. Zazh agrees, laughs, and she gives him this sharply arched look, mouth curving into the beginning of her answer to his wide, wide grin. Though her lips remain quite pressed together, just so, which gives the whole glance an engagingly prim note.
"A tempting offer," a flashing glance, back to the Dame. Gleaming now, and sure, " - but it does not seem right to keep such an artist from her public. Or her public from the artist. Dame Quadra," the glance lingering; as Luce turns to pace back across the distance, returning her glass of wine with a sheer, precise courtesy before bending to brush her mouth against the other woman's cheeks. One and then the other, rather more slowly, deliberately, than her usual breezy greeting to Zazh. A touch, at the elbow and the waist, light as a feather. "It was a most extraordinary pleasure. I will not soon forget your work. If you have any more performances scheduled, it would be my honor to attend. Or if you wish to see the city's sights - "
A brief, sharp glance back at Zazh. "Well, he has my number. And is not at all shy about giving it out. Until then, au revoir, madame."
With that, divested of the wine glass now, Luce reaches up, tucks a lock of hair behind her left ear, and walks back through the riot of throw pillows and murals, the pastiche of exotica, to Zazh's side.
LuceDice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
ZazhDame Quadra's stare at Zazh is easily caught, as Luce's attention flicks from her to him to respond to the query about 'spending more time'. There is a fluctuation...a brief faltering in the Dame's manicured mask, smile wincing and eyes slivering a hint to closed. It lasts a moment, perceived by few but for Luce's exceptional perceptions. Then, she is turning her full attention to the svelte 'blonde', receiving her with a delighted smile and the warmth of hands reaching out to touch just above hips, placed in the grooves of the mid-section
The french good-bye is treated much the same, the second of the two lingering pecks taken with a hand brushing Luce's cheek and a 'Lovely' breathed past her ear, before the Dame retreats, hands primly settled in front of her, entwined and respectful. Her gaze returns to Zazh who is watchful and calm, mouth quirked to a familiar and reflexive smile.
Luce bids her good byes, mentions the presence of her number, which garners a perked brow toward the Dame. Her nod sets his hand to clapping at his rear pocket, fishing for a slip of paper. He pulls it free, folds it in half and without a word holds it out toward the Dame, clipped between index and middle finger.
"Thank you, Sir. It was an honour to catch you during my visit. My hope that you'll entertain my presence once again should I play further within this territory."
Zazh's grin remains as is, a brief flourished bow, more stately then one might have expected from him, offered.
"Of course, Dame Quadra, how could I refuse? Should you and yours have need of me or my services again I will gladly make myself and my resources available to you." He hooks an arm out for Luce to link her own into offering the tall blonde a 'Shall we?' before tipping fingers toward the Dame who smiles in reply, her gaze lingering with Luce a moment longer before she turns toward the Dressing Mirror.
* * * * *
"You seem to have made an impression..." Zazh offers as they begin to make their slow way down the dark hall. The hum of ambient music and hush of gossiping voices begins to push through the curtain. Iilda the small waif of a thing, is waiting by the black fabric draw, watching their approach with the sort of immortal hesitance of childhood.
"A shame you did not want to stay. I think she might have made an exception to her payment rules for you..." Zazh begins to pat himself down, fishing it would seem, for one of those slim black cigars, which he tucks into one corner of his mouth.