Zazh
Russian Hill.
It is a hallmark of gentrified history. Suggestions of the culture that spawned it's sleek hills and garden spruced ledges, still peek out in the occasional store or shop hidden in the awnings and shadows of the condominiums and high-rise apartment complexes. One has to search them out, for they are artfully carved into obfuscation by the architecture of the times (If you won't be bought, then you will be forgotten). Treasures though they are, the Mom and Pop are giving way to the new age and the different and it is only in Time that their memories will stand.
The view, however, driving down Madison, affords those with sharp senses, a brief glimpse at these hidden treasures. Hovels in-grown, like the toenails of some great beast, they hover and hide and skulk in the dark, still replete with the ancient steel bars that make up security features all too obsolete. Through the tinted windows of the Sedan, the ducked and quiet little suggestions of items and services and oddities for sale, quietly continue their stalwart existence and reach out to the keenest of eyes to show their mysterious and nostalgic wares.
The march of time stopped for a brief moment of locational consideration.
The Sedan takes the corners at a leisurely pace, Crosby in the front seat, draped in long freshly wet (from the shower) platinum hair, pair of beige capris, over red hot heels (kicked off into the shotgun seat so she can reach the pedals easier) and a sharp military bomber jacket, lifted from one of these cheap little Mom and Pop shops that were no doubt a fetish for the young Driver. She had greeted Luce on the street of the slender Blonde's choosing and offered little more than a smile and a
"You're getting to be habit forming, I see."
And a pluck of the car door, to allow Luce entry into the rear cab. They had driven with the divider window up and the music upfront a thrumming baseline suggestive of something one might find in a club so far underground you needed a hastily scrawled map from some Half drunk Hipster just to find the entrance. The drive is short though and the effort, none at all, as the Sedan pulls up to the curb of a familiar complex (rows of garden shrubbery fit in Feng Shui perfection to either side of a narrow stone walkway, all before a towering rubix cube of white and green apartments). Most of the windows above are darkened, though the night is hardly old.
Crosby opens the door once more for Luce to exit.
"I think you know the way from here." That same little smile, genuine and without the catty nature one might associate with the feminine kind. Her teeth do not flash and her attention remains on Luce only so long as she remains within the Orbit of the Sedan. The door is shut and Crosby, turns without a backward glance to pluck the Driver's side door open, a wash of Drum and Base, leaping out in the brief moment it takes her to climb back in. The door shuts and the car peels off back into the night.
Luce
It wasn't the Sir Francis Drake tonight. It was some godforsaken crossroads in the tenderloin, a ten minute walk from a dozen dive bars and a half-dozen anonymous apartment and condo complexes, some no more than sagging tenements, others the leading edge of gentrification. Still the leading edge of gentrification, in fact, half-sold, half-empty, the builders' adverts now covered in graffiti, the expensive condos slowly converted to slightly-less-expensive (though still expensive) rentals, in the uneasy borderlands of the neighborhood, where a methodone clinic could be found next door to a vegan restaurant, with a record store specializing in European jazz tucked away upstairs.
She was distracted on the phone. (I'm busy. - she averred. Tautly, perhaps sharply, though mobiles do strange things with the human voice. Only at first.) Half-an-hour later, though, there she was on the sidewalk, a short trench coat in crushed black velvet over a white satin sheath dress. A small bag tucked beneath her right arm, standing out against the neighborhood like a sore thumb.
Crosby receives - for her trouble - a dark-eyed, steady look, the flash of a brief, faintly wry smile as the creature disappears into the back seat of the sedan. Luce lingers close to the passenger's window, her forehead against the glass, eyes moving in this steady, rapid pace, watching the city, the neighborhood, all those old Russian Hill treasures whir past, backgrounded by the dulled sense of the deep bass beat of the driver's music.
--
She pauses on the sidewalk outside the apartment block, lifting her chin to study the darkened windows. The outline the building makes against the city's skyline. The cubist shadow it cuts across the well manicured hedges - taking all that in before she begins to walk up the sidewalk, through the gate. Slipping the bag from right arm to her left, removing the coat smoothly as she walks toward the entrance, satin dress shifting like water with every step she takes. Slowly revealed as she peels off the coat and - finally - folds it over her right arm, tucking the little black sequined back firmly against the dark folds of the coat.
The dress is short, with a modest neckline, satin falling a sequined silver collar cinched around her throat. The back, though, is entirely bare well past her waist, framed by the drape of a few strands of glittering silver beans from the sequined straps that hug her otherwise bare shoulders.
Her hair is up tonight, loosely rather than intricately secured. An afterthought, the strands pulled away from her fine features.
She pauses at the security door, her reflection a floating pale against the dark frame of the evergreen shrubs behind her, flanking the walk. The glittering lights of the city where the street falls away, following the steep sweep of one of San Francisco's many hills. Hesitates a moment, counting off the apartment numbers in her head, perhaps. Then pushes a button to be buzzed inside.
Zazh
The button hums. A soft sound, hardly the garish annoyance of a typical buzzer to be found in some run down apartment complex. It is a soft vibration under the fingertip, not all together unpleasant while the bulb beneath lights up a florescent blue, that turns the blood beneath the vaguest sense of violet.
A few moments is all it takes for her to wait, before there is a sudden flicker of life from the intercom upon the Silver box that serves as both name repository and speaking device. Zazh's voice comes across with a quipped little.
"Prompt as always."
Before the door 'chimes' flicking open on some hidden mechanics, just enough for Luce to reach out and grasp the bar that will allow her entry. The door will swing back into place after she's pushed through and seal closed again by some strange magnetic process, a quick almost suctioning pressure.
* * * * *
The Elevator's velvet presence gives way to that stark, minimalist hallway and eventually the door leading into the apartment, which has been left slightly ajar for her to make use of. The interior is darkened, as the first time she came here, yet the diffuse gleam of that same track lighting floods the peripheral senses when they reach out to test the air.
His presence can be smelled. Felt. Heard.
Scent: The crisp and subtle suggestion of Tobacco. Not enough to warrant a party of smokers, but a single pungent cigar that has been burning for a long and slow period of time. It haunts, with tender suggestions of dark chocolate, airy nostalgia and the vaguest hint of mint.
Felt: The way he captures most environments, here within his home it is an easy thing. A demanding thing, quite incapable of being helped. The hallway walls leading into that open space within which he decorates nothing, is replete with the sensation of presence as if he were intent on being there to greet her or anyone really, without ever leaving the couch.
Heard: He is humming again. Some strange, vaguely familiar musical tone that he has done and said before. Hauntingly soft and yet audible within the open expanse of the apartment itself. He lift his voice every so often and allows it to fall and by no means a gifted talent, he is not unpleasant, skirting a baritone.
Luce enters and the floor below those dividing three stairs is darkened and undecorated as usual. Above the three stair climb however, the couch, the Piano and the Podium garden are all lit by a soft white glow from overhead spotlights. The first, the couch is where he lounges, the deep forest greens of it's L shape, made welcoming and floral by the illumination. His attire is the long length of a jacket, well suited for an outside jaunt and a pair of black slacks to match the colour. The shirt beneath is a crimson bloody, buttoned to within two, just below the chin and just above the hollow and the throat's base. His hair has begun to grow back, but only enough to appear full rather than cancer patient. His feet are clad in simple shoes, the kind you might find on an Armani favoured business man.
The Piano is gilded in that same pearlescent light and under it, Luce is privy to the strangely warping waves that travel through it's lacquered finish. Invisible in all other lights, it would seem whatever bulb Zazh has put within the tracking beams has brought out the hidden darkness of primordial green flushed and fluid in the dark finish of the grand piece.
Lastly, the Podium Garden. The piece being human is no longer alone. To either polar North and South, at the very borders of the Garden, bound and danae both rest and sit, the former on a lower pedestal, six inches the height inferior of being human while the latter, is six inches superior. An ascending to descending taste, that is not symmetrical as much as it is disjointed.
He sits upon the couch gazing at the pieces, fingers under his chin and eyes narrowed slightly. The white light above him casts shadows in the hollow places of his features. A monochrome flash of stillness.
"...Hello, Dear." He says without turning.
"I trust the ride was comfortable enough?"
Luce
Waiting. At the front door; in the marbled lobby. In the warm velvet privacy of the elevator, the hidden lights, the dampened sound. The background hum, not of the city now - sealed out by the magnetic rush of the front door closing behind her as she slips inside - but of the quiet running interior of the building. The furnace, the elevator's motor. The thousand little conveniences built into the shell of the place, all the tail ends of wiring and tubing and ducts and pipes and vents hidden away, sealed behind the walls. Still, the hum of a modern building at work, which becomes simply a hum, tuneless, near a baritone as she pushes open the front door of his apartment. As she pulls it closed. Latched behind - with one spare, backward glance - behind her.
Right hand lingering on the door frame, she takes a deep breath of the tobacco tinged air. The hint of chocolate, the mint underneath. Closes her eyes just once, her straightening the faint forward curve of her shoulders as if bracing herself greet him.
The strike of her heels against the floor is a crisp, measured counterpoint to the soft lilt of his hum. The shoes themselves - three inch heels, four perhaps, silver to match the dress and crusted with glittering crystals that bathe the floor around her feet in scattered shards of refracted light, focusing the diffuse wash of the track lighting that gives the space that ambient glow.
Down the steps and up, long legs working with that careless grace, jacket folded neatly over her arm. Though she discards that - and the little sequined black bag - as soon as she can. Tucking them neatly on the lacquered piano bench without so much as a second look, if only because her attention is fixed on the depth of green gleaming through the black lacquer, the patterns it opens in the surface of the instrument.
She pulls her attention away from the piano, allows her eyes to drift over the pieces on the podium as she weaves her way to the couch where he sits. Keeping him just in her peripheral vision, turning to watch the shadows shift across Danae's sculpted back as she moves. No comment - no specific comment - on his acquisition of the pieces. Except for that look, the way her eyes remained fixed on the work even as she circles the display, angled toward him.
It is his voice that pulls her back. Has her turning, lifting her chin, fixing darkened eyes on him. Her make-up is dramatic tonight; dark around the eyes, which only adds to that sense of bruised hunger, of restrained want, her mouth crimson smear. And ever so slightly imperfect.
"Perfectly comfortable." She breathes out in return, reaching down with a long, bare white arm to brace herself against the back of the couch and bend down, brushing familiar kisses over his cheeks. Cool, precise pressure, these, married to the sweep of her lowered lashes. Not even a hint of tooth, though with the second airy little kiss she lingers, so still, and inhales through her nose and half-parted mouth both.
Then peels herself away, turning her head aslant, so he has this lifting view of the plane of her cheek, the sleek curve of her jaw, the soft hollow beneath the spare joint. Her skin smells fresh; clean. Her perfume a subtle note beneath the immediacy of a recent shower. Other scents cling to her hair, though. Her tobacco. Whiskey. Some man's cheap cologne, perhaps. And perhaps, beneath that, the familiar, acrid flare of gunpower as she pulls away.
To tuck herself neatly, precisely on the couch perhaps a foot from his perch, smoothing the short hem of the dress over her thighs as she sits, this liquid, familiar gesture.
"And you, Zazh." She glances up at him then, this sidelong look that touches his dark, hollowed features, then his throat. Were you to offer terms, she might swear she could hear his heartbeat even from this distance. "I trust you're enjoying your most recent acquisitions?"
Zazh
(Hmmm...Perception 2 + Alertness 2.)
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Zazh
He is patient.
Watching her approach is a careful thing, studied with the same distant appreciation he has for the artwork upon the podium. the lines of her on display and the subtle curves that can accentuate to present femininity or plane to represent androgyny. Her entire figure is a suggestion, calculated with the smallest of movements and the way the dress seems to move with fervent need, like it might dash off of her and back on again at a moment's notice.
He watches her skate into his peripheral and out again, his attention returning to the pieces nearby only to return when she finally places herself into the crook of the couch, fetched and fetchingly nearby. The kisses are returned with distracted airs, a distraction that deepens as she inhales him slowly like a wine of some sort, savouring and he in turn her, sharper and rapidly as if in search of...
"Mmmm, enjoying would be the wrong term for it."
His gaze finds the distant pieces, head tilting forward and eyes narrowing. The low brilliance of the light overhead, makes this a ghoulish thing, carving dark hollows over his eyes, beneath his nose and brow. The hollow under his chin is a second maw and his hand rises to point at the pieces, pinching them from a distance as if he were a child seeking to crush mountains from a loaded perspective.
"I find the heights are off. The pieces, disjointed. Each of their tastes is a separate thing and one I enjoy in each their own and yet together, even on the peripheral I am having a difficult time not being aggravated. Danae wants attention and demands the eye and grows jealous instead of imploring when she catches me glancing at Bound. Yet Bound is so enviably wrapped up in itself I can scarcely stand to look at them for long...at least in the presence of being human, which goads me to rise above and be better in the face of their teasing..."
His features grow grim as he tirades for a moment, leaning slightly forward to steeple finger to finger, chin dressed in that trimmed and dark goatee, upon his outstretched and joined thumbs. He 'hmphs' gaze flicking around the apartment.
"I'm tempted to lock them away in corners, each but then I'd spend a chunk of my day paying tribute time to each just by presence alone. It's rather annoying to be so ruled by the perspective of ownership."
A pause. His heartbeat, a steady thing, reverberating as it does in the hollow echo-sensitivity of the couch beneath them.
"Why...do you smell of gunpowder?" All without glancing at her, or seeming to change his conundrum ridden features.
Luce
If they were human - and they are not human - the space between them would be awkward. Too close to allow the requisite amount of personal space most Americans require. Too far apart to be intimate.
But they are not human; have stripped themselves of the need for such boundaries long since. And she keeps that distance between them - a foot, more or less - sinks, perches, really, just at the edge - into the crook where the couches meet, smooths the hem of her skirt over her pale thighs, then settles her hands flat on the cushions beside her, palms down, long, delicate fingers flanking her hips.
As if she required ballast tonight.
Or boundaries.
He can choose his perspective. Straight on, the direct, A-line cut of the white satin conceals rather than reveals her frame. Emphasizes the boyish narrowness of her torso beneath the sharp, square precision of her shoulders. Aslant, the dress falls away so precipitously from her body that he can see every line of her back and shoulders, the S-curve of her spine, the dip of her waist. The shadow of her ribs, curving around her flank. Expanding and - then, ah - contracting, so rhythmic and precise with every breath she takes.
She turns her head, so that she is cheated toward him, in three-quarter profile, and watches him, eyes still and dark. Studies him so steadily, while he frowns over his acquisitions, launches into his complaint about the demands of ownership. Pale brows drawn together, dark gaze drifting over his profile. The dark shadows gathering in the hollows of his features. They way they pool and disperse in time with the animate tirade on the difficulties and deficiencies of the pieces he has aquired. Their competing demands on his attention, displayed so. Arrayed so.
"You would not enjoy my studio, then. Pieces arrayed without consideration for their demands. Simply because I want them to be there." The dark thread of a half-smile in her voice; some hint of distance, for all that her attention seems fixed, entire, on him.
"Canvases still stacked 'gainst the walls," her voice is low tonight. Lower than he remembers it, if he thinks to remember it, voiced in her chest rather than her throat. The distance in it feels deliberate; some choice she makes. Eyes still fixed on him, dark and soft and hungry. "Four deep, or five. Sometimes I turn them over so I cannot see them. So I'm surprised by them in a month or a year, when I see them again. Anew."
The faintest twist of her mouth. Heard rather than seen. "I do that with Beethoven, too. Permit myself to enjoy his symphonies no more than once a year, so that I never become innured to them. So easy to take their power for granted when you eat them piecemeal, let them hum in the background of some ordinary evening."
Fingers curl into the upholstery of the couch. Her head is canted just aslant, the messy knot of her hair a heavy twist at the back of her neck. Eyes still and dark, opaque but for the rings of light reflected from the overhead spots.
"Remove bound," she suggests at last, finally cutting a brief glance toward the works themselves. Which have less specific gravity for her tonight than he seems to though - there, just there, as she lifts her chin towards the sculptures he has acquired. A breath withheld. Then another, this unvoiced little gasp, as she is momentarily hooked by the prospect of the piece. "To your bedroom. No," a quiet noise. " - your closet. You have a walk-in, yes? It will hardly notice your lack of attention; will revel in itself when all the lights are off. And you will see it in that cloistered space, morning and evening, when you dress or disrobe.
"Perhaps then the others will share space more graciously."
--
Why - do you smell like gunpowder?
His last question brings her eyes in a controlled sweep back to his profile. Thumbs drift carelessly over the upholstery beneath her splayed hands. Or perhaps not carelessly; instead - deliberately, anchoring.
"Would you believe," a conscious flush of rue over the quiet husk of her voice. "target practice."
Zazh
"No. I wouldn't."
His attention does not drift toward her, or seem to schism from the pieces he has described. She is given the stage to present her depiction of some fabled studio, which gathers the perk of a brow (interest) though not his eyes attention. She dresses down the inhabitation of the pieces here, allowed their moment to spawn and craft, their inspired presence not simply a perspective but a true taste of living. Of existence. Each stands out, licking the air and leaving behind an echo from which reaction can be pulled. At least...as far as Zazh is concerned.
Not an audience to watch him, but a Troupe to participate with.
Is it any wonder the Man's apartment had been devoid of pieces before Luce? He might never leave for the conversations with the walls that might demand attention.
"The closet." A feral grin, bright and illuminating, leaning forward so that the light overhead sheds some of the darkness beneath his brow, nose and chin. His elbows settle into place upon either knee and his attention drifts minutely from the others toward bound, an almost conspiratorial (viciously evil) spread of lips sealing the fate of the narcissistic piece. "Of course. I should have thought of that earlier..."
He turns toward Luce with a sudden start, head ratcheting around to orient on her 'distant' presence, that grin subsiding slightly but not fully, to regard her features. Her eyes. His head cants to one side and for the first time, his eyes skip past her body and dress, toward that small chunk of distance between them. He doesn't frown, simply shunts his jaw off to one side, lips twisted upward. His gaze snaps back up to her features and the eyes narrow over a smile that begins to disassemble that misaligned jaw.
"Your ability with guns, unless a lie-" A sliver of humour "-would make such activities about as likely as you mingling with the invisible. That is...what would be the point?" A pause, the smile fading into a flatter line. Not angry. Not impatient. Not even displeased simply...curious, without the eagerness to make it a demand.
"...I trust you understand not to bring your woes and worries into my world." He leans forward slightly, shaving an inch or two off the space between them, elbow reaching out to catch the couch's edge, the hand attached to the same arm rising to cup the side of his head for support.
"...I would hate to have to tighten your chains any."
Luce
There she is - staring at him when he turns toward her with that sudden start. Her head level, her eyes drifting with a precision that is anything but careless between his eyes and his mouth. Dropping, every few heartbeats, to the shadow beneath his jaw. She can read the first hint of movement in his body before he turns, and he finds her eyes on his as if she were waiting for him to turn to her. To look at her. See her.
And then she is his shadow. He cants his head, and her own tips a few degrees as well, the weight of her hair pulling against its haphazard moorings, the soft wash of overhead lights pulling out bands of gold and honey from the blond as she moves. He considers the narrow stretch of distance between them, and her eyes drop as well. Linger on the strange, parti-hued gray shadows she casts over the green, which shift and curl with every breath she takes. Then cuts a glance back upward, touching on his mouth before finding his eyes again.
There is nothing misaligned about her. Red mouth just parted, her eyes a liquid sort of darkness, still steady on him as he smile fades to something, else. The right corner of her little mouth curls upward; the muscles around her eyes contract, this sliver of response to his sliver of humor.
The faintest physical touché of acknowledgment that threatens to become something more. To curl like smoke into the intimate suggestion of a still and quiet smile. The sort that might cast light into the dark steadiness of her gaze. Which sputters; then dies, stillborn, as he mentions her chains.
Her fine little mouth flattens, her breathing shallow now. The barest curl of her narrow shoulders against white satin. She looks quite deliberately away from him, not toward the center of the room, but toward the walls. Or perhaps, somehow, the city beyond.
"As you can see," a brief, sharp little curl of her mouth. "I came when you called regardless of my woes. Came, quite entirely intact. You have no reason to complain, I think. And no reason to question me."
Zazh
"That wasn't a complaint or a question."
He stands then, shifting away from his relaxed posed and climbs earnestly to his feet. The crackle of his knees can be heard, a faint winge of age grasping at his features which she might miss, glancing off into the beyond in an effort to avoid him without moving ("As Women are want to do" Zazh has commented to Crosby no few times). He stretches slightly in the absence of conversation, impervious to the awkward or at least, inconsiderate of it's meaning.
"You are a constant surprise and often are...surprised. You stand and exist in this occupancy of two worlds. The pretend constellation of humanity and whatever truth that hides under those lovely little breasts of yours." He steps around her settled legs and feet, over them almost so that he can catch the side of her peripheral view, turned away from him.
"You speak of Hungers. Many and varied, as Hungers are spoken of in plural. To be sated, satisfied, truncated, nourished or assuaged. All these different little words that mean the same thing and yet absolute differences exist in their utterance." He pauses to regard her, a slight frown about his features. "You tell me about the inconsistencies of the life you lead and the fulfilment in others hovering around you. Lagos, this Annabelle woman-" A casual flip of his hand at the statues behind them "-throwing off shackles while wearing others. The choice of it all-"
He plants one knee against the outside of her thigh, the other falling into place the opposite leg's thigh. It is a sudden move, meant to pin her in place, though he hovers over her lap, keeping her legs firmly pressed between his own.
"-is so very simple and yet you choose to make it complicated with hurt feelings and measures of..." He drops the long coat off his shoulders and sheds it onto the couch behind him, hands reaching to the cuffs of his sleeves, beginning to roll each one up to the elbow and cinch there.
"...Respect."
He will raise a finger, offering a warning glance to any resistance she puts up, some flash of emerald eyes making memories of power in his voice. All the while, leaning forward, resting his weight along her thighs and knees, that he gaze down at her features, hands rising to cup either cheek and turn her face up toward him.
"You and I respect one another as much as necessary. As much as we are capable in this little arrangement of ours. You have your secrets and not once have I pursued them to their conclusion. Nor would do I find it fascinating enough to forego your other very obvious-" A glance down her body then "-attributes, in favour of finding out." And back up to her gaze.
"So when I say your troubles are not mine. That your chains are those I would prefer to leave untightened, you should be grateful for the respect in those words. There are hundreds who have had and been far more than you could be, who I would sooner put in the ground than offer any sense of security like you have." A pause, gaze for gaze.
"You smell of gunpowder. Which means guns. Which means someone was angry enough to fire one near, around or at you. If that's true, then it is far easier for me to assume they might turn that barrel in my direction for association with you, rather than not. Because I do not know these individuals firing guns around my Dear Luce and I would hate to think I might need to do something about them if I catch more than a scent about such indiscretions." His grin livens.
"...As necessary as the frisk in the elevator, Dear. Nothing more than that, unless you make it and if then? We have more concerns than simple respect to talk of."
Luce
Quite as women are wont to do. See? When he rises, she turns her head minutely to follow his path. To keep him in her peripheral vision, her breath is still withheld, or rather, shallowly kept. Held, then expelled before another is drawn, alertness clear in every ( - stiff - ) line of her elegant frame. He steps over her legs, and she - she darts a lifting glance upward, following the path his shadow casts over her body. So he has no more than three or four heartbeats to enjoy her profile before her eyes are on him again, wider now, the lingering darkness brightened by rings of light reflected from overhead.
This cheated, sidelong look, her neck taut, her head canted away from him. Something animal about her wariness tonight. Though from this perspective, looking down at her - shoulders cut away from him, thighs and knees and calves tucked neatly and primly together - he might have a sense of how carefully she holds herself in place. How active her underlying stillness seems.
Until he climbs onto the couch over her; pins her in place with his body. Then she turns sharply back to him, restraint gone, pushes herself backwards. Palms digging into the couch cushions for leverage as she slides back from her perch at the edge of the couch, until her spine hits the cushions of the back and he raises that warning finger.
" - don't touch me." Low-voiced, raw. The words seem not calculated, but torn from him. A warning, or a dare. Some Janus-face, this. The frisson of her civilized panic a straightjacket over something darker in her eyes, which lashes back against it. Rattles those civilized fucking bonds.
Each breath is she takes is sharp and shallow. Through the mouth rather than the nose so she need not drown in his scent.
When he cups her cheeks, lifts her head toward him, she closes her eyes. Opens them once, to meet his measure for measure.
"Zazh." So shallow are her respirations, there's something breathless about the way she says his name. " - you shouldn't, you shouldn't touch me tonight. And you -
" - you should know I would not. I would never - " The darkened eyes flash open, and she curves her neck, straining to lift her chin out of his grasp, to find some purchase, some control as he bears down on her and pins her in place.
"One of them is dead. The other - " Gaze cast sharply aslant. " - is not in any condition to go hunting. Even if he were, he has no reason to connect the person he shot - at whom he shot - with me. And no reason to connect me with you. Is that enough - " and then, directly back to meet his black eyes. Voice dropping a sudden, minor third, the flash of teeth a clear white warning beneath her painted mouth. " - respect for you?"
Zazh
Her movements. Brittle and soaked, gasoline stringent. They are weathered with the same surgical firmness of an orderly upon a hostile patient. He seems to recognize each bid of restraint and flutter of animal calamity housed so very close to the surface tonight. He turns her features slightly off to one side, when that flash of teeth arrive. when that hissing click of the word 'respect' frisson's off her lips. He meets her gaze with a scrutinizing calm both serious and dissecting. Searching first one eye at this angle, then turning her cheek minutely to do the same to the other.
"Ahhh." He says, in as low as voice as she. "There you are." His gaze rises over her brow and then down her lips. His fingers brush a dangerous lilt past the corners of her mouth, as they peel away from her features, though he remains bowed over her twisting face.
"-No, not enough but that would be paranoia talking." He leans back finally, releasing some of the pressure on her legs, gaze flying down her shape as if in appreciation, yet the small frown tastes more of scrutiny again. As if taking in the jittery tensions riding her framework and the constrained....something, hiding in her taut shape.
"Hmph." He offers when catching her gaze again, meeting that feral luminosity with the strangely reflectionless black of his own. Then he pulls off her legs, leaning his weight on one knee and back up to his own feet. He turns his body part way 'round, head canting just slightly aside as if an indication of-
"Would you like a drink? I'm feeling in the mood for a rhum. Dark and savoury..." His gaze lingers with her for a split second longer, even as he's turning to make his way toward that invisible alcohol cabinet near the Podium Garden.
"Gives you a moment to collect yourself, as well." In passing over his shoulder. "If you really want to that is..."
Luce
He turns her features this way, then that way, studying each at each precise angle. The cool, pale sweep of her cheekbones. The bruised, nascent hostility of her dark eyes, through the sweep of her soot-stained lashes. And she pulls deliberately against each turn he makes, watching him from the corners of her eyes, so that her gaze is more white than iris. Tendons in her neck stand out, and he can feel her thighs bunching between his knees, as she she were readying to launch herself forward, to break the cage of his body, did he not release her. Or, perhaps, just meet him half way.
He releases her head; she pulls her chin sharply up and away from him, closing her mouth around that feral, hungry flash of teeth so firmly she ends up pressing her crimson mouth together, just so. The expression would be prim, even sour were it not softened, changed entirely by the sense of need in her eyes. The way she breathes as he pulls back, his gaze falling down the rather strain, plain lines of the white satin gown. The way she breathes - as if she might convince her body - for the next breath, for the next two - to be satisfied with mere oxygen.
Her eyes are closed again. The heat of his body peels away from hers. She lifts a hand to her brow, then pushes her long fingers back through her hair, pulling a few strands out of their imperfect moorings.
"Scotch." - she requests, in this low, raw little tone that is only half-voiced, dropping from her throat to her chest for the last few words. " - neat, if you don't mind." Ignoring each of his other insinuations with the studied deliberation of the single-minded as she allows herself to sink back, quite alone against the spine of his couch as his footsteps toward the hidden cabinet echo quietly in the dark living room.
She forces herself to stand when the precise rhythm of his footsteps stops, breathing now as if to reassure herself of the possibility of control, smoothing the A-line dress over her body, curling her shoulders backward to rearrange the fall of those silver beads against the bare skin of her flanks, lifting her right hand to pat the messy chignon a the back of her head, to assure herself of its stability even as she reaches up with her left to correct any imperfections in the crimson paint staining her mouth. All these familiar rituals of primping. The civilized immediacy of them, to bury the beast.
When she is at last assured of her presentability, she straightens herself, shoulder and bare, curving spine, takes in a deep breath, and follows in his footsteps, her heels an elegant, staccato beat against the floor.
"You wouldn't be very happy with me, Zazh." Hard to tell whether the flick of her gaze over him, head to toe, is meant as deliberate provocation for him or for her. Perhaps he even misses it; turned away, fixing streets. Still, the insinuation of that look finds its way into her voice. Less tease than promise, superimposed with the briefest of wintry smiles. This neat little twist of her red mouth. "Or perhaps you would, after all. Still, I could hardly chance it, could I."
Zazh
"Mmmm, classic choice."
He arrives at the Pedestal garden, skirting bound with a hesitant and flippant glare (Yes I know what to do with you now, you princess of an art affair) before stepping into place to depress the magnetics on the cabinet. It hinges open on reflexive vacuum pistons, settling into a flat table surface, the square decanters of various alcohols pushed forward on hidden springs. A pair of glasses, dimpled along their bottoms, are plucked and set on one of the empty podiums, glittering in the track lighting overhead.
"-And you know what makes me happy then, do you dear?" He offers with no hint of humour or glimmer or playfulness. It sounds almost harsh, almost. The gilded edge of a knife, tucked safely in it's sheath. The presence of a threat, almost. Almost.
"Or not, perhaps. Perhaps." The scotch is unstopped, poured with delicacy to a third measure. A single malt of decadent, even powerful taste. Hardly expensive, but more than the average man pretending at airs of sophistication would dare suffer for.
"I find happiness to be a singular pursuit. Something you achieve over and over again, in repeated fashion. Strive to exist within only for a few seconds and then move onto the next available circumstance. Much like an orgasm, the taste of a really good chocolate cake or the subtle climax of a well done performance. That rush of giddiness that ends with a soft sigh of relief." He pauses, plugging the Scotch up once more in the process.
"Amazingly, even were I find some semblance of Happiness it would be short-lived. Not out of some self-destructive tendency, no, but because Happy, much as Sad or Angry, was never meant to be forever. It is not a pre-occupation or a state of mind. It is an emotion. Transient and symptomatic. Delightful sometimes, but a luxury."
He pours the Rhum next, a small can of Cola pulled from the cabinet, tabbed and poured in alongside the rhum, much less tenderly than the Scotch had gone. A quick turn with a slender glass rod which is dumped back into a small steel chalice.
"Contentment is the way to aim. Search for it in all things for with that one measure, we find satisfaction. Fulfilment. Reassurance and Faith. All in one subtle package." he turns to meet her presence when she eventually meets him or has arrived prior to his speech's completion. The Scotch is held out toward her, his features bereft of that maniac's grin or that Cheshire smile. If anything he looks as serious as he often does in displeasure.
"I think you've piqued my curiosity some, Luce." He warns. "Enough, perhaps that-" A half step closer, closing to that one foot distance. "-I think it best you remain here with me tonight."
Luce
"I've never been satisfied with contentment." Even the edge of her wry half-smile - that bright, darting thing, that clear, assured awareness of her own limitations. The absurdity of them. - feels raw somehow. Like new silk. Immeasurably soft, but striated. Fibrous. "Not for long. It always begins to feel to straightening. Like you're being squeezed into a vessel that does not quite suit you. Though perhaps that is not contentment after all. Is it.
"And happiness - except, as you say, in the immediate, exquisite focus of sharp, clear, ever-passing moments - is otherwise the province of fools. Whom I will only suffer out of necessity, never choice." The wry half-smile blooms into something softer. Darker, as she uncoils a long pale arm to accept the Scotch from his hand without otherwise closing the distance between them.
Intent, indeed, on preserving it tonight.
Her left arm is abducted across her torso, firmly enough that it distorts the A-line of the dress at the waist. The right arm is bent at the elbow, the Scotch held with deliberate care, her fine fingers pinpoint around the mouth of the glass, holding it so that she can see the light shine through the amber liquid and inhale the smokiness of the peat in that harsh single malt.
He comes a half-step closer. She holds herself all the more upright, pulling herself up through the spine. And gives him this spare little half-smile, the edges of which seem - crisp and starched with -
"Then perish your curiosity, darling. If you have questions, ask. But I'm afraid I can't stay the night."
Luce
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )
Zazh
The firmness deepens. Something flashes across his face and the air seems to curdle, suddenly afraid for itself in his presence. Luce's attentions catch something on her peripheral view, the flicker of presence suddenly haunting one of the pedestals, hovering behind Zazh's left elbow and behind; Bound quivers.
A sharp moment, not unlike happiness was meant to be. An immediate, exquisite focus of understanding that goes without words. Bound, as two figures merged to one or one thing diverged into two, quivers in place, as if the presence of something living, not sentient, but reactive were housed within it's stoned skin.
A moment and then it's gone. Or rather, replaced by the measured and firm step of the Man infront of her, his drink held by crooked arm, close to his chest, intent on the space directly infront of her, expectation that she will step back and out of range.
"I was not asking." His head shakes minutely, gaze dropping to beneath his brow. "There is something wrong with the way you move and speak when you are occupied in thought or...something else. Something decidedly-" A sharp inhale "-off, about how you interpose yourself into a situation. As if it were a forced effort. So precise and refined as to be nearly imperceptible to those who don't know you beyond your looks." A hand reaches out toward the hem of her dress, a plucking motion.
"...Perhaps that's why you keep your distance and the focus of your attention and theirs, firmly on the reciprocate. Perhaps the reason for all those masks. Perhaps the reason for hiding like you do and the little girl in you as well."
He would walk her into the Grand Piano if that is as far as they go, or should she not step aside entirely. Where she moves he will follow, with those same slow and deliberate steps.
"Something you keep so desperately to yourself that I think, much like so many other things you've expressed and told me on, is blown well and truly beyond the proportions of existence. Not mortality..." A dismissive snuff of his nostrils. "..But existence." He sips at his rhum and coke, finally leavening off following her/haunting her personal space.
"You'll remain here tonight. The gunpowder and your story about the men who did it haven't done much to assuage my paranoia. If anything, your presence here and Crosby on my speed dial will and if you're hungry, well then..." He slugs back the entire drink with a sharp wince that tugs both corners of his mouth wide, followed by a small pursed 'o' of his lips on the exhale.
"...I'll order you some delivery."
Luce
And so he walks her backwards. Steps forward into her space as she steps back, leading her like a dance, though her body language is almost entirely closed there is still that crisp, floating elegance about her, mirrored by the clipped noise her heels on the floors. The subtle cut of her gaze toward bound reacting, with each step she takes. The sort of deepening alarum in her eyes and mouth.
He does not run her into the piano, though. There is steel in her, somewhere underneath a half-dozen of the masks, and on the fourth step, or the fifth, she firms her shoulders, stands tall, pulling her narrow frame upwards, the heels lifting her three or four inches above her natural height so that she can look down at him. Over the mouth of her Scotch, the pungent liquid quivering from the strange dance.
"You're overreacting." She says at last, over a deep breath that has her bare shoulders curling in sharp little circles forward beneath the cut of the high neckline of her dress. A smile for him, strung with tension as sure as a tightrope, softening with a deliberate sort of invitation. "I had a - difficult - evening.
"I'm unused to physical violence. It frightened me. I'd heard about a particular graffiti artist whose work I wanted to see. I was caught in crossfire. Nothing more. Nothing that might touch on me. Certainly nothing that might touch you.
"But I want comfort in the aftermath. Familiar comforts. And privacy. My own - " a brief glance toward the sculptures he has curated. The faint twist of her mouth. " - treasures. Not yours. Certainly you can allow me that much room."
Zazh
He laughs. Slightly incredulous. Leaning back into a systematic-
"Are you trying to play me again?"
The smile remains, genuinely amused, sliding effortlessly into the space she has provided. She stands tall, straightened to an intimidating height. Several inches more and she was an inch or so more than he was to begin with. He moves into her shadow and the space of her stance and stares up at her with that same glimmering smile (born of razors). His fingers curl slightly around the glass of once rhum and cola and his breath is the scent of sweetness for it as they are separate in inches now.
"Put yourself in danger. Airs of regret." Eyes dancing. Searching hers. "Airs of control, scattered about my floor like so much chaff. Distance for safety's sake or maybe for that thrill you get in denying yourself, hmmm?" He turns slightly, eyes from her a moment to place the glass in his hand upon one of the empty pedestals, returning a moment later to gaze up at her, hands sliding into one another, interlaced at the crux of fingers.
"You can't think I'm silly enough in the brain and libido to truly believe you'd place yourself in a moment that so readily and be intimidating by a bullet or two, can you?" Disbelief. "Really? You who wander the spines of men? The crass envy of women? You're a typhoid mary of the mind. A Thought fuck of singularity, not to mention a rather intelligent creature. Are you truly going to stand there are admit to some-" A hand rises, pinwheeling between them dismissively "-bout of the vapours to explain away this calamity in your movements?"
He glances down at her shoes, a quick gesture that returns to her face a moment later.
"Precision and measure, you enact grand plays with a smile and a look and even coming unhinged as you were only moments ago on the couch-" He chuckles again, haunting her space by inches. A fraction closer, as that smile drops away and that air curdling seriousness returns.
"Be bold for a moment, dear. Bold and honest. If you're so frightened then why come at all? Why not simply return my call and offer some semblance of a reason. If so timid, why make the trip?" He inhales her. A small thing, without a smile still.
"Or were you more scared of what I'd do than what the gunshot seems to have done to your nerves?"
Luce
"Have you ever been to Paris, Zazh?"
A strange non-sequitor. Her eyes linger on his face throughout his speech; as he searches her eyes, as he own dance. The cut to follow him as he reaches out to set his empty glass of rum and coke on an empty pedestal. Then scissor back to his face, following the afterthought of his arm as it returns to his body.
A half-dozen shades of ingénue, naif, damsel, virgin, whore, tried on and discarded as he continues. Airs of regret. Airs of control. Typhoid mary of the mind. When he glances down at her shoes, she steps out of him. This deliberate movement of her narrow hips, sinuous and sure footed. Nails painted a deep ruby - some heart's blood color, full of oxygenated blues - gleam from perfect(ly symmetrical) little toes, the faintest impression of the leather around her feet. The crystal-crusted heels glitter and gleam, shed light like a disco ball, scattering the floor with patterned rainbows as she toes them carefully away. Settles herself just so, bare footed, her hips coiling as she adjusts to her new center of gravity, without the off-kilter swagger and way of the heels.
"I knew someone there, who said quite the same thing to me. Be bold. Honest. I don't miss the people, so much as the city itself. Living and breathing; the Haussmann's great avenues opening up like spokes on a wheel, bathed with light. He put his arms around me - watch the city over my shoulder. We'd climb the Arc de Triomph, you see. After hours, and let the whole thing glitter at our feet. There's a certain hour, you see, when even a city like that is silent.
"Be bold," for the first time that evening, she curls forward. Steps into him rather than away from him, lifting her arms to drape them around his shoulders, her Scotch still tucked neatly in the pinpoint grasp of her right hand. "Be honest. Fuck them all. As you might imagine, I found it quite compelling. 'Course, it doesn't bear thinking, what happened after.
"I came because I wanted to see you." Then she's leaning forward, her head aslant from his. The only contact between them bodies the sharp little bit of her elbows into his shoulders. The heat radiating from his skin. "Perhaps I wanted you to push me. Maybe I wanted to slip, hmm?"
Her cheek is cool and smooth against his, a second point of contact. Breathing haunting his ear, without her mouth finding it.
"Maybe I still do. I'll stay until five in the morning. Then, I want to go home. I haven't packed a bag, you see. And I doubt you have my shampoo."
Zazh
She moves into Paris, for not the first time since they've met. A fascinating gem, this city of Love, it houses a special place in the masks of Luce, emerging as both a sanctuary, a memory, a nostalgic sensation and a horizon for many events. He listens, fails to shift position much beyond the brief glance to either elbow suddenly resting in the slight dip of shoulder, where bone turns to tautened muscle. Beyond the slight touch of fingertips settled at her hips.
She offers the taunt. The tease. The brief sensation of demure acquiescence. Why yes alright I'll stay if you're going to be that way
And Zazh's smile creeps into his features again, felt upon her cheek as she reaches in to hover by his ear. The response is humming sensation, his hands full flush to her modest hips.
"Mmmm, comparisons. You are fond of them." His voice hitches high, tilting into the 'r' with emphatic amusement. His hands grow firmer about her waist.
"You make me wonder things with each new phrase out of your mouth and each mask you pull on to deflect." He steps a little closer, a light sway to his movements. One might almost call it an invitation/assertive request to dance, though there is no music playing.
"...And with those wonders, enliven the curious quality of who you are and what you do. Not enough in most circumstances to be maddening but...the possibility exists." He hums again, a part of the tune, as if he could hang it in her memory and they would not need a tune to sway in minute inches as they are right now.
"With each new evasion, a sliver of strength to the curiosity. A sliver that grows into a wedge. When you refuse. When you bargain. When you plead in the only way you know how and when you eventually negotiate to a brief respite-" He chuckles, a throated thing.
"Each grows the quandary of Luce. It makes me wonder new questions and with those questions, new ways to make you move. Make you step. Make you circle to that inevitability we both know is there." Once more that unknown tune, hummed at the back of his throat.
"I imagine when the time comes, it won't be my efforts that make you trapped and forced to stray past your boundaries...but your calculated frustration that makes you ask and answer the question: What would it be like if I did...?" A chuckle. "Just a little. Not too much. Just a taste...What harm would it be?"
Luce
(just for guidance...)
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Luce
There is a carved marble expectancy about her; that rapt - radiant - sense of fixation wired into the slender architecture of her body, tall as it might be, as if she were not touching the ground beneath their feet, but had been hung from some invisible hook in the dark wash of shadows above their head. Suspended -
- dark eyes wide, watchful, and far from innocent fixed on their reflections. The border of their reflections; where his profile, the narrow, marbled lines of it, cuts into the soft curve of her long throat. Her mouth is just curved upward, her long white arms tucked against her body, hands closed, knuckles pressed against the dark marble vanity. Glowing white in the polished stone.
There is no slack in her frame; has been no slack in her all this long night. Taut as guitar strings wound far too tightly, tension peeling apart the layers of the wire. And yet, somehow she seems even more tightly drawn when that warm smile turns lascivious. Her body bracing itself, with subconscious expectancy, to feel - not the tip of his tongue against her neck, but fangs driving into her throat. Some minute noise in the back of her throat, the clotted sort, half-formed. The beginning of one word; the end of another, never quite invented.
Then his hands cover her eyes; his mouth finds her ear. Her eyes remain open beneath his hands - he can feel the flutter of her lashes, stiff and dark with mascara, when at last she gives in, to the pressure of his hands or the power in his voice. To that note, perhaps, those wordless few notes, like a nameless chord opened into a drifting, imprecise arpeggio, that slip under her skin, resonant in the hollows of her skull, the soft tissues of her mouth. Echoing somewhere in the back of her throat, precise enough that she can taste it. That she can nearly swallow them. Drink that sound, if she could only. There, just -
there.
So, see. That expectancy; that precision as he speaks his instructions. As he makes his promise. She turns her head persistently aslant, to feel the warmth of his breath on her ear. Breathes, and deeply, when he so instructs her, holding each breath in her dead lungs, tasting it against her soft palette. Exhaling only to breathe in again, while his heart beats beneath her skin, steady and strong. Mouth just parted, cheek, nose seeking contact of some sort - any sort - with his profile.
Then, the end. That sensation. That reach. That sense - the invisible weight of iron settled around her neck and shoulders - has her reaching up, longer fingers curving as if she might tuck them between the links, curl them into some stiff collar. There's just her dress - silk and soft beneath her hands. The cut of her own clavicles, straight and level beneath the slope of her shoulders. Hands splayed open, one at the base of her neck, the other tucked to the right, fingers curling, pulling downward as a woman might, to test the weight of a fine gold chain settled around her neck.
He thinks he will miss her.
" - what?" startled, that. Eyes open, now, her loose blond hair a tangled golden frame at the edge of her peripheral vision. Turning her head to find - him rather than his reflection. "What do you mean? Where - " Infused with urgency. With moving, hungry energy pulled sharply back with an indrawn breath when she finds the familiar planes of his human face in the borders of her field of view.
Her profile is in the mirror now; her head - and shoulders - twisted aslant from her hips and lower spine, right shoulder cutting into his chest, the left closer to the mirror. And though her gaze flicks to follow the movement of his hand as he tastes the girl's thigh; and then as it hovers in the air before them, she faces the dark shadows at the other end of the luxurious bath.
"You should do something about her." Low, her profile softened by shadow, eyes flicking to follow the sweep of his hand, though they hardly touch on the unconscious girl. Less instruction, this, than equivocation. Some placeholder. "Cover her up. Make her comfortable." Something to say that does not ring of iron, and does not taste of his laughter.
Then she lifts her chin, tipping the crown of her head toward the mirror. The fine strands of her hair slipping over her left shoulder, the bruised-looking eyes, with their dark rings of shadow and mascara cutting toward him. Then peeling down his features, with a sort of limitless precision, as if he were a puzzle she might take apart, piece by fine piece, only to slip them all back together again, once she had learned how they worked. How they were connected, blood and skin and bone.
The careful survey begins at his scalp; touches eyes and brows; cheeks and jaw. Mouth and nose, then cuts away to focus on something just beyond the collar of his blood red shirt. Which seems more - vivid - in her mind's eye.
Her breathing is in time with his doubled heartbeat; every other. She can taste his laughter in the back of her throat. In the frame of her body.
Quite abruptly, she presses back against him. Hips twisting to follow the movement of her shoulders, until they are face to face. She takes in a breath, though the mouth not the nose, bends arms at the elbows and tucks her forearms up against his chest, nudging open the collar of his shirt with both index fingers. Tracing the seam down to the first still-fastened button and undoing it with deliberate care.
Then the next.
Her eyes are fixed on the work of her hands; the fascinating precision of her fine fingers working in concert to slip each button from its mooring. Her head is canted just aslant, as if the sidelong lilt might help her seize the essence of that nameless, wordless tune.
"You take something from them, too." Murmured, this, and quietly done, her voice quiet. "Less prosaic than their blood. Strong emotion or - " Here, her eyes dart up to meet his. "Don't you?"
ZazhThe whisper of iron that crowds them, colours their immediate selves, cast as both frames are within the vaguely humid airs of the enclosed bathroom tile and diffuse marble glow. It spreads and disintegrates into nothing. Not at her neck, not about his fingers, not even in his voice. It hovers, though, like the taste of him. There at the back of her throat, ready to be summoned should she begin to hum that strange little tune. It would be there for a small eternity.
He takes in her brief shock with a flickering glance and a widening of his own eyes, grin splitting human features, with their many pores, pock marks of age and well used luxuries/decadencies, as laughter true and deep, floods out of him at the question hung so unjustly about her lips and (almost) accusing eyes.
"Mmmm, the girl-" He glances down at young Miss Jennifer, a purse to his lips and a slight narrowing of his eyes "-yes, I suppose I shall. Wouldn't want to have any more dead hookers in my history then is absolutely necessary." He pats Jennifer's thigh with an air of 'There, There' head canting around Luce toward the darkened doorway, beyond which houses the Bedroom. A brief moment's calculation, has him scouring his mind for some place of comfort that would not involve hauling the young thing further than his strength might allow. Dead weight was uncomfortable to most people, afterall.
His attention returns to Luce the moment she slips into his personal space, gaze snapping into a brief and sharp scrutiny that softens just slightly from an edge into a curious cushion, when her limbs glide effortlessly from shoulders to touch at the first of the buttons. They come away with ease under dexterous fingers and he tilts his head just so to one side, to catch her features and what they are doing while she 'performs'.
Her words-
"Not as often as I think you might. Nor I think, is mine a...sustenance exactly." His hands find the openings within her dress, passing from fabric to the flesh at the small of her back, fingertips riding the slight curve of each vertebrae as it presses outward with the taut and reflexive tension a creature like Luce could present. Always the mask in the right place, for the eye, the hand or otherwise.
"Mine is an addiction, easily controlled and starved only within the boundaries of a beggar's lot." He glances down as she catches his features once more, eyes following her progress, crimson fabric shed and flesh expanding it's exposure.
"Emotion would be a dull way of describing it. Far more and yet simplified. Easily explained and yet utterly irrelevant outside of particular-..." The last button drifts open and his hands slide down to cup her ass, the hem of the dress ruffled to her hips in the process, his gaze rising to greet her own with a slanted jawline.
"-boundaries."
There is a heartbeat's pause then, the double of his own steadying somewhat. Slowing just enough that he is half again faster than each of her breaths.
"An opportunity has presented itself to the North. Deep in the pollution thick cavities of Detroit. A momentary thing but..." And he gives a slithering inhale and a delicious shiver "...very exciting." That grin.
"Coupled with recent events in my own community and about the only thing keeping me from having left a week ago is ensuring a guarantee I'll be seeing you again." His hands rise to settle beneath the loose touch of her dress where it meets shoulders, sliding one golden sheer length from her left side, until bare shoulder and arm are near visible.
"I am curious though..." The grin has yet to diminish, those oddly dull black eyes settling in her features. Lost to the lines of them. "...Have I managed to convince you on the benefits of being a Collectible?"
LuceHer hands slip beneath the frame of his shirt, the cool fingers splayed with a - thoughtful curiosity - over his pectorals, dark gaze fixed on the movement of her fingers over his skin. Watching the minute involuntary reactions she draws forth from his flesh, imperfect, human, the lifetime of pleasures and luxuries and debaucheries wound tightly into the shell of humanity.
"And me?" This time she does not look up; he does not have eye contact as a clue to her meaning. Just the coil of her voice around the base of his spine. The pressure of her own spine, backwards, against the pinpoint settling of his fingertips on the hard lines of her vertebrae. "Can you have what you require - " this little pause. Fine mouth spreading in a close-lipped smile.
Feeling the beat of his heart beneath her hand, turning one over, so that her knuckles are sharp against the hard line of his sternum, while the other sinks lower, flattened between them, drifting with precise, pinpoint pressure down the taut plane of his upper abdomen, where the protection of the ribs cuts away to be replaced by the compact muscles of the human core.
"do you take what you require from me?"
Her eyes are downcast again, the long sweep of her lashes a dark smudge against her pale cheeks, the fullness of her lower lip caught back by a little white tooth.
"What if I said yes?" Hummed, this, in a speculative voice that edges on the sing-song. There's that lingering hint of the chord he gave her. Spread out and rearranged. Call it Variations on a Theme. "The thrill of the chase gone. My neck bent to your yoke. Content with my lot. Making eyes at you when you bring me out to while away a few hours on a lazy Sunday." Mouth curved around the words, her voice made of smoke. "Would you really want that." Here, her eyes dart up again, that searching precision of hers feels so spare until she meets his gaze. Her own still dark with hunger. The blue the color of the sky at midnight, where it wraps around the light bleeding from a dying star.
And she smiles then. Enough that he can read the expression in the soft skin around her eyes. So fine it is nearly poreless.
"A guarantee. What sort of guarantee do you require? Travel is not easy for my kind, Zazh. And Detroit - I don't think they have a string quartet. Much less a symphony. I burned bridges in Chicago some time ago, too. Though the sovereign who declared a blood hunt for me has fallen, I think."
ZazhHe laughs, the sound a shake under her fine fingers, spread generously through and across his chest. Lines of hair, sparse and fine touch just under her nails while the flicker of muscles form twitches under the exposure of the cold air and her cooled presence.
"If you say yes, then...you say Yes. And nothing changes."
He leans forward slightly to touch brow to brow when she finally lifts her gaze to meet his, hands remaining, wrapped up in the lines and folds of her dress, flimsy a thing as it is, travelling the plane of her lower back, slowing only as the sharp edges of her vertebrae dance under his grip.
"As far as taking from you...mmmm" Consideration there, true and serious, his eyes closed for a moment. Then- "I had entertained thoughts of replacing my last. You are the closest thing to a creature of Taste as I've found since Her, but...the more I know of you and about you, the less concerned I am with your taste and more with your...substance. A fact that makes you less a meal and more a companion." He smiles, pressing close enough to crush most of the space between them.
"Detroit yes and no. They do not boast operatic tastes. I think a creature like you might wilt to nothing in such a dead zone. I'll be choking semi-regularly myself, I think and as soon as my dealings are complete there, I will be moving on." He turns them then, a gentle thing and his hands move around to push at her, tenderly almost, an indication of the door in that separation, which parts under the press of Luce's shoulder. The bedroom beyond is a sparse thing. Little more than the planes of a bed with thick sheets, a mirrored closet and the spread of windows dusted with drawn blinds.
"I came in search of a guarantee that for the foreseeable future, would settle any discomfort at us being separated." He has turned to address Jennifer, moving to pluck the girl up from hips to arms and collect her in his grip. A brief and quick thing, making use of plenty of leverage to spread her generous curves across the bathroom towel that coats the floor, careful to keep her head from ricocheting needlessly.
"I think that tonight has provided me with considerable incentive toward that Guarantee-..Well..." He ducks into the bedroom to retrieve a blanket from a nearby pile of folded laundry, shaking it loose with the snap of a wrist and grip. A glance is cast at Luce then, grin half-formed, framed by the low light of the bathroom's bulb.
"Almost, I think."
LuceHer smile spreads, wider, the hint of white teeth beneath that soft, stained little mouth as he dips his head forward to tuck close, brow to brow. Gaze dark and steady, her attention fine and unyielding as her hands, on his skin. His own black gaze reflected back to him in the depths of her irises, shining with that smeared, softly white light that gleams from the vanity and burnishes the white tiles lining the walls.
"I don't mind." The smile slipping now, from the edge of her mouth, lingers in the darkness of her eyes, where it takes on an ardent edge. She breathes out, and in, nostrils flaring as she inhales his familiar scent, damped with the steam in the room. "If you take, sometimes. Taste, sometimes." Her hands are still on his chest, fingertips a firm forward pressure until his own grip tightens and he crushes her close.
The sound she makes is experimental, experiential, a framing half-smile, with edge of teeth and laughter embedded deep in the bones of it, the sort she always seems to keep inside her, letting it out through the gleam of her eyes and the curve of her mouth and the curl of her shoulders beneath his hands, against his body.
"We all need - " she is glancing away, a slanting look down the cut of his nose and jaw, the pockmarked cheek to the frame of his shoulder, the open collar, the attachment of tendons at the distal ends of his collar bones. The pulse buried beneath his skin. Then back, the smile dark in her eyes. " - something. But when you do - if you do - I want you to tell me. I want to know, Zazh. I want to feel it, if I can. Do you see?"
Then he is pushing her away. Gently, quite nearly tenderly. Her shoulder blades against the cool wood of the door, the lights from the bathroom cutting a twisting square of light into the bedroom. A glance away from him, the flat plane of the bed, the gleam of their reflections, darkened in the mirrored closet doors.
The dark eyes cut back to him as he lifts Jennifer, from the vanity to the towel spread on the bathroom floor. The edge of her mouth curving minutely wider for the care he gives to the poor girl's lolling head. Eyes fixed briefly, hungrily, on the faint hint of bruising beneath her neck, where blood from the meal he interrupted has spread under the soft, pale skin. Assuaged by the meal, but hardly sated.
Still, she stands there. Watching him as he snaps open the blanket and shakes it out over the unconscious girl, arms crossed loosely over her torso, which is bowed outward in the hip slung posture she always seems to favor, shoulders back against the door. Like all satin, the dress is unforgiving; and now, sadly, shows every wrinkle from the evening's exertions.
"Almost. Hmm." Considered, the steady flash of her dark gaze; the private curl of her little mouth. Turning away from him, her shoulder cutting into the door as she reaches up and back, to pull the weight of her hair again from the back of her neck and tuck it neatly over her shoulder. A glance back over her shoulder at him, at his mouth and that half-formed grin. That note in the back of her throat half-audible, washing his scent across the back of her mind. "What more incentive do you need?"
Zazh"Mmmm. Were I ever to indulge myself in tasting your airs, Luce, It-" He pauses, backlit by the doorway, staring down at Jennifer with something...odd about his stance. It is not exactly scrutiny or even wonder, simply a regard not unlike the brief flash of something old he'd displayed for a hint of a moment in the club he'd found her in last, dressed in another man's cologne while Jazz sang off the lips of a voice he thought he'd recognized.
"-I believe...it would be in a different skin. A different name." The pause is not long but it is solid. Easily identified and incapable of splashing effortlessly into the next. It hangs there around his shoulders, as he pulls several towels, almost ruthlessly, from their rack, his attentions (Zazh himself) returning to the moment, bundling the collection of cottons together to form a pillow beneath Jennifer's head, the skirl of his shirt's tails settling to the outside of either thigh when he crouches.
"Incentive would hardly be the word."
He climbs back to his feet, after a brief inspection at Jennifer's pulse, her brow for a fever, even a cursory clap of his knuckles at her cheek (gentle, but firm) in a rousing fashion. She does not react and he offers an affirming sound somewhere under his tongue before returning to the doorway threshold, hand hovering over the light switch, gaze travelling Luce in that manner and measure he'd been doing since they first met.
"I know girls like you." He says it with clarity, crystal and firm. He pushes past the threshold a hand striding out to catch at her stomach, press at her sternum, eyes still reeling across the subtle lines and angles of her svelte frame.
"Fond of the chase and the hunt and the taste and ever eager to catch that brief moment of gut-wrenching calamity that comes with an upheaval of a Happy Ending possible. You long to be proven right-" He pushes again, back until her calves meet the bed's edge and he's inside her personal space once more, fingers gliding up to touch beneath her chin.
"-Even while you're proving wrong with a smile and a suggestion. Expert in every way of the wrong. Careful, meticulous, precise and insightful." He leans down to take a chaste kiss from her lips then, sharing her artificial breath after it's done, scant inches between their eyes.
"I could use someone like you. A creature of refinement. A figure of prominence. A power and a partner. Your taste is exquisite and your patience exceptional." He pauses, in words only, hands moving to wrap around the fluidly elusive curves of her then.
"You'd not be a servant. That would be waste, but...There comes a time when a man such as me must content himself with the thoughts beyond the Fairy Tale and I came to that conclusion a long time ago. I do not want a wife. Or simply a lover. Or just a confidant." Another kiss, a little firmer, tongue flicking out to catch her lower lip briefly.
"I want someone Trusted." A pause, fingers pressing at her hips, the edge of the mattress and gravity pulling Luce off her feet. "A rarity in these times." His hands press down into the mattress after her, gaze following the sudden spread and vanish of her breasts beneath the sheer dress, little more than minutiae at this stage.
"When you're done your time, settled what affairs you wish to settle and done whatever deeds inspire you so...then know that I have a duty waiting for you that...I believe you'll enjoy." His nose, spread lip grin, teeth. They find the firmness across her stomach, for a moment as he climbs back toward her features.
"Among other past times of course."
Lucestill here!
LuceHer attention is fixed; scouring without being abrasive, her senses open. How can she miss the flash of something old about him; the distinctive, material pause that settles over his shoulders.
A different skin. Some other name.
"There are - " the wreathing curl of her half smile, framed by her shoulder and the curling mass of her tangled hair. " - Kindred," irony embedded in the fabric of the word. " - who can weave masks. Trick the eye into seeing some stranger's face rather than their own. I can usually see through those masks, if I look closely enough. That's not - "
The thought dies in the back of her throat.
That flickering intensity to her attention, dropping to his hands as he tugs the towels from their rack, cutting up to watch his face as he crouches and finishes his inspection, assuring himself of the girl's likely survival.
Then he's on his feet again; Jennifer forgotten, his eyes on her narrow frame, the long white legs, the suggestion of hips beneath the loose sweep of the satin dress, the S-curve of her spine, the sharp framework of her shoulders.
I know girls like you.
That clarity; she stalks backward as he walks her forward, mouth curving in that wry challenge he can quite nearly taste in the air around her. "Do you." Dark eyes gleaming around the words, bare feet soft on the floor as he presses her back to the edge of the bed. "Except I'm hardly a girl, no more than you're a mere - "
Chin rising as he steps in close enough that she can feel the head radiant from his body. Can breathe it in with each (unnecessary) breath she takes. There's a certain way she lifts her little chin, tucks it upward with tip of his fingers; a certain way her smile carves itself into the corners of her mouth that spells out a wordless challenge: the siren's song. Closer. Come closer, I dare you.
There's more challenge underneath it; her mouth half-open with it as he bends to take the first chaste kiss from her. She maintains a certain deliberate distance between their bodies; less protective now than it was hours earlier tonight, when she was wretched with hunger. Closer to goading; that careful, meticulus, precise way she holds her shoulders back from his so that he must lean in closer for the next kiss. Her eyes sharp on his; that minute sense of keen attention framing the orbits as her dark eyes cut back and forth between his, in searching focus.
It is only when he pushes he down onto the mattress that she reaches out for him. Links her hands behind his neck as hands depress the mattress on either side of her narrow hips and he climbs over her. The hem of the dress riding up, his shadow crawling over her. His teeth find her stomach, framed by the prominent flare of her hip bones; a dull scrape against her skin, and the spread of his grin, the warmth of his breath through the fine weave of silk-stain. Her long fingers splay wide, cup the back of his skull with an artist's precision. Then slip from the back of his skull, drift down his shoulders and arms, his chest, to his waist. Fine fingers working the buckle of his belt with the same precision she applied to each button of his shirt.
She is breathing lightly, now; breasts little more than a shadow against her chest, rising and falling with each contraction of her diaphragm.
Her eyes are dark on his face. They touch his gaze; then drop to his mouth as he promises her other past times, of course.
"With an offer like that," the faint curl of a narrow smile. That note again, resonant in the back of her throat. "How could I say no?"
Zazh"Mmmm, Masks and Illusions."
He all but hums it beneath her chin, attentions exploring the deft and careful symmetry of her throat for a moment, as if he might sense that very brief tension she seems to reflexively air with the flush of remembered 'feeding'. It does not last long,as Zazh's senses begin to dull to articulate response under the touch and motion of the young creature beneath hm. His hums turn deeper and it is only the brief drift of her hands to his belt that bring him to a moment's pause.
"Heh" He offers, peering down at her, hands pressed to either side ofer shoulders "You're you. I'm fairly sure you'd find a way." He leans his weight into her, a hand moving forward to brush the blonde behind one of her ears, and then press to the back of her neck. "I'm simply glad you aren't."
And thus, the Reign of Calamity began, not with a battle, or a war or a wedding, or an agreement.
Simply a deal, quite long in teeth of negotiating.
Russian Hill.
It is a hallmark of gentrified history. Suggestions of the culture that spawned it's sleek hills and garden spruced ledges, still peek out in the occasional store or shop hidden in the awnings and shadows of the condominiums and high-rise apartment complexes. One has to search them out, for they are artfully carved into obfuscation by the architecture of the times (If you won't be bought, then you will be forgotten). Treasures though they are, the Mom and Pop are giving way to the new age and the different and it is only in Time that their memories will stand.
The view, however, driving down Madison, affords those with sharp senses, a brief glimpse at these hidden treasures. Hovels in-grown, like the toenails of some great beast, they hover and hide and skulk in the dark, still replete with the ancient steel bars that make up security features all too obsolete. Through the tinted windows of the Sedan, the ducked and quiet little suggestions of items and services and oddities for sale, quietly continue their stalwart existence and reach out to the keenest of eyes to show their mysterious and nostalgic wares.
The march of time stopped for a brief moment of locational consideration.
The Sedan takes the corners at a leisurely pace, Crosby in the front seat, draped in long freshly wet (from the shower) platinum hair, pair of beige capris, over red hot heels (kicked off into the shotgun seat so she can reach the pedals easier) and a sharp military bomber jacket, lifted from one of these cheap little Mom and Pop shops that were no doubt a fetish for the young Driver. She had greeted Luce on the street of the slender Blonde's choosing and offered little more than a smile and a
"You're getting to be habit forming, I see."
And a pluck of the car door, to allow Luce entry into the rear cab. They had driven with the divider window up and the music upfront a thrumming baseline suggestive of something one might find in a club so far underground you needed a hastily scrawled map from some Half drunk Hipster just to find the entrance. The drive is short though and the effort, none at all, as the Sedan pulls up to the curb of a familiar complex (rows of garden shrubbery fit in Feng Shui perfection to either side of a narrow stone walkway, all before a towering rubix cube of white and green apartments). Most of the windows above are darkened, though the night is hardly old.
Crosby opens the door once more for Luce to exit.
"I think you know the way from here." That same little smile, genuine and without the catty nature one might associate with the feminine kind. Her teeth do not flash and her attention remains on Luce only so long as she remains within the Orbit of the Sedan. The door is shut and Crosby, turns without a backward glance to pluck the Driver's side door open, a wash of Drum and Base, leaping out in the brief moment it takes her to climb back in. The door shuts and the car peels off back into the night.
Luce
It wasn't the Sir Francis Drake tonight. It was some godforsaken crossroads in the tenderloin, a ten minute walk from a dozen dive bars and a half-dozen anonymous apartment and condo complexes, some no more than sagging tenements, others the leading edge of gentrification. Still the leading edge of gentrification, in fact, half-sold, half-empty, the builders' adverts now covered in graffiti, the expensive condos slowly converted to slightly-less-expensive (though still expensive) rentals, in the uneasy borderlands of the neighborhood, where a methodone clinic could be found next door to a vegan restaurant, with a record store specializing in European jazz tucked away upstairs.
She was distracted on the phone. (I'm busy. - she averred. Tautly, perhaps sharply, though mobiles do strange things with the human voice. Only at first.) Half-an-hour later, though, there she was on the sidewalk, a short trench coat in crushed black velvet over a white satin sheath dress. A small bag tucked beneath her right arm, standing out against the neighborhood like a sore thumb.
Crosby receives - for her trouble - a dark-eyed, steady look, the flash of a brief, faintly wry smile as the creature disappears into the back seat of the sedan. Luce lingers close to the passenger's window, her forehead against the glass, eyes moving in this steady, rapid pace, watching the city, the neighborhood, all those old Russian Hill treasures whir past, backgrounded by the dulled sense of the deep bass beat of the driver's music.
--
She pauses on the sidewalk outside the apartment block, lifting her chin to study the darkened windows. The outline the building makes against the city's skyline. The cubist shadow it cuts across the well manicured hedges - taking all that in before she begins to walk up the sidewalk, through the gate. Slipping the bag from right arm to her left, removing the coat smoothly as she walks toward the entrance, satin dress shifting like water with every step she takes. Slowly revealed as she peels off the coat and - finally - folds it over her right arm, tucking the little black sequined back firmly against the dark folds of the coat.
The dress is short, with a modest neckline, satin falling a sequined silver collar cinched around her throat. The back, though, is entirely bare well past her waist, framed by the drape of a few strands of glittering silver beans from the sequined straps that hug her otherwise bare shoulders.
Her hair is up tonight, loosely rather than intricately secured. An afterthought, the strands pulled away from her fine features.
She pauses at the security door, her reflection a floating pale against the dark frame of the evergreen shrubs behind her, flanking the walk. The glittering lights of the city where the street falls away, following the steep sweep of one of San Francisco's many hills. Hesitates a moment, counting off the apartment numbers in her head, perhaps. Then pushes a button to be buzzed inside.
Zazh
The button hums. A soft sound, hardly the garish annoyance of a typical buzzer to be found in some run down apartment complex. It is a soft vibration under the fingertip, not all together unpleasant while the bulb beneath lights up a florescent blue, that turns the blood beneath the vaguest sense of violet.
A few moments is all it takes for her to wait, before there is a sudden flicker of life from the intercom upon the Silver box that serves as both name repository and speaking device. Zazh's voice comes across with a quipped little.
"Prompt as always."
Before the door 'chimes' flicking open on some hidden mechanics, just enough for Luce to reach out and grasp the bar that will allow her entry. The door will swing back into place after she's pushed through and seal closed again by some strange magnetic process, a quick almost suctioning pressure.
* * * * *
The Elevator's velvet presence gives way to that stark, minimalist hallway and eventually the door leading into the apartment, which has been left slightly ajar for her to make use of. The interior is darkened, as the first time she came here, yet the diffuse gleam of that same track lighting floods the peripheral senses when they reach out to test the air.
His presence can be smelled. Felt. Heard.
Scent: The crisp and subtle suggestion of Tobacco. Not enough to warrant a party of smokers, but a single pungent cigar that has been burning for a long and slow period of time. It haunts, with tender suggestions of dark chocolate, airy nostalgia and the vaguest hint of mint.
Felt: The way he captures most environments, here within his home it is an easy thing. A demanding thing, quite incapable of being helped. The hallway walls leading into that open space within which he decorates nothing, is replete with the sensation of presence as if he were intent on being there to greet her or anyone really, without ever leaving the couch.
Heard: He is humming again. Some strange, vaguely familiar musical tone that he has done and said before. Hauntingly soft and yet audible within the open expanse of the apartment itself. He lift his voice every so often and allows it to fall and by no means a gifted talent, he is not unpleasant, skirting a baritone.
Luce enters and the floor below those dividing three stairs is darkened and undecorated as usual. Above the three stair climb however, the couch, the Piano and the Podium garden are all lit by a soft white glow from overhead spotlights. The first, the couch is where he lounges, the deep forest greens of it's L shape, made welcoming and floral by the illumination. His attire is the long length of a jacket, well suited for an outside jaunt and a pair of black slacks to match the colour. The shirt beneath is a crimson bloody, buttoned to within two, just below the chin and just above the hollow and the throat's base. His hair has begun to grow back, but only enough to appear full rather than cancer patient. His feet are clad in simple shoes, the kind you might find on an Armani favoured business man.
The Piano is gilded in that same pearlescent light and under it, Luce is privy to the strangely warping waves that travel through it's lacquered finish. Invisible in all other lights, it would seem whatever bulb Zazh has put within the tracking beams has brought out the hidden darkness of primordial green flushed and fluid in the dark finish of the grand piece.
Lastly, the Podium Garden. The piece being human is no longer alone. To either polar North and South, at the very borders of the Garden, bound and danae both rest and sit, the former on a lower pedestal, six inches the height inferior of being human while the latter, is six inches superior. An ascending to descending taste, that is not symmetrical as much as it is disjointed.
He sits upon the couch gazing at the pieces, fingers under his chin and eyes narrowed slightly. The white light above him casts shadows in the hollow places of his features. A monochrome flash of stillness.
"...Hello, Dear." He says without turning.
"I trust the ride was comfortable enough?"
Luce
Waiting. At the front door; in the marbled lobby. In the warm velvet privacy of the elevator, the hidden lights, the dampened sound. The background hum, not of the city now - sealed out by the magnetic rush of the front door closing behind her as she slips inside - but of the quiet running interior of the building. The furnace, the elevator's motor. The thousand little conveniences built into the shell of the place, all the tail ends of wiring and tubing and ducts and pipes and vents hidden away, sealed behind the walls. Still, the hum of a modern building at work, which becomes simply a hum, tuneless, near a baritone as she pushes open the front door of his apartment. As she pulls it closed. Latched behind - with one spare, backward glance - behind her.
Right hand lingering on the door frame, she takes a deep breath of the tobacco tinged air. The hint of chocolate, the mint underneath. Closes her eyes just once, her straightening the faint forward curve of her shoulders as if bracing herself greet him.
The strike of her heels against the floor is a crisp, measured counterpoint to the soft lilt of his hum. The shoes themselves - three inch heels, four perhaps, silver to match the dress and crusted with glittering crystals that bathe the floor around her feet in scattered shards of refracted light, focusing the diffuse wash of the track lighting that gives the space that ambient glow.
Down the steps and up, long legs working with that careless grace, jacket folded neatly over her arm. Though she discards that - and the little sequined black bag - as soon as she can. Tucking them neatly on the lacquered piano bench without so much as a second look, if only because her attention is fixed on the depth of green gleaming through the black lacquer, the patterns it opens in the surface of the instrument.
She pulls her attention away from the piano, allows her eyes to drift over the pieces on the podium as she weaves her way to the couch where he sits. Keeping him just in her peripheral vision, turning to watch the shadows shift across Danae's sculpted back as she moves. No comment - no specific comment - on his acquisition of the pieces. Except for that look, the way her eyes remained fixed on the work even as she circles the display, angled toward him.
It is his voice that pulls her back. Has her turning, lifting her chin, fixing darkened eyes on him. Her make-up is dramatic tonight; dark around the eyes, which only adds to that sense of bruised hunger, of restrained want, her mouth crimson smear. And ever so slightly imperfect.
"Perfectly comfortable." She breathes out in return, reaching down with a long, bare white arm to brace herself against the back of the couch and bend down, brushing familiar kisses over his cheeks. Cool, precise pressure, these, married to the sweep of her lowered lashes. Not even a hint of tooth, though with the second airy little kiss she lingers, so still, and inhales through her nose and half-parted mouth both.
Then peels herself away, turning her head aslant, so he has this lifting view of the plane of her cheek, the sleek curve of her jaw, the soft hollow beneath the spare joint. Her skin smells fresh; clean. Her perfume a subtle note beneath the immediacy of a recent shower. Other scents cling to her hair, though. Her tobacco. Whiskey. Some man's cheap cologne, perhaps. And perhaps, beneath that, the familiar, acrid flare of gunpower as she pulls away.
To tuck herself neatly, precisely on the couch perhaps a foot from his perch, smoothing the short hem of the dress over her thighs as she sits, this liquid, familiar gesture.
"And you, Zazh." She glances up at him then, this sidelong look that touches his dark, hollowed features, then his throat. Were you to offer terms, she might swear she could hear his heartbeat even from this distance. "I trust you're enjoying your most recent acquisitions?"
Zazh
(Hmmm...Perception 2 + Alertness 2.)
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Zazh
He is patient.
Watching her approach is a careful thing, studied with the same distant appreciation he has for the artwork upon the podium. the lines of her on display and the subtle curves that can accentuate to present femininity or plane to represent androgyny. Her entire figure is a suggestion, calculated with the smallest of movements and the way the dress seems to move with fervent need, like it might dash off of her and back on again at a moment's notice.
He watches her skate into his peripheral and out again, his attention returning to the pieces nearby only to return when she finally places herself into the crook of the couch, fetched and fetchingly nearby. The kisses are returned with distracted airs, a distraction that deepens as she inhales him slowly like a wine of some sort, savouring and he in turn her, sharper and rapidly as if in search of...
"Mmmm, enjoying would be the wrong term for it."
His gaze finds the distant pieces, head tilting forward and eyes narrowing. The low brilliance of the light overhead, makes this a ghoulish thing, carving dark hollows over his eyes, beneath his nose and brow. The hollow under his chin is a second maw and his hand rises to point at the pieces, pinching them from a distance as if he were a child seeking to crush mountains from a loaded perspective.
"I find the heights are off. The pieces, disjointed. Each of their tastes is a separate thing and one I enjoy in each their own and yet together, even on the peripheral I am having a difficult time not being aggravated. Danae wants attention and demands the eye and grows jealous instead of imploring when she catches me glancing at Bound. Yet Bound is so enviably wrapped up in itself I can scarcely stand to look at them for long...at least in the presence of being human, which goads me to rise above and be better in the face of their teasing..."
His features grow grim as he tirades for a moment, leaning slightly forward to steeple finger to finger, chin dressed in that trimmed and dark goatee, upon his outstretched and joined thumbs. He 'hmphs' gaze flicking around the apartment.
"I'm tempted to lock them away in corners, each but then I'd spend a chunk of my day paying tribute time to each just by presence alone. It's rather annoying to be so ruled by the perspective of ownership."
A pause. His heartbeat, a steady thing, reverberating as it does in the hollow echo-sensitivity of the couch beneath them.
"Why...do you smell of gunpowder?" All without glancing at her, or seeming to change his conundrum ridden features.
Luce
If they were human - and they are not human - the space between them would be awkward. Too close to allow the requisite amount of personal space most Americans require. Too far apart to be intimate.
But they are not human; have stripped themselves of the need for such boundaries long since. And she keeps that distance between them - a foot, more or less - sinks, perches, really, just at the edge - into the crook where the couches meet, smooths the hem of her skirt over her pale thighs, then settles her hands flat on the cushions beside her, palms down, long, delicate fingers flanking her hips.
As if she required ballast tonight.
Or boundaries.
He can choose his perspective. Straight on, the direct, A-line cut of the white satin conceals rather than reveals her frame. Emphasizes the boyish narrowness of her torso beneath the sharp, square precision of her shoulders. Aslant, the dress falls away so precipitously from her body that he can see every line of her back and shoulders, the S-curve of her spine, the dip of her waist. The shadow of her ribs, curving around her flank. Expanding and - then, ah - contracting, so rhythmic and precise with every breath she takes.
She turns her head, so that she is cheated toward him, in three-quarter profile, and watches him, eyes still and dark. Studies him so steadily, while he frowns over his acquisitions, launches into his complaint about the demands of ownership. Pale brows drawn together, dark gaze drifting over his profile. The dark shadows gathering in the hollows of his features. They way they pool and disperse in time with the animate tirade on the difficulties and deficiencies of the pieces he has aquired. Their competing demands on his attention, displayed so. Arrayed so.
"You would not enjoy my studio, then. Pieces arrayed without consideration for their demands. Simply because I want them to be there." The dark thread of a half-smile in her voice; some hint of distance, for all that her attention seems fixed, entire, on him.
"Canvases still stacked 'gainst the walls," her voice is low tonight. Lower than he remembers it, if he thinks to remember it, voiced in her chest rather than her throat. The distance in it feels deliberate; some choice she makes. Eyes still fixed on him, dark and soft and hungry. "Four deep, or five. Sometimes I turn them over so I cannot see them. So I'm surprised by them in a month or a year, when I see them again. Anew."
The faintest twist of her mouth. Heard rather than seen. "I do that with Beethoven, too. Permit myself to enjoy his symphonies no more than once a year, so that I never become innured to them. So easy to take their power for granted when you eat them piecemeal, let them hum in the background of some ordinary evening."
Fingers curl into the upholstery of the couch. Her head is canted just aslant, the messy knot of her hair a heavy twist at the back of her neck. Eyes still and dark, opaque but for the rings of light reflected from the overhead spots.
"Remove bound," she suggests at last, finally cutting a brief glance toward the works themselves. Which have less specific gravity for her tonight than he seems to though - there, just there, as she lifts her chin towards the sculptures he has acquired. A breath withheld. Then another, this unvoiced little gasp, as she is momentarily hooked by the prospect of the piece. "To your bedroom. No," a quiet noise. " - your closet. You have a walk-in, yes? It will hardly notice your lack of attention; will revel in itself when all the lights are off. And you will see it in that cloistered space, morning and evening, when you dress or disrobe.
"Perhaps then the others will share space more graciously."
--
Why - do you smell like gunpowder?
His last question brings her eyes in a controlled sweep back to his profile. Thumbs drift carelessly over the upholstery beneath her splayed hands. Or perhaps not carelessly; instead - deliberately, anchoring.
"Would you believe," a conscious flush of rue over the quiet husk of her voice. "target practice."
Zazh
"No. I wouldn't."
His attention does not drift toward her, or seem to schism from the pieces he has described. She is given the stage to present her depiction of some fabled studio, which gathers the perk of a brow (interest) though not his eyes attention. She dresses down the inhabitation of the pieces here, allowed their moment to spawn and craft, their inspired presence not simply a perspective but a true taste of living. Of existence. Each stands out, licking the air and leaving behind an echo from which reaction can be pulled. At least...as far as Zazh is concerned.
Not an audience to watch him, but a Troupe to participate with.
Is it any wonder the Man's apartment had been devoid of pieces before Luce? He might never leave for the conversations with the walls that might demand attention.
"The closet." A feral grin, bright and illuminating, leaning forward so that the light overhead sheds some of the darkness beneath his brow, nose and chin. His elbows settle into place upon either knee and his attention drifts minutely from the others toward bound, an almost conspiratorial (viciously evil) spread of lips sealing the fate of the narcissistic piece. "Of course. I should have thought of that earlier..."
He turns toward Luce with a sudden start, head ratcheting around to orient on her 'distant' presence, that grin subsiding slightly but not fully, to regard her features. Her eyes. His head cants to one side and for the first time, his eyes skip past her body and dress, toward that small chunk of distance between them. He doesn't frown, simply shunts his jaw off to one side, lips twisted upward. His gaze snaps back up to her features and the eyes narrow over a smile that begins to disassemble that misaligned jaw.
"Your ability with guns, unless a lie-" A sliver of humour "-would make such activities about as likely as you mingling with the invisible. That is...what would be the point?" A pause, the smile fading into a flatter line. Not angry. Not impatient. Not even displeased simply...curious, without the eagerness to make it a demand.
"...I trust you understand not to bring your woes and worries into my world." He leans forward slightly, shaving an inch or two off the space between them, elbow reaching out to catch the couch's edge, the hand attached to the same arm rising to cup the side of his head for support.
"...I would hate to have to tighten your chains any."
Luce
There she is - staring at him when he turns toward her with that sudden start. Her head level, her eyes drifting with a precision that is anything but careless between his eyes and his mouth. Dropping, every few heartbeats, to the shadow beneath his jaw. She can read the first hint of movement in his body before he turns, and he finds her eyes on his as if she were waiting for him to turn to her. To look at her. See her.
And then she is his shadow. He cants his head, and her own tips a few degrees as well, the weight of her hair pulling against its haphazard moorings, the soft wash of overhead lights pulling out bands of gold and honey from the blond as she moves. He considers the narrow stretch of distance between them, and her eyes drop as well. Linger on the strange, parti-hued gray shadows she casts over the green, which shift and curl with every breath she takes. Then cuts a glance back upward, touching on his mouth before finding his eyes again.
There is nothing misaligned about her. Red mouth just parted, her eyes a liquid sort of darkness, still steady on him as he smile fades to something, else. The right corner of her little mouth curls upward; the muscles around her eyes contract, this sliver of response to his sliver of humor.
The faintest physical touché of acknowledgment that threatens to become something more. To curl like smoke into the intimate suggestion of a still and quiet smile. The sort that might cast light into the dark steadiness of her gaze. Which sputters; then dies, stillborn, as he mentions her chains.
Her fine little mouth flattens, her breathing shallow now. The barest curl of her narrow shoulders against white satin. She looks quite deliberately away from him, not toward the center of the room, but toward the walls. Or perhaps, somehow, the city beyond.
"As you can see," a brief, sharp little curl of her mouth. "I came when you called regardless of my woes. Came, quite entirely intact. You have no reason to complain, I think. And no reason to question me."
Zazh
"That wasn't a complaint or a question."
He stands then, shifting away from his relaxed posed and climbs earnestly to his feet. The crackle of his knees can be heard, a faint winge of age grasping at his features which she might miss, glancing off into the beyond in an effort to avoid him without moving ("As Women are want to do" Zazh has commented to Crosby no few times). He stretches slightly in the absence of conversation, impervious to the awkward or at least, inconsiderate of it's meaning.
"You are a constant surprise and often are...surprised. You stand and exist in this occupancy of two worlds. The pretend constellation of humanity and whatever truth that hides under those lovely little breasts of yours." He steps around her settled legs and feet, over them almost so that he can catch the side of her peripheral view, turned away from him.
"You speak of Hungers. Many and varied, as Hungers are spoken of in plural. To be sated, satisfied, truncated, nourished or assuaged. All these different little words that mean the same thing and yet absolute differences exist in their utterance." He pauses to regard her, a slight frown about his features. "You tell me about the inconsistencies of the life you lead and the fulfilment in others hovering around you. Lagos, this Annabelle woman-" A casual flip of his hand at the statues behind them "-throwing off shackles while wearing others. The choice of it all-"
He plants one knee against the outside of her thigh, the other falling into place the opposite leg's thigh. It is a sudden move, meant to pin her in place, though he hovers over her lap, keeping her legs firmly pressed between his own.
"-is so very simple and yet you choose to make it complicated with hurt feelings and measures of..." He drops the long coat off his shoulders and sheds it onto the couch behind him, hands reaching to the cuffs of his sleeves, beginning to roll each one up to the elbow and cinch there.
"...Respect."
He will raise a finger, offering a warning glance to any resistance she puts up, some flash of emerald eyes making memories of power in his voice. All the while, leaning forward, resting his weight along her thighs and knees, that he gaze down at her features, hands rising to cup either cheek and turn her face up toward him.
"You and I respect one another as much as necessary. As much as we are capable in this little arrangement of ours. You have your secrets and not once have I pursued them to their conclusion. Nor would do I find it fascinating enough to forego your other very obvious-" A glance down her body then "-attributes, in favour of finding out." And back up to her gaze.
"So when I say your troubles are not mine. That your chains are those I would prefer to leave untightened, you should be grateful for the respect in those words. There are hundreds who have had and been far more than you could be, who I would sooner put in the ground than offer any sense of security like you have." A pause, gaze for gaze.
"You smell of gunpowder. Which means guns. Which means someone was angry enough to fire one near, around or at you. If that's true, then it is far easier for me to assume they might turn that barrel in my direction for association with you, rather than not. Because I do not know these individuals firing guns around my Dear Luce and I would hate to think I might need to do something about them if I catch more than a scent about such indiscretions." His grin livens.
"...As necessary as the frisk in the elevator, Dear. Nothing more than that, unless you make it and if then? We have more concerns than simple respect to talk of."
Luce
Quite as women are wont to do. See? When he rises, she turns her head minutely to follow his path. To keep him in her peripheral vision, her breath is still withheld, or rather, shallowly kept. Held, then expelled before another is drawn, alertness clear in every ( - stiff - ) line of her elegant frame. He steps over her legs, and she - she darts a lifting glance upward, following the path his shadow casts over her body. So he has no more than three or four heartbeats to enjoy her profile before her eyes are on him again, wider now, the lingering darkness brightened by rings of light reflected from overhead.
This cheated, sidelong look, her neck taut, her head canted away from him. Something animal about her wariness tonight. Though from this perspective, looking down at her - shoulders cut away from him, thighs and knees and calves tucked neatly and primly together - he might have a sense of how carefully she holds herself in place. How active her underlying stillness seems.
Until he climbs onto the couch over her; pins her in place with his body. Then she turns sharply back to him, restraint gone, pushes herself backwards. Palms digging into the couch cushions for leverage as she slides back from her perch at the edge of the couch, until her spine hits the cushions of the back and he raises that warning finger.
" - don't touch me." Low-voiced, raw. The words seem not calculated, but torn from him. A warning, or a dare. Some Janus-face, this. The frisson of her civilized panic a straightjacket over something darker in her eyes, which lashes back against it. Rattles those civilized fucking bonds.
Each breath is she takes is sharp and shallow. Through the mouth rather than the nose so she need not drown in his scent.
When he cups her cheeks, lifts her head toward him, she closes her eyes. Opens them once, to meet his measure for measure.
"Zazh." So shallow are her respirations, there's something breathless about the way she says his name. " - you shouldn't, you shouldn't touch me tonight. And you -
" - you should know I would not. I would never - " The darkened eyes flash open, and she curves her neck, straining to lift her chin out of his grasp, to find some purchase, some control as he bears down on her and pins her in place.
"One of them is dead. The other - " Gaze cast sharply aslant. " - is not in any condition to go hunting. Even if he were, he has no reason to connect the person he shot - at whom he shot - with me. And no reason to connect me with you. Is that enough - " and then, directly back to meet his black eyes. Voice dropping a sudden, minor third, the flash of teeth a clear white warning beneath her painted mouth. " - respect for you?"
Zazh
Her movements. Brittle and soaked, gasoline stringent. They are weathered with the same surgical firmness of an orderly upon a hostile patient. He seems to recognize each bid of restraint and flutter of animal calamity housed so very close to the surface tonight. He turns her features slightly off to one side, when that flash of teeth arrive. when that hissing click of the word 'respect' frisson's off her lips. He meets her gaze with a scrutinizing calm both serious and dissecting. Searching first one eye at this angle, then turning her cheek minutely to do the same to the other.
"Ahhh." He says, in as low as voice as she. "There you are." His gaze rises over her brow and then down her lips. His fingers brush a dangerous lilt past the corners of her mouth, as they peel away from her features, though he remains bowed over her twisting face.
"-No, not enough but that would be paranoia talking." He leans back finally, releasing some of the pressure on her legs, gaze flying down her shape as if in appreciation, yet the small frown tastes more of scrutiny again. As if taking in the jittery tensions riding her framework and the constrained....something, hiding in her taut shape.
"Hmph." He offers when catching her gaze again, meeting that feral luminosity with the strangely reflectionless black of his own. Then he pulls off her legs, leaning his weight on one knee and back up to his own feet. He turns his body part way 'round, head canting just slightly aside as if an indication of-
"Would you like a drink? I'm feeling in the mood for a rhum. Dark and savoury..." His gaze lingers with her for a split second longer, even as he's turning to make his way toward that invisible alcohol cabinet near the Podium Garden.
"Gives you a moment to collect yourself, as well." In passing over his shoulder. "If you really want to that is..."
Luce
He turns her features this way, then that way, studying each at each precise angle. The cool, pale sweep of her cheekbones. The bruised, nascent hostility of her dark eyes, through the sweep of her soot-stained lashes. And she pulls deliberately against each turn he makes, watching him from the corners of her eyes, so that her gaze is more white than iris. Tendons in her neck stand out, and he can feel her thighs bunching between his knees, as she she were readying to launch herself forward, to break the cage of his body, did he not release her. Or, perhaps, just meet him half way.
He releases her head; she pulls her chin sharply up and away from him, closing her mouth around that feral, hungry flash of teeth so firmly she ends up pressing her crimson mouth together, just so. The expression would be prim, even sour were it not softened, changed entirely by the sense of need in her eyes. The way she breathes as he pulls back, his gaze falling down the rather strain, plain lines of the white satin gown. The way she breathes - as if she might convince her body - for the next breath, for the next two - to be satisfied with mere oxygen.
Her eyes are closed again. The heat of his body peels away from hers. She lifts a hand to her brow, then pushes her long fingers back through her hair, pulling a few strands out of their imperfect moorings.
"Scotch." - she requests, in this low, raw little tone that is only half-voiced, dropping from her throat to her chest for the last few words. " - neat, if you don't mind." Ignoring each of his other insinuations with the studied deliberation of the single-minded as she allows herself to sink back, quite alone against the spine of his couch as his footsteps toward the hidden cabinet echo quietly in the dark living room.
She forces herself to stand when the precise rhythm of his footsteps stops, breathing now as if to reassure herself of the possibility of control, smoothing the A-line dress over her body, curling her shoulders backward to rearrange the fall of those silver beads against the bare skin of her flanks, lifting her right hand to pat the messy chignon a the back of her head, to assure herself of its stability even as she reaches up with her left to correct any imperfections in the crimson paint staining her mouth. All these familiar rituals of primping. The civilized immediacy of them, to bury the beast.
When she is at last assured of her presentability, she straightens herself, shoulder and bare, curving spine, takes in a deep breath, and follows in his footsteps, her heels an elegant, staccato beat against the floor.
"You wouldn't be very happy with me, Zazh." Hard to tell whether the flick of her gaze over him, head to toe, is meant as deliberate provocation for him or for her. Perhaps he even misses it; turned away, fixing streets. Still, the insinuation of that look finds its way into her voice. Less tease than promise, superimposed with the briefest of wintry smiles. This neat little twist of her red mouth. "Or perhaps you would, after all. Still, I could hardly chance it, could I."
Zazh
"Mmmm, classic choice."
He arrives at the Pedestal garden, skirting bound with a hesitant and flippant glare (Yes I know what to do with you now, you princess of an art affair) before stepping into place to depress the magnetics on the cabinet. It hinges open on reflexive vacuum pistons, settling into a flat table surface, the square decanters of various alcohols pushed forward on hidden springs. A pair of glasses, dimpled along their bottoms, are plucked and set on one of the empty podiums, glittering in the track lighting overhead.
"-And you know what makes me happy then, do you dear?" He offers with no hint of humour or glimmer or playfulness. It sounds almost harsh, almost. The gilded edge of a knife, tucked safely in it's sheath. The presence of a threat, almost. Almost.
"Or not, perhaps. Perhaps." The scotch is unstopped, poured with delicacy to a third measure. A single malt of decadent, even powerful taste. Hardly expensive, but more than the average man pretending at airs of sophistication would dare suffer for.
"I find happiness to be a singular pursuit. Something you achieve over and over again, in repeated fashion. Strive to exist within only for a few seconds and then move onto the next available circumstance. Much like an orgasm, the taste of a really good chocolate cake or the subtle climax of a well done performance. That rush of giddiness that ends with a soft sigh of relief." He pauses, plugging the Scotch up once more in the process.
"Amazingly, even were I find some semblance of Happiness it would be short-lived. Not out of some self-destructive tendency, no, but because Happy, much as Sad or Angry, was never meant to be forever. It is not a pre-occupation or a state of mind. It is an emotion. Transient and symptomatic. Delightful sometimes, but a luxury."
He pours the Rhum next, a small can of Cola pulled from the cabinet, tabbed and poured in alongside the rhum, much less tenderly than the Scotch had gone. A quick turn with a slender glass rod which is dumped back into a small steel chalice.
"Contentment is the way to aim. Search for it in all things for with that one measure, we find satisfaction. Fulfilment. Reassurance and Faith. All in one subtle package." he turns to meet her presence when she eventually meets him or has arrived prior to his speech's completion. The Scotch is held out toward her, his features bereft of that maniac's grin or that Cheshire smile. If anything he looks as serious as he often does in displeasure.
"I think you've piqued my curiosity some, Luce." He warns. "Enough, perhaps that-" A half step closer, closing to that one foot distance. "-I think it best you remain here with me tonight."
Luce
"I've never been satisfied with contentment." Even the edge of her wry half-smile - that bright, darting thing, that clear, assured awareness of her own limitations. The absurdity of them. - feels raw somehow. Like new silk. Immeasurably soft, but striated. Fibrous. "Not for long. It always begins to feel to straightening. Like you're being squeezed into a vessel that does not quite suit you. Though perhaps that is not contentment after all. Is it.
"And happiness - except, as you say, in the immediate, exquisite focus of sharp, clear, ever-passing moments - is otherwise the province of fools. Whom I will only suffer out of necessity, never choice." The wry half-smile blooms into something softer. Darker, as she uncoils a long pale arm to accept the Scotch from his hand without otherwise closing the distance between them.
Intent, indeed, on preserving it tonight.
Her left arm is abducted across her torso, firmly enough that it distorts the A-line of the dress at the waist. The right arm is bent at the elbow, the Scotch held with deliberate care, her fine fingers pinpoint around the mouth of the glass, holding it so that she can see the light shine through the amber liquid and inhale the smokiness of the peat in that harsh single malt.
He comes a half-step closer. She holds herself all the more upright, pulling herself up through the spine. And gives him this spare little half-smile, the edges of which seem - crisp and starched with -
"Then perish your curiosity, darling. If you have questions, ask. But I'm afraid I can't stay the night."
Luce
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )
Zazh
The firmness deepens. Something flashes across his face and the air seems to curdle, suddenly afraid for itself in his presence. Luce's attentions catch something on her peripheral view, the flicker of presence suddenly haunting one of the pedestals, hovering behind Zazh's left elbow and behind; Bound quivers.
A sharp moment, not unlike happiness was meant to be. An immediate, exquisite focus of understanding that goes without words. Bound, as two figures merged to one or one thing diverged into two, quivers in place, as if the presence of something living, not sentient, but reactive were housed within it's stoned skin.
A moment and then it's gone. Or rather, replaced by the measured and firm step of the Man infront of her, his drink held by crooked arm, close to his chest, intent on the space directly infront of her, expectation that she will step back and out of range.
"I was not asking." His head shakes minutely, gaze dropping to beneath his brow. "There is something wrong with the way you move and speak when you are occupied in thought or...something else. Something decidedly-" A sharp inhale "-off, about how you interpose yourself into a situation. As if it were a forced effort. So precise and refined as to be nearly imperceptible to those who don't know you beyond your looks." A hand reaches out toward the hem of her dress, a plucking motion.
"...Perhaps that's why you keep your distance and the focus of your attention and theirs, firmly on the reciprocate. Perhaps the reason for all those masks. Perhaps the reason for hiding like you do and the little girl in you as well."
He would walk her into the Grand Piano if that is as far as they go, or should she not step aside entirely. Where she moves he will follow, with those same slow and deliberate steps.
"Something you keep so desperately to yourself that I think, much like so many other things you've expressed and told me on, is blown well and truly beyond the proportions of existence. Not mortality..." A dismissive snuff of his nostrils. "..But existence." He sips at his rhum and coke, finally leavening off following her/haunting her personal space.
"You'll remain here tonight. The gunpowder and your story about the men who did it haven't done much to assuage my paranoia. If anything, your presence here and Crosby on my speed dial will and if you're hungry, well then..." He slugs back the entire drink with a sharp wince that tugs both corners of his mouth wide, followed by a small pursed 'o' of his lips on the exhale.
"...I'll order you some delivery."
Luce
And so he walks her backwards. Steps forward into her space as she steps back, leading her like a dance, though her body language is almost entirely closed there is still that crisp, floating elegance about her, mirrored by the clipped noise her heels on the floors. The subtle cut of her gaze toward bound reacting, with each step she takes. The sort of deepening alarum in her eyes and mouth.
He does not run her into the piano, though. There is steel in her, somewhere underneath a half-dozen of the masks, and on the fourth step, or the fifth, she firms her shoulders, stands tall, pulling her narrow frame upwards, the heels lifting her three or four inches above her natural height so that she can look down at him. Over the mouth of her Scotch, the pungent liquid quivering from the strange dance.
"You're overreacting." She says at last, over a deep breath that has her bare shoulders curling in sharp little circles forward beneath the cut of the high neckline of her dress. A smile for him, strung with tension as sure as a tightrope, softening with a deliberate sort of invitation. "I had a - difficult - evening.
"I'm unused to physical violence. It frightened me. I'd heard about a particular graffiti artist whose work I wanted to see. I was caught in crossfire. Nothing more. Nothing that might touch on me. Certainly nothing that might touch you.
"But I want comfort in the aftermath. Familiar comforts. And privacy. My own - " a brief glance toward the sculptures he has curated. The faint twist of her mouth. " - treasures. Not yours. Certainly you can allow me that much room."
Zazh
He laughs. Slightly incredulous. Leaning back into a systematic-
"Are you trying to play me again?"
The smile remains, genuinely amused, sliding effortlessly into the space she has provided. She stands tall, straightened to an intimidating height. Several inches more and she was an inch or so more than he was to begin with. He moves into her shadow and the space of her stance and stares up at her with that same glimmering smile (born of razors). His fingers curl slightly around the glass of once rhum and cola and his breath is the scent of sweetness for it as they are separate in inches now.
"Put yourself in danger. Airs of regret." Eyes dancing. Searching hers. "Airs of control, scattered about my floor like so much chaff. Distance for safety's sake or maybe for that thrill you get in denying yourself, hmmm?" He turns slightly, eyes from her a moment to place the glass in his hand upon one of the empty pedestals, returning a moment later to gaze up at her, hands sliding into one another, interlaced at the crux of fingers.
"You can't think I'm silly enough in the brain and libido to truly believe you'd place yourself in a moment that so readily and be intimidating by a bullet or two, can you?" Disbelief. "Really? You who wander the spines of men? The crass envy of women? You're a typhoid mary of the mind. A Thought fuck of singularity, not to mention a rather intelligent creature. Are you truly going to stand there are admit to some-" A hand rises, pinwheeling between them dismissively "-bout of the vapours to explain away this calamity in your movements?"
He glances down at her shoes, a quick gesture that returns to her face a moment later.
"Precision and measure, you enact grand plays with a smile and a look and even coming unhinged as you were only moments ago on the couch-" He chuckles again, haunting her space by inches. A fraction closer, as that smile drops away and that air curdling seriousness returns.
"Be bold for a moment, dear. Bold and honest. If you're so frightened then why come at all? Why not simply return my call and offer some semblance of a reason. If so timid, why make the trip?" He inhales her. A small thing, without a smile still.
"Or were you more scared of what I'd do than what the gunshot seems to have done to your nerves?"
Luce
"Have you ever been to Paris, Zazh?"
A strange non-sequitor. Her eyes linger on his face throughout his speech; as he searches her eyes, as he own dance. The cut to follow him as he reaches out to set his empty glass of rum and coke on an empty pedestal. Then scissor back to his face, following the afterthought of his arm as it returns to his body.
A half-dozen shades of ingénue, naif, damsel, virgin, whore, tried on and discarded as he continues. Airs of regret. Airs of control. Typhoid mary of the mind. When he glances down at her shoes, she steps out of him. This deliberate movement of her narrow hips, sinuous and sure footed. Nails painted a deep ruby - some heart's blood color, full of oxygenated blues - gleam from perfect(ly symmetrical) little toes, the faintest impression of the leather around her feet. The crystal-crusted heels glitter and gleam, shed light like a disco ball, scattering the floor with patterned rainbows as she toes them carefully away. Settles herself just so, bare footed, her hips coiling as she adjusts to her new center of gravity, without the off-kilter swagger and way of the heels.
"I knew someone there, who said quite the same thing to me. Be bold. Honest. I don't miss the people, so much as the city itself. Living and breathing; the Haussmann's great avenues opening up like spokes on a wheel, bathed with light. He put his arms around me - watch the city over my shoulder. We'd climb the Arc de Triomph, you see. After hours, and let the whole thing glitter at our feet. There's a certain hour, you see, when even a city like that is silent.
"Be bold," for the first time that evening, she curls forward. Steps into him rather than away from him, lifting her arms to drape them around his shoulders, her Scotch still tucked neatly in the pinpoint grasp of her right hand. "Be honest. Fuck them all. As you might imagine, I found it quite compelling. 'Course, it doesn't bear thinking, what happened after.
"I came because I wanted to see you." Then she's leaning forward, her head aslant from his. The only contact between them bodies the sharp little bit of her elbows into his shoulders. The heat radiating from his skin. "Perhaps I wanted you to push me. Maybe I wanted to slip, hmm?"
Her cheek is cool and smooth against his, a second point of contact. Breathing haunting his ear, without her mouth finding it.
"Maybe I still do. I'll stay until five in the morning. Then, I want to go home. I haven't packed a bag, you see. And I doubt you have my shampoo."
Zazh
She moves into Paris, for not the first time since they've met. A fascinating gem, this city of Love, it houses a special place in the masks of Luce, emerging as both a sanctuary, a memory, a nostalgic sensation and a horizon for many events. He listens, fails to shift position much beyond the brief glance to either elbow suddenly resting in the slight dip of shoulder, where bone turns to tautened muscle. Beyond the slight touch of fingertips settled at her hips.
She offers the taunt. The tease. The brief sensation of demure acquiescence. Why yes alright I'll stay if you're going to be that way
And Zazh's smile creeps into his features again, felt upon her cheek as she reaches in to hover by his ear. The response is humming sensation, his hands full flush to her modest hips.
"Mmmm, comparisons. You are fond of them." His voice hitches high, tilting into the 'r' with emphatic amusement. His hands grow firmer about her waist.
"You make me wonder things with each new phrase out of your mouth and each mask you pull on to deflect." He steps a little closer, a light sway to his movements. One might almost call it an invitation/assertive request to dance, though there is no music playing.
"...And with those wonders, enliven the curious quality of who you are and what you do. Not enough in most circumstances to be maddening but...the possibility exists." He hums again, a part of the tune, as if he could hang it in her memory and they would not need a tune to sway in minute inches as they are right now.
"With each new evasion, a sliver of strength to the curiosity. A sliver that grows into a wedge. When you refuse. When you bargain. When you plead in the only way you know how and when you eventually negotiate to a brief respite-" He chuckles, a throated thing.
"Each grows the quandary of Luce. It makes me wonder new questions and with those questions, new ways to make you move. Make you step. Make you circle to that inevitability we both know is there." Once more that unknown tune, hummed at the back of his throat.
"I imagine when the time comes, it won't be my efforts that make you trapped and forced to stray past your boundaries...but your calculated frustration that makes you ask and answer the question: What would it be like if I did...?" A chuckle. "Just a little. Not too much. Just a taste...What harm would it be?"
Luce
(just for guidance...)
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Luce
There is a carved marble expectancy about her; that rapt - radiant - sense of fixation wired into the slender architecture of her body, tall as it might be, as if she were not touching the ground beneath their feet, but had been hung from some invisible hook in the dark wash of shadows above their head. Suspended -
- dark eyes wide, watchful, and far from innocent fixed on their reflections. The border of their reflections; where his profile, the narrow, marbled lines of it, cuts into the soft curve of her long throat. Her mouth is just curved upward, her long white arms tucked against her body, hands closed, knuckles pressed against the dark marble vanity. Glowing white in the polished stone.
There is no slack in her frame; has been no slack in her all this long night. Taut as guitar strings wound far too tightly, tension peeling apart the layers of the wire. And yet, somehow she seems even more tightly drawn when that warm smile turns lascivious. Her body bracing itself, with subconscious expectancy, to feel - not the tip of his tongue against her neck, but fangs driving into her throat. Some minute noise in the back of her throat, the clotted sort, half-formed. The beginning of one word; the end of another, never quite invented.
Then his hands cover her eyes; his mouth finds her ear. Her eyes remain open beneath his hands - he can feel the flutter of her lashes, stiff and dark with mascara, when at last she gives in, to the pressure of his hands or the power in his voice. To that note, perhaps, those wordless few notes, like a nameless chord opened into a drifting, imprecise arpeggio, that slip under her skin, resonant in the hollows of her skull, the soft tissues of her mouth. Echoing somewhere in the back of her throat, precise enough that she can taste it. That she can nearly swallow them. Drink that sound, if she could only. There, just -
there.
So, see. That expectancy; that precision as he speaks his instructions. As he makes his promise. She turns her head persistently aslant, to feel the warmth of his breath on her ear. Breathes, and deeply, when he so instructs her, holding each breath in her dead lungs, tasting it against her soft palette. Exhaling only to breathe in again, while his heart beats beneath her skin, steady and strong. Mouth just parted, cheek, nose seeking contact of some sort - any sort - with his profile.
Then, the end. That sensation. That reach. That sense - the invisible weight of iron settled around her neck and shoulders - has her reaching up, longer fingers curving as if she might tuck them between the links, curl them into some stiff collar. There's just her dress - silk and soft beneath her hands. The cut of her own clavicles, straight and level beneath the slope of her shoulders. Hands splayed open, one at the base of her neck, the other tucked to the right, fingers curling, pulling downward as a woman might, to test the weight of a fine gold chain settled around her neck.
He thinks he will miss her.
" - what?" startled, that. Eyes open, now, her loose blond hair a tangled golden frame at the edge of her peripheral vision. Turning her head to find - him rather than his reflection. "What do you mean? Where - " Infused with urgency. With moving, hungry energy pulled sharply back with an indrawn breath when she finds the familiar planes of his human face in the borders of her field of view.
Her profile is in the mirror now; her head - and shoulders - twisted aslant from her hips and lower spine, right shoulder cutting into his chest, the left closer to the mirror. And though her gaze flicks to follow the movement of his hand as he tastes the girl's thigh; and then as it hovers in the air before them, she faces the dark shadows at the other end of the luxurious bath.
"You should do something about her." Low, her profile softened by shadow, eyes flicking to follow the sweep of his hand, though they hardly touch on the unconscious girl. Less instruction, this, than equivocation. Some placeholder. "Cover her up. Make her comfortable." Something to say that does not ring of iron, and does not taste of his laughter.
Then she lifts her chin, tipping the crown of her head toward the mirror. The fine strands of her hair slipping over her left shoulder, the bruised-looking eyes, with their dark rings of shadow and mascara cutting toward him. Then peeling down his features, with a sort of limitless precision, as if he were a puzzle she might take apart, piece by fine piece, only to slip them all back together again, once she had learned how they worked. How they were connected, blood and skin and bone.
The careful survey begins at his scalp; touches eyes and brows; cheeks and jaw. Mouth and nose, then cuts away to focus on something just beyond the collar of his blood red shirt. Which seems more - vivid - in her mind's eye.
Her breathing is in time with his doubled heartbeat; every other. She can taste his laughter in the back of her throat. In the frame of her body.
Quite abruptly, she presses back against him. Hips twisting to follow the movement of her shoulders, until they are face to face. She takes in a breath, though the mouth not the nose, bends arms at the elbows and tucks her forearms up against his chest, nudging open the collar of his shirt with both index fingers. Tracing the seam down to the first still-fastened button and undoing it with deliberate care.
Then the next.
Her eyes are fixed on the work of her hands; the fascinating precision of her fine fingers working in concert to slip each button from its mooring. Her head is canted just aslant, as if the sidelong lilt might help her seize the essence of that nameless, wordless tune.
"You take something from them, too." Murmured, this, and quietly done, her voice quiet. "Less prosaic than their blood. Strong emotion or - " Here, her eyes dart up to meet his. "Don't you?"
ZazhThe whisper of iron that crowds them, colours their immediate selves, cast as both frames are within the vaguely humid airs of the enclosed bathroom tile and diffuse marble glow. It spreads and disintegrates into nothing. Not at her neck, not about his fingers, not even in his voice. It hovers, though, like the taste of him. There at the back of her throat, ready to be summoned should she begin to hum that strange little tune. It would be there for a small eternity.
He takes in her brief shock with a flickering glance and a widening of his own eyes, grin splitting human features, with their many pores, pock marks of age and well used luxuries/decadencies, as laughter true and deep, floods out of him at the question hung so unjustly about her lips and (almost) accusing eyes.
"Mmmm, the girl-" He glances down at young Miss Jennifer, a purse to his lips and a slight narrowing of his eyes "-yes, I suppose I shall. Wouldn't want to have any more dead hookers in my history then is absolutely necessary." He pats Jennifer's thigh with an air of 'There, There' head canting around Luce toward the darkened doorway, beyond which houses the Bedroom. A brief moment's calculation, has him scouring his mind for some place of comfort that would not involve hauling the young thing further than his strength might allow. Dead weight was uncomfortable to most people, afterall.
His attention returns to Luce the moment she slips into his personal space, gaze snapping into a brief and sharp scrutiny that softens just slightly from an edge into a curious cushion, when her limbs glide effortlessly from shoulders to touch at the first of the buttons. They come away with ease under dexterous fingers and he tilts his head just so to one side, to catch her features and what they are doing while she 'performs'.
Her words-
"Not as often as I think you might. Nor I think, is mine a...sustenance exactly." His hands find the openings within her dress, passing from fabric to the flesh at the small of her back, fingertips riding the slight curve of each vertebrae as it presses outward with the taut and reflexive tension a creature like Luce could present. Always the mask in the right place, for the eye, the hand or otherwise.
"Mine is an addiction, easily controlled and starved only within the boundaries of a beggar's lot." He glances down as she catches his features once more, eyes following her progress, crimson fabric shed and flesh expanding it's exposure.
"Emotion would be a dull way of describing it. Far more and yet simplified. Easily explained and yet utterly irrelevant outside of particular-..." The last button drifts open and his hands slide down to cup her ass, the hem of the dress ruffled to her hips in the process, his gaze rising to greet her own with a slanted jawline.
"-boundaries."
There is a heartbeat's pause then, the double of his own steadying somewhat. Slowing just enough that he is half again faster than each of her breaths.
"An opportunity has presented itself to the North. Deep in the pollution thick cavities of Detroit. A momentary thing but..." And he gives a slithering inhale and a delicious shiver "...very exciting." That grin.
"Coupled with recent events in my own community and about the only thing keeping me from having left a week ago is ensuring a guarantee I'll be seeing you again." His hands rise to settle beneath the loose touch of her dress where it meets shoulders, sliding one golden sheer length from her left side, until bare shoulder and arm are near visible.
"I am curious though..." The grin has yet to diminish, those oddly dull black eyes settling in her features. Lost to the lines of them. "...Have I managed to convince you on the benefits of being a Collectible?"
LuceHer hands slip beneath the frame of his shirt, the cool fingers splayed with a - thoughtful curiosity - over his pectorals, dark gaze fixed on the movement of her fingers over his skin. Watching the minute involuntary reactions she draws forth from his flesh, imperfect, human, the lifetime of pleasures and luxuries and debaucheries wound tightly into the shell of humanity.
"And me?" This time she does not look up; he does not have eye contact as a clue to her meaning. Just the coil of her voice around the base of his spine. The pressure of her own spine, backwards, against the pinpoint settling of his fingertips on the hard lines of her vertebrae. "Can you have what you require - " this little pause. Fine mouth spreading in a close-lipped smile.
Feeling the beat of his heart beneath her hand, turning one over, so that her knuckles are sharp against the hard line of his sternum, while the other sinks lower, flattened between them, drifting with precise, pinpoint pressure down the taut plane of his upper abdomen, where the protection of the ribs cuts away to be replaced by the compact muscles of the human core.
"do you take what you require from me?"
Her eyes are downcast again, the long sweep of her lashes a dark smudge against her pale cheeks, the fullness of her lower lip caught back by a little white tooth.
"What if I said yes?" Hummed, this, in a speculative voice that edges on the sing-song. There's that lingering hint of the chord he gave her. Spread out and rearranged. Call it Variations on a Theme. "The thrill of the chase gone. My neck bent to your yoke. Content with my lot. Making eyes at you when you bring me out to while away a few hours on a lazy Sunday." Mouth curved around the words, her voice made of smoke. "Would you really want that." Here, her eyes dart up again, that searching precision of hers feels so spare until she meets his gaze. Her own still dark with hunger. The blue the color of the sky at midnight, where it wraps around the light bleeding from a dying star.
And she smiles then. Enough that he can read the expression in the soft skin around her eyes. So fine it is nearly poreless.
"A guarantee. What sort of guarantee do you require? Travel is not easy for my kind, Zazh. And Detroit - I don't think they have a string quartet. Much less a symphony. I burned bridges in Chicago some time ago, too. Though the sovereign who declared a blood hunt for me has fallen, I think."
ZazhHe laughs, the sound a shake under her fine fingers, spread generously through and across his chest. Lines of hair, sparse and fine touch just under her nails while the flicker of muscles form twitches under the exposure of the cold air and her cooled presence.
"If you say yes, then...you say Yes. And nothing changes."
He leans forward slightly to touch brow to brow when she finally lifts her gaze to meet his, hands remaining, wrapped up in the lines and folds of her dress, flimsy a thing as it is, travelling the plane of her lower back, slowing only as the sharp edges of her vertebrae dance under his grip.
"As far as taking from you...mmmm" Consideration there, true and serious, his eyes closed for a moment. Then- "I had entertained thoughts of replacing my last. You are the closest thing to a creature of Taste as I've found since Her, but...the more I know of you and about you, the less concerned I am with your taste and more with your...substance. A fact that makes you less a meal and more a companion." He smiles, pressing close enough to crush most of the space between them.
"Detroit yes and no. They do not boast operatic tastes. I think a creature like you might wilt to nothing in such a dead zone. I'll be choking semi-regularly myself, I think and as soon as my dealings are complete there, I will be moving on." He turns them then, a gentle thing and his hands move around to push at her, tenderly almost, an indication of the door in that separation, which parts under the press of Luce's shoulder. The bedroom beyond is a sparse thing. Little more than the planes of a bed with thick sheets, a mirrored closet and the spread of windows dusted with drawn blinds.
"I came in search of a guarantee that for the foreseeable future, would settle any discomfort at us being separated." He has turned to address Jennifer, moving to pluck the girl up from hips to arms and collect her in his grip. A brief and quick thing, making use of plenty of leverage to spread her generous curves across the bathroom towel that coats the floor, careful to keep her head from ricocheting needlessly.
"I think that tonight has provided me with considerable incentive toward that Guarantee-..Well..." He ducks into the bedroom to retrieve a blanket from a nearby pile of folded laundry, shaking it loose with the snap of a wrist and grip. A glance is cast at Luce then, grin half-formed, framed by the low light of the bathroom's bulb.
"Almost, I think."
LuceHer smile spreads, wider, the hint of white teeth beneath that soft, stained little mouth as he dips his head forward to tuck close, brow to brow. Gaze dark and steady, her attention fine and unyielding as her hands, on his skin. His own black gaze reflected back to him in the depths of her irises, shining with that smeared, softly white light that gleams from the vanity and burnishes the white tiles lining the walls.
"I don't mind." The smile slipping now, from the edge of her mouth, lingers in the darkness of her eyes, where it takes on an ardent edge. She breathes out, and in, nostrils flaring as she inhales his familiar scent, damped with the steam in the room. "If you take, sometimes. Taste, sometimes." Her hands are still on his chest, fingertips a firm forward pressure until his own grip tightens and he crushes her close.
The sound she makes is experimental, experiential, a framing half-smile, with edge of teeth and laughter embedded deep in the bones of it, the sort she always seems to keep inside her, letting it out through the gleam of her eyes and the curve of her mouth and the curl of her shoulders beneath his hands, against his body.
"We all need - " she is glancing away, a slanting look down the cut of his nose and jaw, the pockmarked cheek to the frame of his shoulder, the open collar, the attachment of tendons at the distal ends of his collar bones. The pulse buried beneath his skin. Then back, the smile dark in her eyes. " - something. But when you do - if you do - I want you to tell me. I want to know, Zazh. I want to feel it, if I can. Do you see?"
Then he is pushing her away. Gently, quite nearly tenderly. Her shoulder blades against the cool wood of the door, the lights from the bathroom cutting a twisting square of light into the bedroom. A glance away from him, the flat plane of the bed, the gleam of their reflections, darkened in the mirrored closet doors.
The dark eyes cut back to him as he lifts Jennifer, from the vanity to the towel spread on the bathroom floor. The edge of her mouth curving minutely wider for the care he gives to the poor girl's lolling head. Eyes fixed briefly, hungrily, on the faint hint of bruising beneath her neck, where blood from the meal he interrupted has spread under the soft, pale skin. Assuaged by the meal, but hardly sated.
Still, she stands there. Watching him as he snaps open the blanket and shakes it out over the unconscious girl, arms crossed loosely over her torso, which is bowed outward in the hip slung posture she always seems to favor, shoulders back against the door. Like all satin, the dress is unforgiving; and now, sadly, shows every wrinkle from the evening's exertions.
"Almost. Hmm." Considered, the steady flash of her dark gaze; the private curl of her little mouth. Turning away from him, her shoulder cutting into the door as she reaches up and back, to pull the weight of her hair again from the back of her neck and tuck it neatly over her shoulder. A glance back over her shoulder at him, at his mouth and that half-formed grin. That note in the back of her throat half-audible, washing his scent across the back of her mind. "What more incentive do you need?"
Zazh"Mmmm. Were I ever to indulge myself in tasting your airs, Luce, It-" He pauses, backlit by the doorway, staring down at Jennifer with something...odd about his stance. It is not exactly scrutiny or even wonder, simply a regard not unlike the brief flash of something old he'd displayed for a hint of a moment in the club he'd found her in last, dressed in another man's cologne while Jazz sang off the lips of a voice he thought he'd recognized.
"-I believe...it would be in a different skin. A different name." The pause is not long but it is solid. Easily identified and incapable of splashing effortlessly into the next. It hangs there around his shoulders, as he pulls several towels, almost ruthlessly, from their rack, his attentions (Zazh himself) returning to the moment, bundling the collection of cottons together to form a pillow beneath Jennifer's head, the skirl of his shirt's tails settling to the outside of either thigh when he crouches.
"Incentive would hardly be the word."
He climbs back to his feet, after a brief inspection at Jennifer's pulse, her brow for a fever, even a cursory clap of his knuckles at her cheek (gentle, but firm) in a rousing fashion. She does not react and he offers an affirming sound somewhere under his tongue before returning to the doorway threshold, hand hovering over the light switch, gaze travelling Luce in that manner and measure he'd been doing since they first met.
"I know girls like you." He says it with clarity, crystal and firm. He pushes past the threshold a hand striding out to catch at her stomach, press at her sternum, eyes still reeling across the subtle lines and angles of her svelte frame.
"Fond of the chase and the hunt and the taste and ever eager to catch that brief moment of gut-wrenching calamity that comes with an upheaval of a Happy Ending possible. You long to be proven right-" He pushes again, back until her calves meet the bed's edge and he's inside her personal space once more, fingers gliding up to touch beneath her chin.
"-Even while you're proving wrong with a smile and a suggestion. Expert in every way of the wrong. Careful, meticulous, precise and insightful." He leans down to take a chaste kiss from her lips then, sharing her artificial breath after it's done, scant inches between their eyes.
"I could use someone like you. A creature of refinement. A figure of prominence. A power and a partner. Your taste is exquisite and your patience exceptional." He pauses, in words only, hands moving to wrap around the fluidly elusive curves of her then.
"You'd not be a servant. That would be waste, but...There comes a time when a man such as me must content himself with the thoughts beyond the Fairy Tale and I came to that conclusion a long time ago. I do not want a wife. Or simply a lover. Or just a confidant." Another kiss, a little firmer, tongue flicking out to catch her lower lip briefly.
"I want someone Trusted." A pause, fingers pressing at her hips, the edge of the mattress and gravity pulling Luce off her feet. "A rarity in these times." His hands press down into the mattress after her, gaze following the sudden spread and vanish of her breasts beneath the sheer dress, little more than minutiae at this stage.
"When you're done your time, settled what affairs you wish to settle and done whatever deeds inspire you so...then know that I have a duty waiting for you that...I believe you'll enjoy." His nose, spread lip grin, teeth. They find the firmness across her stomach, for a moment as he climbs back toward her features.
"Among other past times of course."
Lucestill here!
LuceHer attention is fixed; scouring without being abrasive, her senses open. How can she miss the flash of something old about him; the distinctive, material pause that settles over his shoulders.
A different skin. Some other name.
"There are - " the wreathing curl of her half smile, framed by her shoulder and the curling mass of her tangled hair. " - Kindred," irony embedded in the fabric of the word. " - who can weave masks. Trick the eye into seeing some stranger's face rather than their own. I can usually see through those masks, if I look closely enough. That's not - "
The thought dies in the back of her throat.
That flickering intensity to her attention, dropping to his hands as he tugs the towels from their rack, cutting up to watch his face as he crouches and finishes his inspection, assuring himself of the girl's likely survival.
Then he's on his feet again; Jennifer forgotten, his eyes on her narrow frame, the long white legs, the suggestion of hips beneath the loose sweep of the satin dress, the S-curve of her spine, the sharp framework of her shoulders.
I know girls like you.
That clarity; she stalks backward as he walks her forward, mouth curving in that wry challenge he can quite nearly taste in the air around her. "Do you." Dark eyes gleaming around the words, bare feet soft on the floor as he presses her back to the edge of the bed. "Except I'm hardly a girl, no more than you're a mere - "
Chin rising as he steps in close enough that she can feel the head radiant from his body. Can breathe it in with each (unnecessary) breath she takes. There's a certain way she lifts her little chin, tucks it upward with tip of his fingers; a certain way her smile carves itself into the corners of her mouth that spells out a wordless challenge: the siren's song. Closer. Come closer, I dare you.
There's more challenge underneath it; her mouth half-open with it as he bends to take the first chaste kiss from her. She maintains a certain deliberate distance between their bodies; less protective now than it was hours earlier tonight, when she was wretched with hunger. Closer to goading; that careful, meticulus, precise way she holds her shoulders back from his so that he must lean in closer for the next kiss. Her eyes sharp on his; that minute sense of keen attention framing the orbits as her dark eyes cut back and forth between his, in searching focus.
It is only when he pushes he down onto the mattress that she reaches out for him. Links her hands behind his neck as hands depress the mattress on either side of her narrow hips and he climbs over her. The hem of the dress riding up, his shadow crawling over her. His teeth find her stomach, framed by the prominent flare of her hip bones; a dull scrape against her skin, and the spread of his grin, the warmth of his breath through the fine weave of silk-stain. Her long fingers splay wide, cup the back of his skull with an artist's precision. Then slip from the back of his skull, drift down his shoulders and arms, his chest, to his waist. Fine fingers working the buckle of his belt with the same precision she applied to each button of his shirt.
She is breathing lightly, now; breasts little more than a shadow against her chest, rising and falling with each contraction of her diaphragm.
Her eyes are dark on his face. They touch his gaze; then drop to his mouth as he promises her other past times, of course.
"With an offer like that," the faint curl of a narrow smile. That note again, resonant in the back of her throat. "How could I say no?"
Zazh"Mmmm, Masks and Illusions."
He all but hums it beneath her chin, attentions exploring the deft and careful symmetry of her throat for a moment, as if he might sense that very brief tension she seems to reflexively air with the flush of remembered 'feeding'. It does not last long,as Zazh's senses begin to dull to articulate response under the touch and motion of the young creature beneath hm. His hums turn deeper and it is only the brief drift of her hands to his belt that bring him to a moment's pause.
"Heh" He offers, peering down at her, hands pressed to either side ofer shoulders "You're you. I'm fairly sure you'd find a way." He leans his weight into her, a hand moving forward to brush the blonde behind one of her ears, and then press to the back of her neck. "I'm simply glad you aren't."
And thus, the Reign of Calamity began, not with a battle, or a war or a wedding, or an agreement.
Simply a deal, quite long in teeth of negotiating.