ZazhThe Garters.
Chinatown is replete with the illustrious designs of tourism. Bright colours, sharp tones and the lightest of mysteries enough to attract, awe and send the round-eyes home, content knowing they've cultured themselves properly. in most respects, you would have to be someone of well worth and informed to garner more than this 'Mask of Civility' presents.
This isn't to say that Zazh is worthy of much of anything, really, but when it comes to information, well...he seems to be kept in several loops.
The Sedan comes to a rolling halt after a few precious minutes of driving. The Man in his suit and pleas(ant)ed smile is comfortably calm and quiet for the duration of the ride, neither engaging or ignoring Luce in her place against the plush leather. Every so often, his gaze travels her framework, an appreciation with flavours containing all sorts of suggestions (Requests, Demands etc. etc....).
When they arrive, Zazh buttons his overcoat up, adjusts his tie and leans to the right slightly, gaze and fingers finding his pocket from which he fishes out a slender obsidian band. Unremarkable but for the vague gleam under the car's interior light, it slips easily onto his left pinky before both hands interlock and settle on his lap. He turns to stare at Luce and that grin lights his features once more.
"Shall we then?"
And he climbs out of the car, moving around to the curbside (they had parked so that Luce's door would open out onto the sidewalk) intent on opening Luce's door for her, with flair and no small amount of presentation. Whether he makes it there in time to do so or the woman does so for herself, is seemingly moot.
Zazh would open a hand toward a rather dingy looking alleyway, who's sewer grates are spewing out white fog, a stench like aging produce out of the fridge, and a long long walk down into the belly of a darkness wedged between two colourful trinket shops.
LuceThe first night they met, the creature's eyes were bruised with a thick ring of dark shadow that gave her a vague, decadent drugged out look as complement to denim and cotton and leather. As if before morning she might disappear backstage, fuck the band, and then mainline heroin, disappearing with the sunrise to find another bar and another band and another drug of choice when the sun set again.
Tonight, she's a showpiece, dressed in a strapless golden gown that leaves the whole architecture of her arms and shoulders bare to the cool night air. Round shoulders, the sharp cut of her clavicle, the hollow at the base of her throat. The structure bodice conspires to give her illusion of cleavage, and the spangled piece clings to her lean frame the way skin does. Shifts with her every movement, no matter how faint, sending scattered circles of light dancing across her features. Across his. Across the leather seats, when the sequins catch and reflect the light. When they shine. His view, to the say the least, was most enjoyable.
All the way from the War Memorial Opera House, where she suggested he pick up up, to a dark alley sunk somewhere amidst the tourist traps and secret back alley shops of Chinatown. The creature waits for Zazh to open her door - all flourish - accepts a hand to rise should he offer one. Her own is cool and fine, nails polished an opaque lime green in almost direct counterpoint to the diamond polish of the rest of her attire.
She tugs a soft wrap - black velvet - after her and drapes it familiarly around her shoulders. Well-groomed brows rise over her pale eyes in a society matron's imperious query. The expression is undermined, however, by the supple twist of her mouth, an engaging curve, not quite a grin, inviting conspiracy. Welcoming it, perhaps.
"We shall." She adjusts the wrap with a supple twist of her shoulders, and begins to walk. Heels click on the pavement. Her gait is all precision - she has an animal's certain knowledge of her body, it seemes - but she is careful of those steaming grates. That twist of her quick little mouth again, painted red tonight, as they start to walk. "You come here often, do you?"
Zazh"I must say, Dear Luce."
He breathes her in as a hand is offered, almost 'plucking' her from the car's interior. He holds that hand aloft for a moment as the shawl is settled at her shoulders, his gaze devouring the length of her with obvious appreciation.
"Once again at that, you are a creature of exquisite beauty. One could almost say, ravaging, really."
The grin has yet to leave his features. He settles that hand of hers neatly into the crux of his arm, turning to face the alleyway before them. Zazh is, dripping in nightly blacks tonight. From the long coat that hangs well to his knees, to the dusty and sheenless charcoal suit beneath it all. The undershirt is coloured a brighter onyx while the single splash of vermilion that is his tie, grants his angular features and slicked back hair a generous quality of the predator.
([i]Fangs drip the excess of a fresh kill down my chest / To sate the stoked hunger that hounds my chest /[/i]...)
He takes an almost experimental step forward, offering her the chance to set the gait and match her with something akin to comfortable ease. The alley swallows their movements and selves without effort, hungry and expectant and as they travel the length of the alleyway, one can spy the slender yet cleared trail that has spread the garbage and the grime to one side and left a 'walkway'.
"I make it a point to inhabit the most choice and welcoming of places, within the city. They provide entertainments suited to those of my tastes and appetites and I find the Chinese, above most others? Have a penchant for exploring hidden Joys and Secret Desires to their most gratifying end."
He steps and by association, Luce does as well, around a small pile of crates, empty and hollow, stacked near the height of a man. Behind which, sits a stairwell leading down and a dark door with a simple red light hovering over the alcove. The sudden glare of crimson, sets fire to Luce's garment and Zazh squints slightly, features cast in a ghastly sort of purr.
"...A moment, Luce..."
And he disengages himself from her arm, tenderly almost, to step down the stairwell and lean forward. The obsidian ring and the hand beneath it, rap gently against the doorway. Almost immediately, there is the slide of metal and a pair of dark eyes peer out from an interior awash of low ambient noise and several flashes of stark colouration.
"Hello, Polo."
The eyes are replaced by a mouth with a Mandarin tongue.
"Yes, Polo. It was funny the last ten times. It's funny now. The white man does not speak your language but still has his membership-" That obsidian ring flashes before the slide-view "-Now open the fucking door."
There is a pause, as Polo's gaze settles back into place, peering past Zazh to the gold and red shape at the top of the stairs. Another Mandarin phrase peels out from behind the door and Zazh sighs.
"She's new. Obviously..."
And the slide view claps shut. Leaving Zazh to narrow his eyes from the stairs, in silence.
Luce"Mmm." The sound is dusk in the back of her throat. The creature swallows the complement without preening, without curving into the ballast of his appreciative attention and without shying from it. Without the usual drift and sway of a woman hungry for the affirmation of a male gaze. The street's shadows leach her gaze of its saturated color. There is instead the impressionistic gleam of light reflected across her iris, a flash of attentive challenge.
"You flatter me." Her voice is low; the words are like steps in an old fashioned dance, a form to be inhabited. "You shouldn't, you know. It will go quite to my empty head." There's little inflection to them, but the twist of her supple red mouth infuses them a cool, remote sort of cheek as he tucks her fine hand into the crook of his arm. She grips his forearm familiarly, and walks close.
Tonight, her hair is dark blond, pin-straight and sleek as a curtain of silk. The soft, gleaming length pulled back into an elegant chignon, leaving bare the long white sweep of her neck, the tender hollow beneath her delicate jaw, the slender golden hoops piercing her ear. There is something architectural about her loveliness, as if she were hewn out of white marble rather than born in blood and pain. Enlivened by the sculptor's love and hubris, rather than the breath of god.
He adapts his pace to hers, and so the pace is rather more leisurely than his would be alone. She is not a mincing creature, but no matter how graceful she is, the heels she wears are suicidally high. They show off her legs to fine advantage - pointing her toes, firming her calves - and lend her spare physicality a certain feminine sway, the illusion of hips to match the smooth white curve of her thighs. And they hobble her gait, shorten the long swing of her legs. There's no avoiding the effluvia in the alleyway, either, no matter how precise the navigation. The narrow path through the trash is also bisected by a rivulet of water, running oily, opaque through the cracks in the asphalt. She is careful to avoid the worst of the filth, but otherwise does not grimace at her surroundings.
"I see I'm not the only person who enjoys the adulterated," she murmurs to him, sidelong, turning in a slow arc to study the deep shadows cast by the brick walls, the rusting dumpsters, the weeping piles of rubbish left to rot unseen in the darkness. Her eyes narrow against the crimson light, chin rising as he extricates himself. That private, simmering smile lingering on the curve of her shapely mouth. "You must have your ear very close to the ground to find this place. In such surroundings."
While he climbs down the narrow stairs, she extracts a dark cigarette from her small clutch, lights it and inhales fully. The cloud of tobacco smoke surrounds her like a halo or a caul as she exhales, merges with the city's native fog, made dusky and opaque by the crimson light. She is listening, alert to the sound of the foreign tongue below. Were he to look back up at her he could read that alertness in the evident straightness of her spine, rigid as a column of steel. She turns in a slow circuit, balanced forward on the balls of her feet, surveying the shadows around them. The other doors, closed and locked. The dim glow of a distant security light over a freight entrance, and listens, head cocked like a bird, like a raptor, alive to the shadows and filth around them.
The conversation belowstairs continues. Zazh sighs; she casts a edged glance backward over her bare white shoulder, velvet wrap sunk low, cool features cast sharp in shadow, takes a last deep drag on her dark cigarette and tosses it in a shower of orange sparks to hiss and gutter in that oily water bisecting the alley. A moment later she is descending the steps, one careful stair at a time, shifting in delicate precision as she does so. The air around her smells of smoke and spice, base tobacco and cloves, now. The sweet, heavy scent banishes the effluvia of the alleyway. She breathes out a last lungful of smoke as she reaches the lower landing, looks pertly from the closed latch to Zazh. There's little room down here. She stands engagingly close to him, but lifts her brows in prim, precise little arches that define a certain challenging distance between them.
"Your gentleman's club does not allow its members guests?" She tugs the soft folds of her wrap upward to shroud the pale curve of her shoulders and arcs her chin upward, lifting her mouth to his ear. "Do you think he will open the door?"
Zazh...Luce has her answer a moment later.
Metal begins to grind behind the doorway as the seconds of momentary awkwardness tick by and finally abate. Zazh's answering smile at her relative proximity is, for those brief moments, ignorant of the entryway being peeled back and the sounds and entertaining lights within suddenly gashing the senses with their punctuation.
"On the contrary, they understand the need for a little fun and games with their guests, least those with appetites that beg entertainments like those within? Believe themselves customers enough to be unkind to the employees. It's a subtle form of control..."
And he turns from their inches apart conversation, his breath that of cigars, beef (rare) and wine, to regard Polo; a 300 pound monstrosity of Chinese Sumo muscle and power in a t-shirt half a size too small for him and a pair of jeans all but vanished in the dark of the hallway behind him and his own paunch. His head is bald and covered in snake and dragon ink. His neck is nearly non-existent and his fist looks like it could pulp a watermelon without much effort.
"...I like that."
And Zazh steps down the last of the stairwell, directly under the glaring crimson of the overhead light, his gaze seemingly captivated with Luce's framework (without ignoring her own eyes or the contact and...dare one say, respect? That might suggest), a hand already offered to help her down the rest of the way.
He turns then, sliding her digits effortlessly into the crook of his arm again, peering up at Polo with a benevolent smile and a tip of an imaginary hat before they are through the doorway and into what those in the city charmingly call 'Garters':
The air is alive with the thrum of base music. The slow ambient sound that is more felt than heard, thrums and delivers a charge to the flesh that subtly murmurs muscle and pushes at blood. Bones shake minutely beneath the skin and one is reminded, perhaps, of the soft vibrations that come with a dishwasher at the low end of it's cycle.
The Hallway they are in, pushes forward toward a Curtain, the overhead lights a low watt strobe of directed rays and reaching curiosity. Zazh reaches out as they approach the Velvet curtain and draws it aside.
The Interior is a broad chamber. Stretching to either side for many yards, it spawns tables and chairs around small, many shaped platforms. There are rectangles, squares, stars and pentagrams, each lit by a florescent tube at the edge where Stage ends and spectating begins. The chairs around each stage are, unlike a strip club, a good ten feet back, set up with plush red velvet and capable of being reclined as many of the business suit wearing and cocktail dress adorned people within are doing.
The walls are a small host of Alcohol bottles, indented inward and treated like some separate room, behind which some severed and bisected servant dressed in black and bearing a simple red lotus embroidered on their chests, delivers drinks to the casual wanderer. Money isn't exchanged in the effort, the drink is simply made and handed over that the Customer continue on their rounds to each stage.
The Light above is heady, brilliant rich, monotone colours glaring down on each stage. Here, the ruby slash of red, there the gusting wash of blue and somewhere in the corner over a Triangular stage, a brilliant golden light.
Upon the stages, the Dancers.
Male and Female both. The dress code seems random, dependant almost on the light, the stage and the...mood of the dancer themselves. Dressed in the gleam and suggestive glitter under the Golden light, a woman, tall, lithe, displaying of Ballet forms and delicious fragility, steps from corner to corner of the stage. Her hair is a sweeping curtain that dashes over her shoulders, one small, pert breast exposed while the other is a cup of golden light and sparkling shimmer.
Each step she takes is a calculated innocence. She leans out, threatening to fall from the stage, only to right herself on powerful leg muscles. All the while, a collection of like-dressed business men stare with avid fascination, their slicked back hair and burning cigars ignored as the captivating presence of the 'Lamb' sets their instincts ablaze.
Across the room, a red glare dances across a Man. He is dressed in a simple pair of boxers, his body contorted at such angles as to make Tzimisce perk brows in curiosity. A Contortionist, that pushes through double-joints and dislocations without a moment's hesitation. The red glare captures each newly crafted curve and pocket of shade on his twisted frame, creating an oblong animal. His face is a mask of contorted colours, the painted on visage of some cat or canid, delivered with feral snaps of elongated teeth (prosthetic?) and hissing snarls.
And closer to their own entranced, the violet hum of an overhead light illuminates a couple. Man and woman, almost identical in description and hauntingly androgynous, move between the dangling lengths of long silk ribbons. Each captures in their motions, a ribbon on arm, elbow or shoulder, leaning in toward one another to wrap the other in the length taken. A delicate display of dominance ensues, as each turns the other, expertly into a position of submission while the other stands over in dominance.
It shifts and changes without hesitance, the silken cords, fitting snugly and without wrinkle over throats, around legs. Ribcage, feet, wrists, eyes and chin. The pair tangle and untangle themselves with swift, yet tender ministrations.
There is but a single man watching, in a white suit, at his side, the glittering and bejeweled remains of a pair of obvious prostitutes, both nearly asleep in their drug addled states.
And beyond that stage, at least another half dozen, each with their own suggestive motif. Design. Atmosphere. Dancer.
Zazh leans forward to lift his nose and face, eyes closing at the doorway to 'Breathe it in'.
"Shall we get a drink before partaking of the Installations?" he greets her with this, the grin a gentle curve on one side of his face, motioning toward one of the alcove bars nearby.
LuceThere is a pale flame in her eyes as she turns, aslant, attention sparking on his profile. Whoever she is, is hidden somewhere beneath that look. Which steadies, still on the line of his features, nostrils flaring with the scent of his breath as the door finally begins to open.
..I like that. he declares, as the giant doorman fills the space where the door had been.
"Of course you do," she murmurs, wry, more than a little distant, with a cool bite of humor at the end. Her eyes are still, lingering longer on his profile than is necessary, not to draw him to her, but to fit the lines of his face in her memory.
He is already moving onward; she remembers herself and follows, thoughtlessly graceful, long-legged and slender as a gazelle. The noise washes over her, familiar and insistent as half-forgotten human desires. That drumming sound through her body gives her again the illusion of a heart, beating in her chest. There is a subtle coiling of tension in her spine, a certain predatory sheen gleams across her eyes as the beat works its way into her skin and bones. Her grip tightens on his forearm; then looses as she relaxes into the sound, a familiar bonelessness liminal in her frame, sensed rather than seen.
By then they have come to the end of the hallway; he has pushed away the velvet curtain to reveal the many stages, the many acts, the many visual vices to be indulged. He breathes in the atmosphere, eyes closed. Her attention sharpens - he can feel that wreathing alertness in her body beside his. Not alarm - her breathing remains always soft, always even, regular as the moon and the ocean tides - but awareness prickling over her fine white skin, straightening her long, lean body again.
Her eyes narrow against the glare of the lights; lingering on each tableau. Some she dismisses after a moment's arch glance - the ballet of innocence, the hungry businessmen - others arrest her attention for long heartbeats of near trance.
He rouses her from the last of these with the offer of a drink; "A drink," she makes a noise in the back of her throat, something close to laughter husked with rue. "Yes, I think we should."
And as they begin toward the bar, she leans close, cheek to cook cheek, murmurs, ""Is this when I confess that you've already surprised me?" without seeking his gaze, her own steady on the androgynous pair wrapped in silken bondage.
Zazh"Mmmm, no my dear Luce" He all but hums by her cheek, lips pressed close without the pursing to call it a kiss or a peck "That would be too easy and I want you in Mint condition..." The grin is felt more than seen, the lights of the various stages carving out a path before them in a multi-hued clash of rainbow colouration. Not unlike the haze she had first seen around the man at her side earlier in the evening.
He is nodding as they walk. Meeting the eyes of several of the evening's individuals who leap into their mutual perceptions; a Rotund man tucked in a booth that is all but hidden from view of the doorway. He is surrounded by a small collection of french maids in Oriental ethnics, his features a rippling mass of jowl and sunken eyes. The girls are tittering quietly, while leaning over the slender rectangular table infront of them, which is lit with a single large plate of some meat or other, surrounded by half a dozen bowls of some gelatinous red liquid. Syrupy like molasses, the liquid drips off the tender bits of meat they pluck at and feed to him with expertly feigned relish.
To the Left, a bored looking woman in a pale green dress. Her ears are decorated with emerald stones that dangle like fish bait and her hair is an elegant black mass of curls circa 1950 lounge singer. She is watching the dark blue cascade of light and the writhing coltish like woman stretched out on the stage beneath. The Dancer's movements are sporadic and jerking, not unlike a fish, face a mask of white paint that gapes and gawks and breathes in deeply between each spasm. Like a fish out of water. The light ripples, as waves.
They reach the bar, a mat black onyx marble behind which stands a waiter in black, a small gold flower emblazoned on his right breast (A Lotus?) who does not meet their eyes. Simply bows his head and awaits their order.
Zazh, his black attire blending in well with their surroundings, playing the various lights off of his shoulders and back and arms, at diluted shades, turns to regard Luce with an arched brow and a half-smile.
"Order anything. Anything you like." A quirk to that smile now. "It can be provided." And then, as if to prove his point he turns to the waiter with a serious expression.
"A Widow's Grief. Three cubes of ice. A slice of Nectarine and a dusting of salt." To which the waiter, nods and turns his lidded attention toward Luce. Zazh, with obvious roaming eyes, does much the same.
LuceThe smile he gives her in response, felt more than seen, is returned. His is wide; her own is cool as her pale hands except at the edges. A lilt of awareness there, a certain engagement, an immediacy that writes a certain tension into the muscles beneath her skin. As if she were poised for -
- ah, something. Each tableau steals her gaze for long moments, as if her attention had been pinned down by some extravagence within the viewfinder. The slice of light across the features of a particular giggling girl. The tension in the bored woman's mouth as the fish out of water jerks like a dying, air-hungry thing.
"Saint Magdalene, 19 year old, cask strength," is her order, murmured, her pale blue gaze sharp on Zazh's features, now. Staring right into his eyes as they roam. Her dress casts sharp, scintillating points across his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose, the gleam more absorbed than reflected by his layered blacks where the refracted spangles touch his clothing.
"Rather more quotidian than a Widow's Grief," a nearly noiseless exhale at the end. "Whatever that may be. But if you don't have it, your best Ardberg or Laphroaig will do.
"You come here often." A statement, not a question, though the flicker of her pale appraising gaze, the conspiratorial lilt of her elegant brows makes it more than that. Half-a-secret, swallowed back, held cool on her tongue, perhaps.
"The shows," she continues, inclining her golden head to Zazh as the bartender sets about constructing their respective drinks. Turning so that she may take in the entirety of the decadent tableau, as much as may be seen from one fulcrum point.
Naturally, she arranges herself on her best display for his roaming gaze, elbows resting on the bar, pale shoulders rising creamy white above the gleaming golden corset of the dress, her torse a concave, inward curve that makes her legs look all the longer. On a woman of average height, the dress might hit a three or four modest-to-slightly daring inches above the knee. On Luce, it it a scandal waiting to happen.
"Are they á la minute, á la carte?" Her French is natively perfect. Parisian if he has an ear for it. Precise as her fine little mouth can make it. "Or table d'hôte.?"
ZazhFrom one Fulcrum:
The Golden Dancer, ballet perfection turned to less delicate demands and desires, has all but fallen upon the stage. She plays the wounded gazelle to perfection, moving with grace both effortless and hurt, over the feigned helplessness of a wounded leg. The breast exposed heaves with generous lungfuls, drawing the attentions of those business men, once frat boys, close. Many are leaning out of their chairs, that careful repose practiced before gentleman club mirrors and board room meetings. A facade that cracks and shows the predator within. Their eyes devour and the Gazelle on the stage, seemingly limps through motions of pleading mercy. Imploring help.
The Red monster, contorted into a proud lean, more than two dozen yards across the expanse of the room, lunges to the edge of the red stage. His gaze, a flurry of black coal within the paint of his stripes, seems to register the weakness of the Gazelle distant. The brilliance of his red stage and the sheerness of her Gold, seems to eliminate that vague darkness that is the distance between them. Enough that one can smell the heat. Feel the musk. Hear the soft rumble of stomachs. He bends to his knees, shoulders touching either whilst arms spread out infront of him. A lunging pose that stills expertly. Poised...
The Violet Stage is awash in the grim tableau of the Androgynous couple, the man (Woman?) crouched upon the stomach of a bent over woman (Man?), who is bowed to their knees. She/He reaches back, stretching arms and hands out behind Her/Him, the tethers of long silk ribbon wrapped snugly about her/his throat, where the hands of the one atop, wrap and bind securely. As if to choke. As if to throttle. Both faces are serene in that picture, even if the vague tremble of the Choking Twin's hands can be seen. Straining...
And not far from their place by the first of the bars, another Stage. The piercing collision of halogen white, forgettable up until this moment for the brilliance of it. Blinding of the Dancer upon it's stage, who's front is little more than white paint and and flurescent body suit. She is slender, asian and petite. She moves with slow vigour, elegant yet beauteous. A tender thing of soft movements that spreads her arms and hands like wings. She turns in place to display a collection of curling black glitter, decorating her shoulder blades and thighs. Buttocks and hips. The Swan moves with deliberate ease. There is no one around her Stage, tucked off in a nearby corner close to the last bar alcove.
"The Shows." He repeats her tone. Her inflection (or lack there of), leaning back against the bar as the Waiter behind ducks out of sight around one of the alcove's walls. Curiously, each of the bottles behind the bar are not labelled. Each seems to contain a similar liquid that catches the light displays fastidiously.
"...Are not so much Shows as they are, installations, my Dear Luce. Each is an art piece dedicated to the wonder of...." He pauses, hand pinwheeling in the air. "Something. It is difficult to measure the truth of the artistry. I admit, to little understanding myself. Though they are quite lovely."
Their drinks arrive. Her's is a brilliant goblet filled with arterial red liquid. His is a slender cylinder, edged with a frozen slice of nectarine, rimmed with a brackish looking salt and filled with a deep emerald liquid, both opaque and oddly diffuse. He plucks his up without a hint of pause and sips at the contents tenderly. A vague rushing shiver, almost sobering quiet settles upon the man's features not long after. His face clips that smile swiftly.
"Are you looking for something in particular?" And he turns to look at her. His gaze has sharpened. His eyes, beginning to narrow at the pupil. "Something perhaps you are craving?" A glance down at the goblet. "Beyond the wine that is...."
Luce"Mmm," she returns, quietly, her expression livening as her gaze sparks upward from the installations to meet his sharpening gaze. Her eyes are shadowed by lashes made dark as smoke, half-lidded in a manner that might seem coy but for the glint of sharp, ready humor beneath them. But for the open ease of her posture as she lifts the long drape of an elegant arm to accept the goblet from the waiter.
"I'm not ready for the confessional yet, Zazh." Her chin rises, a note of rallying, almost haughty challenge in the arrogant eloquence of the gesture, which exposes the long, elegant curve of her bare throat. "Do I really seem the sort? To lay bare all my desires, dark or otherwise, so readily?"
By then she has tucked her long arm back into her body, the goblet held delicately between thumb and fore and middle fingers. She gives the glass and expert swirl to appreciate the "legs" the liquid leaves behind as it levels again, then leans forward and inhales. She is still in that moment, strung taut - as if pinned in place by some exquisite sort of awareness so briefly sharp it is balanced perfectly on the fulcrum of pleasure and pain. Then the moment passes, she exhales the breath of wine in a long, slow sigh and sinks her bare shoulders back into insouciant structure of her slouch, and favors him with a wry curl of her little red mouth. "Summer in a glass."
The wry curl widens as her attention flicks back to the installations, captured by a particularly sudden movement between the golden doe and the red monster before it drifts back to the elegant movement of the swan. "I do find them rather more interesting as installations rather than - " a sharp, sweeping glance sideways, then, away from the swan, back to the keen edge of his gaze. " - offerings on a menu. And in any case, I prefer to find my own pleasures rather than order them up out of the ether. Observer I may be, but in some things I require an active part.
"And you. Do you come here for the dancers?" A flashing glance back to the golden doe. "Or the patrons - " before her sharp gaze fixes on the businessmen surrounding her. The hungry cracks in their façades, dark and wet and open in the sheen that gleams across their avid eyes.
ZazhDo I seem the sort...
"You will be." A moment's pause. It almost...almost sounds threatening, the way his features seem to cast themselves in a harsh way. An almost vicious manner, that makes the suit he's wearing less of an attire suitable and more of a cage for the truth. His gaze leaves her for that sentence, to regard the Androgynous pair upon their violet stage, the submission having finished with the deflated 'corpse' of the Man (Woman?) suddenly deadly still and sprawled awkwardly. The other, man or woman, lies huddled over the still form, inspecting with what may be sorrow, what may be fascination, hands roving the slender shape beneath with avid unabashed firmness.
"Do you wish to delve any further in tonight's extravagances." The slender glass of opaque green is supped at again, that strange quiver, diminished now, drifting across his framework and setting right his features. Back, is the sombre title of regard. The red tongue of his tie adjusted under carefully slim fingers. There is a distance between them now, though measured in feet. One can feel an air there. Something not so much distracted as...incisive.
"A meal is a temporary thing, these days. To be respected only in it's creation and culmination. The taste and pallets of most are no where near refined enough to appreciate the Tenderest of meats or the most delectable of sauces. A spice is often wasted on the tongue of the hungry." He sighs, something vaguely melancholy, gaze falling to the drink in his hand, an absently open frown drifting over his face.
"To say such things of those on the stages would be a waste. Little more than a billboard glimpsed on a highway, rather than the art piece for the understanding eye." A pause. The wry smile is faint, but genuine. "Let Art be for those suspect of Prejudice, that appreciation be found in their Humility." The glass rises. A distant glance. A moment-
"I come here for business." He states matter of factly, turning his eyes sidelong toward Luce. For once, he does not rove her shape or form, merely meets her gaze. The dancers on their stages seem to shift perilously from one build up to the next. No doubt, a climax is to be had upon each, the result of the evening's dance. Already the Gazelle lays in tortured repose, back arched and legs spread as if in invitation. The Beast in red lathers and flails, gliding from the edge of his stage to the other like some caged monster.
"They order what I can provide and as a result, I am provided with access to their facilities. Such are the way things go." A pause, the glass of opaque green, barely touched, set back upon the bar and the Tender snapped at sharply for attention. His gaze remains on Luce a moment longer.
"For my enjoyment, I bring here young things to marvel at the darkness between the colours. It helps to impress them before you fuck them."
And then around on the Tender again with an almost imperious frown.
"Not this tonight. It stains my tongue. Bring me a Scarlet Wound over a Desperate Murder. No ice. No fruit."
The Tender retreats, quickly and without question.
LuceYou will be.
The goblet is held a scant eighth of an inch from her mouth; the impression of her red lips lingers on the glass, and the fine, dark liquid clings to the sides, settling slowly back into equilibrium like droplets of dark, viscous blood. The wine leaves the faintest, lingering stain on her lower lip, much as her painted mouth has left a faint, lingering stain on the glass. Her mouth is half-parted in that moment, the hint of dull white teeth behind soft red lips. And she is still, sharpness embedded in the moment. It is not the stillness of prey, no. The stillness of a predator, in that brief moment irrevocably aware that it, too, is being stalked. The elegant slouch is suddenly - half-sprung somehow, as if her spine were a coil pulling her body inward.
"No." If she were human, if he were an animal, he might catch the spike of hormones in her blood - the sharp awareness of danger that edges toward fear, without collapsing into it. The heady bloodrush of anger. He is looking away, watching as one nameless twin mourns or celebrates the murder of the other, in a still, quiet frenzy of hands over the awkward, leaden sprawl, when she straightens. Leans in close enough that her cool breath stirs his hair, and her soft mouth just brushes his skin as she murmurs into his ear. "I will not."
That fricative consonant at the end of the last word is bitten off, arrested so sharply that he can hear the very tick of her tongue against her teeth. And after all, she is not human. Her body chemistry does not betray her. There is nothing more than the cool sophistication of Chanel No. 5, the spiced scent of her tobacco, and the sweet weight of the wine in her glass. She inhales him, though. Her senses are keen enough to smell his blood beneath his skin.
And then he is adjusting his tie, and she is pulling back as well. Allowing that space to open between them, reeling back her awareness of his living presence, her jaw set as the moment changes, pale brows rising in an elegant counterpoint to that flare of the beast in her breast.
"The swan, I think," she returns, as the Tender retreats with his new order in hand. Scarlet wound over desperate murder. No ice. No fruit. She waits with a elegant patience for the man to return with Zazh's new order, cutting the man a brief glance back as he returns. Her own is still virtually untouched, gleaming ruby in her pale hands. "Unless you have a preference?" A certain arch solicitousness, when she finds his eyes on her own, gleaming-pale, saturated blue. Her pupils contract in that moment, the tendons in her neck tighten against the well-developed habit of refusing to meet, directly, another vampire's gaze, so there's an underlying tension, something like defiance, in the way she holds the look. "I trust I am not one of the young things, you mention. Somehow, you make your pleasures sound almost - " a brief, sharp pause. " - transactional. Business-like. Commodified."
Zazh"If you were, Dear Luce, I wouldn't be telling you about it. We would be off in the dark between colours right now-" His hand flits casually in the air above him "-legs in the air-" Then across his lips negligently "-tongues at war-" and then brush almost casually past hips and groin "-something of perversion making your night. I would have thought that were obvious by now."
Disapproving. A joking tsk. As if to close that vague haunting gap suddenly left behind them. His drink arrives and before that there is...a butting of proverbial heads. She arrives at his side while he studies the distance, plucking at his cheek with a moment's attention and a firmly declarative opinion. His response is a quick cast of his head around on a corded neck, eyes blazing with something akin to...anger. Entitled anger. Expected anger. Anger that of Nobles. Anger that of Kings and Queens and how dare you's. It is brief. A thing of razors. Thin and threatening childishness before it's subsumed in a flickering cast over her shape.
Then, his drink arrives and she is retreating. His first sip crushes the vague fugue that has eclipsed the moment, the tall glass containing a rich syrupy red liquid, like molten candy, that pools and begins to slowly penetrate the viscous yellow that sits at the glass' bottom. He is left with a sudden sharp inhale, like a Lover found his love in bed with another. That sharp intrigue of confusion bleeding out through his eyes and features. He lightens. Grows into his suit and almost out of it, enough that a hand rises to loosen his tie and run a slightly mussing hand through his slicked hair. Which is when he begins to tell her about what they'd be doing were she one of those young fuckables.
"Nothing of the sort. You're here to appreciate. To enjoy because I found this place to your liking. Despite the minuscule amount I seem to know about you. Your tastes are fashionable, if unique." And his head turns toward the Swan, who is bowed near double over, hands crossed at the wrist, legs crossed at the ankle, the gleaming black of her rear face, a sharp contrast to the flaring white halogen over her head. She stares with alien eyes, brilliant milky contacts turning her into an unseeing and lonesome figure.
"Is there something about her you find appealing? Or something you'd rather she be doing?" The tone of his voice is heated. Almost...accusatory. Perhaps, vaunted and needing to impress. Or subtly despising and wanting with clandestine intent. He begins to make his way around Luce, offering her a hand. Not an arm, but a hand on his way toward the Swan. At a pace, one might think a little too hurried for appreciation's sake.
Luce(In the brief face of his anger, sudden and sure, all razors, the hot core of it momentarily alight in his gaze, she is a bastion of intransigence. Soft mouth pulling sharply wide in a curling half-smile, just parting to reveal a hint of teeth. A brief, sharp inhale as he masters that hint of noble's anger, her lips closing soft as if around a particularly choice morsel.)
The pace is both too hurried for appreciation's sake, and just a hint too fast for a woman wearing heels so high that they deform the shape of her feet, make her look like a ballerina en pointe rather than a woman wearing shoes. The spiked heels themselves seem longer than her feet and constrict her gait so that she takes two steps to his every one. She takes then, though - a quick, crisp, clipped gait, defined by an unerring sort of balance.
"I appreciated the pair in bondage each to each. Particularly when they were in such exquisite tension, each to each. They could take their performance to any gallery, I think, in San Francisco or New York, and create a stir. Give them a different name each week, or let the patrons name the act. Display the cards beside them, projected on a blank white wall, a constantly changing narrative that alters nothing about what they do, and everything about how they are seen." A flickering glance back to their violet stage as they pass.
" - but they seem to have slipped past the moment of catharsis, into the denouement. It's that moment I find most interesting. The uncertainty, you see. The tension. The moment between heartbeats. The doe and monster interest me only to the extent that they interest the watchers, you see. We've known that story for a thousand years. Girl and beast. She will either get eaten, or fucked, or saved by a man who is going to eat or fuck her. Every girl knows that story. Has lived some boring iteration of it out in her own life.
"What I want, Zazh, is someone to surprise me. And so - the swan, blind, elegant. Still, and alone at that. No one close, no wretched, hungry little stock broker - worth, I think no more than a night's pleasure in the darkness between the lights, as you say - salivating over her written fate.
"I'm curious to see what comes next. Will she just sit there, a poem above solitude, unaware of our eyes trailing over her painted figure? Will she - like the swans I fed on the waters by my father's house - snap viciously at us should we come too close. Or perhaps she'll die, a proper reenactment of Tchaikovsky's great ballet, the music only in my head.
"Unless you know it, too? Swan Lake?"
She closes her mouth, glances at him sidelong, and hums, low in the back of her throat the reedy, rising theme to the ballet.
ZazhThe Swan remains bowed where she is. Still and supine and utterly exquisite in both.
"Constantly hiding..."
An accusation that. Not heated or cold but obvious. As if he'd striped that clean and laid it bare from the carcass. For them both to stare at in their myriad gluttony of emotions. Broken lovers and-
He's shaking his head, squinting into the Halogen lighting, jaw slightly unhinged and dangling as the blaze of brilliant white fashions a crown, a mantle and a robe about his form. Until the black of his suit is nearly obliterated in the glare of the stage that he's pressed up close to. Inches from the floor and mere feet from the delicate dancer upon it.
Luce's trailing presence, the clip clip clop of her hurried steps, are ignored though her words hang about his head, eagerly gobbled up with the slow rotation of a jaw. The Swan begins an agonizingly slow rise toward extended arms and calves and legs. His molars chew at some unknown gristle and his eyes remain fixed upon the dancer as he answers:
"Offering me details and dissection per your usual. Per your plan. Such things are delicious and extravegent and craving of a soul that is no more there than this time you pretend at feeding swans on a Father's lakeside. You're no more that innocent creature than you are a Dancer, a Singer or a Whore.
"Surprise you?" He turns then to regard her, backlit by the brilliance of that halogen heat, glare of black eyes suddenly subsumed under an...emerald hue. Just a moment. A brief hint of the green she might have witnessed in that brief auroric vision hanging around him when they first went for a drive.
"You're a creature prone to watching. Desperate for alleviation from what...Boredom? Novelty? Substance?" A pause. A half step closer, hand made into a claw as if he might snatch up her wrist. The drink he'd left on the bar counter flecking his lips, tasted by a dancing pink tongue. "Or maybe just grief? A loss that brings you to her Stage side-" Snapping a finger out at the Swan, turning back to lay both hands on the stage's edge. The grin is back. Manic perhaps. Maddened.
"...To appreciate. In jealousy or regret or reminiscence....or..." And he's blinking in that halo glare, that light from heavens and 1000 watt bulbs. He's narrowing his eyes and raising a hand to block the light some.
"...What say you little Swan?"
He whispers it. All but murmurs. The response...is electric:
The black sequin and glitter seems to expand as the Asian woman's hands wrap around her back, contorting to a flexible grasp that unfurls a hidden collection of spun black webbing and unfolding stiffened wire. In an expert flourish of motion, she is winged, the light fleshing the black web until it is a gleaming collection of curtained pinions, flooding out to crash the stage in sharp buffets and wanderings. She moves with hurried pace, around her small little space, fearful of the dark beyond where the light touches. Small and quick and blind and free and-
"....Of course. You run." Was that disgust? He continues to lean on the Stage. Watching the Swan move as a Swan would.
LuceAuspex 2!
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( fail )
Luce"Hiding?" her eyes are fixed on him, narrowed against the glare of the unforgiving halogen stage lights, the blisteringly white glare that paints him in crown and mantle and robes. She draws in a breath, unaccountably sharp, at the illusion. The faint, wry curve of her mouth slips into something rather more starched, a spike of supple, fragrant truculence, utterly contrarian. As if she meant to meet his every question with a riposte, his every diagnosis with some new, unrelated symptom. "I'm sure that I am transparent as clear glass. I've refused you nothing, Zazh."
She holds herself back in that moment when he seems ready to snatch her delicate wrist, to pull her forward. Then the swan alights, and the creature makes a low noise, quiet, simple delight, applauds three times, fingers flat against the palm of her hand, the wine glass held delicately forward, crystal interrupting the sound waves just so that the edge of the sound has a crystalline quality.
The creature joins him at the edge of the stage, lifts her wine glass in faint, clear toast to the swan, then to her mouth, and finally lowers the wind glass to rest it at the edge of the stage. "Boredom? The sign of a weak mind, a weak imagination, or both. The world's rather large. There is more than enough within it to keep me both engaged and entertained, for as long as I care to be both." There's a brief, razor edge to her half-smile. The light gleams across the surface of her gaze, heightens her already present pallor, washes her out so that she seems a mask of light, the absence of all color except for her hair, her mouth, her dress, and the pale glittering of her sharpened gaze.
"But perhaps you are right. Perhaps there is some hidden grief, that draws me to her side. The truth is, the pond was not my father's. Nor were the swans, nor the home, nor the voice that called me in ahead of the sun. My father was murdered shortly after I was born. By men whom, I think, were almost as ruthless as you. Is that confession enough for you? Enough truth laid bare?"
Zazh"Hardly enough. Never enough."
Low. Whispered. Harsh like the men whom killed her Father (supposedly). He continues to watch the Swan, move and motion and flit until she is breathless and spent and crawls into a foetal ball that is enshrouded, as if protectively, by the spun webbing of black. A ghostly creature, ethereal in the Halogen glow, lost under the spidery traces of her own escape mechanisms.
He's beginning to ebb. That taste of concocted violence. Potential manslaughter. Drifting accusation and impassioned, jealous, furious love is wavering and waning with only a sip of the glass he left behind. He drifts to the side to brush her shoulder.
"You'd not be worth collecting were you ever measured in 'Truths' and 'Enough'." He breathes, one might say raggedly, as the edge of the yawning maw he pulls back from (addict) peels away and leaves behind an adrenalized creature of softened eyes and a withered smile. He watches the Swan tremble upon the stage, so accurately as to wonder if it is real or imagined for the Installation. His gaze does not last long, instead turning from the lights to aim his back to the Swan and his gaze over a shoulder at Luce's own profile.
"Perhaps is what I like. Perhaps is what I am interested in but...you would refuse me nothing." A pause. The smile drifts by on the corners of thinned lips. "That...I will take as admission. Not too easy nor too hard. Just right enough." And he leans in close to breathe her in, lip to near lip (scant millimetres) as if he could take the wine off her painted own. Abruptly stops and inhales sharply.
"Your first step to being mine. Congratulations." The grin. He pulls around her as another one of the Stage's flares to life, a livid orange replacing where once the Golden Gazelle, now mysteriously vanished, alongside the gaggle of suits watching her. A slender male of powerful legs creeps onto the Stage's edge, his timid motions curious. A monkey's pause. A fluid comedy to his every knuckled step.
"Come come, my dear" A hand held out toward her, to grasp or smack away, it mattered not. He was watching the Orange light. The next great distraction. "More to see. More to inspire."
LuceThe creature is still when he bends in close, face to face, nearly mouth to mouth, and inhales. A stillness that is utter and entire, except for the perfect rhythmic cycle of her breathing, the minute rise and fall of her shoulders as her lungs move inevitably as a bellows, all tidal, the washing breath. Defined by by the moon. His shadow deepens over her narrow frame; her pupils dilate, black devouring the pale blue of her irises.
She tips her chin just upward, her painted lips just parted, moving her mouth fractionally closer beneath his, without touching. Not as if she wanted to kiss him, though. As if she wanted to devour him.
As if she wanted to devour him, and only the thin veneer of civilization kept her so responsively still.
Or perhaps it is the way he breathes her in. Some memory of the mantle-and-crown allowed him by a trick of the lights before the stage. Or some remembered grief. She is sharp with awareness. Her nostrils flared, her shoulders fixed, her lean frame written over with coiled tension evident in the straight, square elegance of her shoulders.
"You're overconfident. I don't belong to anyone but myself. I'm not collectible, and I'll not be yours."
Nevertheless, when he offers her his hand, she takes it, rather primly. Drifts with him toward the monkey, the human ape, watching him caper about with a certain sangfroid that descends carelessly over her features. Haughty and remote.
"Ah - a monkey! You do remember the analogy William Blake used for Swedenborg in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, yes? A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as much wiser than seven men.
"Though, in truth he was not much wiser than his monkey. Why are so many of them animals - "