[Danny Jones] (123 not me!)
[Lucia] Lucia sat – alone – on the patio of a restaurant that was otherwise busy. She had come from one side of the street (or the other), come from one direction (or another). Maybe she had circled this place multiple times today before deciding to enter. Maybe she’d just seen it, seen the light and the warmth inside, and been reminded – for a moment – of something less harsh than asphalt under her feet.
She looked like she belonged there. Her long hair positively gleamed under the carefully ambient, carefully hidden lighting. It was combed back and twisted up, deftly arranged in the sort of hairstyle you might expect from a grad student or youngish librarian. Her freckles barely showed in the dimness. She wore a simple green dress, with a soft yellow cardigan over her shoulders against the chill. There was a half-empty glass of iced tea in front of her, a plate of half-eaten dinner.
And yet she clashed. She was out of place anywhere, however she did her hair, however demurely she crossed her legs at the ankle, however quietly she sat in that uncomfortable metal chair. There was something in her eyes that did not quite fit with the dress, the hair, the iced tea in front of her. She seemed angry. She was sitting alone; that must mean something was wrong with her. No one had asked to be seated on the patio since she’d come out here. It was not impossible to ignore her. But it was a distinct challenge.
[Lucia] ((Not the most original scene-starter, nor the FUNNEST, but that’s what ya get.))
to Danny Jones, Erich, Nessa Malikoff
[Nessa Malikoff] One cannot afford to be distracted at night in Chicago. Nessa dismounts the new (used) motorcycle, not perhaps dressed for the chill in the air as well as one might be. Jeans, a leather biker jacket over some sort of deep colored sweater set– yes, incongruous, but apparently she mixes styles like cappuchino flavors. Nessa removes her new black helmet and stores it– and her jacket– in the space under her seat. Locks it carefully, and then spends a few necessary moment fluffing her long, black waves from Helmet Hair to a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Shadowlords perhaps look less harmless, without biker paraphernalia on them.
One might not guess now, about her, save for the subtle, mystical scent of her breeding about her, save for the depth it gives her face where otherwise she might be plain.
Around this area are some shops open so late. Restaurants and bookstores with coffee bars in them and more. Perhaps she does not feel like it just now; Nessa is less, something absent and not yet recovered, her face pale and full of tension and ache.
[Danny Jones] Even streetrats like to do something other then slum on occasion – and one street rat in particular has friends that hold a little section of the mile, so it’s not unusual to see the skinny little gnawer wandering through the streets here and there. The weather has chilled again, going from hot to shiver-inducing chilled winds; thus she’s pulled out her jacket from the depths of her back once more, and has it over top her typical cargopants and t-shirt. Tonights t-shirt is hot pink (yes, pink!) with grumpy care bear on it, thought bubble saying simply “+@%!” in glitter.
Yes, glitter.
Hands are shoved into her pockets, her backpack slung comfortably over her shoulders, and the only other noteable thing- other then the two-toned fabulous hair – is the goldpainted wedding band she wears on a leather strap around her neck.
Other then that? Same ole Danny, different day.
Past various cafes, past other shops and such, she doesn’t slow down until she is passing by the patio where a certain girl(monster) sits as if she (doesn’t) belong and drinks her tea. A bit of memory, a recognition, and she slows her steps as she nears the patio to see if it is indeed the (weird) girl who was protecting her fries at the pub with Thaney…
[Erich] A toilet flushes. One of the stalls in the men’s room opens, and Erich Orlov emerged. The restroom was empty, which was fortunate; Erich had emerged from the stall, but never gone entered it in the first place. He moves over to the sink, where he turns the water on, and slowly begins to peel of his gloves.
Looking in the mirror, he examines his face. He’s wearing Jackie O sunglasses. His jaw is a swollen mess; it looks near dislocated, and the bruising has marbled the left side of his head, discoloring the skin around his eye, which is thankfully hidden by the shades.
The glove comes off slowly, with layers of skin sticking to the interior, slowly pulled off his hand like a bandaid might be. He hisses, a low sound, and extends his glistening pink fingers into the cold water, where he lets the flow slough up some more liquefied skin, cool the burn.
Straightening, he pats his hand dry, face neutral, controlled, and then carefully, oh so carefully, pulls the glove back on. That done, he turns, exits the restaurant, and begins to move purposefully towards the patio, ignoring the stares he garners from the patrons within.
[Erich] (brb)
[Lucia] The way she sits, with her legs crossed and one arm slung carelessly over her abdomen, seems to suggest that she should be smoking a cigarette idly to sum up her opinion of the meal she doesn’t seem inclined to finish. There’s no smell of smoke around, her, and no hint of feral breeding in the slant of her eyes or the color of her hair or the structure of bones underneath her skin. People that walk by the sidewalk outside the patio avert their eyes, to avoid meeting hers, just in case.
Even inside, dinner conversation trends towards serial killers and horror movies, home security and that scene from To Kill a Mockingbird with the dog shambling rabidly down the street towards the business end of a shotgun.
A woman on a bike, a woman with a ring, a man with battered wife syndrome.
Lucia picks up her glass, fingers almost – almost – slipping on the condensation, and lifts it up from the table. She puts the straw in between her lips and takes a sip, a drop of moisture falling onto the pale green fabric over her lap. And she looks at Danny slowing down. She looks different, Lucia does, but it’s the same girl. The same prickly feeling in the air around her, the same vicious look in her eyes. She sucks another drink of tea up through the straw, sets it down with a scrape-clink of glass on iron, and looks towards the door to the patio opening.
[Danny Jones] She looks different, Lucia does, but it’s the same girl. Danny slows, and then stops, and finally leans on the little fence, the small barrier that cuts the patio off from the sidewalk, that makes a distinct, we are we and you are you and never shall the two mingle line in the sand. A line that Danny has ignored time and time again. It’s just her way.
She glances at the rest of the patio, a slight tip of her head as Erich exits, with a vague recognition of him as well. What she recognizes is more then enough, of course. AIn’t no surprise there, to any what know her.
And so, back to Lucia. Dark eyes under jeweltoned hair as lips quirk into a smile. “You know Thaney, ain’tcha…” Close enough to a hello, hm?
[Danny Jones] ((allo darling! be sure to hit the beltane forums, hm? *g*))
to cricket
[Nessa Malikoff] One whom she recognizes. Danny, and conversations have been had about that particular Gnawer. Nessa can remember their first meeting, their first conversation and the rapidity with which a burger disappeared into the bottomless woman.
Danny has a… ring? A wedding band. On a cord. Nessa blinks, and angles towards the intriguing bit of information, takes a certain number of steps towards the patio where the Gnawer slows, slows as she comes to a lone woman sitting without any crowd where usually people would be congregating even at this hour at that particular cafe. Perhaps business is slow. Perhaps Danny sees the leftover food on that plate.
A few more steps and Nessa recognizes someone else, even if she has no name for the blonde, lone woman. Erich had been speaking to her one night in the park, and how often does he chat up humans? More curious things. And speaking of Erich.
Nessa’s head turns to examine her surrounding. She coudl… look for cars. And enter the next building instead. She is on path to choose either.
[Lucia] “I know the name. I remember the face the name is attached to.” She pauses there, looks at the wetness on her fingerprints. Her eyes cross, glaze, then refocus clearly. Lucia drops her hand and wipes off the water on one long thigh, then turns and looks at Danny. Her head moved like her limbs moved, as though dragging through water. She was in no hurry. When she found the Gnawer, her mouth was softened with something readable as innocence, and yet her eyes swam with some dark, primordial wisdom. “Who are you?”
[cricket] I saw! Danny is clearly aiming to give Hunter a heart attack and finish him off. :-P
to Danny Jones
[Danny Jones] (hahah! I thought it was brilliant! I’m eagerly awaiting his reply. *Grins*)
to cricket
[Danny Jones] Movement captures her eye – and she turns in time to see Nessa gravitate her way. She lifts a hand to wave at her, letting her know she’s been seen, before she turns back to Lucia with the oddly placed words, but clear meaning. She’s leans comfortably on the railing, the ring a swaying pendulum that glints in the softened amber light.
Lips curl into a smile, and she scratches idly at a patch of skin on her wrist. “I’m Danny. I saw you with Thaney’s friend Steven the other night at that pub, with the fries.”
[Lucia] She tilts her head back, both long arms resting easily on her stomach, and looks up, up, up. The tops of buildings thrusting against the sky make her dizzy. Her eyes swim for a moment and then she clenches them shut, screwing up her entire face – freckles and all. For a moment her teeth are bared, and the effect is bizarrely gut-wrenching. She has the expression of a child, and a young one at that, but the sight of her teeth releases rushes of hormones in any normal human brain that signal any one (or more) of the F urges. Feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproductive activity.
Lucia’s teeth, briefly seen, equal adrenaline.
She opens her eyes and exhales everything inside her in a silent rush. Her mouth closes and her eyes rotate in her head from the sky to Danny once more. She doesn’t offer her hand, or smile. “It’s ten thirty at night. Do you know what your friends are?”
[Nessa Malikoff] She can, she will. Danny has seen her. Nessa’s chin raises in strength, not greeting, and she walks towards the patio, and the Gnawer, and very, too soon, the killing zone around the woman with the teeth.
Fangs.
For a brief, shocking second, Nessa was nearly sure she saw fangs.
The breath enters her body, forced in where it doesn’t want to be, and she approaches in such a way that Danny can choose to invite her closer or wave her away, should that woman be unacceptably dangerous, as opposed, perhaps, to the merely deadly.
[Erich] The patio door swings open, and Erich emerges. It takes a momement, perhaps, to identify him, if only because of the long, beige raincoat that he’s wearing that reaches down to his shins, belted across the mid-drift, the black baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, the huge shades, the poloneck shirt. Gloves. There is barely an inch of skin showing other than his shadowed face.
He moves forwards, feet heavy, and then drags a chair out from under Lucia’s table, the legs raucous on the ground, and sits down heavily in it.
[Danny Jones] Lucia looks up, and quite cutely, gut-wrenchingly, wrinkles nose and bares teeth. Adrenaline surges into the are, and normal humans Feel the Fs. Danny is no normal human. Dark eyes watch, with that same lazy little smile playing across her lips.
She’s pretty, Danny, though she’d probably deny it. She’s too skinny, too wild (wyld), too this, too that to be pretty. It’s her personality that sets her apart however, that makes folks just seem to gravitate to her. The moon is dark tonight, and even under it’s pull, she is comfortable, at ease in her own skin.
“Ain’t them like the words to some nursery rhyme or commercial or some shit – only they ask where the kids are…” A pause, and that same lopsided grin. “An yeah, I know what my friends are.”
A nod toward Nessa, and a soft. “Hey Nessa.” in hello. Then Erich is suddenly there, settling at Lucia’s table, and Danny studies him. A brow quirks upwards, but she ain’t say a damn word.
Yet.
[Lucia] The fact that a trenchcoat-wearing man has just approached her table as though he belongs there, yanked out a chair, and sat down does not seem to phase Lucia. She still has her head tilted back, her throat utterly bared, but somehow there’s nothing particularly submissive about her posture. Go ahead. Get close enough to breathe on the curves of skin stretched over the bones and muscles in her neck. Think about splitting that fair skin and think about how much blood will come out. Consider her position submissive. Please.
There is a man she does not recognize in a coat and hat and glasses and gloves sitting across from her at the table. If Danny had not glanced at the man, Lucia probably would have continued to ignore him. He probably wasn’t real, after all. But Danny looked at him, and so Lucia’s head slowly came up and her eyes opened to travel over what there was of him. “And what are you supposed to represent?” she asks him, picking up a piece of lettuce from her plate and munching on it.
[Erich] “Your id,” he says, voice low, a gravelly grumble, a rumbling rumble. He leans back in the chair, wincing as he does so, his swollen face making even the wince itself painful. Eases back, and a slow, sickly sweet odor begins to rise from his body. To permeate the air like what you might smell in the ER under the stink of chemicals and disinfectants and the like.
He looks at her, then over to Danny, their faces reflected and distorted in his huge sunglasses, which he finally pulls off, revealing the darkness that occludes one eye, that swells it and tingues the flesh in shades of green and purple. He sets the shades down heavily on the table, and looks back to Lucia.
[Danny Jones] Lucia has an interesting way to pose questions, to slide her phrases around oddly chosen words. It captures the attention of the little Gnawer, though it’s the scent that flows off Erich that causes her nose to wrinkle.
She manages not to point out the obvious, but well, she don’t quite keep it from her face, or her eyes, for that one brief moment.
[Lucia] Lucia does not answer Erich for a few moments. She munches on the bit of lettuce she picked up, licks a spot of dressing off her lower lip, and stares at him while he takes off his sunglasses to reveal at least one of the many wounds she can smell faintly in the air between them. Again, she lifts her glass of tea and takes a long sip. There’s undissolved sugar clumped at the bottom of the glass. Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me…
When she sets the glass back down, she nods to him. “Close. My id never talks. You must be one of the other two, slumming it.” Another nod. “I suspected as much.” She uncrosses her ankles, switches them, sits upright in her chair, then turns to look at Danny again. Her eyes flick across the hair, then the glint of the ring, then the glitter of the girl’s shirt. She sparkles, she shines. “Beers don’t repay french fries.” She pauses, frowns slightly. “I don’t drink, I never drink. Devil’s Water makes me crazy.”
[Nessa Malikoff] Erich… smells. He joins them and Nessa is suddenly uncomfortable, shifts, her nostrils flaring in protest. One notices these things. “Privet, Mr. Orlov, Danny, miss. That is one hell of shiny, sir.” Kind of an admiring tone. She would like very much not to eat right now. But he obviously earned his wounds in some sort of fight and deserves comment, da?
One is polite, when one has seriously offended a man.
Lucia speaks oddly. Nessa does not understand several references, and she turns her attention to the lip– no the lettuce- no, the Woman, meets eyes with an inner strength of her own, but no challenge. Lets the gaze drop to respect, if offense seems near to be taken.
[Erich] Erich turns his gaze towards Nessa, and his gaze is inscrutable. He simply stares at her, and then purses his lips, and looks back to Lucia. Reaching into his coat, he draws out a scrap of paper with a phone number written across it in blue pen. He slides this across the table towards Lucia, and then stands.
“Call me when you have a chance.”
With that, he turns and begins to head back into the restaurant.
[Danny Jones] She chuckles, softly and a shoulder rolls into a slight shrug. “Depends on who ya talk too, I suppose. Me, I prefer french fries to beer, but will drink it too.”
She lifts a hand to slide it through her hair, an idle movement meant to (and succeeding in) spiking up the two-toned goodness properly. It’s a messy spike, without the aid of hair gel or anything else. Erich makes a quick retreat, almost as soon as he entered, and that brow of Danny’s quirks upwards again. She seems infinitely amused, Danny.
[Lucia] It’s entirely possible that Lucia would read a challenge where none was intended, were she looking at Nessa. So far it seems as though – despite Danny’s greeting – she hasn’t noticed the kinswoman’s approach. Her eyes stay on Danny’s chest, eyeing the glitter splayed across the cotton. Meanwhile, Erich leaves her something, pushes something over to her. Still watching Danny, Lucia’s left hand crawls spider-like across the tabletop to the edge of the paper.
Her fingernails test it, pull it forward, crumple it into her palm tightly. Her wrist drags back across the iron, and her fingers close completely around the number. By that time, Erich is long gone. And then she turns her head and looks at Nessa. She stares. It’s a distinctly uncomfortable position to be in, on the business end of Lucia’s stare. She isn’t looking at Nessa with lust or anger or dominance, though what’s in her eyes could easily be mistaken for any of the above.
She’s imagining something. The wheels turn, click, she exhales softly. “It would be warm.”
[Nessa Malikoff] Gaia. He’s caught her with another tribe. Again.
The distance between what she is and what Erich is lengthens, pulls her in too many directions. Nothing on her face particularly seems to change in any significant way, but sadness leaks from her. Loss.
Her spine is straight.
“Pardon? What is warm?”
[Danny Jones] Warm.
All right, then.
Nessa asks the question, the question that Danny wasn’t going to ask. She’s another one, the little Gnawer, as she watches where Erich disappeared to, dark eyes lingering on the door that swallowed him whole, as surely as it vomited him this direction mere moments before. Finally, her question comes, with a twist of her head to look at Lucia again. “Ya with him?”
[Lucia] “He could very well be a manifestation of my ego. Or superego,” Lucia says, her consonants clipped, her brows pulling together. She glares at her half-empty plate, her mouth in a flat sort of pout that makes her lips petulant while her eyes boil. “Of course I’m not with him. I’ve only seen him twice, and he hasn’t been the same either time. What sort of track record is that? None at all, that’s what.”
She tips her iced tea over, spilling a few tablespoons through the wrought-iron curls of the tabletop, sending ice chips skittering, her straw tumbling soundlessly to the tiled flooring of the patio. The glass rolls, one way then the other, then sighs to a stop. “Crack it open, crawl inside. I did it once, but the man wasn’t big enough to hold both my shoulders at once.” She sighs and looks with a slightly sympathetic, wincing look at Nessa. “Like taking a bath in a tub too small, kept having to shift back and forth, side to side, to get both arms warm.”
[Danny Jones] Whether or not it is intended? Part of what she says strikes the Gnawer as funny. There’s a snort of laughter, started but stopped before it gets too far or offends. “Indeed. None at all.” Agreement, and amusement, all in one.
She just listens after that, bewildered, amused, and perhaps a little impressed with the seeming leaps of logic that make no sense. Of course, there has to be logic in there… somewhere… right?
[Nessa Malikoff] She stares, the wisdom of the stranger going straight to her soul.
Nessa nods slowly, her sadness slowly, snail’s pace moving towards the first hints of acceptance. “Is exactly so. One sizes does not fit all. I must think about what you have said.”
Nessa– does not fit. Or They do not. Her spine is straight and her chin up as she wanders off again, with an abstracted good-bye wave for Danny.
[Danny Jones] ooooooookay.
Nessa is victim to the next blank look, and clearly the Gnawer is the one out of place if that makes any kind of sense whatsoever. And people thing the BeeGees are nuckin futs… ohdalolly.
Fingers lift to run blunt nails against the back of her neck, fall along the jawline, then return to where they began the journey. Danny…. is lost.
[Lucia] A method to the madness, a logic to the lunacy…something like that. Lucia watches Nessa walk away, then turns to Danny and quirks an eyebrow. “Is she daft?”
[Nessa Malikoff] (BWAAHAHAHHHAH!! that si great. thansk for sceen!)
to bird, cricket, Danny Jones, lint, Lucia
[Danny Jones] And that, friends, causes another bout of snorted laughter, captured and controlled but not quite as quickly. “Shit, girl – that whole fuckin T..” Clears throat. “Family’s nuckin futs far as I’m concerned. Ain’t met a one of ’em I’d trust as far as I could throw em yet. Daft’s probably the nicest way t’put it.”
Oh Danny-girl…
[Lucia] Lucia leans forward, looks through the bottom of her tipped-over glass, peers through the slowly oozing sugar that had settled underneath the now-spilled tea. She blinks once, tilts her head, frowns a little at something. Still leaned over, shoulders hunched in a manner that makes her seem like she’s preparing to pounce on something, she says, “It’s never made sense to me. Trust has nothing to do with distance, and everything to do with degree.”
[Danny Jones] “Always figured it were interchangeable – degree’n’distance – in the sayin. Sayin’s ain’t always make sense, after all. My Mama has some fuckin weird sayings.”
A lopsided grin as she stands upright once more, and stretches, arms overhead, back bending, a sigh of appreciation as muscles relax again. Arms fall, and she slides her hands back into the pockets of her jeans. “I gotta go do some stuff, girl. Nice talkin to ya.” Pause. “S’yer name, anyway – ya ain’t never said…”
[Lucia] She straightens, cracks her neck – what a sound, it’s music like gnashing teeth – and waggles her tongue aimlessly outwards, like trying to catch snowflakes on its tip. She pops it back in, smooches the air, nods. “That’s a long story. And I don’t want to tell it again.” She waves a hand at something beside her left ear; a bug, perhaps. Mosquito. Fly. Something tiny and silent.
“Goodnight.”
Which is, sort of, a goodbye, or a dismissal.
[Danny Jones] A slow smirk, then. Followed by a chuckle. “I’ll bet.”
But that’s all she says, though gaze flicks toward where Erich was, the number passed, the crazy fuckin Lords, and maybe she puts 2 and 2 together to get 5. Ain’t matter, she just nods, and turns on a heel, and heads off in her original direction.