lucetilogs | and the bass keeps runnin runnin

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and the bass keeps runnin runnin

Who: Anyone who heard the announcement, caught a flier in the plaza, of heard by word of mouth. Everyone's welcome!
What: A rave! Well, "rave." Luceti makes everything a little different.
When: June 21st, nightfall to early morning
Where: the beach near Adele's house
Summary: It's the first day of summer! This calls for bonfires, naturally, but why not spice it up with loud music, flashing lights, drinks, dancing, and a conspicuous lack of curfew?
Rating: PG to PG-13, please move anything steamier to appointments ~~or Adele will take the hose to you~~

Getting all the firewood, food, and drink out to the beach had been, honestly, the hardest part of preparation. Whatever else one might say about running things on magic, it certainly did cut down on the trouble of constructing edifices and machines to run the entertainment side of a party. As it stands, the setup is labour-intensive but otherwise minimal, and there's not much to do by sunset. Escape the house before Max and Zevran, the culture-displaced madmen, can put any more eyeliner on him. Arrive at the beach. Light the bonfires. Make sure the bonfire-cooking-compliant food is set out. Put up a table loaded with bottles, cups, ice, and permanent markers. Thank the resident doctor and quartermaster once more. Plug in the stereo system.

The speakers and light show have been with him since he left his house, in the form of the resident god of mischief, and they confer over sheets of paper with track names and times written on them for a little while just before the start. That's the last of it, and by the time the sky above the mountains is beginning to darken into twilight, the first thumping, trilling strains of dance music begin to echo out across the sand.

It's the shortest night of the year. Best make every second last.

[OOC: Feel free to post your character for mingling, since this entire event is very free-form anyway. For everyone's enjoyment there is a drinks table, food, several bonfires, the ocean (lifeguards not on duty, splash drunkenly at your own risk), and of course a dancing area with lights and music. Music will probably be primarily EDM with a heavy bass line, but occasionally wander into the territories of electro-swing and the like to give even less modern partygoers a chance to show off. The light show as well will stray out of the typical at times, with the expected abstract wheeling and flashing lights giving way to more complicated illusions. Don't be surprised to find yourself and your fellows occasionally dancing in a forest glen or a Rivendell look-alike for a few minutes at a time. Loki is working the tech booth, after all.

The party will go as long as people stay and are enjoying themselves, so have fun and tag around!]

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I honestly had no idea what to say.

[He's completely frank about it, mostly because it's pointless to try to be evasive to Isaac. The man is going to do what he wants to do, and besides, the last few times Jack has seen him he's ended up running like a frightened baby animal. If he ever had an image to uphold, it's well and truly demolished by now. He doesn't want to know what Isaac thinks of him, if in saying another life might have left him a similar man he'd meant it as an endearment or an expression of his own relief.

He wants to believe Zevran's side of all of this, blame the worst of the friction on Luceti and spirits and anything else convenient, but most of the deeply forgiving people in his own world are dead now and with good reason. Still, he reasons (moving further out of the sound and out of swinging or kicking distance, still unwilling to look away for a moment), he supposes they can talk. For the moment.]

Anything you want.

[Anything you want.]

No, no... [Shaking his head so softly, he huffs a sad and breathless little laugh, his eyes rolling skyward as if he were to find something of comfort up in the darkened, star-lit heavens.]

Do not tell me that.

[The bass thumps on in the silence, steady and powerful like the beat of one’s heart, shaking the ground and shaking his bones but shaking nothing deeper. And then it comes at last.] Why… did you not do it?

[Anger is bled and drained; there is only disappointment towards something he expects Jack to follow. He breaks eye contact after a moment to scrub at his face with a hand, sniffing dryly.]

[From nealy anyone else, Jack would take the hints at emotion at face value and probe deeper, trying to unravel the meaning behind the nonverbal little sighs and glances. But he doesn't know what the value of things done with a borrowed face even are, so he only watches, conflicted and quiet as he nervously rolls the slowly-warming can between his hands.]

Why didn't I do what?

[It's a guileless question. He really has no idea what he would have been expected not to do, at any point during their acquaintance.]

[He breathes slowly through parted lips, sweat glittering on his skin.]

Your hand… [One rises demonstratively.] …I had placed it over my breast and pressed it close, and you… you had stood where you are. [Watching almost desperately for the faintest glimmer of recognition in his expression, he cracks a glass-thin smile.]

You remember, don’t you? [A beat before his voice drops to a conspiratorial murmur.] You had felt it then, the thump of the heart. There it was. [Leather creaks as his gloved fingers hook into his own chest in a fierce though ineffectual effort to carve deep into it.] Would that you had sank your nails into me and tore it from me – tossed it aside or crushed it under your foot, cum tu doreşti - ... ah.

[It leaves him in a sigh of something close to relief and his eyes fall shut, the thought left to hang in the air a moment. Savoured, almost.] Mn, 'twould have saved another man the trouble. [A wretched laugh bubbles up, a pale imitation of his gleefully roguish self.] And me... my breath... at the very least.

[Whether Isaac intentionally means to dig at the wound of what he'd had Zevran do - how the man had come back to their shared bedroom a wreck barely held together with ranting and avoidance - he does anyway. Jack's eyes, the picture of distressed curiosity, narrow toward the end of Isaac's explanation, and he pops open the can harder than ha needs to, taking a long drink before he answers. It does nothing to cool him off, the time or the icy alcohol that settles into his gut.]

What? Why on earth would I murder some weirdo who hasn't done anything worse than unsettle me a bit? [He remembers the moment well, just as he remembers how at that moment, Isaac had been nothing more than a strange, melodramatic man he'd met under the effects of a shift.] And even if I had, how would it have saved anyone anything? None of that lasts here and you know it.

[There’s a twitch tugging his upper lip into the beginnings of a snarl, words spewing from him in a short, furious outburst directed less towards Jack than at fate and God and his sorry self.]

It had meant everything --!! [He pulls in a raw, shivering breath through his teeth, hands bunching into fists around empty air.] Everything, that... that one chance to taste freedom for lack of anything more.

[The fire in his wild, widened eyes dies away as his own silence deepens and his breathing evens and the reality of his situation is left to sink in. Need and want; want and need. Death had been the only way to break free from the selfish, determined hunger, to break free from the tormenting idea that he deserved more than what he could have.] But… ‘twas not to be.

[Pressed-thin lips twist back into a smile.]

‘tis most unfortunate that one needs this sorry piece of flesh to live when it breeds madness. Madness and misery. ...What need have I for it, Jack?

[It's a question he knows will have no satisfactory answer, if any. And yet he waits for it and almost with bated breath, eyes shining and demanding, as if this man had been the one to give him life.]

Sometimes, I have thought... 'twould come to better use as a prize on a hunter's wall. At least then it might be looked upon with fond eyes.

[A laugh jolts out of him as sudden and violently as a cough, and he looks to Jack, half-expecting him to join in.]

Edited (tiny edit) 2013-06-24 02:34 (UTC)

[Between his twisting logic and the just-plain-archaic bent of his grammar and syntax, Jack really wishes sometimes that Isaac came in print, with little clarifications in the margin or even on an opposite page. It takes him entirely to long to realise that they're still talking about his heart, and the epiphany is only cued when his expression slides from confused anger into something flatter, bits of different expressions scattered haphazardly through his affect. A bit of disgust in the turn of his lips, anger and fear in the line of his back, and only more of that curiosity creasing around his eyes.

He's quiet for a second that is still, and then for another where he blindly mouths a few words that don't come to him, until he realizes the one way in which this entire demonstration is dimly familiar.]

Is . . . this your first breakup?

[He can't be blamed for not recognizing it straight off, really. It's been a while since he was sixteen.]

[After puzzling over Jack’s silence, all he knows is that he had been expecting something else, something other than an answer in the form of a question he doesn’t understand. His smile drops and he cocks his head, bleary eyes slitted.]

…What?

[It’s not so viciously sharp as if in response to an accusation, but it’s the low and cool and wary note of a man just on the verge of taking offense.]

Edited (tiny word change CARRY ON :I) 2013-06-28 20:10 (UTC)

It's fine, if it is your first- ah. [It's probably a word choice thing, Jack realizes, and pauses to think of how to rephrase himself.] How would you phrase 'breakup'.

[His diction shifts to a higher tone not entirely consciously, just a bit more posh and deliberate.] Parting 'twixt two as lovers?

[He knows that he really, really should not be comfortable enough to be hashing out modern slang with Isaac. Maybe it's easier to let his guard down near so many people who could witness any trouble. Or maybe he really does seem more like the man he'd met before the possession disaster, and it's becoming easier and easier to believe that he had absolutely not been himself. Probably a bit of both.]

Edited 2013-06-28 20:23 (UTC)

[His expression darkens momentarily, not so much at the translation itself but at how he perceives the tone of it, raw-nerved with more than drink. But before words have come to him he suddenly finds himself dissolving into breathless, chuckling laughter, his throat aching and thick and full. And by the end of it he cannot remember feeling angry.]

‘twould depend on how it is that you define ‘lovers’. Two who fuck and part in the morning… or two who fuck but wake in one another’s arms, needing nothing more... and no one else.

[Laughter is tentatively, at least, a good thing. It's an improvement from the brief, stormy silence in which he'd instantly mentally reviewed all his escape routes and yet again wondered why he had such a big mouth. Laughter eases him back from that, and he has a slow sip of beer as he waits for Isaac to finish, eyes never leaving him for longer than the space of a blink. And the answer he gets is a surprisingly fair and collected one, coming from Isaac.]

I never heard from you or Zevran which exactly it was. [It's one of those carefully neutral non-answers, which he amends almost immediately, not sure if it's enev possible for that alone to lead anywhere good] But, yeah, it implies a relationship.

The parting of ways… of that I know well. [He glances aside, gazing far and dully across the darkened distance for a long moment. It's tempting, on an impulse, to ask Jack of what Zevran had said of him. But what did it matter? In the end, when they had stood by the light of his burning sketches, the elf's sentiments had been undeniably clear.]

We had not lain together and known one another's touch in so very long… and his love I never lost, for I had it not to begin with. Would there be a term for that?

[A beat passes in considering silence and then comes a soft shake of his head and a smile that manages to be mirthless and wry and apologetic.]

‘twould be disappointment, I suppose. But such a word... [He swallows thickly.] ...such a word makes very simple and neat and shallow a thing of sentiments which can be no such thing.

[Low under his breath, he tests the word.] Disappointment. ...‘tis not enough and ‘twill never be.

[Blinking, he turns weary eyes glimmering with the smallest spark of curiosity onto Jack.] ...you made Zevran's acquaintance in December, didn't you? [It's a question masquerading as a pressed-flat, hollow statement devoid of accusation. Just a man seeking answers that suspicions might be laid to rest at last. He could not hope for anything more.]

Edited (JEEEZZZAAS) 2013-06-29 04:09 (UTC)

[It's a strange, almost unsettling feeling, realizing that you've begun feeling sorry for someone who's struck at both you and someone you love. Jack doesn't even realize that's what it is for several moments, but a vague sympathy is exactly what begins to settle into him as the acidity in Isaac's bearing begins to degrade, gaze cast into the distance and anger bled out of his tone.

There isn't a word for what he describes - not in any language Jack knows of, anyway. But he imagines he can understand it well enough, the sense of losing a thing that never even quite had the chance to be born in the first place. It's not such an unfamiliar sentiment, in the end. He's from the end of the world. A lot of people mourn the lives they'd never had a chance to live. He even averts his eyes a little as well, past Isaac and to the mountains, drinking his beer and listening.]

November, actually. The beginning of November. [December had been the shift from flirty light friendship into something much more satisfying and complicated, but that wasn't the question and isn't something he just comes out and volunteers without a more direct prompting.]

…Ah.

[He nods faintly to himself, remembering Zevran in the snow, in December, dragged out hacking and wheezing and his burned and blistered skin made to heal through the work of his Crimson. He remembers twisting on his heel and leaving him there, fiercely angry at the elf’s carelessness, and afraid, and surprised that he could come to fear for anyone in Luceti but Julia or Hector.

And such had been the beginning of the end.

He had torn into him and ruthlessly with frustrated concern hidden too deep in every spitting, hissing jab, and had driven Zevran away. And by then, Jack… Jack had already caught his eye like some new and glinting thing, some beautiful thing, and Isaac had surely only given him more of a push in his direction. Less a push and more a vicious thrust, unintended.

It doesn’t matter now.

All that matters is that Jack’s looking away because otherwise, from the set of his jaw and the way the moonlight shimmers across the whites of his eyes, he’d find him on the edge of tears.]

The first man I had ever loved… was the son of a blacksmith and an avid hunter in Cordova, not past his twentieth year at the time, were I to guess.

[It’s easier to talk and force his throat to work rather than letting it twist up in silence. And it bubbles up, irrepressibly.]

He was also among the very first of men I had ever seen… ah, and I thought him to be the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes upon. But no sooner had I realized what it is I felt, I had been stuck with a sense of terror... and sickness, for I had already seen what fate can befall a man accused of seeking the flesh of another man. I suppose I had feared they might smell the taint of wicked thoughts on me and find me, hunting me down like a pack of slavering hounds. So ‘twas my little secret.

[He snorts and his Adam's apple bobbles in his throat.]

...I told not even my own mother. But there is enough I did not tell her, the little wretch I was.

Edited 2013-06-29 05:18 (UTC)

[He'd never thought of Isaac having a mother.

Stupid, wasn't it? As if anyone, even someone like Isaac, just coalesced out of thin air and free-floating spite. But it had never been something that had occurred to him - that the man who wore borrowed faces and told him hideous things and had twisted so deeply into Zevran's sentiments had been young once, too. That there might be some truth in that little throwaway line about how a different life might have left him a man not unlike Jack.]

How old were you?

[Only on the surface are the reluctant words a query for Isaac's age at one moment in his life. Jack wants to know what happens, in that sinking way that is sure he'd be happiest in the dutiless ignorance of never having heard the beginning of the story. Even brief acquaintance with Isaac is enough to infer that he's from a decidedly pre-modern time, and Jack is a little too aware of what even earlier parts of modernity have had to say about people like him. Them.]

Isaac blinks slowly, surfacing from his reverie just enough for the question to penetrate. "Eleven, I believe... when I had first seen him. But I was twelve when we met. ...Yes. I know not the day I was born, but the year was… 1453, Anno Domini. If it holds any meaning for you."

Blank-faced, he looks to the stars as if a message were spelled out in the faintly glittering constellations. "Much too young was I to know what it is men are wont to do when burning with desire deep in the night. My desires were simpler, in a way; all I had hoped for was to be adored and to be spoken to and to find a friend in a human other than my own sister. So taken, so smitten was I by this man I had never met and who knew not I existed."

Pausing, he turns the words over in his mind, huffing a soft, sad little laugh at the foolishness of such sentiments. "How fortunate it was for me that my mother would sleep very deeply, for one night I mustered the courage to break free, as it were. Twelve years spent as a recluse, beaten about the head with warnings and never permitted to wander far from the woods had made a very restless and fearful boy of me, as you might imagine. But… my curiosity was greater than my fear, and I dared to enter Cordova several times."

An almost gleeful smile steals across his face, making a child of him.

"A marvel I did not wet myself then from the sheer thrill of it all. I found all manner of things and made them mine – a coin or two, a scrap of leather, some sort of half-eaten pastry from the market… ah. Such were my treasures."

He lingers fondly on the thought.

"Of course, it came to be that I began to think very highly of my ability to pass through unseen and grew too... comfortable. Cordova had its guardians… that is to say, about a dozen able-bodied men appointed to wander the streets after dark to answer the threat of flesh-eating ghouls and demons and the like to which the night belongs. But ‘twas I who they caught, thrashing and screaming, my arms wrenched behind me. And others came forth from the darkness. Men brandishing crucifixes and flasks of holy water. But when I flinched not at the sight of the Lord’s son and His flesh pressed into mine, and the water could singe my skin no more than the cross, even greater was their terror. I had begged them to understand I was naught but a foolish child, a human like themselves, and like their own sons. I apologized, as if it might appease their wrath. But no child did they see before them. Be not fooled, one said, by the cunning of a strigoi. And then, I saw him – ‘twas he who came forth with the stake, and for the first time he looked at me. He looked at me, and… and with such… hatred --"

The words are spat out in a sharp and snarling whisper, his nose wrinkling.

"-- and disgust in his eyes." A beat. He's left panting softly, fierce energy and hope bleeding from him. "...Such pretty eyes they were."

Breaking off, he turns his attention to his dirt-scuffed boots and studies them absently, chuckling low in his throat despite himself. "I had his attentions at last, but... not quite in the way I had wanted it."

Edited 2013-06-30 00:35 (UTC)

For better or for worse, Isaac is a marvellous storyteller, and Jack finds himself bound in silence as he listens to him unfurl the tale. What he does not say, or touches upon only briefly, leaves at least as much of an impression on him as the things he lingers upon at length.

That had been Isaac. Twelve years old, with no company but a mother and a sister, at a time in the world's history when darkness and solitude were both such terribly dangerous things. Enough of a twelve-year-old boy to risk even the things he had been told were most dangerous, and revel in his new-found invincibility to have come away from the so-called peril alive and full of new experiences. Enough of a child to be terrified to find himself alone, set-upon by unfamiliar authority, and willing to say whatever he thought would see him back to the home he'd gleefully fled. And just old enough to have built up in his mind someone who could never come even close to those careless daydreams.

It doesn't change a thing he's done. And Jack's not enough of a fool to think that past pain makes the man any less dangerous - if anything, the pattern tends to run exactly the opposite. But there's an ache in understanding a little better, perhaps, some of the monstrousness. Of course he proclaims that he's not human. Who on earth would want to be human, after that?

". . . hell," he murmurs, when he finally finds his voice again, watching Isaac with only a troubled disquiet.

Though Jack’s hushed response registers, quietly absorbed, he’s still smiling half-absently as if he hadn’t heard. Eyes soft and dim and lost in the distance.

“Mother was furious.” There’s a soft exhalation of a laugh, his tone too buoyant. ”I believe her desire to strangle me to death was quite nearly equal to her desire to save me. More wrathful a woman when cross I have never known since. She was -- I had hated her.” The word turns over and over in his mind and his brow furrowing as warring emotions wrench him every which way. “…No. I had hated what it is she would do.”

Had he truly and wholly hated her with every fibre of his being in the way he had come to hate the human race, he would have never gone weak at the knees and buckled at the sight of her charred corpse, blind with fury and tears and howling until his throat had gone raw. He had assumed the same fate had befallen Julia and fled in helplessness for what he had hoped would be the very last time, angrily and desperately forcing his wobbling legs to carry him to the castle, its distant spires rising from the fog. Running from man and monsters, panting breaths tearing at his lungs.

He shakes his head.

“It should have killed me. It did, in the end.” Slowly, his fingers climb his ribs, thoughtfully smoothing over the scar. “So died the foolish creature that night, seeking love --“ The word curls his lips like a rotten piece of food. “-- and to live among his own ilk. Never again did I enter Cordova. Not until many years had passed and Dracula bade that we leave it in ruins, the blood of every man, woman, and child flowing through the streets. Ah, my love… my sweet and gentle hunter, he recognized me in an instant."

A pleased little smile.

"Fierce as was his scowl and as dark the night, I could see the blood draining from his face…” His voice drops to a breathy, alcohol-laden whisper, heavy-lidded eyes gleaming as they hold Jack's gaze. “…and it made me hard.”

The smile deepens as if in anticipation of a laugh.

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and the bass keeps runnin runnin

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