"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
William Faulkner

?I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not."
Neil Gaiman

Perhaps it?s that you can?t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.
Rebecca Solnit

in the land of gods and monsters

Louisiana, United States

Sun light was melting through the windscreen of a grey, Ford pick-up truck stopped at a set of lights. The Kills ?Superstition? kicked along on the radio as Roach sung along with a frown, tapping a maroon Allstar impatiently in between loud sucks of the straw bent towards her in a glass Pepsi bottle. Once the lights went green, the truck lurched forward in a wide turn as she propelled them out of the filter to merge into the traffic headed along Highway 90.

On her right thigh, a map was opened but hard to see against the glare of the midday sun. In the shade, the map had placed them only a matter of miles from Uptown and Aububon, which was over behind them, and the estuary of roads that bled into Highway 61 straight ahead, where the two channels met. From there, at this time of day far from peak hour, it would be a sleepy route direct for Canal Street and the French Quarter where their hotel waited.

With Robert out cold - eight ounces of blood lighter thanks to a visit from Salome, she didn?t want to wake him to better gauge the best way to approach the hotel, being where it was and knowing that the closer one got to the Quarter, the more tricky it was to navigate the warren streets and cars. Robert also hadn't been to the city in far too many years to assert on that. Plus, though far be it from her to admit it, he looked kind of cute while he was asleep. Vulnerable to her radio choices as well. Always a win.



But now, a few moments to rewind - to illustrate the architecture behind all things: all this was in technical terms. Technically, this was where Robert and Roach were. But in essence, in truth they were sitting at the threshold of a much more liminal place, where the metaphysical married with the mundane; the place where myth and lesser known modern histories converged, where memory and future danced vulnerable to chance and whim of ancient collectives, or, those who dared to face it. A city of gods and monsters and demons, like Robert Brohkun, or mortal girls like Elizabeth Lee, whose soul sang their infernal melody in bloody, binding script.

Highway 61 itself was the page of a story, a cult classic; a highway that was the intersection between the blues and jazz, and not just for the music. It was a little known fact, unless you walked these paths, that the same demon that had cut the deal with Robert Johnson - a soul for a song, was the same gentleman that had sliced B.B King's palm over a bottle of Jack Daniels. That same demon, who now shined glasses at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon.

As for Highway 90? The untimely death of Hollyweird film star, Jayne Mansfield, who was killed in a car accident on the road that bordered Lake Catherine on her way back to New Orleans. Of course, it was no accident.

Like beloved Eostre, Jayne was an embodiment of spring; of renewal, of virility and fertility but whom had abandoned her post for a flirtation with the new guard; one so perverted, so corrupted, so shallow, the ones her contemporaries saw with disapproval and little tolerance. Instead, Jayne cavorted in her Pink Palace on the West Coast, seduced by another influence - with Fame, a less god still. So that fateful night in 1967, she paid her price.


Everyone does. Everyone will. And everyone, everyone, has a price.


And this, this, is the version, the reality, the world, that the two drive into. Louisiana-Not. The one that was settled by the slaves and the gods they brought with them; Legba, Samedi. Where King Louis sent over the Casket Girls, who were responsible for the first wave of vampirism in that boggy, non-fertile, untouched gulf, followed by the notorious, shadowy Carter Brothers. It was a city settled around its monsters, around sex, around blood as much as liquor. So, it is no surprise that it is where, many many years later, a five hundred year old demon pretended to be a drunk and befriended a waif.... fates colliding and, where, they now returned.

With that out of the way...
__________________________________________________ _______


Hotel Wyndham, Royal Street - French Quarter


Far, far behind them was Rhy'Din and the portal she had taken on the recommendation of one of the buyer's. Now, they were close to their destination. There's a loud squeal of tires as Roach turns the truck down the squirrelling back alley of the hotel where the shuttle buses pull up and bell boys roam. .

One of them is waving at her that this isn't a place to park and she rolls down the window manually, elbow-out, straining her neck. "Where's the car park, man, there's no signage?" The concierge nods dimly and points off down the alley, further and around to the left. She gives the man a thumbs up and hits the pedal, cruising them down the alley street, into a dip and around into the garage. About ten minutes later, the truck is parked in the shadows of the hotel's lot and she looks over to Robert, he's still asleep. She smiles a touch and nudges down the iridescent, round aviators from her eyes down her nose (a nose faintly bruised courtesy of a bar brawl..) and whispers his name. "Robbie. Robbie. Wake up." Gently. She figured finding a spot inside would take a bit. "Pssst. Robbie." A poke of her finger into his arm. She turned the key killing the engine and the music at once, leaving only the snores of the man and the jangle of the set now in her lap.

Robert was sleeping when the tires squealed and there was a sudden whisper of his name that felt like it came immediately outward. The sound of her voice could be an unnerving haunt when it sounded like she was doing something that she shouldn't. Clearing his throat he looked at her, seeing a small distorted version of his reflection below her gaze that came over the aviators to him.

"We're here?" He said it unnecessarily, lifting his head off the bunched up tweed coat that he'd wedged between the headrest and the side of the truck's cab.

"And we're alive too." She said, still in the same lower voice. "No fatalities. It's a goddamn miracle, yo." Her arms were stretched out, hands on the wheel, nails tapping against it.

"How you feeling? You been out cold for a while."

Her eyes fell in a glance towards his arm, indicating where he had let his blood. "If you want, I'll bring as much as I stuff in and get one of the bell boys to help, if you wanna go on ahead and get us checked in?" From between her jean clad legs, she pulled up her Pepsi bottle and slurped through the straw loudly.

With her driving, it had been. At least when Salome took his blood it had been relatively peaceful. He imagined with Roach explosions of bright red everywhere.

"Better, thank you for doing the driving." She mentioned him getting them checked in and he nodded, "It's in my name, anyway. They'll need me there. I'll go ahead and get things started." With a tug of the truck door handle he gave it a small shoulder shove and then stepped out of the truck. The metal door gave a rolling groan as he opened and then shut it with a thunk.

It wasn't unlike walking in clouds. He could see everything and feel it, but e was drowsy and everything felt even more unfamiliar and strange to him than it should have. Glancing over his shoulder, he made one last check on Roach before he stepped around the corner and took the stairs which would lead to the hotel lobby.

"S'okay." She answered softly as she placed the pepsi bottle and its stripy straw into the cup holder and watched him get out, her other arm still gripping the wheel. The door slammed shut and she sat there a moment, finding it comical that the front desk staff would assume they were a couple and weirdly, they were? Was that right? She shook her head, pulled her glasses up on top of her head tucking the arms into the stiff-hold of her dreads and reached over the back of the seats to struggle a minute with their duffle bags, drawing them with a few curse words towards herself as she made backwards out of her door. As she did so, arms full, she managed to catch the keys as they tumbled from her lap and caught the eye of one of the bell boys who was lingering with anticipation not far from the freshly parked vehicle and he came running. Slipping him a fiver in tips, for now, she turned to retrieve the keys, her purse and his tweed jacket slumped across his empty seat. As she brought it towards her she caught that cinnamon smell and it elicited in her heart a zig-zagging fissure; that feeling she had encountered on his lap, after the exhibit, with his hand at her ass and her knee when he had asked her to consider deeper, the idea of desire, on the end of a provocative conversation that had disconcerted her. She forced the memory out of her mind and with a serious face, sauntered towards the stairs and up into the lobby, sidling up beside Robert just as the receptionist handed him their room keys.

"Oh, you must be Miss Brohkun. Did something happen?" The woman's cheerful face looking over Roach's frowning expression with a mild concern.

"Nope. That's just my face", Roach responded. The woman laughed in a forced way and looked back to the computer, tapping out a few things. "For your first few days, we have a complimentary breakfast on the second floor. On the ninth is where you can find our computers should you need access to email and all that."

It was uncomfortable to be around Roach when she had those faded bruises along the bridge of her nose, result of her broken nose (which, had been quickly set and now sat straight as ever on that impervious face.) The look was an abused one and demons were typically villains when it came to those situations. He swallow at what the receptionist said and then handed one of the keys over to Roach with a short, "Thank you," to the attendant behind the desk.

Their room was 426. All even numbers. Four plus two is six. It would be an easy room to recall. He nudged his key card into his back pocket, looking at Roach and then towards the elevators, "I suppose we should get settled in, first."

They were a sort of couple. Their discussions of being together had been presented to him in terms of 'why not fuck' more than 'I want to be with you.' He wasn't sure that it couldn't be called a relationship. Neither of them would see other people and the intention was to be intimate. Something about coming back to Nola, but it being with her and this ways struck him like a destined irony.

Or maybe that was the grogginess from the car ride lulling his mind. He stepped towards the elevator.

She nodded her agreement and gave a bit of her own forced smile to the woman at the desk as they turned and moved along. The bell boy ran up to ask them for their room number, to which she responded and then in step, moved towards the elevator as the doors opened with a loud chime. Inside, it was just them, room keys and a surreal sense of place and time. New Orleans could do that all alone, but with what was becoming between them, insofar as words that spoke of want and expectations around the dimension of a relationship, not to mention the Nexus-lag encroaching on them both, it was a ride to their floor that had both their heads likely spinning. The doors opened and she stepped out, key ready, and seeing the hall that their room fell under, moved towards it and down until they were before their door. Opening it, his jacket over her arm and her purse heavy on her right shoulder, she filled the slot with her card and the door light flashed green. In she stepped, holding the door for Robert. The room was lit only by the angle of light that mid afternoon was allowing, between the two fat, hefty curtains opened half way across. Somewhere below, a roaming brass band played a rag.

He moved to the window first, peaking through the curtain and down to the street as he started to unbutton his shirt. The smell of metal copper and cinnamon. He reflected, quietly, "It'll rain soon." Their accommodations for that were better this time around. His gaze moved from the window to her as he finished unbuttoning his shirt, "I'm going to take a quick shower to... wake up a bit. Are you hungry?"

Ordering room service seemed questionable, if it was even provided. He was guessing there would be the usual coffee pot and cups set aside since most hotel rooms had it. Robert wasn't sure if he was hungry, but knowing the closest places to eat in was a good idea. It's where plenty of people would be lurking.

A few steps to the bed and she crashed down upon it's end, dumping the large black purse beside her. "Yeah, some food would be good. And an effing smoke, too." He was tempered in the window glare unbuttoning his shirt and for some reason she felt like looking at him just then was inappropriate yet she didn't look away. Instead she grinned. "Hurry up then, Robbie. Before I order us a hell of a room service bill." Then, she flopped back on the bed with a sigh of relief at being there finally, even if that surprised her more than anything. She had been all too happy to skip town for Rhydin on the premise of breaking ties with Jimmie, finding Zoel for some extra cash fall and maybe, if she was lucky, seeing Robbie for a catch up if he couldn't help her. Instead, they were road buddies, potential lovers, sharing a room back in the city where they had met. The ceiling spun for a moment above her, and sparks of Nexus-lag limned her prone frame spread eagle on the king bed. "There's a bar around the corner if I recall correctly, got a mean ass gumbo."


"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" He said with the slow arch of one brow as he turned. He could feel the wires of the carpet give under his shoes. He slipped his shoes off by rubbing his heels together.

"A drink and some gumbo doesn't sound bad." Though he still couldn't tell if he was hungry. Looking at the flopped on the bed with her wayward smile he fought the impulse to warn her that New Orleans was dangerous and to be careful as if it was her first time to the city instead of being a veteran to its ways.

The buttons at the cuffs of his shirt undone, he laid his shirt on the bed and then stepped towards the bathroom. That smell that was him felt unappealingly intense, like his body was sweating uncomfortably with where he had gone. He supposed it had to do with the blood letting, the short lingering at the cemetery followed by a long car ride in a beaten up truck. His body did not approve.

She watched down the length of her body as he moved past and to the bathroom; her chin tucked in and her cheek turned as her eyes pursued. The smell that emanated from him reminded her of clove cigarettes, but the good kind. The ones that left your lips a little sweet after a puff, and made even the most imposing of cold days feel warm. He did that to her, too; slowly warming her from within, subtle but present. Though she had been the one to try the lock, he had turned the tables on her, instead, breaking into her affections with a moment of unmitigated intimacy devoid of passion but a sense that something important had been shared. She didn't know that she liked that, that he had out-witted her at her own game, and some part of her felt like he was still testing her. The door clicked shut and she slowly sat up. In the mirror opposite to the bed and the table and chair in front of it, she could see the edge of the bathroom door. There was an impulse to chase him in there but something hemmed her in. She fidgeted with the quilt cover and then got up and walked to the window. There was a snap, as she pulled the spiked collar from her neck while rolling it. There was a light irritation at its column from it rubbing against her flesh in the stale heat of the truck and all the various temperatures encountered between leaving Rhy'Din and hitting the sultry weather of the south.

She placed the collar on the top of the TV set and as he showered, reached into her pocket to glance over her phone. No texts from Menace. It was her turn for a peek out the window, at the tourist traffic, the musicians, the grifters, the convenience store across the way. TRoach broke from the sill and wandered around the room; exploring the mini bar, checking over the room service menu (..tres important). There was another little glance touched to the door of the bathroom. But, she didn't. She wouldn't. She swallowed and ended up returning to the bed where the muted sounds of the world beyond the hotel played on and she fantasized about that gumbo and a stone cold beer.

When the water stopped and he stepped out of the shower he had removed most of that prickling smell, washed down and then diluted under the scent of hotel soap and shampoo. It wasn't floral but a 'clean' smell that was so powerful that it was all that was there. He grabbed a set of clothes, seeming uneasy for a moment, as if he would have preferred to get dressed then and there except that there was an audience.

How many men tip toed back into the bathroom to get dressed when there... girlfriend... lingered in the room? Still, it felt like the appropriate thing to do.

New clothes and what felt like new skin. He stepped out of the bathroom when he fastened his pants and worked on buttoning up his shirt. There weren't any tattoos or noteworthy birthmarks or scars except for the one in his side which looked like an angry stitch mark two inches wide in his stomach.

"I'm ready." It occurred to him that this was their first date.

"Great." She didn't look at him immediately but busied herself with tossing her cell haphazardly into the deep purse and laying his jacket out properly over the bed. He may have smelled like shampoo and soap but that jacket still promised spicy exhalations and a constant hint of heat. She turned once the business of collecting herself was done, having masqueraded it in that series of actions, of reigning in her wandering mind. Her slightly smeared mascara eyes levelled on his, which were decidedly not smudged. "You look refreshed." She made a move towards the door, patting her pocket to make sure she had the room key and then swept a brush of pomegranate Burt's lip balm across her studded mouth.

Fragrant, shower steam clouded the entrance to the room and she stared at the moisture in his damp, wiry hair as she passed. "Sorry if I smell like ****." Markedly less refreshed, Roach's odour was one of a long drive's perspiration and faded patchouli applied to her pulse points hours and hours ago. Her shower would come later; right now, being out amongst it, and near food, was where it was at.

It wasn't long after that they had met the pavements and the sounds of the roaming band were loud, unavoidable as were the myriad scents of the city. Of magnolia and heat-withered jasmine, of ozone as clouds rolled overhead. They were only a few minutes along Royal when the first drops began to hit. She swore beneath her breath but smiled a bit. Looked like she would be washed clean anyway.

"That bar is only a couple minutes walk."


There was still a red line on his wrist from Salome. His button up wasn't tucked in and was a grey with a few lines of pale green running down it vertically. He grabbed his key and belongings out of his old change of clothes, shoving his feet into the mouths of his shoes and then catching up to her, "You're fine." Patchouli always made him think of hippies and weed and how spelling that word always seemed like a weird experience.

The faint red line across her throat from where the collar had been whispered a reminder to him of a ribbon that had been waiting for him outside. When she bolted from him as if he'd been infectious. Perhaps in a way he was.

Fist sized buds of magnolia flowers yet to bloom promised a floral hint over the hot asphalt and fluctuating hints of brine. She was ahead of him by a step since she knew where she was going. His hand slipped through the air, catching her palm to drip his fingertips in between hers.

Roach, perhaps on edge for being back in the Crescent City given Jimmie's demise and the uncertainty of the outcome of that, gave a start when his fingers brushed up through hers. With that, the very real shock of his gesture - since their discussion where he had negotiated with his ground rules, they had continued to move in and out of each other's way with only the occasional, brief, unsure glances but not a doting caress between them.

Though startled, she did not shy away. Her eyes lifted to his as they fell in step again. Her fingertips seemed to think about it for a moment as they wriggled in between his... before there was an affirmative clutch of hand. Even that, palm to palm, was a quiet and distinct thrill that she nursed inside her mind. Then, she was looking away again as the streets changed around them, the sounds of saxophones and trumpets falling away behind them as they walked into a Zydeco band.

Yo Mama's, doors wide open. Smells of beer and juicy burger meat breathed out the windows. Roach pulled Robert behind her as they set foot inside, swamped in a darkness that was tones of red and blue neon and to the left, another kind of dark, the cosy dark of a booth. Walking backwards, her hips in time with the washboard out on the street.. and it was not unlike a dance. Not the Pavan he had instructed her in, to be sure, but a set of steps they were learning, together, nonetheless; silently communicating, all along.

((Cajun Music playing: La Danse De Mardi Gras - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCBn9UYqhp4))

http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g469/madirye/bourbon-street-web.jpg

"It was almost twelve years ago now. It's practically a scar." Not that it was a scar. Like that mark on his stomach that he allowed to fester and bleed for much longer than he should have.

She was apologizing to him and that was slightly surprising. Roach wasn't one to give into apologies easy and he wondered if she somehow felt guilty. Like she should have been able to read his woe and know what the problem had been a long time ago. There was no way she could have known. He had spent his time in a daze, half huddled in a box. There were not heartfelt confessions there, just strange poetry for what was currently being felt.

"It's possible. I don't recommend it," a glance down a the menu, "If getting pulled back through Hell was easy and left all parties unscathed, how many do you think would do it?" His eyes lifted to her and to that he added weights to the scales, "There are millions, Roach. One soul in hell is not so significant but... it will be the final score for who has won this game on judgment day."

There was a pause and then he looked at his meal, giving a forced smile to Doll who gave them equally playful winks and what she thought was a 'knowing' smile at the company they kept. He continued when she was out of earshot, the side of his face still glowing with blues and reds, "It's a risk. Blood is blood, my role in what's happening won't be unknown. If donating blood was risk free then she wouldn't have struggled so hard to find it?" His eyes lift to hers.

"I don't like this ****." Referring, to the situation. Her brows severe in their knit as she looked down to the gumbo and pushed took up the spoon, pushing the contents around the bowl with a bland look. "Given how sinister this all is, you were way generous. But, I knows... " she laughed ironically, "I knows what it means to step out and right a debt. Or, try to." Her face was rendered in the same colours as his; grief, reds and blues. She swallowed and found his gaze just as he found hers. "I owe you more than eight." She worked her barbelled tongue at a tooth.

"Cris helped me because it was a situation we needed to resolve. But I was prepared to threat him and what he cared about. I'm not that sort of person. I don't threaten." Threatening felt like the job for thugs and low life's and elicited a disagreeable frown from him. He could hear Mahis telling him that Cris wold never help. That he would be killed and his task was one ripe for failure.

No one expected that Robert would succeed. Maybe he didn't, either. Yet he had, and the path had brought him all the way to Nola for the second time.

Something about her latter statement cause the muscles in his jaw to ripple and for his eyes to avoid contact with her's, as if he was afraid that it might sew together a gap between them. He didn't have to look up to know, to hear, that metal slid against the enamel of her teeth. It sounded like a promise they were tip toeing around.

He didn't look but she didn't stop; that rough-knuckle stroke of a gaze pointed on him, engaged as she was by the matter at hand. She was committed to the discussion, it had her by the wrists and ankles and dragging her down its long, claw-ridden hall. "But, was it really resolved?" Guilt was beneath her words, in her comprehension of what had come before and deepened hr understanding by degrees of who he was and why he had been the man she knew him to be, historically and presently. But the guilt was not so penetrating that it forced her words or her concern; her bubbling worry was not counterfeit. She took a bite from her spoon. "It sounds like all four walls of that house could blow down at any time."

"There were ten Nephilim in the bar that night." He said it with a long draw and then added, "Now there are ten in the ground." He lifted his glass for a swallow, thankful for the whiskey and the delayed numbness that would come with it. Setting the glass down he shifted to begin working on the food on his plate. Periodically he glanced at her but it was never the full, rich eye contact that she deserved. He didn't know what was waiting in her eyes.

Her eyes widened a touch and she slouched deeper into that lean, guiding the spoon in a scrape around the side of the bowl, still mostly untouched as the conversation diverged and became a distraction. Her eyes ran off the table and over to the bar where Doll pulled a beer with lots of head and flirted something fierce with a couple. She had them both red in the cheeks and reaching for one another's behinds. Doll still had her powers, alright. Then, she looked back to him and rolled the multicoloured barbell-ball against a canine behind closed lips and thought over what he had had to say. "I just hope you haven't opened yourself up to the potential of further battle, yo. That's what I'm making out in my mind over here. You know? But hell, hell, I'll play soccer with the brains of any assholes who wanna start something." Just as long as they weren't capable of possession because, well, then she would be screwed.

She needed to work on that....

Roach sighed over her bowl and eventually brought herself to another bite. "Anyways, what you wanna do tonight? Wander? I haven't heard from Menace yet.. he's not in town til tomorrow so, we got a night free if you wanna play tourist?" Her thin brows arched at him as she pushed them out of that conversation. She succeeded there, with artful distraction, but not so much in pulling herself out of the gravitational pull the man had over her from across the table. In her eyes was further promise. A reluctant openess, but an openess nonetheless, to the discussions back in Rhydin. Heavily lined eyes paid greater attention to the shape of his mouth, his avoiding eye contact, his fingers around the spoon. Suddenly, she felt like a creeper and hemmed herself in again. Finishing the gumbo with a drag of the triangle of napkin over her face, petting at the edges of her mouth as she gave the bar area another look.

"Anything is possible." Especially in Nola.

She spooned at her gumbo, which reminded him to draw his hand away from his glass and take a try at what was there. It had a fire that hit fast but didn't spend too much time lingering. Still, he thought he felt his mouth sweat. His put his napkin to his lips and leveled his gaze on her face, "I think playing tourist will work in our favor. We still don't know the pulse of the city." They knew the city, but whether it was jogging or reclined was a different matter. How much had its pulse quickened?

Doll would have liked to hear that they were playing tourist. She liked to toy with them enough and the idea that her and Robbie would have even played at it would have made her laugh. When he glanced up to her he thought her hair pins looked like needle pins. That her wild hair was stitched into being tame against her head. His throat cleared and took only a few more bites, his meal largely untouched as he put his mind to his whiskey.

"We could go down Bourbon Street."

Everyone went there. It was like the dirty walk of fame.

"That it is, Robbie" she agreed, trying on one of her wide, slightly-naughty grins, to steer them further out of such low-lit talk when what was done was done and no talking about the future could predict it. Briefly, she remembered his telling her, ten years ago, about his illusions, but she had cast off the talk as an inebriated ramble, something meant to entertain her as they had laid flat on the floor of the skeleton room; the crowns of their heads touching, staring at the ceiling and sharing a joint back and forth. The joint had also deterred her taking his confession with any iota of truth. But, she wondered on it now. It was a moth in the light of her mind, and it was soon gone.

After thanking Doll for the hospitality and schmoozing a little to keep on her good side (even if she was certain her "free meals" would come to bite them in the ass or be used to force a favor down the line) they left the Voodoo Queen and her bar behind to seek out Bourbon Street, its lights, its many faces, its sounds. As their feet again found quarter foot path, Roach snuck her hand out and brushed her index and middle against the back of his as they walked side by side, as if between them was a secret still unraveled, and for the most part, that was true. Jazz, blues, cajun music blasted out of different red and green lit windows of the various bars and scantily glad women posed for them both in the doorways of sex clubs, beckoning them with their red lips and buxom figures. Roach touched her gaze to Robbie with a short laugh as he looked away from the women as if slapped and they moseyed down the main street.

Kids dressed in traditional day of the dead makeup said 'boo' at them as they passed, giving that immature teenage laugh afterward. They passed all sorts on the street. Most were human but he saw a good number of demons focused on lust, greed or abandonment. They lingered with laughs, looking mostly human. He wondered at times how people didn't see them more readily, if he was prone to seeing them better because he was one or if people just didn't see what they weren't expecting to be there.

That there were only laughing, weird masks.

The song rattled the air, causing his hand to close in on around her's and tug her. It was like being jerked against the tide, snapping her body from the forward flow and backward into his. Beside the dilapidated wall his mouth dropped to meet hers. It hadn't be a particularly romantic moment until then. Until his cinnamon-taste smashed into her mouth and all of Nola flooded into their noses.

Bourbon Street always held elements readily likened to October and its month of spookshows and, of course, masks, of costume of becoming something other than yourself, or less than yourself.. but too, always the real midway of life, the real circus; between the sexualised women in their vulgar poses and suggestive come on's, the skeleton-faced adolescents running in packs like kids hyped up on too much candy floss, and the abundance of vice and thrill and excitement, if you were so inclined, at every turn. There wee different ways too, of being a monster. Not all had horns or claws or fangs. Then, there were the couples, hand in hand, merely walking and soaking up the sights. Robert and Roach fit into the last.

Her thumb was innocently fidgeting at the edge of his sleeve when his hand took hers and attached to it, she was tugged towards him as the strings and accordion swelled around them. At first, she is frowning as she looks up into his face; a frown of question, before he lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her with a ferocity she hadn't been prepared for. It takes her aback as she sways against him; one hand still locked in his and her other at her side.. then creeping up to clasp the back of his neck as she opened her mouth and deepened the kiss, flicking her tongue against his, little mewls of eagerness trapped between their furious mouths.

He didn't know what was her and what was New Orleans when he tasted her. He'd meant to kiss her before, in a quiet moment before they loaded into the truck. There was a blood exchange and then the lead-in-veins feeling which followed. This was the first moment in the last twelve that felt crisp and demanding. Had he been the only one to feel like he noticed her, the little parts of her here and that that begged for further notice? His mouth had pounced upon her's, no question, hesitation or apology.

Her pierced little mouth tingles and pouts in that kiss, trembling with the sensation of his lips that went beyond the delicious graze of whiskers and urgent kisses that worked her mouth over and over, with her meeting him at every turn and giving as good as she got. Her hand in his grip twists around to clutch in turn, as she walks him back against the corroded wall beside them. She was NOLA, as was he; they had lived there long enough in their own times and ways that it had gotten beneath the skin. It was the only city of its unique kind that lived in you, as much you it, where sinner and saint was easily transposed and one could easily blame the city for any misconduct or daring streak come upon them. New Orleans disorientated folks. And it did not take long to seed and flower.

As surreal as the encounter was with that backdrop: a cacophony of music and voices and bodies, it also mad her feel like they were like those kids, running amuck and up to no good. But underneath the dance of it, she was all too aware that her heart was a snare drum again. Roach kisses Robert like she had wanted to before she took off into the night and left behind only a ribbon the colour of desire. Her tongue rolling with his, the kiss slowing as they explore one another's mouths and change pace and change tactic. "****", she whispers between them; her favorite word, noun and verb and one that voiced her approval and stunned delight.

Robert turned, so it was hack against the snagging, rough velcro pull of the wall. It promises to leave scratch-mark kisses and little red-line reminders if they kept being careless. Her mouth moves with his, more easily, more fluid than he expected. Roach had never shown a great hand at finesse and it was strange to see that her troublesome mouth knew how to move in a way that gave a smooth delivery. Her mouth didn't just simply barge in on his, but pried it open like a thief and steal his tongue into her mouth. His frame pressed into her's, his left hand grasping her behind her knee to tug it up to his hip's level.

Somewhere under his shoes mardi gras beads were being ground into colorful dust.

She felt like she had at seventeen, when he had first met her - even more reckless, irreverent, mischievious. The crowd pressed on past them, some lingering to stop and laugh or make kissy noises and some simply admired them and looked at one another with a smile, continuing on. A new song had started and was pouring over the street. Fuchsia-pink neon fell across their involved bodies from a bar window above, as he turned to the wall and kept her there in the lean of his body and the grasp of his hand beneath her right knee, forcing her leg around his own and her body to be pinned, suspended, just at an angle, just above the clatter of beer cans, beads and drying rain at their shoes. Her breathing is rapid and the kisses shave the hypnotic quality of the ones when that is all you have, as a teen, way before sex is ever considered. Exploratory, and oscillating between lingering and deep and fast and hungry. Her head against the wall twists away from it as she leans further into him. Her hand leaving his neck and now grabbing at the side of his arm. The steel in her tongue drawn beneath his tongue skillfully as she issues a bite of his lower lip. There, a pause, her eyes opening slightly. "This ain't PG, Robbie." She looked to the street, what she could scarcely see of it and her crackling fire of a laugh, more like the low flames at coals in that intimate embrace, looses itself. "You're walking a very dangerous line."

"I didn't say I was PG. But it was something we needed to know." He stated it so matter of factly, as if an experiment had been performed and they had the sort of results that they wanted. His body docked into a place against her's, their affectionate body wrap enough to get playful hoots from the crowd. He knew what he said didn't explain what he meant. The following words were spoken into her ear like a secret, "I needed to know if we had chemistry and not a spontaneous moment back at the museum." Wondering, then, if it had been a fluke. If his solitude had wet his appetite for a body and she had played just the right note when her fingertips dancing along that string at her throat.

"We forgot to bribe Doll not to talk. You know she's going to sell news about us being here o the first person who has something she wants." His body began to ease off of her's, the distance enough that street and brine elbowed in over the taste and smell of his soap-skin.

She inhales the freshly washed scent of his hair and leans back. Her commentary on their PDA more aligned at the passing faces than any remark on his behaviour, which, of course, Roach encouraged. Sliding back down the wall a little until her one lifted leg had reached the scatter of beads underfoot, a beer can rolling off down the alley, she cleared her throat and pushed the pieces of her hair away that were not dreaded, but soft, freed and framed her face (and currently all in her eyes) as it was in the devil may care mess of colliding bodies and wild hands.

What it was he felt or did not feel, she could not discern with reliance; his eyes as they often appeared were complicated algorithms that took time to pay attention to, in order to solve and draw a clear answer from. Roach adjusted against him, her ears still burning and little lines of heat visible on the sides of her long neck and the glimpse of collarbone that the thin t-shirt alowed. "Uh... ' she gave him a look as the rest of his words drizzled down her ear. Brows straight and eyes peering at him closely.

"What the heck does that mean?" Like maybe he had offended her as their passionate exchange cooled in the air around them and his words came on uncertain tone. There was an idle quality to his face that had her stepping beneath his arm, which was still propped against the rough, exposed wall, up and around as fingers swept beneath her her shirt, tugging at the hem. "Hope I cleared that up for you. Jesus."

She faced the street, turned away, and nodded dismissively to his mention of Doll. A cigarette was being walked around as well as her lighter from the purse still dangling at her side. Lighting up she spoke around cobwebs of smoke, as they floated into the air and faded between them, much like the intensity of only a few moments ago. Perhaps it was a confused moment between them, back at the museum, but she went with what her heart had reflected and what his seemingly piqued attention had told of, once realising she found him sexually charismatic.

"Doll can wait. I'll sort her out; think given Jimmie and your Crispin sitch, that pin cushion of a woman is the least of our worries." She took another drag, hazel eyes moving side to side watching the crowd. The diffidence so often a part of her creeping back into the way she held herself, the serious face, the potential for a scowl at the sides of her lips that still tingled, still tasted like cinnamon and ever so slightly burned every time she took a puff. "Onwards then?" And she stepped back into the tide of tourists and revellers, her mind pushing ahead to the reasons why she had chosen to return here at all. She didn't look back to see if he followed.