08.29.2016
Saila is hanging out at the Red Dragon when Amare arrives, antagonizes Charlie and then demands that Saila leave with him to go swimming.
Shoving off the bar, Amare came to his full height, putting his cigarette between his lips and shoving the pack and light back into the inner pocket of his jacket. His eyes went back to Saila and he pointed at the door with his cig, "I'm going to swim naked. You will join me. During which time you'll say the big whatevers which can't be spoken here. And if it's boring we're going to get you a tattoo or something to fix the level of boring you are starting to be because JESUS."
Saila laughed outright at that. "... Boring," Echoing the word, she grins, and that grin is pure delight. The science project's favorite thing ever is being underestimated, don't you know. "...Oh, Rabid Baby. You'll learn." Hard to say whether she's talking about him thinking she's boring or... the futility of sparring with Charlie Darling. "Fine. We'll go swimming. You'll be naked. There's a thing I've never seen before." These words are spoken in a flat monotone, though the mirth is still there in those eyes that don't look like they even belong in the same face.
"Saila, I'm about to suffer Revenge of the Peter Pan Nerd if we don't go. She's just getting more and more wordy. I've offended the books and she's about to throw the Dewy Decimal system at me. Or explain it at length. I'm not sure which is worse." Cigarette back to his mouth and stride out the front door. There was swimming to do and then, really, a Saila to harass, which technically had been first on the agenda for him. Stepping out the door of the inn he held it and looked at Saila, "Don't make me say it."
"...Excuse him," says Saila to Charlie and Raychicago both. "He's ...uh. Well, he's something alright. But he's kinda my problem, so." There's a flash of a grin for Charlie though, a kind of solidarity for not being cowed. She tips a nod to both of them. Her grin splits in a knowing way, and the long legged girl eases out from behind the bar in pursuit of a semi-rabid werewolf.
"You are going to make me say it. Slow. Slow as **** That was your stripper name in the previous life." Once she had caught up to him he sighed, flicking his cigarette out onto the gravel. His jaw tightened, his mind rather fixed on the original topic, "So, talk. Spill your guts. Huh..." he put his hands in his pants pockets as he walked, "Spilling your guts is, quite literally, spilling who you are." The idea of which seemed to be staying with him.
"This doesn't feel much like a game," came her answering comment. "How do I win? And anyway we're not swimming yet."
"Who said that the point was for you to win?" He said it with the annoyance a person had when a dumb question was asked. At the bit about not swimming, his eyes rolled, "Seriously? You're such a prick, a goddamn squirrel eating up the inside of my house." His arm wraps over the top of her shoulders again. Something in there, in him, ached in a bad way. But she already knew that.
She did, and so despite his words, the razorblades in his tone, the girl wrapped both arms around his waist. She'd rather, well... eat up the inside of his house than call him on it, though, so she took a breath, directed her steps down the stairs, away from the Inn. "...How much have you figured out already...? "
"I'm not the Rain Man. I exist in a word where words are the magical way that people exchange knowledge." A lift of one eyebrow, blue eyes giving her a pointed look. In an all black suit, well, he could be quite the handsome devil. Or jerk devil. Ahhh... jerk devil. He sucked in a breath and rolled one hand impatiently in the air, "I might literally spill your guts. It seems like understanding you would be faster that way. I can't make a game if I don't know what we're playing with." Amare had a way of devouring people. Of being both comical and horrific. He couldn't seem to know the difference of playing with a puppet or a corpse.
The difference? Why choose! Amare plays puppets with corpses. Saila's seen it done. Effin' puma. "...You callin' me a Rain Man?" Her voice trails off, becomes indistinct as they move away from the inn, and the only reason she even knows what a Rain Man is has to do with the way her arms are still draped around him. "Tell you what. I can explain this better if I tell you about you..."
"I don't want to know a **** thing about me," his hand tightened on her shoulder and he rolled that other hand impatiently, "And you're using a dumb delay tactic. I am asking about you, not about me. So don't distract me with me to not talk about you. Jesus H Christ. That weaselly thing is just offensive." All of that made sense.
They went the route which let to the shoreline where Twilight Island was. Being a werewolf meant abandoning certain things. Fear of nudity was one of them, though honestly he had never suffered from that. It wasn't that he had the build of an Adonis or the endowment to make a porn star blush... it was that it was him. He seemed to think it was just a flesh house, that his body was slightly expendable but also the vessel to be worshiped. His clothes came off in a heap and then he waded into the waters. The tattoo of a wedding band on one finger, the wolf tattoo over his ribs. The ink image was damaged, cut over and then his flesh had healed. The interruptions looked purposeful since there wasn't any scarring.
Saila knew his body, as sure as she knew Quinn's or Dirk's. The girl had precisely zero inhibitions - her reasons for wearing clothes had absolutely nothing to do with being self conscious or concerned about her own naked frame. She knew enough about such things to know that what all those heavy black layers concealed was apparently attractive. Even Quinn had been caught staring at first.
She watched from the shore line in a distant way as the wildest of her 'brothers' kicked his clothes off and walked seemingly purposefully into the water, charging ahead like there was something--someone-- in there he needed to fight, or eat, or ****. Debating whether or not to join him, the teenager found a rock not far from the water's edge and perched on it, crossing long long limbs underneath her.
The muse pulled her bag into her lap, digging around in its seemingly infinite cargo space until she found a bottle of bourbon, which was lifted out by its neck and set aside. Putting the bag down beside her, Saila twisted the cap off her booze, digging her nails into the wax to make the cork pull free more smoothly.
Mismatched eyes on the water's surface, she tracked Amare's movements, waiting for him to surface. No sense in spilling her guts to the moon - the moon already knew all of her secrets.
The coolish water was what he needed. It brought things into focus. He wasn't really **** sure what had been floating in his brain to begin with, but that present moment was all that mattered. At first he was swimming in a more structured way, but that devolved quickly. His body thrashed and dove, and it wasn't until he found something that he was compelled to come ashore.
It was awkward, and apparent he was carrying something. Locked in his hands was a seaweed-wrapped box. Maybe recently placed there or long ago planted. He sat in some spot beside her, knees bent and the box planted on the ground in between his legs. His skin was still beaded with water, his breath labored from the swimming.
Tempted to join him in the water at least a handful of times, particularly when it became apparent that he was looking for something, Saila ultimately refrained. She picked at the cuff of her sleeve and drank her bourbon, watching him curiously. Waiting to see if he found what it was he was looking for.
Amare stalked ashore looking a little like a recently shaved Swamp Thing, this seaweed and algae choked thing in his hands. He came to a stop beside her and, wordless at first, the purple haired girl offered him her bottle. Mismatched eyes fell past him to the box, curious.
"Yes. So," he threw back the bottle of bourbon and then leaned back, reclined on the ground, propped up by an elbow, "What's the **** deal?" It was the sort of eloquence that was to be expected, and it might have been stranger if it had been any other way. His eyes measured her carefully, in that calculating way he had. Maybe that had always been there since he'd been a predator long before becoming a wolf. Still, he did not stir, or seem overly concerned with the box. The bottle wasn't returned to her, he intended to hold it hostage until she got to talking.
This was a girl who was psychically, physically bonded to Quinn ****' DeFortes. She never, ever had only one bottle of liquor on her unless it had been a particularly bad night. Even so, Saila made no move either to reclaim the one she'd given Amare or to fetch another, not yet.
He posed his question in that totally Amare way - true enough, she'd have been disappointed most likely if he'd gone about it in any other fashion - and Saila's gaze slid back out over the water, her hands working reflexively in her lap. "That's been the question for a minute now, Amare, but I've finally got most of an answer for it." She paused a moment, catching the inside of her lower lip between her teeth thoughtfully. The hesitation wasn't fear: it was just that trying to explain never really got any easier no matter how many times she'd done it, how many words she'd learned to describe it.
"I'm a made thing," she said quietly, parroting the phrase that Sal had taught her. "A science experiment, essentially. I am ... a whole bunch of things spliced together into one body. S'why my eyes don't match -- they aren't supposed to. Everything about me," she looked down at her hands then, watching her own fingers flex and curl like it was a marvel or a miracle, and technically it was, "... was built in some lab."
"What? That's expensive as ****, why the **** would someone go to the trouble of making a person instead of just finding that cough-of-a-woman who's certain to **** you?" The query was still on point. The effort it took to simply have an organ transplant was well into tens of thousands of dollars. That was his metric, though, having grown up in New York. He didn't measure the "effort" of things in magic, Rhy'Din standards, because it wasn't his first language. Still, even in the magic world, it would have been a tremendous undertaking.
A dark smile touched her face. "I was designed to be a weapon, near as we can tell. To combine the strongest parts of several super natural entities in a way that would enhance their skills and minimize their weaknesses. I don't really need sleep. I don't really need food. I heal as fast as you do." Her gaze shifted to him then, her expression thoughtful. "I'm telling you this because you're my family, Amare. Because I trust you," she said quietly, leaving the implications of that unfinished.
"So yeah. My hands can make you come, that's true. But that's not all they do."
It was all opening up and very sweet, but a distraction from the point that he had pursued. That was what he said, "Well, what all is it then?" It didn't seem to shake him that she was a war thing. Or a thing. It might have been that his lack of sympathy made most people things to him. Beyond that, Rhy'Din had a way of preparing your mind for oddities.
He was ignoring the bit about her calling him family because it was a weird feeling he didn't much want to dwell on. Like a vulnerably, mushy orb of something that was trying to work its way in.
"But, whatever. If you're a weapon you're not **** cheap so who just... lets their BMW drive away and not come looking?" Amare couldn't imagine letting someone take a possession he was mildly fond of, let alone a seemingly unique and one of a kind weapon. Beyond that, she wasn't dead or unstable so she must have ranked as a 'success.'
Saila is hanging out at the Red Dragon when Amare arrives, antagonizes Charlie and then demands that Saila leave with him to go swimming.
Shoving off the bar, Amare came to his full height, putting his cigarette between his lips and shoving the pack and light back into the inner pocket of his jacket. His eyes went back to Saila and he pointed at the door with his cig, "I'm going to swim naked. You will join me. During which time you'll say the big whatevers which can't be spoken here. And if it's boring we're going to get you a tattoo or something to fix the level of boring you are starting to be because JESUS."
Saila laughed outright at that. "... Boring," Echoing the word, she grins, and that grin is pure delight. The science project's favorite thing ever is being underestimated, don't you know. "...Oh, Rabid Baby. You'll learn." Hard to say whether she's talking about him thinking she's boring or... the futility of sparring with Charlie Darling. "Fine. We'll go swimming. You'll be naked. There's a thing I've never seen before." These words are spoken in a flat monotone, though the mirth is still there in those eyes that don't look like they even belong in the same face.
"Saila, I'm about to suffer Revenge of the Peter Pan Nerd if we don't go. She's just getting more and more wordy. I've offended the books and she's about to throw the Dewy Decimal system at me. Or explain it at length. I'm not sure which is worse." Cigarette back to his mouth and stride out the front door. There was swimming to do and then, really, a Saila to harass, which technically had been first on the agenda for him. Stepping out the door of the inn he held it and looked at Saila, "Don't make me say it."
"...Excuse him," says Saila to Charlie and Raychicago both. "He's ...uh. Well, he's something alright. But he's kinda my problem, so." There's a flash of a grin for Charlie though, a kind of solidarity for not being cowed. She tips a nod to both of them. Her grin splits in a knowing way, and the long legged girl eases out from behind the bar in pursuit of a semi-rabid werewolf.
"You are going to make me say it. Slow. Slow as **** That was your stripper name in the previous life." Once she had caught up to him he sighed, flicking his cigarette out onto the gravel. His jaw tightened, his mind rather fixed on the original topic, "So, talk. Spill your guts. Huh..." he put his hands in his pants pockets as he walked, "Spilling your guts is, quite literally, spilling who you are." The idea of which seemed to be staying with him.
"This doesn't feel much like a game," came her answering comment. "How do I win? And anyway we're not swimming yet."
"Who said that the point was for you to win?" He said it with the annoyance a person had when a dumb question was asked. At the bit about not swimming, his eyes rolled, "Seriously? You're such a prick, a goddamn squirrel eating up the inside of my house." His arm wraps over the top of her shoulders again. Something in there, in him, ached in a bad way. But she already knew that.
She did, and so despite his words, the razorblades in his tone, the girl wrapped both arms around his waist. She'd rather, well... eat up the inside of his house than call him on it, though, so she took a breath, directed her steps down the stairs, away from the Inn. "...How much have you figured out already...? "
"I'm not the Rain Man. I exist in a word where words are the magical way that people exchange knowledge." A lift of one eyebrow, blue eyes giving her a pointed look. In an all black suit, well, he could be quite the handsome devil. Or jerk devil. Ahhh... jerk devil. He sucked in a breath and rolled one hand impatiently in the air, "I might literally spill your guts. It seems like understanding you would be faster that way. I can't make a game if I don't know what we're playing with." Amare had a way of devouring people. Of being both comical and horrific. He couldn't seem to know the difference of playing with a puppet or a corpse.
The difference? Why choose! Amare plays puppets with corpses. Saila's seen it done. Effin' puma. "...You callin' me a Rain Man?" Her voice trails off, becomes indistinct as they move away from the inn, and the only reason she even knows what a Rain Man is has to do with the way her arms are still draped around him. "Tell you what. I can explain this better if I tell you about you..."
"I don't want to know a **** thing about me," his hand tightened on her shoulder and he rolled that other hand impatiently, "And you're using a dumb delay tactic. I am asking about you, not about me. So don't distract me with me to not talk about you. Jesus H Christ. That weaselly thing is just offensive." All of that made sense.
They went the route which let to the shoreline where Twilight Island was. Being a werewolf meant abandoning certain things. Fear of nudity was one of them, though honestly he had never suffered from that. It wasn't that he had the build of an Adonis or the endowment to make a porn star blush... it was that it was him. He seemed to think it was just a flesh house, that his body was slightly expendable but also the vessel to be worshiped. His clothes came off in a heap and then he waded into the waters. The tattoo of a wedding band on one finger, the wolf tattoo over his ribs. The ink image was damaged, cut over and then his flesh had healed. The interruptions looked purposeful since there wasn't any scarring.
Saila knew his body, as sure as she knew Quinn's or Dirk's. The girl had precisely zero inhibitions - her reasons for wearing clothes had absolutely nothing to do with being self conscious or concerned about her own naked frame. She knew enough about such things to know that what all those heavy black layers concealed was apparently attractive. Even Quinn had been caught staring at first.
She watched from the shore line in a distant way as the wildest of her 'brothers' kicked his clothes off and walked seemingly purposefully into the water, charging ahead like there was something--someone-- in there he needed to fight, or eat, or ****. Debating whether or not to join him, the teenager found a rock not far from the water's edge and perched on it, crossing long long limbs underneath her.
The muse pulled her bag into her lap, digging around in its seemingly infinite cargo space until she found a bottle of bourbon, which was lifted out by its neck and set aside. Putting the bag down beside her, Saila twisted the cap off her booze, digging her nails into the wax to make the cork pull free more smoothly.
Mismatched eyes on the water's surface, she tracked Amare's movements, waiting for him to surface. No sense in spilling her guts to the moon - the moon already knew all of her secrets.
The coolish water was what he needed. It brought things into focus. He wasn't really **** sure what had been floating in his brain to begin with, but that present moment was all that mattered. At first he was swimming in a more structured way, but that devolved quickly. His body thrashed and dove, and it wasn't until he found something that he was compelled to come ashore.
It was awkward, and apparent he was carrying something. Locked in his hands was a seaweed-wrapped box. Maybe recently placed there or long ago planted. He sat in some spot beside her, knees bent and the box planted on the ground in between his legs. His skin was still beaded with water, his breath labored from the swimming.
Tempted to join him in the water at least a handful of times, particularly when it became apparent that he was looking for something, Saila ultimately refrained. She picked at the cuff of her sleeve and drank her bourbon, watching him curiously. Waiting to see if he found what it was he was looking for.
Amare stalked ashore looking a little like a recently shaved Swamp Thing, this seaweed and algae choked thing in his hands. He came to a stop beside her and, wordless at first, the purple haired girl offered him her bottle. Mismatched eyes fell past him to the box, curious.
"Yes. So," he threw back the bottle of bourbon and then leaned back, reclined on the ground, propped up by an elbow, "What's the **** deal?" It was the sort of eloquence that was to be expected, and it might have been stranger if it had been any other way. His eyes measured her carefully, in that calculating way he had. Maybe that had always been there since he'd been a predator long before becoming a wolf. Still, he did not stir, or seem overly concerned with the box. The bottle wasn't returned to her, he intended to hold it hostage until she got to talking.
This was a girl who was psychically, physically bonded to Quinn ****' DeFortes. She never, ever had only one bottle of liquor on her unless it had been a particularly bad night. Even so, Saila made no move either to reclaim the one she'd given Amare or to fetch another, not yet.
He posed his question in that totally Amare way - true enough, she'd have been disappointed most likely if he'd gone about it in any other fashion - and Saila's gaze slid back out over the water, her hands working reflexively in her lap. "That's been the question for a minute now, Amare, but I've finally got most of an answer for it." She paused a moment, catching the inside of her lower lip between her teeth thoughtfully. The hesitation wasn't fear: it was just that trying to explain never really got any easier no matter how many times she'd done it, how many words she'd learned to describe it.
"I'm a made thing," she said quietly, parroting the phrase that Sal had taught her. "A science experiment, essentially. I am ... a whole bunch of things spliced together into one body. S'why my eyes don't match -- they aren't supposed to. Everything about me," she looked down at her hands then, watching her own fingers flex and curl like it was a marvel or a miracle, and technically it was, "... was built in some lab."
"What? That's expensive as ****, why the **** would someone go to the trouble of making a person instead of just finding that cough-of-a-woman who's certain to **** you?" The query was still on point. The effort it took to simply have an organ transplant was well into tens of thousands of dollars. That was his metric, though, having grown up in New York. He didn't measure the "effort" of things in magic, Rhy'Din standards, because it wasn't his first language. Still, even in the magic world, it would have been a tremendous undertaking.
A dark smile touched her face. "I was designed to be a weapon, near as we can tell. To combine the strongest parts of several super natural entities in a way that would enhance their skills and minimize their weaknesses. I don't really need sleep. I don't really need food. I heal as fast as you do." Her gaze shifted to him then, her expression thoughtful. "I'm telling you this because you're my family, Amare. Because I trust you," she said quietly, leaving the implications of that unfinished.
"So yeah. My hands can make you come, that's true. But that's not all they do."
It was all opening up and very sweet, but a distraction from the point that he had pursued. That was what he said, "Well, what all is it then?" It didn't seem to shake him that she was a war thing. Or a thing. It might have been that his lack of sympathy made most people things to him. Beyond that, Rhy'Din had a way of preparing your mind for oddities.
He was ignoring the bit about her calling him family because it was a weird feeling he didn't much want to dwell on. Like a vulnerably, mushy orb of something that was trying to work its way in.
"But, whatever. If you're a weapon you're not **** cheap so who just... lets their BMW drive away and not come looking?" Amare couldn't imagine letting someone take a possession he was mildly fond of, let alone a seemingly unique and one of a kind weapon. Beyond that, she wasn't dead or unstable so she must have ranked as a 'success.'