The Red Dragon Inn, the morning of April 17th

Plenty many things arise without logical explanation. Things that are born into existence solely because they must. He was one such entity. A cosmic being that simply was. Blink your eyes, rub your nose, it could and would be missed. Loose clothes, loose expression, let loose on the fantastical world of RhyDin without precedent. That was how Alex Ravenlock did his business, and how he came to be sitting there on a barstool with a warranted expression of unsatisfying proportions. "Huh." A throaty rumble. "All this time, I would've figured you go off and die somewhere. Color. Me. Surprised."

The noise she made was probably intelligible a couple thousand years ago. No real meaning, no real articulation. Just a noise borne of fear. The tankard flew up out of her hand, dark ale arcing through the air, all of it on a crash course with the ground. That is, until she stretched out her hand. All object motion ceased, the tankard bobbing inches from the floor, ale suspended in fat globules. "Think ya needed a new color anyway." There's a pause here, a lengthy one, and it tellsquite a story. Lain doesn't exactly want to finish that thought. A simple look upwards would suffice. The objects under her control skitter around through the air.

Rich and smooth. That was his baritone voice as it scratched the edges of his throat. Like steamed milk, however, it was plausibly the most satisfying as it tickled the air. Painfully long legs dismount the lowest rungs of his seat and clambers to feet. "I never was a fan of colors." Pushing aside the seat, the Ravenlock directs his strides around the counter to meet up with a long lost vision that was no better to him than a ghost out of a 1950's flick. There, he snatches her by the shoulders to drag her in for a hug. Long, hulked arms fit around her shoulders, a mountain of hands pressing firm against the delicate, small presence of a dimple in her spine. "Have you been here long? Waiting?"

Butter spread with a sword down her spine, that was what his voice reminded her of. Just enough danger to make it tingle. Thin fingers turn over in the air. The tankard settles in her palm first, followed by the gloppy, goopy plopping of her ale. She hurriedly took a sip to wet her mouth, to steel her nerves. Because ale was familiar and comfortable. Nothing at all like this. "Could've fooled me. Alex." There was enough a pause from one statement to the other that by the time she'd said his name he already had his arms around her and she was wrapped in a cocoon of muscle, of thrumming energy, of him. Within that cocoon, she stood still as any petrified statue her nose buried against the familiar expanse of toned chest and abdomen. If she moved, she didn't know what she would do... "Waitin' for what? For you?" voice barely registering above a murmur. The ale in her tankard boiled as if heated by an unknown source.

"Heh." He relinquished the butter smeared spine of hers and stepped back once, the sandal suffused to his foot clopping. It was a gunshot to his ears, the time between vocalized amenities shared between them. "Yer a smart one, girl. I suppose, since yer sitting here like this, yer just as much answerin' whatever the hell call Brian threw out?" Fingers pinch the point of his chin, scratching through a field of stubble. "Yanno, you don't have'ta do that."

There was a moment, the barest, tiniest and most minuscule of slices of her being that chided her for refusing to return his embrace. That same part felt the parting a lot more roughly than the rest of her did and she backpedaled before she did something stupid. When she set the tankard down, it continued to roil and froth, a tangible testament to the real emotion her sleek features don't show. "I dunno anything about no call." Gunmetal eyes rose to the door. "But I saw him around here, few days ago."

"Schway." Utterances of days past signal a smug, sideways twist of his mouth. The smoking cylinders of her eyes beckon his; unpolluted, auroral. They size her up, soak in every feasible ounce of her with the hunger of a dry sponge on a crashing ocean wave. "Bet that was trippin' as hell. Gotta see him tomorrow when he's here. Probably flip his sh*t, yanno."

She flinched, reason eaten away by compulsion, and she aimed an open palmed shove at one of his biceps. Like it'd do something other than tickle. It'd be a moment before her hand slipped away. "What do you have to go sayin' that for?" The pull of his emerald gaze was like that of the sun around her planetary body. Lain latched onto curiosity, meeting his probing eyes. "What's all this 'bout a call anyway? What'd you feel?"

Push a mountain, change the world. The beast of a man rolls with her motion, eyes high to the ceiling in mock exasperation. The Trueblood regains his attention rather quickly and affords an additional step back. "Somethin'. Probably the guy looking to have the family get back together fer whatever reason. That's why I'm here. Yer sayin' you didn't?"

With that logic, she'd wrecked the world several times over. Arms fold over a lacking chest as a single hip finds purchase against the bar's edge. Alex's earlier size-up would reveal little other than she'd woken up not too long ago. From the lumps in her ponytail, she'd pulled back her silver hair quickly, chrome trinkets and marred right ear on full display. Light wished it could escape from their shine, charms and a single bell ringing a merry tune when she tilted and shook her head. Her ensemble for the evening consisted of thread thin plaid pajama bottoms and a black hoodie over a skin tight white camisole. And lime green bunny slippers. "I felt SOMEthin'. Just not sure it was Brian. I could never really feel much from him." Avoiding his gaze, she looked instead at the ale. It floated like a good minion into a waiting hand.

He claps his hands together, a bear's roar of ambience raging from the single collision of calloused palms. Awashed with a characteristically smug grin, he turns and retraces what few steps required him to return to the proper section of the bar. "Not a direct family member. Yanno. That's what happens 'round here with us. You call, you get yer responses. Figurin' I'll drop him a line in the mornin' or somethin'" A barstool is collected and lifted to put him in parallel comfort with herself. He mounts it with as much grace as an oaf in a tugboat. "Yeah. So yer here because you don't know? Can assume it's 'cuz of him. That or yer just showin' up expecting me to. Heh. Knew you'd love me too much to let old sh*t go."

"No matter what hole we're in or what trouble's got a hold of us," added. They could make their own slogan. When the Ravenlocks combine... Lain watched him over the glass rim of tankard, swallowing to fill the yawning hole beginning behind her sternum. A single nude nail banished the traces of foam from a thin mouth deftly curving around a smirk. "You'd like to think that wouldn't ya? Can't expect you to do squat, Alex. Ever." It's easy to brush past his claims. Lying was never her strong suit. So she never attempted it when she hadn't had something reheassd and thought out for at least a week and a half. "Where've you been keepin' yourself?"

"Can't expect me to do squat, eh?" Chuckling, he smacks the counter's edge to ebb out the rise of unwanted amusement in his voice. Tiny cracks form in the surface, instantly healed by the inn's powerful wards against destruction. He pays it no heed. "You bet yer a*s you can't. Like I give a f*ck about doing anything productive." His legs crash against the partition at the knee, sweeping the soles of his wicker sandals against the floor. "I always keep myself somewhere, doin' somethin'. Yer gonna tell me you care now?"

She jumped and instantly hated herself for it, dropping her gaze to his hand on the bar and the spidercracks that resulted from the aftermath of his strength. It was the sound that fried her nerves, really. She'd never been afraid of him, even when things got bad. And even whens he should have been. Her smile gleamed like a newly frozen lake, teeth white and unbelievably straight. "I ain't sayin' nothin'. But," paused here to wet her tongue with another ale sip, "can't say I don't like that you ain't dead either. That never realy sat well with either of us."

His smug grin had nowhere to go. He wore it like a police badge. "Ain't sayin' nothin', huh?" There wasn't a chance he was imagining it. She just said a sh*t ton. He leaned back on his seat, catching his spine an invisible back support that cradled him with welcoming arms. "Right. Right. Didn't set with anyone, I imagine. People don't really like it when ya go off and die without warnin'."

Can trust him to pick up on her subtlety. It was the only way she could carry herself without the risk of her face lighting up like a Christmas tree. But again, anything less than honest, especially with him, was like taking a cheese grater to her own a*s. Every time she sat down, she'd remember it. And she really liked sitting down. "Missed the memo on that one." Mouth to tankard, she gulped once.

"Didn't catch the memo. Didn't hear the summons. Who did you say couldn't be expected to do sh*t again, Lain Amthras?" A scratch and drag of blunt nails across his jaw chased off the irritation under his skin. She wasn't the cause, nor was she making him feel uncomfortable. The breath of air, the ringing silence when no voices filled his ears. They burned his head and set his a*s on fire. Living had a learning curve. It was nothing like riding a bicycle. "Tell me what I gotta do. Walkup to ya, compliment yer shoes and request we f*ck?
Would that suit this moment better?"

Focusing on her own mortality, or lack thereof, was out of the question. At least until she could breech the subject in a way that didn't make it sound like she was b*tching and whining, or trying to compete. Alex's scorecard trumped hers in sheer length and that wasn't even taking into account creativity. "Forfeited the right to scold me on that crap when ya made it to a hundred and seven, 'Lex. I'm still young, only on my third life. I gotta live it up." There's a smile, the first true one of the morning. Its brightness shaved years of strain from an otherwise youthful visage. On a good day, she could pass for twenty-six. Smiling, she had the fresh face of a girl fresh into the double decades. But no amount of waking up naked would have ever prepared her for his queries.

Her broad grin faltered and like bloody flowers, her cheeks bloomed crimson. Moon silver hair looked positively bleached in comparison. She shoved one palm raggedly across her face, then leaned down against the counter with her elbow. "Tell ya what you gotta do? Man, could make a girl melt with that line." When her head tilted, her earrings followed, uneven bangs slipping across her left eye. "Ya missed me so much ya can't wait, huh?"

"Tch." He sits upright in his stool, hands grasping the balled ends of his knees. He resembled a kid straight out of the 60's when bored out of hi mind. It was sheerly a facade in its current, unrefined state. The lack of a stoic demeanor, the persistant way his sardonic smirk refused to be washed off his face. He was loving every god damn minute of this. The bones of his fingers crack and pop at their joints as he curls them inward, diluting the stress in his arms long enough to feel the first shimmer of relaxation kick in. Fleeting moments as they were in a guy freshly reincarnated, he took them as they came. "Don't start getting yer a*s all excited. Just lookin' fer that smile on yer damn face. Won it, too. So you can shove it, woman."

She blinked. It only took another moment to slam the iron doors back into place. Lain grinned with the tip of her tongue captured between her teeth and straightened up. "Came all the way down here just to make me smile. Ferget flowers or a card." Two fingers were all she needed to send the tankard back over to the service counter. Said same two fingers were, again, all she needs to dismantle the stool he currently lounges on with the barest of flicks to the East and West. "'Sides. I'm wearin' slippers."

The size of this Ravenlock could make the foundations of the inn crack and fall out of alignment were he to drop those several inches to the floor. It could fill the air with the rampant stomping of a stampeding elephant. It could do a damn lot, actually. Yet, nothing ever came from her dismantling his stool. He fell, sure. He fell like a bowling ball. But he never hit the ground. Inches from meeting the floor, he stopped dead in his tracks, no surmountable trauma on his face. Nothing at all, really. Nothing except what had already been there and continued to be experienced in true, unadulterated glory. With her lording over him this time around, he aims a look up at her with a subtle raise of auroral, roiling eyes.

"You'd piss all over those flowers and eat the card. Yer not that kinda woman." It didn't matter how long these two were apart. He knew her better than the back of his hand. Knew every inch. Nook and cranny. It was almost unrewarding to experience something from her. Except for the obvious fact that everything was exciting when it came to her. Slapping the ground with a hand, he hiked himself up, amassing like coalescing water from a raging river. "All right. Fine. Ferget I said anythin' at all. I'll just walk my a*s outta here and go look fer my brother now."

Banter hadn't been a strong suit for her either, ever, and while she'd won the round, the victory tasted like rotten meat in her mouth. Sickly sweet and squirming, filled full of maggots. Manicured nails scratched at her upper lip and she reigned in her impulsiveness with righteous effort. Sleek and smooth as her face was, it was a blank slate for every expression known to man. Right now, anguish. Followed shortly by regret. Each of these were aimed to either direction of his actual person. Steel eyes closed, then lifted with the rest of her face. "Alex, wait."

It should be noted that he hasn't moved. Hasn't turned. Hasn't done anything other than continue to stare at her like she was the only figure in the entire world. Were the inn filled to capacity, that wouldn't have changed. "'sup?" he rumbled, one arm crossing the other and layering the center of his chest with them. He felt infinitely lighter without the sword cases looming low on his back. "Lookin' like you just kicked a baby pig. I wasn't going to actually leave you somewhere, yanno."

"Ya never know with you. Could hear some call." Though the thin corners of her mouth turned upward. Sure she was relieved. She was a lot of things. And having the hardest damn time figuring them all out. A few days ago, she hadn't even been sure she wanted to open her eyes at all. "Look, I..." Briefly, she put her face in her hands, emptying a rather feminine growl into her palms.

"God, Alex, how the hell can we be back here again, lookin' at each other? Talkin', smilin'. In a manner of speaking." Thin fingers do little to neaten her hair. Actually when the drag through it they take the red scrunchy with it. Moonlit white cascades in a neat waterfall to rest along her collarbones, obscuring one elven and one marred ear. (s)"You've got no damn idea how many times I've wanted this an' I swear, if it's a joke... If you're not really here, or if I'm not really here... You'd put me outta my misery, wouldn't you?"

"Heh. I always could, I s'pose." Except, when he looked at the door, there were no rancorous cries demanding his attention as they were prone to in the years past. A stiff shoulder rolled, popping and cracking with the same volume of a bag of kernel popcorn. Seeing her open up beyond that idle banter she was often known for killed the sprawl of lips and sobered him up considerably. It was the first time he looked less ready to bark out laughter and, for once, listen to something she had to say. It was a little known fact that he listened to everything she had to say. Didn't matter if she was babbling like a newborn child or spewing vile calamities over everything that happened between them. The motherly chiding she'd do, the evil scowls that only he was privy to when their doors closed for the evening. He listened to each and every last one of them. So, especially now, when she'd carry on and tell him exactly what it was he had hoped she would, he listened god damn well.

Similarly to her, his hands breached the hairline of powdered lavender hair and cut it around a finger to one spiked earlobe that was punctured en masse with jagged metal shards that best resembled shrapnel from a recently ruptured frag grenade. He paid tribute to the smoldering ashes of her chalky eyes and the snares of kissed, freshly spun spider silk that poured from atop her scalp. It was easier to be fascinated by what was above and beyond rather than see the raging ache that punched a massive hole in his gut. "'course I would, darlin'. There's no f*cking way in hell I'd let you live in misery fer even a minute. Sooner get my own a*s killed again than let it."

When he looked, she did as well and for a single moment, she made a vow to herself that anything coming bursting through that door would find itself riddled with objects so quickly that bleeding out wouldn't even be an option. They would simply cease. Eye contact, another inability, and those seemed to be coming out in spades. He'd brought out the very best and the very worst in her, most often in unison. She could weather storms and unleash them. She could build up and destroy. And she had in years past. But now, she was nothing more than a woman attempting with every ounce of petrified strength she had to keep herself from shaking. One thin hand barely touched the bar as she made her quiet way out from behind it. The reassurance of something solid was all she needed, knowing that she'd be caught if she fell was enough to force her to try.

His voice now was a warm tongue down the side of her neck; startling, satisfying, exhilarating. Her tentative stride came to a complete stop not one foot away from him. Her thin mouth disappeared in a line, reforming flush and red from the worry of her teeth. She raised her hand from the bar, open palm curved, the perfect rest for a lean, masculine cheek as was her target. He'd held her strongly before, but that was a lifetime ago now. She needed new evidence to the contrary that she wasn't going crazy. (s)"Yer real?"

How real did one have to be? Did they need to be sentient? Breathing of their own accord? Something beyond a memory laden with trauma and ruination. The small grace of her hand arrested the shape of his jaw and molded it into his liking. At first, his auroral gaze knew nothing but the top of her head. Eventually, it discovered new plateaus in hard to reach places. The definition of her arm, the way it tracked to the shape of her shoulder and how it expanded fully into the shape of a respectable bosom. Momentarily, he chased a distant look to the floor and silently calculated what distance put them apart. At this range, he'd feel a sneeze, as would he be able to account for the surplus slams of her heartbeat against her ribs.

Without thinking, without ever showing indication, he drew closer to her and answered her touch with a strong grasp that could fit three times around the curve of her shoulder. He grounded her there, punished her for not moving any sooner than she had, and sank the foot in height difference to ensnare her mouth against his after removing the stubbed twig from the corner of pinched lips. Rugged, smoldering appearances felt just as real as they looked: rough lips, the scratch and pinch of short hairs around the upper ridge of his mouth and the tracks that drizzled the underneath. The warm caress of his breath mingled with havoc; tasting fresh like a morning rain during spring without the rueful melancholy that gloomy weather always enforced.

Were he to voice that question, she'd never be able to answer it. Her dreams had seemed real to her before she opened her eyes, her nightmares remaining without respite whenever she closed them. Nothing touched her face in the appearance of dark circles or a squinted gaze. Fatigue was one of those things Lain could always muscle through with more ale. She had been tricked before. Oh, had she been tricked before. And defenses raised their hackles at the sensory perception. Her palm told her brain she was caressing his face, her fingertips sliding across the half smooth, half weathered plain of his cheek. Her core told him it was his presence she felt, his life[/I[, pure and unaltered, surging with vitality like only he could. A rather smooth brow wrinkled, an uncharacteristic sheen glossing over gunmetal eyes. She hadn't the time to squeak a noise of surprise before his mouth was on hers.

Her body stiffened in his vice-like grip, hand frozen against his face. Her heart leapt and faltered. And all at once, she sagged against his chest, a moan of the abandoned willpower and strength smoothly rising from her throat to her lips against his. She slid her hand up into locks of lavender that she'd all but forgotten the feeling of, entwining her knuckles until she was sure he could not pull away. Her other hand spasmed against his chest, over where she knew his heart would be, another fist tightening in his clothes. Her lips were like ale and cherries, her scent the subtle twinge of leather and clean linen. And she would make sure, this time, that they mingled so as to never be discerned once again.

Could not. Would not. These were things singing in his head with the strength of a nephilim's choir. He enabled the strong contact to his chest, answered it in kind with a roll of thick fingers across the bridge of tendon that collected the taut branch of muscle region. He collected her at the waist and drew her in with force of a fisherman locked in a gladiator's match with a sea bass, fitting her chest against his stomach and fastening her down to keep her from wrangling free. Much as his brain suggested she'd lost the willpower to conquer this battle, he was not a man of risk. Hardly a man that willingly gambled away the things he required most. The shape of his lips, thin as thin got, massaged the contours of hers. They consumed the flavor of liquor, washed clean by the livid taste of cherries that complimented it admirably, and swallowed it down whole with an aggressive bob of throat and an even more truculent tensing of esophagus.

When their contact expired, it was bittersweet, leaving his expression sour and uneven while his mind raced to the summit of elatedness. He showed nothing, shared nothing beyond a rumble of contentedness usually garnered when a plate of food was emptied.

Breath was one of those things she'd never had much use for. It had kept her alive, sure, for the better part of her only century of life, but that was only until she had found this man. He could crush her if he wanted, and she would let him. She would sink into him without preamble, surround herself in him, in his existence, in his touch. Bathe in his scent and attention. His arm along her back was as hard as a statue's embrace, a fresh line of fire along her spine. She couldn't even hope to draw in oxygen against the power with which he held her, each line and delicious ripple of him pressed flat against her body, igniting her blood, setting her body ablaze. Her fingertips gripped the curve of his head, long nails dragged and scraped along his hidden scalp.

She matched each movement of his mouth with her own, his kiss burning its way along her tongue, down her throat. She shuddered a sound of disapproval once the airways were open, their contact no longer the solid thing holding her upright. Without it, her grip trembled. She drew her lips into her mouth, sealing the taste of him inside of her with the memory as her lashes drooped low over gunmetal eyes too overtaken with desire to see clearly. It was a minute, one very long, lovely, torturous minute while she rode the torrent of sensation. Everything felt pink and fuzzy. (s)"Waah..." The word had tried to be wow, really.

With their act concluded, he tips his hand high off the slope of her shoulder to fetch the hand attached to his rugged cheek and captured it for his own safekeeping. The auroral fire of emerald was a dull, diluted property; a ghost of its former self. His elatedness made his head feel full, worse than a headache but also more enjoyable. A subsequent buzzing ran laps across the wrinkle of his brow, a fanned flame that left him requiring her posture and state of being to keep him upright. A deadly sharpness wrecked the center of his chest, made it impossible for him to suck down copious amounts of air, and defiled the stoic way he'd intended to handle this situation.

He regarded her as all fanatics did their deities, with whole worshipfulness and dedication. By the waist, he twisted her around to fall in line beside him and lead them toward the steep incline of stairs. Say anything? He didn't want to ruin this moment with his god damn mouth. Besides, every thought in his head was sputtering like a broken toilet. He'd had made more an a*s out of himself than ever before. And for a guy like Alex Ravenlock? That was quite a feat.