Evolution [Pi]

[Lancaster]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--


<Pi d’Artois> It felt like the sewers were their playground. When they weren’t doing what was expected of them in their ‘day’ jobs that is where they could be found to fill the hours. It wasn’t what you would call a normal past time, but what part of any of this life could you call normal? How they survived, what they knew as their reality was far from an accepted norm. When the world was as turned around as the one she knew now, this seemed positively mundane.

Tonight was different though. Tonight she went in search of Elliot because she hadn’t seen him where she had expected to find him. When she was done with her run through the tunnel system she went in search of her rangy muso, going to one of the three places she usually found him, realizing tonight, the tunnel system under the city wasn’t one of them.

That left Lancasters, the Crypt or… his studio. So she tried the Crypt first.

When she didn’t find him there she jumped in the shower and changed. The other locations she needed to check required her to switch wardrobe, peeling off what she wore to stalk hunters and switching for something comfortable and casual. A chill had infiltrated the evenings, burning off the summer heat from the day and replacing it with precursor Fall. Slipping into ballet flats she zipped herself into the knee length skirt, adjusting the cuffs of the cardigan she wore to blend in with others who were wearing more in the evenings with the lowering temperatures in the evening.

She let her hair dry naturally, in a soft cloud around her head and went off in search for him.

It had to be Lancaster’s, and by association, Bunk. With a smile she wound her way through one, nodding at the servers in the bar before pushing through the connecting door of the Hostel, smiling at the staff member on the desk, ducking around the station to take the stairs up into the floor above all of it. When they had first bought this property they had talked for hours about making this a small apartment for them. They had made big plans about creating a space for themselves. At the moment it was an open space waiting for them to do something with it. Pushing the door open she poked her head in, scanning the place once, looking for him with a softly whispered “Elliot?”



<Elliot d’Artois> The sewers had indeed become some kind of playground. The months and the years and all the hurdles in between had finally granted Elliot a certain kind of balance. Once upon a time one would not have found him happily meandering through the sewer systems in search of foe to kill. No, he’d either not have gone down there at all so as to avoid giving in to his more violent nature, or, if he had found himself down there, he’d have hidden from those he knew so as not to have to admit to his shameful past time. Or he’d have had to try to think of some excuse – which didn’t work, now, anyway. He had concluded, or so he thought, that he had an inability to lie. At all. He’d not really tested it to any major extent.

These days, however, Elliot had come to terms with his dual nature; the resistance to everything that had changed gelled with the instinctive violence inherent in his soul. He kept one life separate from the other. He had his businesses, and his employees, and everything else. But he also had his vampirism, his urge to spill blood. And he had Pi – the sire and the lover who bridged the gap.

He hadn’t made it down to the sewers yet, however. He’d been thinking about changing one of the companies through which he ordered his wine—he’d called around and had some test bottles sent to him. He wanted to serve only the best at his bar. All the bottles had arrived, and he’d lugged the boxes up to the third floor. The last time he’d had too much to drink, he’d ended up with a childe. Best that he stay out of the way of any humans this time around. The lights were dim overhead – they’d had the special ones installed, that could be manually adjusted. He sat on the floor, the bottles ranged around him. There were about a dozen different glasses, too – some full, some half full, some completely empty.

When Pi walked in, whispering Elliot’s name, the man’s face was flushed. He flicked the hair out of his eyes and greeted her with a large grin. “Pi! Come… come and take a seat,” he slurred. He went to pat the wood floor at his side but accidentally knocked one of the bottles in the process. He caught it, though a single splash of red stained the floor. “Whoops…” he muttered, tugging at the sleeve of his red plaid shirt so that it covered his wrist, so that he could use it to mop up the spill.



<Pi d’Artois> Pi closed the door behind her, pulling it with a gentle click, her gaze never straying from where Elliot sat on the floor surrounded by… bottles. Lots of them. Glasses too, as if one had bred the other and multiplied itself all around him.

This was new. Very new. And she wasn’t sure exactly how she was meant to react. Walking forward she stared down at him on the floor, standing there with a look on her face that wasn’t so much blank as it was… bemused. He was sitting there, surrounded by bottles of wine he’d obviously indulged in and if his slurring was any indication. It had got the better of him.

It had been a while since Pi could drink. Three years? Something close to that time. In three years you lose the sense of what it feels like to be full or in this case, be inebriated. You don’t consider what it means and forget to look for clues about how someone acted when they were .. under the influence. Other than ordering something to sit in front of her when she was in Lancaster’s, she rarely bothered with the pretense of eating or drinking. Even in her baking, unless Elliot was around to eat what she made, it all went out to the shelter.

Which meant she had no real beginning point to dealing with what amounted to a partially intoxicated Elliot. So she smiled, hands on her hips, but smiling all the same. It felt indulgent, watching him look up at as he did. “How…” she began, because she really had to know how this was possible. “… why do you sound… drunk?” she asked.



<Elliot d’Artois> There was a teasing lie that wanted to leap from the tip of his tongue, but it got stuck in his throat. He laughed as he spread his arms wide, as if he were a king and all the bottles and their accompanying glasses were but his minions, and this his court. The space was clear of most things; there were a few extra boxes tucked up against walls and piled in corners. Extra storage space for whatever wouldn’t fit downstairs. There were a few random bits of furniture but really nothing of any consequence. Nothing resembling, yet, the home that he and Pi had planned to build here.

“Because I am drunk!” he managed, finally, in a sing-song voice. It wasn’t hard for him to affect a sing-song voice, and even when slightly drunk it was in tune. The hair that he had flicked from his eyes had fallen back over them again, though this time he made no move to shift it. That answered the why, anyway. A simple answer. Why does he sound drunk? Surely, she must know the process. But he would explain it anyway. He sucked breath in through his nose and narrowed his eyes at the first offending bottle.

“The… new comp’ny sent me some samples, see, and I started with tha’ one,” he said, pointing to the organic, preservative-free Cabernet Merlot. “It’s good! But not as good as… wait… oh this one,” he said, reaching for one of the Sauvignon Blancs. When he picked it up, only a tiny bit of liquid sloshed at the bottom. “And you know… you know how it is with wine, my love,” he said with a lopsided grin and a mischievous glint to his blue eyes. “You can’t jus’ have one glass,” he added.



<Pi d’Artois> It was endearing really, watching him and she shook her head before she bent, scooping a bottle out of her way, holding it casually with a hand as she squeezed herself into a space between him and a row of two bottles on his right. She let herself slide down the wall, trying to be graceful and failing a little since she wasn’t exactly dressed for slumping on the floor. Her skirt drifted around her legs, settling high on her knee, the fabric touching a glass close to her thigh until she picked it up and scooted that way to give her more room.

Spinning the bottle she held, she read the label Penfolds, an Australian Shiraz. The other labels differed with brand and style. She shook her head. The blood stuff she could drink, from Ariadne’s collection. This, this she definitely couldn’t, not anymore. But she was French, and even a Parisian who had been born and raised with little to commend her could appreciate good wine. As if it was bred into a cultural imperative to like the tart liquid bottled with vintner care.

The question she aired though, had nothing to do with the appreciation of wine itself, but how exactly he’d managed to get himself sozzled on it. She wondered if he knew how out of the ordinary this was. Or maybe it was her own understanding of what was normal that was skewed, but reaching back in her memory she couldn’t remember another vampire …drunk. “Drunk...” she repeated, as if repeating it would make something claw its way up from her memory and give her the answer to how.

Turning her head she elbowed him to get him to turn his attention to her, facing him with an arched eyebrow. “You are very cute when you are… inebriated. But I’m not sure I understand how you are drunk considering out… biology.” Leaning up to kiss his cheek she dropped her head to his shoulder, her voice curious. “What does it feel like?... being… drunk?”



<Elliot d’Artois> The woman seemed concerned with the drop of her skirt as she made herself comfortable beside the musician. Elliot, not really thinking about it, found his hand resting upon her thigh, the long fingers nudging the material further up. Because there was no one here to flash but him, and he’d seen it all before. The fingers remained rested upon the flesh of his Pi’s thigh, reached across her lap. Now that she was there he had a single focal point. The world didn’t pause around him with the breath that paused in his throat, however. The world spun precariously on its axis.

He understood, now, her curiosity. When it had first happened to him he had not understood, either. When he first realised that he could drink, when the majority of the others could not, he’d tried to get drunk. There were so many occasions that he’d wanted to. That he’d needed the sweet oblivion that alcohol could provide. But he hadn’t been given that pleasure. Now, though? He didn’t know why or how it was possible. It just was.

“Cute?!” he scoffed. “I feel emasculated,” he mumbled, his tongue tripping over the last word but getting it out, in the end. He laughed, the tone low and melodious. He sighed. “It feels…” he leaned back, balancing his rangy body on one hand. His legs remained crossed, though his hand left Pi’s thigh to instead wrap around behind her torso. He released a breath and took another.

“… it feels. My tongue is dry, and my throat thirsts. The world is spinning, but only when I stop still. And when I close my eyes…” and here, he closed his eyes, “…the spinning picks up the pace,” he said. He swayed, he swallowed, the Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat. “But my tongue is loose and there’s a curling in my gut that tells me I should stop but instead I drink more,” he said. But with Pi so close, the bottles were out of reach. His chin dropped toward his chest—his shirt was untucked, and his shoes had been removed. He was wearing only a pair of grey socks, a hole in one of the toes. He waited for Pi to look up—wanted her to look up so that his tongue could nudge at her lips. So that he could kiss her with the languid laziness that only a drunk man could achieve.



<Pi d’Artois> She watched his hand on her thigh, her stomach clenching with anticipation as his hand gripped and relaxed, sitting there casually draped across her. They’d found this with one another, the easy contact that didn’t ask more of each other than they just … be. When he shifted to hold her closer she snuggled under the crook of his arm and made herself comfortable. She smiled at his words, “You are definitely not… emasculated.” She scoffed.

When he explained how he felt she listened intently. He knew her so well, knew she wanted to know every bit of it. Curious, loving he was appeasing that curiosity with specific detail. He described for her the sensation of what he was feeling and for a moment she dropped into memory of when she had felt just that thing, tongue slurred, feeling pleasantly disconnected with mellow senses dulled by what she’d drunk and buoyed by the jokes of the other men in her unit. In her memories there were boisterous dares and crude jokes with men who fought hard and drank harder.

“Maybe… because you can drink… because of you’re… as Allurist.” She wondered out loud when he paused, a little envious at his ability to feel and be something so … normal. To have the ability to taste and to feel something outside of yourself, something uncontrolled and human. Lifting a small hand she reached across herself to stroke down the shoulder her head rested on.

She raised her head because she could feel his eyes on her, the angle of his chin pointed towards her, nudging the top of her head so she bumped him as she moved. Shifting her hand to stroke his jaw she accepted his silent invitation, molding her lips to his and sucking his bottom lip into her mouth before delving deeper, her tongue moving against his in a languid touch. She was being selfish, kissing him deeply and taking the taste of wine from his lips, enjoying the taste of him merging with that of the white wine, a woody note paired with what was inherently Elliot. Pulling back, her lips still against his she smiled into his eyes. “I like this… I could take advantage of you… get you drunk. Ask you anything I want … about anything I’d like.” She teased, kissing him lightly, once, twice and again for good measure.



<Elliot d’Artois> It was so Pi, that she would continue to question the why of his drunkenness. Would it continue to bother her until she had an answer? And how could she get that answer? Elliot had a fleeting image of the woman hovering over his body as it lay stretched out over a metal slab, cutting him open and poking around inside to see if there was some glaring clue, some crossed wire in the complicated circuitry. Perhaps the imagery was due to that dual violent nature which he had accepted and embraced; it didn't disgust him. He didn't shove it away. Instead, it flitted off of its own accord as he was distracted by the feel of Pi against him.

The door was closed, but was it locked? Could he fall back, here, with Pi in his arms? Would it matter entirely if they were interrupted, if someone should walk in on them? The blood in his former imagery turned instead to spilled wine and broken glass, the two of them tumbling amongst a forgotten and ruined mess of alcohol. He hummed against Pi's lips. His hand shifted, as if he was going to wrap both his arms around Pi. But he didn't, because he began to lose his balance, dizziness making it difficult to figure out whether he was actually still upright. And anyway, any fumbled attempts to make his imagined scene of love-making come to life were nixed by the break of the kiss.

He hummed again, pausing to regain control of the spinning room. "I don' have to be drunk for you to interrogate me, woman, he murmured. "You can do that any night, he added with that same lopsided grin. He wasn't sure that he had much to hide from Pi. And even if he did, how could she know enough to question him about it? His drunken mind flailed for reasons why he should try to avoid such an interrogation, but he could find none. Not just yet.




<Pi d’Artois> Pi smiled against his lips and pulled further away to settle against the wall again. It would be the only way she would ever taste wine again, on his lips and she greedily took advantage of the chance to taste what she hadn't in too many years. For a moment she felt a poignant pull of regret. Fleetingly she considered all that she couldn't do now that she was what she was, what they both were and much like she had done in the past she pushed it to the side and focused instead on what was directly in front of her. She couldn't change what was and she couldn't get morose over it. She let herself miss the crisp call of wine and then shook it off.

"Do you hear from your family? she asked quietly. Maybe she was being a masochist. Maybe the taste of wine had affected her more than she was letting on. Maybe the situation with d'Artois was pulling on her conscience more than she thought. Maybe it was all of those things, but the first thing that came to her mind when she considered all the things she'd ask him, was his family. Not the one they had created here in this corner of Canada, but his other one. The one he was born into, where he had parents and cousins probably, and a brother surely she remembered him saying something vaguely about a sibling.

Stroking an absent palm down his arm she soothed herself by pretending to sooth him, her touch butterfly light, but constant. “Tell me about them…?”



<Elliot d’Artois> Elliot squirmed, inwardly. No, there was nothing that he would keep from Pi in regards to his family, but he was happy two seconds ago. He was happy generally, if he didn’t think too much about how he would never have his old life back; how he had taken his family for granted and had assumed they’d always be there for him when he decided to return home. The alcohol was a double-edged blade. It played upon one’s emotions – and, for an allurist, emotions were already heightened. For Elliot, it was far too easy to swing from one emotion to another, completely opposite emotion. He, too, leaned back.

“I hear from Mum, every now and again,” he said. He answered the question without any lies. But he didn’t elaborate so much, either. His relationship with his human family hadn’t been fraught, but it was beginning to be. Elliot could see the signs. Could hear it in his mother’s voice whenever he talked to her on the phone. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Pi about his human family, and so he shrugged.

“Dad’s dead – I was younger,” he said. It failed to hurt him much anymore. It was long gone, that particular heartache. “Heart attack,” he said. It was nothing special, the way his father had died. “And Thomas – I haven’t heard from Thomas in… God, I don’t know how long. He wasn’t… he’s a half-brother. Dad had him with another woman before he married Mum. Thomas was around sometimes but not all the time,” he said. Some kind of custody agreement and so, after Bobby died, Thomas didn’t have a reason to come stay with Elliot and Jane. He’d kept in touch, but nothing too significant. “What else do you want to know?”



<Pi d’Artois> Pi shrugged, knowing he could feel the movement where she leaned against him. The wall opposite them was bare, about as bare as the space they sat in, as if the space still waited patiently for them to do something with it. Anything. Anything other than store bottles of wine and get sozzled once in a while. The thought made her smile. “Everything.” She stated baldly. It was the truth. She had an endless curiosity about who he was before he came here. Because once he got here she knew everything that happened from then to now, but his past proved a grey area of short sentences that were never expanded on. Like now.

“Would you.. would you like to see them if you could? If things were different?” she asked, knowing it would be hard for him to go back and consider the things he’d left behind. She’d long figured he had given up much more to become a vampire whereas she had just gained. Even if their family was disconnected and fraught, it was still a hell of a lot more than she’d ever known. And she might not speak to those she had turned all the time, but by god at least they were still around. It was certainly more than she’d ever had growing up.

Maybe that’s the reason why she didn’t worry too much about how d’Artois had become so… quiet. Because quiet wasn’t dead like her mother had been dead. Quiet wasn’t a foster home with people who only collected money and fed her and paid as much attention to her as they did the family German Shepherd. She wasn’t asking to be melancholy, but as a genuine interest in what it would mean to someone who had people he might miss. She didn’t miss anyone. Didn’t want t turn back time and be anything else. Maybe, in her way, what she really wanted to know… was whether those people she had never met (and likely never would) could pull him away from her. Somehow. Or maybe, maybe she was just jealous of anyone who grew up in a family that wasn’t a dysfunctional mess. Maybe.



<Elliot d’Artois> Elliot didn’t want to. That was the pure and simple of it. Pi wanted him to dredge up memories of people that he did miss. I missed them now because he knew that one day he would have to give them up completely. He loved his mother. He always had. She was a soft woman, who would do anything to make him happy. She had accepted Thomas’s existence and had been as much a mother to a child who was not her own as she was to her own child, simply because she loved the man who had brought that child into the world. Elliot had harboured no resentment toward Thomas; had instead embraced him as a brother, as much as he was able. There’d always been the intention to make that relationship stronger. But that could never happen now.

And just like that, again, Elliot’s emotions swung. The softness of his blue eyes had gone from gleaming mischief, to anxious hurt, and now to a defensive anger. He should have been able to remember them and talk about them happily – but they were not dead. They were alive. And he wasn’t going to talk about them as if they were happy thing in his past, the loss of which he was happy to give up. He wasn’t happy to give it up, and Pi, of all people, should remember them.

“I would, Pi. If things were different I would see them again, because I took them for granted. I never thought I’d ever just lose them and not return to them. I talk to my mother and she wants to know where I am, because she’s used to me wandering around the world. She can’t understand that I haven’t moved anywhere for years. She can’t understand why I stay here and I don’t go home to her. I usually go back for Christmas every couple of years and she expects me to, you know? It doesn’t usually go this long without me going home and it hurts to talk to her, Pi. It hurts, because I can’t make her feel any better,” he said. She had asked. She was the one who had opened this can of worms. And Elliot answered with violent honesty.


<Pi d’Artois> Pi heard the tight tension in his voice and lifted her head off his shoulder to turn her face to him. She needed to shift her hips too, because she didn’t want to maintain such an awkward neck position. This meant turning her body to face his, her legs tucked up, with her skirt pushed over her knees that nudged his outer thigh. Now she leaned her head against the wall and kept her hands to herself. Instead she let them drop into her lap to pick at the invisible lint or smoothing the fabric with her small hand.

No, Elliot’s situation was nothing like hers. Never would be. It didn’t matter what she said to him about this. It wasn’t like she could come up with a scenario that would work to make this better. It wasn’t her that controlled their unfair circumstances and while she was the one who had changed his live irrevocably, much like a car accident whipping you away from the life you thought you would lead, so too did her one decision change the course of his life. It was what it was.

“We could invite her for Christmas?” She offered. She swallowed hard on the words, wondering where the hell they had come from. Wasn’t she just thinking five seconds before, that it was impossible to help him? That she couldn’t fix this for him? Yet, here she was trying to do exactly that. Offering a way for him to see his mother. The mother he so obviously loved. The lump in her throat stuck. “Bring her here… it’s winter, the nights are longer and we could say… I don’t know. Tell her that you work nights and have your days.. turned…” the words dribbled to an awkward end because even to her own ears the logistics of trying to cover up what they were when Elliot passed out like the dead during the day were ridiculous. And to bring a loved parent here? To this place of death and creatures who dealt death… god, what was she thinking. She fell silent, waiting for his scoffed rejection of the idea.



<Elliot d’Artois> It was always like this with Pi, and he wondered whether it would ever be any different. Whether or not she had been the one to kill him, she was embroiled in everything that made him who he was now. She was the one in that pub who had killed someone, right in front of his eyes; the one who had put him in danger to begin with. She had changed him, she had saved his life. She had given him immortality, and now gave him her love, which he returned tenfold. His thoughts were jumbled, inhibited by alcohol. He couldn’t focus, and it was a good thing, too. He didn’t want to have think, now, about why the woman sitting with him now was the one thing that he loved, the one thing that kept him here. But she was also one of the only things that could drive him away.

He scoffed. He laughed – the sound held little mirth. “Invite her here?! Are you ******* kidding, Pi?” he asked. He shouldn’t have been so harsh, he knew. She was only trying to help, in an odd kind of way. “This city where there are fuckers who kill us for our associations with humans. I would not bring her here, ever. And why? What good could it possibly do? Could only do that so many times before she realised something was wrong,” he said. He shook his head, which he then slammed into the wall behind him. It thudded, heavily. He sighed, shook his head, and closed his eyes. He let the dizziness grab hold of him. He spun with it.

“No. best to just not think about her or it or any of it,” he said, waving his hands in mid air. “I don’t want to talk about it, Pi. We have eternity and we have to let our old lives go sooner or later and it’s best to not think about it. Don’t make me think about it,” he said. He cracked open one eye and reached for a nearby bottle – a red. He didn’t look at the label before taking a long, hard swig.



<Pi d’Artois> She knew as soon as she suggested it that it wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. She’d swallowed the rest of the plan that had thrown itself into her brain as a way to get Elliot what he wanted because common sense took over and she cut off the rest like one would slap their hand across a friend’s mouth after they’d uttered something insensitive and stupid. Which is exactly what she had done. She winced as he slammed his head against the wall and pulled herself a little further away. Rolling her knees so she faced forward she brought them to her chest, tucking her under her then balanced her chin on top of them.

Would she had considered the idea if it was her own mother and someone had suggested it? Pi couldn’t even connect that dot. The woman who had given her half her genetic code wasn’t what anyone would want to come visit them.

Silently she watched Elliot reach for the bottle of red wine and for a moment the action superimposed itself over that of the junk head mother who died passed out on a couch so many years ago. Pi wasn’t a stranger to alcohol, or of reaching for it when stressed. She’d watched it enough in her youth. Turning away from even that she felt guilty associating Elliot with the woman who had birthed her. They weren’t the same people and she had no right drawing comparisons, even if you brain went there.

“Okay.” She said quietly. “I wouldn’t have invited my mother either… not that it’s the same thing but… I shouldn’t have brought it up.” She dribbled off awkwardly again, finding very little conversational foundation to continue the attempt to sooth the situation. He was right, better to let the past go, let it .. jesus, just let it go already. And then she ran out of things to say to him. When she came to look for him, it was really just to catch up like they usually did, their night, what had been going on with their businesses… and she was going to float something by him about the current Mayoral candidates but… well, now she didn’t have anywhere she thought the conversation could go. So she just sat silent. Silent was good too.

[Pi dArtois]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Elliot d’Artois> Yes, it always happened. It always seemed to be Pi who copped the brunt of Elliot’s anger regarding his past and the things that he could never have back. The way she slumped, the way she tucked herself away from him and his volatility inspired guilt in Elliot. Because, with the regret of the things that he had lost, the one thing that was always most prominent, the one emotion the fuelled most everything he did, was guilt. He didn’t like the way that his reaction seemed to push Pi away.

The Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. He put the bottle aside and reached for Pi; his legs untangled as he crawled over the floor toward her. One bottle tipped and fell, having been toppled by one of his feet. He didn’t care. He let it roll, the crimson liquid gurgling out of the neck and sloshing all over the floor. He could have snapped. Could have told her that no, she shouldn’t have brought it up but she had and now he was feeling all kinds of anxiety.

But he couldn’t do that. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want there to be any distance between them, because he hated it when there was distance between them. He had hated it when she’d wanted to join that ******* faction, when he had stopped talking to her, when he’d put that brick wall between them. He hated that brick wall. She was all clammed up and he wanted to get past her shell. His hand latched behind her neck, his lips pressed gingerly to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said, breath whispering against her mouth.



<Pi d’Artois> Pi didn’t need him to say sorry, she understood where she’d gone wrong and felt sorry for it as well, but she was glad he did. In the same way you didn’t need someone to point out they agreed with you but it was nice to know all the same. Wrinkling her nose she kissed him back, a gentle press of lips, letting him have access with the expedient turn of her head. “It was a pretty sorry suggestion.” She replied with a rueful smile.

It wasn’t that her feelings were hurt, so much as she just sometimes got it wrong and knew she did. It was the worst case of hindsight 20/20 after she’d opened her mouth and let it out. In situations like this the split second afterwards amounted to something like buyers remorse and the wish she could rewind the moment by five seconds and get herself not shut the hell up.

“I just sometimes wonder what ….” Ugh, there she went again. The man was drunk, and here she was again, running off with scenarios that are best left for .. maybe never. What did it matter what their choices might have been if they hadn’t been taken away from them. What good was digging up three year old decisions that neither of them could change and pick at them like it would do any good. Therapists were keen on researching the past in order to fix the present but Pi didn’t want to do that either. But she still thought about it. Where he would be, if she hadn’t shifted the course of his life. This wasn’t the time however, and maybe there wouldn’t be and she would keep those philosophical discussions to herself. “… well, what we’re going to do about what wine to buy.”

The change of subject was clumsy and obvious but she didn’t care. It was what it was and her shifting away from where they were was best. “Did you pick one?” she asked, steering the conversation away, leaning her forehead against his.



<Elliot d’Artois> The change of topic was obvious. Elliot could tell that Pi was not about to ask about the wine. The wine was not on her mind. How could it be, given their previous topic? Given his anger, the way it had lashed out in rhetoric that was not so much vicious, but sad. Because what do we do with our sadness, when it cannot be remedied? We get angry. We want people to blame, things to blame. Elliot didn’t want there to be any blame for his sadness because he was afraid of where it might land. And so he was happy to ignore his sadness, as he had grown accustomed to doing. To focus instead on the life that had been built around him. A life that required that he choose wine to stock in their bar.

“No,” he said, glancing at the bottles that stood sentry around them. He reached for one of the whites. The liquid inside glinted beneath the dim light, but it was not completely yellow. It was near clear—of great quality. He tipped some of the liquid into one of the clean glasses and swilled it around, before lifting the glass to his lips. His nose dipped into the bowl of the glass and he took a long sniff, before allowing the liquid to slide onto his tongue. It coated his tongue, before he swallowed. He then turned to Pi.

“Maybe you can help me,” he said. A hint of that mischievous glint had re-entered his eyes. Yes, better this, than any other topic. Not right now. Now when his emotions were prone to dismantling and running riot under the influence and direction of alcohol. As he settled in beside Pi, his arm again winding around behind her, his fingers splayed upon the floor just behind her backside, he leaned down again to kiss her, to slip his flavour-coated tongue past her lips.

“We can choose, based on how it tastes on another’s tongue…” he suggested with an arch of the brow.



<Pi d’Artois> She had no urge to bring up anything that brought distance to them. Grinning against his mouth she hummed an agreement to his plan. She was worried, but it went deeper than sometimes getting it wrong.

Elliot was the only thing she had in this city she felt like she’d got right and the idea she was suffocating him with her attention was making her nervous. She needed something else to focus on but she hadn’t found it yet. And in the vacuum she had placed Elliot. All of her attention, every scrap of it, right now, was focused on him. Not that she didn’t like the idea of him being a big part of her life, so much as she didn’t want to drown him in her singular attention. And sometimes she thought she was. Except he made it so easy to want to. Like now, with his endearingly sweet suggestions that hit her right in the solar plexes.

Her lips moved on his slowly, her tongue reaching out to taste the wine sitting there. “Hrmm.. woody, a chardonnay?” she asked her lips moving against his as she spoke then delved deeper, the smile she couldn’t contain stretched against his lips before she deepened the kiss getting caught up, catching flavours and trying to keep her attention focused on the wine but knowing she was failing. Pulling back with a sigh, she swallowed hard. “I like that one… even though, I’m not sure I’m a good judge… ” She finished with a faint blush. “You distract my… scientific approach.” Teasing, she reached to a glass, already half full with a red, holding it up to his lips. Her eyes glistened with a heated challenge. “Lets try this one… see if I can.. do better.”



<Elliot d’Artois> Elliot could drown himself in wine. He could fill a bathtub, he could bathe in it. Pi could join him. The images that flitted through his mind were incorrigible, in the very least. The glass of white had been put aside—surprisingly without being knocked over, the flimsy glass broken—and his long fingers, normally accustomed to plucking strings, were tangled in Pi’s hair. The way she blushed, after speaking, was only endearing to Elliot. The subject had been dropped and he wondered whether it would have been regardless, if he had not distracted her ‘scientific approach’.

Was this, then, how he would distract her in the future? She had found a weakness of his; that, under interrogation, he would tell her anything. That she could ply him with drink, not that he ever thought that she would be so underhanded. Had she figured it out? Could she tell, that he wouldn’t lie? That he couldn’t? Did he even know that for sure?

He took the red from her hands and lifted it to his lips. He repeated the process of tasting, of letting the liquid sit on his tongue for a few long seconds before swallowing. He cleared his throat, before his blue eyes snagged on Pi’s. “You should test me,” he said, finally. Did he care, if she knew that he could not lie? He didn’t think so. “Try to make me lie,” he said, glancing away only briefly as he put the glass down, out of the way, out of danger of his clumsiness. When he lifted his gaze again it was while leaning forward, while lifting that hand again to latch around Pi’s neck.



<Pi d’Artois> It might be cowardly, but she was happy to take this to the lowest common denominator. This was something they never got wrong. They were so evenly matched in the bedroom, focused solely on one another and moved as one. Their lips knew the taste of the other, their hands the landscape of each other’s body. This she could do and not stuff up. She felt comfortable here, where words seemed to make her stumble and look foolish. Which was ironic considering how little real experience she had with … physical affection.

Pulling back she gave him an odd look at his request, wondering where it came from. Make him lie? How was she going to do that? In order to catch him in a lie she would have to ask him about something she thought he would lie about to her which would be proof he had not told her a lie by telling the truth. Her eyebrow raised at her own attempt to rationalize how she would deduce the accuracy of his ability or inability to lie.

What she was scared of was what she would need to ask him to ascertain his constant truth. But what filtered through her mind was why he was asking at all. With a soft hand she pushed back the hair that had fallen across his forehead, her voice soft. “You.. don’t think you can lie?” She asked the question because she was being cautious. She didn’t want to throw herself into a scenario where she just asked questions, questions that could be uncomfortable or bring back his disappointed rejection of where her questions would lead. But also, she really wanted to know. How long had he struggled with this and if it was true… how could this affect his relationships. Life, all forms of life, required some level of protection… and small lies, said for good reasons were the shield all people held against the world and their opinions. She’d ask him questions if he wanted, she’d jump into the deep end and take the challenge, but she wanted to know… just how big an issue this could be… and what exactly he really believed was going on.



<Elliot d’Artois> She didn’t take the taste of the red wine from his lips, or from his tongue. The conversation that he had now instigated he had hoped to undertake between their languorous making-out sessions, but Pi had other things in mind, obviously. Even as intoxicated as he was, he could still feel the vibrations pulsing between them; that specific aura that he could pick up, that perhaps others could not. She was worried, and he did not want her to be. He sighed, and shook his head, though he leaned slightly into her touch as she brushed the hair from his face.

“No. I’m not sure that I can,” he said. He hadn’t really shared everything with Pi, as yet. There were theories that he had, but nothing that he knew for sure. Things that he had come to realise, through habit and repetition, as recurring themes. He chuckled, under his breath. “Just like I can’t do anything bar what a human can do when the moon is full, or when there’s no moon at all. Just like I can… I can get drunk. I’m either being punished or rewarded,” he said, glancing up at Pi. His breath smelled like wine. His throat was still dry, and the thirst that clawed at it wasn’t just a thirst for more wine.

“My theory is that I have so much guilt and shame, that for so long all I wanted was my own life back. To be human again – to be as human as possible. I’ve been given that, in so many ways. I think,” he said with a shrug. A return to their previous topic, slightly, under a different umbrella. But this time he held his emotions tightly, keeping them restrained with a deep breath held in lungs that did not need it.



<Pi d’Artois> Where had she been that she didn’t know about these things? What had she not been asking or sharing that she didn’t know he too couldn’t do anything during the new moon. She thought it had to do with the white wolf, that her powers as a vampire lost their potency because the wolf was in.. retrograde or something. Sitting here on the floor with the man she loved she realised just how much they hadn’t shared, how much she hadn’t shared with him when they could have been helping each other through these things. “I…” surging forward, closing the small distance she buried her nose in the soft space. “I can’t .. I have no powers during the new moon either.” She spoke against his neck as if she were a parishioner in confession and he the shadowed figure behind the wooden screen. “I’m so sorry, I thought it was just me.. I didn’t know it was something someone else would be experiencing, least of all you.”

With a deep sigh she pulled back, but barely, just enough to look into his eyes so she could see what he was feeling, to see what was there for him. She knew he’d been drinking so this was no time to delve into why what he’d revealed made her feel so guilty. It had been a long time since she’d thought of herself as his sire, as the person who was charged with helping him learn the ropes of the city, but right now, she felt like she’d failed miserably at that too.

“Tell me you hate me.” She whispered softly, holding his gaze. It was a lie, she knew it, he knew it. If there was something she was confident in, it was his feelings for her. It took a second for her to realise she didn’t need to come up with twenty questions to figure this out, but one, the biggest one. The only one they both knew was truth, and ask for the lie. All he needed to do was utter it.

She wanted to rewind and go back to kissing him, tasting the wine on his lips and if she were any other person she would pretend this was something to play with, to carry on their game but she couldn’t. He had thrown a bomb into the conversation and she wanted to help him diffuse it. So she gave him the lie to say, to repeat back to her knowing it was that it was… and she hoped, god she really hoped he could utter it.



<Elliot d’Artois> The revelation surprised Elliot. The fact that Pi suffered the same thing—whether it was s curse or a blessing he hadn’t quite yet figured out. Most night he didn’t use his specific vampiric powers, anyway. When he lost them, he knew without a doubt that he could, in fact, feel what others felt, as if their emotions were a physical presence. It had become second nature to him, moving through the crowds and at the same time, wading through all the nuances of their feelings. These strangers he didn’t know, but which he immediately felt connected to, simply because he was aware of something that he shouldn’t be aware of.

He laughed, because she said she was sorry. He laughed because the guilt he could feel bleeding from her was so much like his own. And he laughed because of what she requested of him. He was drunk. He’d lost thread of the conversation, and he’d forgotten, briefly, what he had asked her to do. He had mentioned his humanity, the loss of it, the blessing and the curse of these things that burdened him. Did she think that he hated her for it? He shook his head.

But then he remembered, and he knew that the game was afoot. A game, if it could be called that. She was far too serious, and rather than continuing to laugh, Elliot’s brows furrowed. “Alright then,” he said. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. He straightened his shoulders and held her gaze. “Papillon d’Artois,” he started. “I hate—“ and his voice snagged. There was a blockage, and he cleared his throat. “I hate—“ he tried again. It didn’t work. He shook his head. “I hate this one,” he said, picking up a bottle of Rose. The taste of it was sour on his tongue, and he had hated it. There was only a small amount missing from that particular bottle.

He put it down again, gently. He narrowed his eyes at the bottle as if it were the cause of that particular blockage in his throat. Again, he shook his head. “Papillon d’Artois, unlike that offensive bottle of wine, I love you,” he said. He’d given up. He returned his full-bodied stare to Pi.



<Pi d’Artois> The laughter that rose was a bit hysterical because he was trying to make it a joke except with each attempt to tell her he hated her, she felt herself moving her mouth, wanting him to be able to. Each stutter seemed to signal something momentous and her lips moved, as if her own attempt would help him with his. And then he just stopped, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t lie. How is that even possible? It wasn’t a viral affliction. It couldn’t be magical could it? What omnipotent being created a magical power where a person couldn’t lie. Could it be psychological? Could it be something in his own mind that is attempting to balance some sort of cosmic scale.

She laughed but she was pretty sure nothing about this was funny at all. Except, she felt almost hysterical laughter well and flow past her lips until she hiccupped. “Then we won’t stock the….” Turning her head to read the label on the bottle she finished the statement. “Rose… stuff the Rose.”

Closing the distance she whispered frantically against his lips. “I hate you… I hate you so much it hurts when I breath, or don’t breath because I can’t breath.” It should have been that easy, that simple to say words that weren’t true knowing they weren’t. A joke, or a polite lie so you didn’t hurt someone’s feelings. You said things that weren’t true all the time and Elliot.. couldn’t. It wasn’t anything to mourn, was it? Surely it was a good thing that she loved a man who would tell nothing but truth.

But this city. This damn city with its awful rules, it could suck you into a morass. No, Pi stopped at the thought as she pressed her lips to his. It’s a good thing and something wonderful that of course would happen to someone as inherently honest as Elliot. With a smile she joked “Of course you would find a magic where you could only tell the truth.” Lifting her hand she stroked his hair again, then dropped her hand sliding down the side of his face, until she reached his chest. “Only you..” her smile widened.



<Elliot d’Artois> “Just that particular Rose,” he mumbled, nudging at the bottle so that it did fall over with a heavy thud. The lid was on this one, though. There was no spillage of liquid. He sighed again and canted his head to the side. Nothing horrible had happened due to this affliction of his. Well, except for the fact that it may have in some way led to the siring of Jia Li – his inability to avoid her questions, and unable to do so with grace perhaps only because he was so inhibited with drink. The first time that he had discovered his weakness to alcohol poisoning.

His own grin echoed Pi’s. She was hysterical, and his own eyes were wide as he watched her, carefully. He couldn’t figure out whether this revelation was a good thing or a bad thing, in her opinion. The way she laughed, as if she only did it because it was the only option even when something wasn’t funny. He felt no hate, however; the words that she spoke were not true. He could understand that. He shook his head.

“You hate me about as much as I hate you,” he said, his fingers crooking under her chin, knuckles grazing against the softness of her skin. He nodded. He couldn’t comment. Only him, yes, but he couldn’t deplore it. He didn’t need to lie. Rarely did he ever want to lie. It meant nothing much to him that he couldn’t. It just meant he had to get better at his rhetoric. No big deal. His lips slid from hers, the stubble of his jaw tickling her skin as his mouth grazed a path down to the tender skin of her neck.

“Because I don’t hate you at all. Not even a little,” he said. Hate was a strong word. And he couldn’t feel it, not toward Pi. He shuffled that tiny bit closer, his long legs splayed out in front of them, his toes curling and the hole in his one sock stretching.



<Pi d’Artois> Lowering her head so she pillowed her check onto the soft curve of his should Pi absently played with her hand across his chest, her expression thoughtful (although he couldn’t see it). “No, I don’t have you at all. Not even a little.” She repeated back, making herself comfortable, as if she planned to settle there for the rest of the night. “Well,” she started, her voice pensive. “We have some catching up to do… about… our powers, what we have.”

Considering his currently inebriated state, she thought it was little wonder it came out like it did. She also liked the fact they weren’t sitting around in a round table discussion about the potential ramifications of the powers they found themselves saddled with. It wasn’t that they had purposely kept each other in the dark so much as they had obviously both grown and thought it was normal, when it was clear that they had both grown, as was normal, but just for themselves. Pi could no more advise Elliot on his ‘truth’ magic as he could advise her on the spirits she drew for Cartis in the Shadow Realm or… sitting up fast Pi stared at Elliot, blinking at him as if an idea had slapped her in the face (which it had).

“My.. eyes…” she stuttered. “I thought… I thought it was the wolf but.. my eyes. They change… when I’m angry or… scared.. they change.”

She hadn’t tried to change them on purpose before, or hadn’t tried to channel the emotion that would make them do what she knew they did under stressful situations. Staring at him, willing him to watch, she channeled emotion, spiraling it until blood flowed into her cheeks, her eyes narrowing. She knew it worked when the world turned grey, so many shades of grey they were almost a colour scheme of their own. She watched his face as if he were a black and white movie and smiled. “I… thought it was my wolf. That I … change too often and she… became too much a part of me. And maybe it’s true. Like you are so honest… it’s manifested in… a life of whole truth. Could we be.. evolving?”



<Elliot d’Artois> Drunk Elliot, at this point, had one thing on his mind. With his lips resting against that small rise in Pi’s skin, where her skin was perfectly smooth regardless of the fact that his teeth broke the surface on so many different occasions. Though, he supposed, he didn’t stick only to the neck. There were other places that he liked to bite her, where the blood flowed strongest. They had just confirmed how much they loved each other, how non-existent their hate was. It seemed the perfect opportunity…

… she was saying something. He wasn’t listening so much. Something about catching up. Something about power. His tongue was circling her skin. The gums around his canines ached as they extended; as that desire for Pi’s blood grew. But his focus upon her skin was broken just as his lips widened, just as his teeth grazed the surface. She wrenched herself away and forced him to focus on something else. To focus on what she was trying to tell him. His focus was blurry, and he had to blink a couple of times, his lips pressed tightly together to hide his obvious desire from Pi.

He gave a shrug. He shook his head. “We might be. It’s a good possibility,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at the change in Pi’s features, the way the animal peeked through. His fingertips grazed her cheeks, and spread over her eyebrows. She had said they changed when she was angry or scared. And when had this started? Had he not seen her angry or scared in that long? But he was seeing her now.

“So what are you now?” he asked. “Are you angry, or are you scared?” he said.



<Pi d’Artois> Pi stared at his elongated eye teeth and was distracted by what that meant, she opened her mouth to answer but felt her mood shift as quickly as it had when she concentrated to make her eyes change. Emotion slammed into her and it was neither anger or fear but some more visceral and immediate. And her eyes didn’t change back. Maybe it was just emotion, strong emotion. Right now, as she concentrated on the outward change of her eyes meant, it seemed controlled more by emotion period, and this time that emotion equaled… lust, love, passion, need. All of the above wrapped around the man whose gaze captured hers and held her captive.

“Neither.” She answered, swallowing hard, her lips curving in invitation. Pi leaned into his touch arching as he ran his hands over her much like the wolf would if Elliot’s hand ran through the ruff of the white wolf’s fur. She almost purred, and felt a rumble from inside her as the Wolf at her heart, woke to the touch, rumbling her own agreement to his touch.

They both were so much more than they had been, her and Elliot. They had talked tonight of what they had lost, what they missed. But they’d come circle, to where they were now, what they had become and it was clear the evolution, or whatever explanation they chose to describe their growth, were making them so much more. She knew what he saw when he looked into her eyes, they were her wolf eyes, light brown, irises, those of an animal, sharpening her vision until she saw all of him, and the periphery as well. And she loved everything she could see, especially the fact he could tell only the truth.

Arching her neck she stretched her chin up, a silent invitation to take what he wanted, to take her hold her close and take her blood. Whatever they were becoming they would do it together, in moments like this, they would make eachother stronger. Better. She grinned, even if he was drunk, laying on the floor of the store room with holes in his socks.



<Elliot d’Artois> The sound that Pi made enraptured Elliot. Whatever they might talk about, no matter how riled up he might get about the state of his life as it was now, there was always one constant. His love for Pi, the way that she anchored him. The way that one murmur of a purr unlocked within him all the love and lust that had built over the years that they had been together – whether together or not. The need for her that had culminated on the night that he had turned Lex.

There was no more talking. He didn’t have to ask what she was feeling in lieu of fear or anger. He didn’t need her to explain with words, because she was explaining it to him already, with her body. With the way she arched, and the way her neck was bared. He had shown her his own desire, and she had echoed it. His smile was lopsided, but hungry as he lowered his head. He sacrificed his balance when he wrapped his arms around his lover, as his teeth broke the surface and the familiar heat of her blood coated his tongue. All the taste of wine was banished as a low groan rumbled in his throat.

This, this was what he lived for, some nights. Some night the busy-ness of his life got the better of him. Some nights he got stressed, some nights he got angry, but he could almost always come home to this. To his anchor, to this woman who was his be all and end all, even with all the flaws, with all the complications of the way they had met and the way in which they were bound to each other. Intricately, physically.

More bottles were toppled as Elliot fell, as he took Pi with him. As he trapped her beneath him, their desirous bodies wreaking havoc upon the small circle of glass that Elliot had created earlier. Some smashed. Some didn’t. Elliot, who had lost all inhibitions, did not care. He took her blood. And gave her all the love in his veins in return.