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Ziv and Eko have a cute little house, one of those places that came out of an affordable housing initiative in Northeast: no yard, really, just a little square out back barely big enough to build a sukkah in, and a nice front porch. Of course, it's dark out, and quite cold, but warm golden light spills out of the front windows as Ziv fusses around inside, prepping for guests.
Sushi is easy to make kosher, so that's what they've ordered: philly rolls and spicy tuna and edamame. The delivery is as-yet incoming, so they're setting the table, chopsticks and plates, soy sauce and small bowls for same. They're wearing a pair of palazzo pants cheerfully printed with mermaids with pride tails, and damnit i have to design those now, and a t-shirt which has a flexing arm, a rainbow Star of David, and a banner reading 100% Kosher Beef.
Alex doesn't really feel the cold the same way she used to. If she's not freezing solid, she's pretty much fine. It doesn't stop her from dressing for the weather, and when she arrives at the door she's wearing a coat trimmed with faux fur over her jeans, sweater, and boots. Her is pulled into a high ponytail tonight, leaving a giant poof of curls at the back of her head.
She knocks on the door, shoves her hands into her coat pocket, and rocks back and forth onto her heels and the balls of her feet while she waits for someone to answer, like she's actually a living, warm-blooded mammal that's trying to keep warm.
Aaron has been hanging out with Ziv, lounging about in track pants and a muscle shirt. Definitely relaxed attire, particularly for a dinner with guests. But he's become one who doesn't stand much on ceremony these days. Aaron comes to the door so that Ziv can keep fussing, pulling it open and just standing there in silence for several seconds before stating, "Sorry. I was briefly confronted with the idea that inviting you in was going to be some weird stereotype. But hi. Welcome. Do come in." Aaron steps out of the doorway to make room.
Pap pap pap, Ziv fusses around indeed. The inside of the house is one of those layouts that makes the most of its scant square footage: open flow from the living area to a small dining area off of a kitchen. The furniture is not expensive, either, but picked to make the house seem warm and inviting. "Hi!" Ziv calls, finishing putting out the chopsticks. "Dinner should be here soon. I got the rolls you said you liked and a bunch of other stuff, too." They flash a wide smile and trail over toward the doorway, making room for Alex to come in while still being welcoming. "Make yourself at home. Eko may be home at some point, I don't know, her schedule can be a little chaotic. Mine, too. But yeah! Hi!"
Alex stops her heel-rocking when the door opens and swaps that for smiling her rather uncannily perfect smile at Aaron as she waits on the front step. She lets out a laugh at his statement and the laugh, too, is a little bit eerie in its perfection. A little unearthly. "Fortunately for me, I don't start bleeding from the eyes or anything if I come in without being invited. I think technically I'm already invited anyway, since Ziv asked me to come over." She steps inside and shrugs her coat off, and underneath it is a slouchy black sweater that hangs off of one of her shoulders, revealing a tank top strap under it. "Hi Ziv!" she calls. "Where should I put this? Just toss it anywhere?" she makes a gesture with her coat.
Aaron shuts the door behind Alex as she steps in, takes her coat and the like, and only then catches up with what Alex said in response to his half-joke. "Wait. So that's actually a thing?" Aaron follows along after Alex, as only a young mage can around something mysterious and supernatural. "I was told a lot of that mythical stuff is just that. Like garlic and all that." Aaron is quick to add, "Not that I'm looking for anti-vampire information! It's just a cliche that came to mind. Since most of the mythology is around... uh. You know." Aaron clears his throat and then heads for the kitchen, "I'm going to stop talking now."
The look that crosses Ziv's face when Aaron starts babbling is both amused and utterly smitten. Oh goodness, he's so cute. "There are hooks behind the door," they begin to explain, but Aaron has already taken her coat. They laugh softly, both hands folding over the lower half of their face, and then pad over to the big, soft grey L-shaped sectional that folds into one of the corners of the living space, flopping down on it and curling their legs up underneath themself. "It's good you don't start bleeding from the eyes. All my towels are brand new, and purple." They wink at Alex. "How are you, anyway?"
"No, no, it's not true," Alex laughs again as she hangs her coat on the hook. "Garlic is definitely not true, either. Or holy symbols. Or holy water, or basically holy anything else Pretty much just fire and sunlight that really do any kind of special harm to us, and..." Alex shrugs. "I can go out into the sun for short periods without it being too bad. It hurts, but it doesn't do damage anywhere near faster than I can heal it. I haven't exactly tested it, but I'm pretty sure that if I was really hard pressed I could manage an hour or more. It's not, like... instant ashes." She heads toward the couch and flops down on it too, where she crosses her legs. "I'm doing pretty well. The holidays coming around is making me miss my family more, though."
"...Huh. Huh. Huh!" Aaron returns from the kitchen carrying a gimlet, which he sips briefly on his way to settle down near Ziv. "Well. I guess I should be happy I can conjure fire with my brain. Or bend sunlight around the horizon... I think." Aaron then squints up at the ceiling, perhaps wondering if he really could do that or not. "I could try getting a radio frequency from the other side of the planet... that would be about the same idea." He shakes his head to clear the question, "Anyway. Sorry. I get a little caught up in those questions lately."
They curl up comfortably, listening, and frown thoughtfully. "I guess I never really thought about what about us does or doesn't work. We are very tied to promises and the like," Ziv muses, and then pauses, watching Aaron theorize. "... wait, what? Like, you could pick up Radio Free Europe? With what, your brain?" Blink blink. Aaron's gimlet makes them pop back up to their feet. "Right! Drinks. Um. I have some alcohol, obviously, we don't keep a lot in the house because -- " And pause. "Reasons!" A bright smile. "But can I get you something, Alex?"
"It's wild that you can go out in the sunlight, though." And they frown mildly. "Yeah. I miss my family, too."(edited)
"Trust me, I get caught up on a lot of these questions myself," Alex says with another grin. "I mean, what is it about sunlight, specifically, that harms us? Why doesn't reflected sunlight from the moon, but reflected sunlight from a mirror does? Is it just this specific star whose light hurts us, or would other stars too, if we got closer? Are the stars already hurting me, for that matter, just not enough to notice?" She shrugs with another laugh and says, "I'm a major nerd, and I spend an awful lot of time wondering about this. I've been trying to think of a good way to concentrate starlight to see if enough of it would actually burn me or not."
She leans back into the couch and answers Ziv, "I wouldn't mind a drink. What have you got?" She pauses and adds, "actually, iron does still hurt me, too. That's not typical of vampires, though, and it doesn't do anything to my powers, just to me."
"...My parents just lament that I'm no longer at Rodeph Sholom. I haven't told them I can bend radio waves with my mind. I'm told I'm not supposed to. So. I don't. There's some logic to it, I think. Their minds can't wrap around the idea, so. It'd just hurt them, basically." Aaron tells the truth without being too awful specific. Which would please the spooks, probably. "I could probably help you with that experiment. Lens all the light up there together and concentrate it into a small point. Try to shoot for an intensity no greater than sunlight. Actually? We could probably do that tonight if you wanted to try." Aaron once more peers upwards, overhead. Not that the ceiling his disappeared since the last glance.
That stops Ziv halfway to the kitchen, and they turn on the balls of their toes, totally distracted. "Wait. Iron still hurts you?" Ziv's jaw drops, and their wide dark eyes blink blink blink. "I mean, I guess it makes sense to an extent but I would have thought that the one condition would replace the other and -- " Beat. "Oh, that's rude, Ziv," they murmur to themself, and cough softly. "Mostly I have non-alcoholic stuff, but I can make a mean mocktail. There is some gin, though, which I got for Aaron, and I have kosher wine for Shabbat. So anything that requires gin, basically, or some kosher wine, or ... lemonade, water." Soft fluttering of their hands.
"Yeah, usually it's best not to try to prove these things to people who aren't involved, sadly. For us it's... " And here there's a small, sad smile aside at Alex. "It tends to be a bit of a siren song for humans, which ends up with more people being Taken. Even if the occasional one gets in there and back out again." Not naming any names here.
"A lemonade is fine!" Alex responds. "It's honestly kind of all the same to me at this point, but that sounds nice." She turns to blink at Aaron a couple of times. "You think we could actually test that? I would definitely be interested." With a soft laugh she adds, "if Ziv doesn't mind us getting sidetracked by science, anyway." She kind of slides away from the family discussion without looking at it any more closely, but not away from the topic of banes, that just waits until Ziv comes back.
"You know," she says. "With some effort, I can..." she trails off, adjusts her phrasing, and says, "see the hidden aspects of Fae things." After all, she doesn't know if Aaron knows about the Mask and such.
"Ziv finds my fascination with this stuff charming. Every Rabbi is pretty much a nerd by definition. Just a nerd about Torah. I think the fact that I nerd out about other things just reassures them that I'm also normal. Even if the normal things I nerd out about is bending light around the world and using stars to burn vampires." Aaron gives a shrug of his big hairy shoulders and has another sip of his gimlet. "Ooh. That's cool. I don't think we can do that."
Pap pap pap, and off Ziv goes to the kitchen to fetch back lemonades. One for themself, one for Alex. "I made it earlier, because I was being fussy and domestic," they explain, bringing a tall, slender glass over to Alex and passing it over. "I'm fine with testing these things, I do find it charming," they agree, sticking their tongue out at Aaron as they circle the coffee table and settle down next to him, leaning their head on one of those big hairy shoulders for a moment.
Blink blink. "You can?" Ziv asks, and then waves a hand. "Aaron has seen my mien, he knows about a lot of stuff with us. You don't have to tiptoe around things." Because the Joyeux picks up what Alex is putting down. "And feel free, if you'd like to see what I actually look like. I'm very pretty, actually. Both ways, but I like my neon."
Alex pauses, smiles, nods, and then extends her senses to try to peer past the Mask to what lies beneath. Not just for Ziv, but for anything in the room that happens to have a Mask, which is probably just Ziv. "Thanks for clarifying," she says as she does it. "I don't know what information has been revealed already, and don't want to be the one to do it." She glances over at Aaron. "Want to go do some experimenting? The sky is clear tonight, so it might be a good night for it."
"People seem to just trust me with their secrets. Maybe because I'm so new to all of this, I seem harmless. Possibly because I wouldn't know what to do with half of the stuff people tell me about themselves, even if I wanted to. It's made me consider taking up the dispute resolution business for supernatural folk. I know a lot about everyone and could probably translate and help people see their way to consensus and so on. Might keep things peaceful around here." Aaron sips his drink for a moment, then ticks another small shrug. "Not that we've been at each other's throats, or anything. But. I hear stuff, and apparently it happens." Aaron then sets his drink aside, "But, sure. Let's experiment."
That pause causes Ziv to tip their head to one side and almost preen a little. They know their mien is pretty and it makes them happy to be seen, after all. The Siren, Mask stripped away, has a body that looks like a glass bottle filled with a nighttime river, dark water shifting and moving around inside them, reflecting the lights of the City that made them. Splashes of yellow, blue, white, and pink neon dance across their skin, and Ziv's eyes become solid black.
"It's because you're inherently trustworthy, beloved," Ziv offers wryly, taking a sip of their drink. "People trust you because you're trustworthy. You even look trustworthy." They hop up, and are going to get their coat and shoes when they notice Aaron putting down their drink. "Let's... not leave that, please. I don't know when I expect Eko home." The look on their face is somewhat awkward, a little twist of their mouth.
Alex pauses for a moment to just study Ziv's appearance, hopefully not in a creepy way. It's a look of appreciation, certainly, but not a lascivious look, and it doesn't last for long. "You are very pretty, both ways," she agrees. "You look like the reflection of the city on the surface of water, or something."
She pulls her eyes away and gets up too. "Is Eko sober, or something?" she asks, tone not judgmental. It's more like she's asking so she can avoid crossing any boundaries or causing any problems.
Aaron plucks up the gimlet he wasn't actually keen on leaving behind in the first place. No skin off his back. "This might take me a while, just for the record. It's an awful lot of space we're dealing with, here. And you'll need to pick a bit of skin you don't mind getting potentially scorched. We can start with a piece of paper, though, just in case I dial the intensity in wrong. Don't want to set you on fire on accident." Aaron ticks back another nip of his drink and begins to wander towards the back yard.
Whether or not it's creepy, Ziv doesn't seem to mind. They offer Alex a peace sign and stick out their tongue like they're posing for a picture. "I was the Siren in the City's river," they agree, "and I look like the river now. Also a mermx. Sometimes I have a tail." This information seems to actively make them happy, as much as, you know, anything about Arcadia makes anyone happy.
"Eko is sober, yes," they offer with a small sigh, as if they're glad to just, you know, say so, but felt like they couldn't just say so without being asked. It's not their thing, after all! Slipping into their heavy sweatshirt and stuffing their feet into their sneakers, they zip up said sweatshirt. Probably the only one of the three who actually has to worry about getting cold.
"Not that it's hard for me to avoid the topic of alcohol, but I'll make an extra effort to do so when I meet her," Alex says as they all pack themselves up for going outside, though she doesn't bother with her coat this time. "Having a target other than me to start with is probably a good idea," she tells Aaron. "I'm all for experimenting on myself and testing, then breaking, the limits of my own condition, but I like to at least have a modicum of sense about it. I'm kind of suspecting we're going to find that nothing happens, but at least we can test the hypothesis. Just, you know... don't fry me like an ant under a magnifying glass."
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