|
Annikah is currently curled up on the couch with a book, the pages of which she occasionally turns. This particular volume is an old leather bound volume, but not so old that its condition is of any immediate concern, which is probably why it's acceptable to her to be reading it on a couch, resting on her bare crossed legs. She's currently wearing one of Visigny's shirts, the most ridiculously poofy thing she could find in his closet, and her undies, and that's it. On occasion she reaches over to pick up her phone and check the time or look toward the door, like she's waiting for something to happen and killing time for now.
Artje was out late, and so she's up late. She came in just before dawn this morning, racing the sun in a way that's somewhat unlike her. She always likes to be home at least half an hour before the sun is up, usually more like an hour, to have time to wind down, have a bath, and check in with everyone before crawling into bed for the day. And after she wakes up, it's time to bathe (again), fuss with her hair, all of that. So it's probably not surprising that Annikah's looking at her phone by the time she comes wandering out, stretching her undead muscles as if they still require such a thing, wearing one of her many loose silk robes tied lazily over a matching nightgown.
This is practically indulgent for her, really. And she's barefoot, which is something generally reserved for the Trio. Shoes are a political statement, and so is being without them. She wanders in, draping herself along the couch next to Annikah and laying her head on the Gangrel. "You look silly and cute at the same time."
Visigny returns fairly late in the evening, a bit dishevelled and his collar a bit spattered with red and daubbed over with white out. Hans will have to mumble about it with some ice and a brush in the morning. He slips out of his coat and accoutrements of murder and has himself a proper bath with Edith Piaf and a glass of cognac which he sniffs and nothing more. But then it's back out to join with the others in their mutual haven of convenience and ostensible world domination via fashion.
"Good evening, my brides. I must say, you both make leaving a good fight seem worthwhile."
"What luck, I am silly and cute at the same time," Annikah says as she makes a note of her page, closes the book, then reaches to her other side to put the book as far away as she can reach. Once it's out of the way she puts her other arm around Arjte and kisses the top of the Daeva's head. "I love seeing you without all your armor on," she says softly into Artje's hair.
She only lifts her head back up because Visigny enters too, and she suddenly feels the needsto smile in his direction as she offers a response. "You know I love a good fight, so I understand how much of a compliment that really is. Who are we fighting now?"
"It's safe with you," she answers, nosing up underneath the kiss to the top of her head. Artje's arms loop around Annikah contentedly, and she lets out a little sigh.
She rolls up to her feet when Visigny enters, padding over to inspect his clothing. "Good evening, my darling. Hans will have a fit over this, you know." This doesn't seem to bother her all that much -- this is his job, for which he is paid handsomely, after all -- and so instead she takes hold of his collar and presses her mouth to his before letting him go off for a bath.
He returns and she's lazed against Annikah again, all soft and liquid in a way she never is anywhere else, her head on the Gangrel's side. "I made you both a present, maybe."
"A few young gentlemen were of the misapprehension these were, and forgive me as I am quoting here, 'our streets, motherfucker'." How he can make that word sound erudite is unclear. "I protested that the disposition of the public thoroughfare has been a settled matter in the Commonwealth since its founding. And certainly since the incorporation of the city and county of Philadelphia. I daresay, oh I do daresay that, yes I do daresay it. And so I upbraided each youth individually and in turn."
He huffs and crosses his arms pouting, "No one studies civil tresspass law any longer and it shows." Huff, huff, blow hair out of face. Huff.
"Anyway, I'm with you both now. And so are they, in a sense, mmm?" He pats his tummy as he slides over onto the bed like a cat wrestling a serpent. "Darling. Darling," he protests towards Artje while slipping nearer to rest his head on Annikah's leg and claim one of Artje's hands. "The only present you need ever give me you gave me once in Vienna. And it was a sweet little soul, it was." He kisses her hand, as that beast of his crawls around behind his eyes. It understood that reference. (edited)
"Oh my god, Jean-Louis," says a particular Gangrel with something that sounds an awful lot like frustrated disbelief but is actually deeply affectionate amusement. She even manages to look at him adoringly with an expression that might be mistaken for rolling her eyes. "I would probably have just laughed at how very mistaken they were. In my experience that works really well for starting a fight and saves me so much time."
She reaches over to slide her fingers into his hair. Then ruffles it. Meanwhile she's got Artje on her side and contentment suffused through her. "What present is this? Can we eat it?"
He takes her hand, and she sighs happily, listening to the story he tells. "Sounds like you had a delicious meal. Any cleanup needed?" Artje laughs when Annikah's frustrated disbelief plays out in her speech, hearing the affection underneath of it. Her laughter is a warm thing, honey in the sunshine, when she laughs for real, and it curls around both of them as she pulls Visigny's hand in to kiss the heel of his thumb, her dark eyes glittering. Her Beast answers his, the words pulling out a sly little smile.
"In a manner of speaking," she answers coyly, "it is." She licks her lips, lowers her eyes, and then raises them to the other two of the Trio one at a time. "You both know how fascinated I am with Devotions, and how much I love working with them," she begins. "... and I know that at one time you and Elsa had a blood bond for mutual protection. I took the theory behind the practice of breaking the chains, known within the Movement, and my long history under a bond... " her voice trails off, almost uncertainly, and there's the slightest glance towards Visigny, who has never been bound. (edited)
Visigny almost never closes his eyes. When he must, around the living. But otherwise? Why. Heads fall off in the sleep between the closing and the opening of an eyelid in his world. So when he nestles in closer against Annikah and pushes his head up and under her nails with the faintest of rumbles in his chest, it should be understood as the compliment it is.
He uncurls up and under the hand on his head to slide up onto his elbow, leaning against Annikah's lap and resting on the bed opposite her. Yes. Headpats. I am a good snake. Hisshiss.
He's confused at first. Genuinely confused. Because as has been pointed out, Visigny has never known the bond. Not once. Not ever. He is the lone man, walking the night. He is forever the black sheep. He has walked his own path. He is self-made. He is his own creation. And something wants to share that with him? These creatures want to share that with him? They want to take that all away? And replace it with what? Understanding? Security. A safe place to give in to the darker urges. A safer place still to give in to your better ones, even. Nation. Home. The only thing you've ever known of love?
His beast keeps thrashing back there, kicking and screaming and tearing at the vessels of his eyes which seem to twitch with what is not being said and done. The hand he reaches out to cup Artje's cheek with is still as the grave and hard as stone.
"D'accord, ma petite chou-chou. D'accord." (edited)
Annikah's beast seems docile within her at the moment, having been given freer reign recently than many Beasts ever get outside the rare occasion of a frenzy. The present of two of the people it's most protective of mean's it's doing the metaphysical equivalent of curling up contentedly inside of her next to a cozy fire, but it lifts it's head to look around when Visigny's reacts the way it does. She curls her fingers into his hair until he shifts around to settle into a different position, and her beast settles itself again.
With patience and encouragement the Gangrel turns her eyes back to Artje and prompts her to continue. "I'm intrigued about where this is going. I can think of a few possibilities, and I don't want to take away from your reveal by guessing." She doesn't seem worried and neither does her Beast. The blood bond can be a terrifying thing but they don't seem afraid. Not this time, at least.
She wasn't afraid of Annikah's Beast's reaction -- after all of this time, she knows exactly how in control of her Beast, how in harmony with it, the Gangrel is -- but she was braced for Visigny's, at least on some level. Artje goes quiet and still, letting all of that play out -- and perhaps the stillness of her calls back the way she used to freeze, the way she used to fade, to fall out of the attention span of vampires, after a century and change serving them. The sugar goes in the middle, and Artje is still and quiet, and so she stays safe, safe from the rages of Serpents and Shadows, safe from the anger of Invictus and Lancea, safe from the bombs falling on London, safe and quiet and so, so still.
It isn't until Visigny's hand comes up to rest on her cheek that a shiver runs through her and she turns her face into that hand. A human would have let out a sigh, let out a held breath, but Artje had no breath to hold. Her pale, cool hand comes to rest over his, subtly pressing the back of her ring against his hand. "I have created a way for us to be safe. All three of us. Balanced. Bound. Together. No one else can trick us. No one else can force a Bond on us. Ever."
"Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. Forever." Visigny has always had an air about him of a young man around a dark table with a candle, some Marx, and fuck all to lose. There are none more zealous than the converts, and he may not have come up in their revolution, but it was their politics that set him free. Visigny knows how to speak Artje's language. And placate his own beast. Isn't this what you wanted, after all? The freedom to choose these people?
"What you offer is almost beyond description. In some places it will mark us as heretics-- we'll never be able to return home. Not safely. The Lance still burns for this. But if you both are content to join me in a life of dashing defiance of societal norms yet somehow doing so with unerring civility, I will happily drink you both down. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, me please." He's almost giddy.
"Can I get my knives." Okay, now he's giddy.
"The Sanctified might try to burn us? My beloved, you almost sound like you're trying to convince me we should do this and then go find one of those cities," Annikah answers Visigny's words with a wicked smile. One she doesn't try to hide at all in this company. "I'm already a heretic in the eyes of the Lancea Sanctum, though. They tried to exterminate my bloodline already. They can go fuck themselves sideways with the writings of Longinus for all that I care for what they think." Her grin only grows. "Since when have I really cared about social norms, either?"
She trails her hand over him as her attention comes back to the one making the evening's proposal. "It probably doesn't surprise you that my worry is more for both of you than for myself. I've been bound twice, and come free of it twice, and have spent enough time studying the blood and the beast to fear them both less than ever. To fear the vinculum less than ever. I'll do this gladly to protect you both."
Her eyes are half-closed, like a cat having her ears pet, when Visigny speaks the four words he leads with. Now she sighs happily, a consciously-made decision, petting her hand over the hand on her cheek. "I have been an outlier and a perversion to the Lancea Sanctum for a hundred years," she points out mildly. "The Movement gave me standing, allowed me to vote, to make decisions. And then in Vienna, they called for our heads. An emergency embrace, and two who went to another city to choose their deaths? How many times have they threatened us?" A little flick of her hand.
"Go and look for them now," she offers, as if they'll both understand that statement.
"We could wait for a year, if we really felt threatened. Let the bond fade. There are methods to break bonds, too, which I will have to teach you for you to learn this." She pauses, adding, "But. I should warn you both." And this seems sincere, though there is a level of flirtation that runs through it like a serpent coiling through the Garden. "My bloodline. We are... " A pause. "Our blood provides a certain... mm. It is the Muse's ichor. For a few hours after you have tasted a Toreador, you will see colors more brilliantly, hear notes more sharply, understand composition and range and chords more perfectly." The thing she can give but cannot have for herself, the irony of the bloodline, a curse in its blessing. "We are addictive, especially to artists." And here she tips up her head to look at Annikah, then back to Jean-Louis. Her musician, her artist, both of her beautiful creatives. "More so, even, than often befalls Serpents with frequently-visited fonts."
"So waiting a year, you both might find difficult, if we decide to stop once we start." She doesn't, clearly, think that will ever happen. "But, you know. Fuck them all. I live with you or I die again."
"Yes, my beloved. Go and get your knives." (edited)
"It is my lot in life to conquer my beast with civility, darling. But to conquer it, that means we must not become too friendly. I know its wants and its appetites. I know its lusts and its avarices. I know its violence and its indignation, too. I have found all manner of ways a person might humiliate me, and I constantly hunger to endure more. To show you that I can. And I assure you both, watching you two have a taste will be no indignity."
When permission is granted, Visigny's house robe is briefly suspended in air before gravity takes over. He appears a split second later, stripped to his waist with five knives protruding from his chest at various angles. "I couldn't decide which one to grab, so I got the set. And listen."
He flicks each knife in turn, and it sings out a note. It's the opening of La Marseillaise. The last note is a little sharp so he pushes it in a hair further, then flicks it again for the final ting.
Then he spreads his arms with a big ol' smile.
"Babe," Annikah says with a reach of her hand to brush Artje's cheek with her hand. "I'm already addicted to you." It's corny, and she knows it's corny, and that's why she's doing it, but she manages the entire thing sounding perfectly serious. Not a crack of a smile nor a hint that it's a joke.
She leans back to take Visigny in then and the seriousness of her expression is no longer contained. It's too delightfully Visigny for her to pretend she doesn't adore this kind of thing about him. "Oh my god, I love you so much right now. I love you so much it makes me want to wander around the house in nothing but one of your shirts, just because it smells like you." That is what she's wearing, after all.
Oh, that is corny, but it's so corny that Artje flutters her eyelids at Annikah, and she does that on purpose. Just the same way that Annikah is being corny, Artje is being corny right back. "You say the nicest things, 'nika," she murmurs, reaching out and touching the gold choker around Annikah's throat, a tiny, proprietary gesture. Mine. Her Beast curls around behind her dark eyes like a cat stretching its claws out on someone's stomach.
Visigny returns with knives stuck precisely into himself, and Artje laughs so brightly, so honestly, and for so long that, if she were a human, she'd ben gasping and struggling for breath, tears running out of the corners of her eyes. As it is, she just clutches her stomach and kicks her little feet in delight. When she manages to contain herself, she rolls up onto her knees and closes the distance to Visigny, cradling his face between her hands and laying a small, precise and butterfly-soft kiss on the tip of his nose. "You." And she shakes her head a little. "You are perfect."
He draws her in a little closer after that kiss to his nose. It's a very precise sort of drawing in. A drawing in that comes with a straight back, square shoulders, firm arms, and a lifted chin. He pulls her into a waltz, because it is always the waltz with these two, and the doing of it plunges a blade or two a little further into himself. The wincing and gurgling is positively beatific for a few moments, and then he's spinning off barefoot in his silk boxers and vitae spattered robe, making Artje look like a music box dancer at the end of his grip. He dips her at one point, lower and down and near to Annikah's face where he is happy to hold her for as long as the pair should like.
"A gentleman should protest," he assures her, "I shall instead watch."
Annikah stretches her bare legs out and watches the two dance for the moment, head tilted slightly to one side as both she and her Beast take the sight in. The Beast, being what it is, leans into the desire to jump up and insert itself into the dance, like a dog that just has to force its way into a snuggle. The woman knows that so much of what's delightful about the sight would be spoiled by trying to figure out how to waltz with three people, and restrains the Beast so they can enjoy the show. "I love watching you two together," comes out in a low growl as half-lidded eyes take in the sight. She looks an awful lot like a contented cat.
When Artje is dipped down near her face she has to lean over to press a kiss to those lips. It starts out with a soft, tender press of her lips, but quickly becomes just full-on makeout kissing. At least Visigny's muscles aren't going to get tired holding that position for a minute, as Annikah makes soft noises of pleasure, shifts in a little closer to them both, and slides one arm around Visigny's legs.
Then gives his ass a mighty pinch.
It is always the waltz with these two. Invented in Vienna, after all, the dance is one of those classic 'you're just a chump if you're trying to be classy in Vienna without knowing this' things, so clearly, they both are experts. She rises to the balls of her feet and spins around the floor with him, the soft silk of her nightdress and peignoir flaring as he turns her this way and that. She laughs again when she's dipped, her hair draping down like a waterfall to the floor, when Visigny holds her upside down and Annikah leans in to kiss her.
Her eyelids flutter closed, and she makes the smallest little sounds of delight, almost kittenish, those. A delicate little creature, this one. Harmless and cute. Honest. Fingers not crossed at all. And she probably won't even get upset about the dip, and the resultant little droplets of blood dripping down off of Visigny's knives, getting all over the silk. Just this once. Her kiss is a hungry thing, and she clings on to Visigny, letting him support her.
With one arm he hold his porcelain doll, his Christmas Present and New Years day all in one some years ago. One can imagine the artificial snow falling in the little snowglobe in which this carnal pieta is playing out. Barechested and bleeding, Visigny offers the jewel of the only crown he believes in down to the only ground in which he knows the idea of nation. And when they kiss, the state is whole. And he is happy.
With his free hand he begins to wrench one of the main-gauche from his chest, gurgling again as her forces vitae out on the blood groove. He hisses and gasps as it finally pops free, and he turns its blade about to hold it up to the light. All dark and ichorous and heroin heavy in the mind.
He lowers the blade and carefully slides it along Artje's cheek and down her throat, panting a sliuce of his blood down the side of her face, and then down her chest and across one of her breasts to the narrow taper of her ribcage. Just one dribbling painted mess. The blade clatters to the ground as his now empty hand lifts to drag through that trail all over again, smearing it about like finger paint.
He looks so goddamn happy.
Annikah finally draws back from kissing Artje. It's a good thing she doesn't need to breathe, or she would probably be light headed after so long without coming up for air. She slides to the edge of the bed and gets up, slipping around the artistic display of vampire weirdness going on before her, and starts circling around Visigny.
"What are we going to have to do for this idea that you've come up with, Artje?" she says as she circles. When she gets back to the front of the pair she reaches a slender hand out to touch her fingers to one of the knives sticking out of Visigny, at which point she looks for his eyes with hers. Asking permission without words.
His right hand now gooey with his own vitae, he slaps the flat of his hand to his face, framing one eye between his fingers and sloooooowly sliding the gore down his face, tugging at his lower lip as he does so. His fangs slip free as he does so, his eyes drawing up Artje's pale and red slicked chest until his eyes track the movement of Annikah's legs and hips, and follow that pleasant course right up to her nose. And finally to her eyes.
He licks the lips of his suddenly quite dry mouth, and breathes out the word, "Oui."
This is a sort of dreamy thing, really. The sort of tableau that played out in a million restless daydreams, or rather -- day-dreams -- where the Beast whined and kicked its heels in the back of her subconscious for all its delicate little depravities and the hunger for not just perversion but Perversion. Artje's eyes glaze over, her focus fading for a moment as the scent of Visigny's vitae, and its presence on her, rather robs her of all ability to think coherently for ... a solid several seconds. She doesn't breathe, so her breath doesn't become shallow or strained, but the thought is there. One hand comes from around Visgny's neck, draws down her chest, and comes up slick with the other Serpent's blood.
Her hand trembles, and she stares at it. At him. I'm sorry, were people expecting her to think?
She blinks slowly, once, twice, a china doll tipped upside down, draped in Visigny's arms like a flag, staring at her own fingertips. There is a crisis of will playing out, here.
"I... we need. You. Do you know how to break the chains? If you do... I will. Have to teach you the Devotion. And then we begin again. Together." No tasting the Visigny yet, Artje.
Annikah pulls the blade free in a smooth, quick motion. This isn't the kind of thing you want to take slowly, if you intend to be kind, and the Gangrel has more than enough strength to be sure it comes out in a single easy tug. She flips it over in her hand and brings it up to her face, where she holds it under her nose as her eyelids lower. With a long inhalation she pulls the scent of his blood into her nose, then she lets that air back out with a sensual moan. Her Beast yearns for it. The power of her blood is enough that she should only be able to survive on vitae, and she so often denies it, but the Beast knows what it's supposed to be consuming and the hunger for a proper meal and its lust for their lover have it begging inside of her.
Then she lowers the blade again as her eyes open, looking first at Visigny with the combined hunger of the woman and the Beast, and then at Artje. With a hint of a smile on her pierced lips she slides the blade into her own chest, right below her ribs. Not quickly, not a plunge, but slowly. Tenderly. And she moans again as it goes in, a mixture of pain and pleasure.
"Hmmm?" she says inarticulately, her brain taking a moment to catch up. "Ah. Yes, I do."
The snake hissing and lashing behind his eyes is impotent before his self-control. A child ranting at a closed bedroom door past bedtime. So he can simply enjoy all of this with a clear head and a calm mind, relish in the staring, and the scents. The sensation of the blade leaving his body, and the exquisite sudden burn that absence produces once it's done.
He doesn't tremble as the point of his blade finds her skin. He doesn't part his lips, or bite them, as the point pierces in and begins its gradual plunge. As her flesh puckers in, as the vitae bubbles out around the edges, and the silver black steel just continues to grow smaller and smaller and hotter and hotter.
The serpent wrestling the cat that is his body has its serpent win out. He hovers, swaying cobra graceful until the end. His tongue slithers out to taste the air, and his head rolls slowly back to stare for a moment at the ceiling.
He doesn't stumble, though he does slowly curl Artje in towards himself and pet at her soothingly in the way no one can the beast inside his mind. Least of all himself right now. "I am your most avid and ardent student of the blood, Artje."
He used her first nime, no additions. It's in Italics and everything. He could be tittering behind his hand right now. Everyone will talk about the first name thing. That's what's weird here.
Oh yes. It's not the two of them clinging to each other like islands in a raging sea and watching avidly as their lover pierces herself with the blade she took from Visigny's chest. No, that's not the strange thing. It's not the china doll with blood smeared on her face, holding her little hand up where she can stare both at it and at Visigny's face smeared with blood, no! No, that's all extremely normal. It's the unadorned first name that's the strangness.
Artje's throat turns out a little mewl, neat and precious as a ballerina turning out her calf in second position. Everything about her is a posture, until it's not. She trails her nose along Visigny's cheek, the blood smeared on his face now curled along her nose, the round of one cheek, curved by the side of her mouth. So close, and yet so far away.
How does one show to others the defensive posture of the Beast, the way that the blood moves within the body, one Beast making itself amenable to the shared servitude that is the proposed tripartite bond? It simply is within her, this alchemy of the certainty of immortality and their certainty together, in a way that the turn of her wrist demonstrates to them, the way the vitae shifts under her skin, slipping beneath her bone-white skin. There, it is, a delicate dance of intention and blood, the Beast moving within her like a breath. It is that, and no more, and somehow -- it is shown.
What's being conveyed is an extension of Carthian Law, itself a metaphysical construct whose functioning defies concrete definition and description, something formed from collective will and the power of the Blood which can then somehow be passed on to others. That the blood within them can join their undying wills together until they sing together in a harmony that would be impossible for any of them to achieve on their own? This is no surprise to any of the three.
And to Annikah, who believes that her Beast can serve as her guide to higher truths that would otherwise defy even knowing, let alone accurate definition in words created from the lower minds of the physical realms, this is no stretch of the imagination. Of course Beast can learn and bring back understanding from the Beasts of others, and of course that understanding can simply be there in her.
She puts her arms around the pair and presses herself close to them, heedless of the way it drives the knife harder into her chest, and she puts her heads against theirs, and she breathes in the scent of them, and she is filled with gnosis drawn down from the hidden world.
|