Jötunheimr

[Harlequin]

"Oh, okay," She was a little hurt by the dismissal, but not enough to overcome the exhaustion she\'d been fighting, for the sake of politeness. It would seem that her second wind had come and gone with the intensity of the conversation  (which had also only happened in the first place-- she noted with a vague, faraway sort of annoyance -- after she\'d refused his advances) and now the night had caught  up to her, and took her down hard.
 
She did more or less as expected, pulling down pillows, and slipping under the covers to curl up on her side. Eyes closed, she sighed hapillyas he turnde the covers up -- and the sigh transitioned smoothly into the deep, even breath of sleep. The last thing she was aware of was his presence in the doorway, leaving -- to sleep on the couch, maybe?
 
Whatever the case, the thought was never completed.

––––

Upon waking, Vivianne momentarily enjoyed the refreshed, light feeling gained from a night of deep, heavy sleep, yawning and stretching muzzily, which disloded the muscular arm thrown negligently around her waist –

Arm? Whose arm? this thought was followed immediately by another, And why aren\'t they breathing? Her eyes flew open, to a darkness so complete that it barely mattered. She sat up quickly, jerked into full alertness by the sudden panic – which faded with the delayed recovery of her memory, as the last shreds of sleep faded.

So apparently the Vampire had not, in fact, taken the couch. She gingerly moved the arm, and scooted out of bed – moving as lightly as possible to avoid disturbing her undead host. She remembered the way to the bathroom, at least – a straight shot from her side of the bed (which didn\'t stop her from murdering an elbow on the bedside table, muffling her yelp of pain with her other hand.)

Finished there, she made her way out of the bedroom on tiptoe, following walls until she found the doorknob with her hip rather abruptly.  In the hall, rubbing her new bruise with one hand, she checked the time on her phone. 4:45. So she had about an hour to kill until dusk, at which point she could only assume her host would awaken.

That hour was killed on the Playstation she discovered in the lounge, by a generic underground racing game whose single purpose seemed to be to give her all the points it had, with the pbnoxioulsy popular soundtrack turned down to a whisper. He would find her on the couch, wearing the tank top she\'d had on the day before, and the drier of her two skirts – this one a pale cerulean, made of some shimmery, thin fabric – with her eyes fixed on the T.V., hands busy with the controller.

[Existentially Odd]

The vampire emerged still wearing his boxers, scratching negligently at his crotch with his left hand and his slightly ruffled red hair with his right.  That he could walk and maintain a steady path while simultaneously performing these tasks was a credit to him and further evidence of the many years he\'d existed to perfect these skills.

"Hey," he greeted as he walked in and sat on the lounge to the right of Vivi, his voice slightly constricted by the sleep he\'d just come out of and a slight squint to his vision as he looked her over.  "You sleep alright?"

[Harlequin]

Unfortunately, the teen was too absorbed in her game to witness the vampire\'s spectacular display of dexterity, and she twitched in surprise as he sat down next to her – still mostly naked, she noted, as she hit the pause button and set the controller on the couch in her lap, and turned a hesitant smile toward her host.

"Like the d–just." She\'d meant to say \'dead\', but thought better of it and cut herself off before the word left her lips, "I got bored," she waved a delicate hand it he direction of the TV, where the dark blue Lamborghini she\'d been piloting was frozen mid-crash, in crystal clarity, "I hope you don\'t mind."

[Existentially Odd]

"Nah, it\'s fine," he told her with a brief glance at the television.  What he didn\'t say was that he was rather impressed that she hadn\'t got up early and just wandered off - even if he did live in a pretty dismal part of the city, she was no idiot and could have found her way home while he slumbered, if she\'d wanted to.  He looked at her steadily, the sleep disappearing from his eyes and a thoughtful twinkle emerging instead in the mostly-blue irises.

"So... what\'d you think about me feeding from you last night? he prompted, wanting to direct her answers into specific places such as agreeing to meet with him regularly and telling him what she thought about him, but figuring he\'d start with a general invitation to talk.  She wasn\'t much of a rambler unless you struck a topic she enjoyed, it seemed, and he didn\'t expect eloquence immediately, but he would work on it.

[Harlequin]

Of all the subjects in the whole wide he could\'ve brought up, Tom chose the one at the very bottom of Vivianne\'s list. She didn\'t even want to think about it, but now he was making her talk about it? (Not that he was actually making her do anything, but it would be tricky to change the subject now that he\'d asked her a direct question). She pursed her lips, and her hands bunched in her skirt.

Her gaze drifted from his eyes to her lap, "I think you shouldn\'t have," she said quietly, "Because I said no." It wasn\'t what he was looking for, she knew, but it was true.

Well, the easy part of the truth.

The rest wasn\'t going to come easily.

[Existentially Odd]

He shrugged equably.  "Yeah, but I was gonna\' keel over on the spot if I didn\'t.  Probably still would\'ve if it\'d been anyone with average blood.  I just got lucky that yours was so potent," he complimented, flashing her a grin that faded quickly.  She\'d evaded his question and they both knew it.

"Still, you enjoyed it, didn\'t you?  Like I said you would?" he prodded, staring intently at her while he waited for the truth.  It was a means to an end as far as he was concerned, so he couldn\'t see why answering this part might be such a monumental stumbling block.

[Harlequin]

Vivianne hated the fact that he could do this to her just by asking the questions she didn\'t want to answer, she hated that she was letting him do this to her by answering. She hated that she\'d given in to the pleasure his bite had provoked.

And, more than anything, she hated that she wanted to feel that way again, and that it hadn\'t even occurred to her to leave when she\'d had the chance.

Knowing that he actually had needed her was a comfort, but the blonde\'s pale eyes crinkled at the corners as if she were in pain. She answered simply, "Yes," in a voice barely more than a whisper, though it felt like she was giving something away; like she was giving up.

[Existentially Odd]

He was momentarily deterred from his \'end\' by her reluctance.  She was acting as if he was currently sentencing her to life in prison or some shit, and he couldn\'t figure that out.  His face crinkled up in a frown of consternation and he looked her over to see if he could get any more information from her body, but that bunching of skirts thing wasn\'t exactly a light in the dark.

"Why the fuck is it so bad for you to have enjoyed it?  It\'s not against the law y\'know, but you\'re acting like admitting it was good is some sort of big crime!  What\'s wrong with enjoying yourself?" he demanded, baffled and offended by the notion that even though what he\'d done to her was pleasurable, he still seemed to be the distasteful piece of shit sticking to her shoe that she couldn\'t wait to scrape off.

[Harlequin]

She cringed away from his angry words, as if she expected him to hit her. She didn\'t understand why he was angry, all of a sudden. Nobody liked being proved wrong, did they? Especially not when it came to things like this. Her heartbeat picked up, and her breathing came uneven.

"N-nothing," she said, and went on quickly, "I\'m sorry. It\'s just – I feel like I should be mad at you, for...making me, but I can\'t, because you were right, and it was...good. I don\'t even want to be mad at you. I mean, that\'s...absurd, I don\'t even know you, but there\'s part of me doesn\'t even want to leave, because I\'ve never felt anything like that before, and I –" She stemmed the flood of words there, took a deep breath, and chanced a look at his face, "I\'m sorry. Please don\'t be mad." The panic had subsided as she spoke, and she straightened her back, forced her fisted hands to relax, "It\'s just...different. It\'s confusing, for me."

She wasn\'t even entirely sure what she felt, at this point. For some reason, though, she missed the way he\'d looked at her the night before. She missed the adoration in his eyes. She realized suddenly that she didn\'t want Tom to think ill of her, and not just because of the fact that he could kill her if he felt like it.

[Existentially Odd]

"I\'m not mad," he assured her with a dismissive shake of his head, sliding a bit closer to her on the expansive couch, so he could touch her hand reassuringly.  "I\'m just frustrated; it passed the second you told me the truth."

There was an unintentional, condescending authority to his words, like a pervert who manages to make his victim feel sympathy for him, simply because they didn\'t do what he expected, but he wasn\'t conscious of the way he\'d learned to play his games.  It just came naturally.

"It makes sense you\'ve never felt that way before, because you\'re a virgin," he reasoned, not even bothering to ask because he knew it had to be true.  "The bite\'s sexual for the mortal, a bit different on the other side of things," he told her consideringly, making a jump gesture with the hand on his lap, like a dog over a fence, as he talked about the two halves of this equation, "but not too different.  Either way, there\'s satisfaction, if you just let it flow."

He looked at her steadily, knowing he was about to get to the bit where he didn\'t have the answers, so he let his direct stare demand them for him, even though his tone was still kind and reasonable.  "You didn\'t want to let it flow last night, weren\'t ready to.  That\'s cool," he emphasised, holding up both his hands in a surrender type gesture, like maybe she\'d started arguing and he needed to override her - again, a manipulation on his part, but a conscious one this time.

"I can get by if you\'re never ready to let it flow like that," he told her, in the manner of someone who could... but who would be very, very sad (the puppy dog eyes were a bit much, but automatic), "I just want to know that it\'s not gonna\' end here.  I want to see you again.  I want to drink from you again.  I hope you do too."  His gaze was blue and filled with silent appeal as he did his best to look like someone whose heart would be broken if she turned him down.  Last night, he\'d been desperate and he wouldn\'t force her to submit to him again, under normal circumstances... he just really hoped she\'d do it willingly!

[Harlequin]

Like a star pupil, Vivanne held onto his words, examining them, turning them over in her mind as she listened with a serious, intent expression. It comforted her to know that there wasn\'t something (else) wrong with her brain, that the bite affected all mortals (she assumed) the same way. She barely even registered that he was touching her, even now that that she didn\'t have the excuse of being tired and hungry and more or less out of her brain. She was awake, alert – and she didn\'t care.

In this situation, Vivianne was at a clear disadvantage. Her lack of communications skills meant that she heard the condescension, but couldn\'t identify it, and so dismissed it. She even tilted her head to the side when he made his \'surreneder\' gesture, wondering if perhaps she should be protesting, though she couldn\'t really figure out why.

"I, uh, wouldn\'t count on it," she said hesitantly, after she\'d had a bit of time to digest what he\'d said. She felt bad about letting him down (for she felt that she was – the puppy dog eyes worked like a charm), and looked it, "The ever part. I\'m–" not ready to talk about it? "Saving myself." For what? She hadn\'t gotten that far yet.

"How often do you have to...feed?" she asked, using the word she\'d heard tossed around at Risk with genuine interest. The fact that she used the language showed that she was getting used to the ideas behind it. THere was still hesitance there, of course, but it was fading.

[Existentially Odd]

He shrugged, tilting his head from side to side in a considering sort of way as he thought about it.  "Well, about every four or five days, unless I get myself hurt, but I wouldn\'t expect you to meet me that often!" he told her hastily, again holding up a single, \'Stop your thinking right there, missy!\' type hand.  His other hand was busy toying with hers.

"Just... maybe every couple of weeks or so.  Too often and you\'ll get weak and I don\'t want you to become sick," he told her, as if he was worried about her health, rather than the quality of \'his\' blood.  "And not when you\'ve got your period, of course," he told her magnanimously, supposing that might be too much personal information too soon, but needing to be honest.

Of course, he could always suggest they do it during, for he, personally, had a hot and heavy thing for menstrual blood but in all his two hundred years he\'d found very few women that would accommodate his interest (and even fewer vampires that shared it).  The amount wouldn\'t even raise all ten fingers should he decide to count them on his hands.  With such statistics managing to have stuck themselves in his hyperactive brain, he knew Vivi wasn\'t the person to broach that subject with.

Besides, he quite liked the fact that she was too much of a lady to discuss such things with.  It made him feel he was raising his own standards when he was associated with such quality.

[Harlequin]

The blonde was surprised to hear that he didn\'t ned to feed every day day; like a snake, slowly digesting its food. She chided herself not to think of it like that, but the image took root quickly.

It was not, however, stronger than the popular teenage fiction version of the vampire she was trying to think of him as, however. It made thinking about the situation easier; more allowable and optimistic.  She took his concern at face value, and was endeared by his false thoughtfulness.

She blushed appropriately at the mention of her period, and nodded quickly, understanding it and desiring very much not to speak of it further – exactly the lady he\'d labeled her.

"Can I have some time to, uh, think about it?" she asked, looking down at the  hands resting on her folded knee. One his on top, one hers, below; passively receptive of his touch.

[Existentially Odd]

His lips did a little screwy dance as he thought her offer over, gnawing on the inside of his lip to stop himself from impatiently telling her that she didn\'t need to think about it, he was being fucking generous!

"Yeah, sure," he eventually conceded, his unhappiness at the fact that she wasn\'t leaping at his offer like a contestant called up to play a game show clear in his voice.  "I\'ll give you my mobile number and you can call when you\'ve made up your mind, yeah?"

[Harlequin]

The frown on her face matched the one in his voice. For someone who wanted this thing from her – specifically (or so he said) – he was being really impatient. He\'d been alive for hundreds of years, what difference would a few days make, either way? He was asking her – a person who had little experience with relationships of any kind –to enter into a completely unorthodox kind of relationship, with him – a near complete stranger. Why was he surprised that she wanted time to think about that?

Mobile? What the hell was a mobile?

Oh yeah. Foreign for Cell. "Oh, yeah." she shook her head, feeling stupid, "Uh, now? My phone is in the bathroom." She wasn\'t sure if he had anything else to say to her – it didn\'t seem that way, but it couldn\'t hurt to ask.