Roleplay City
Administration => Infusco Archives => Archives => Old Roleplays => Topic started by: Harlequin on May 29, 2008, 07:16:25 PM
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Low lighting; the scent of brewing coffee; the low buzz of quiet, polite, conversation – usually revolving around such mundane topics as art history, current fashion, What I Did This Weekend, and, perhaps, last night\'s discrete sexual encounter. The merry tinkle of the cash register. Smiling baristas. It wasn\'t often one saw Morgaine Layfette in a setting such as this. And when you did, she was usually wearing large, dark sunglasses and trying very hard not to be seen.
Tonight, she was doing exactly the opposite. On any other night, she wouldn\'t be caught dead as she was now, and, tomorrow, if you said you\'d seen her here, she\'d call you a liar.
She was seated on a stool near the back of the shop, where tables had been cleared away for a makeshift performance space; tonight had been billed as a sort of open-mic fiesta, meant for college students and aging hippies to who wished to break out the old guitar and pour their hearts out to an audience of other college students and aging hippies by way of soul-wrenching songs about breakups, or Fleetwood Mac covers (respectively).
She certainly looked the part, in her torn jeans and thrift-store T-shirt, with the obligatory acoustic guitar in her lap. Unlike everyone else, however, she didn\'t introduce herself to the audience. She wasn\'t doing this for them. This was for her. She strummed a few chords, and, satisfied, she played the opening to Green Day\'s "Give Me Novacaine".
"Take away the sensation inside,
Bittersweet migraine in my head
It\'s like a throbbin\' toothache of the mind
I can\'t take this feeling any more."
The Indian girl\'s slight Delhi accent put a new spin on the familiar words, and she settled into the rhythm easily, replacing the drum track with the tap of one foot on the lower rung of the stool.
"Drain the pressure from the swelling
This sensation\'s overwhelming
Give me all a kiss goodnight
And everything\'ll be alright
Tell me that I won\'t feel a thing
So give me Novacaine."
As she began the chorus, her head nodded to the words, and a curtain of hair fell from behind one ear, obscuring her tattooed visage. Her eyes were closed, however, and she made no move to fix it.
"Out of body and out of mind
Kiss the demons out of my dreams
I get the funny feelin\' that\'s alright
Jimmy says it\'s better than air."
The first verse had mirrored Billy Joe Armstrong\'s detachment. She\'d simply sung the words – but this verse, she felt. The words came out hard-edged, but pleading. Misery and rage twined together, transforming the lyrics and twisting her voice. Her hands wrenched the chords from her guitar as if they were a lifeline, but a detestable one, and she clung to it for dear life as she sang the second chorus through clenched teeth.
Typically, a brief interlude played after the second chorus, but she stripped the tradition away, taking the melody and twisting it to meet her mood – a brief, jilted appregio that only barely resembled the original music – before she pulled it back, and repeated the chorus again. The wild rage was all but gone from her voice, replaced by a bitterness sharpened by anger, and dulled with pain. Though less intense, there was more raw emotion in that chorus than she\'d shown in some time. When she raised her face to the mic, tears shown on her tattooed cheeks.
But then she stopped singing, and played the closing chords. When those faded into nothingness, the room was silent. Her performance held the sort of raw, pure emotion that made people uncomfortable. She\'d shown this audience something of herself that very few people had ever seen, and nobody knew what to do with it.
She rescinded the stool to the next guitar-wielding college kid to a smattering of applause, wiping her face with the back of her hand in a sharp, furtive gesture.
Morgaine was here tonight because her life was falling apart at the seams. Everything she stood for, everything she loved, was slowly being taken from her by forces she had no way of reckoning with. With every fiber of her being, she fought against the acceptance, though, using the only weapons she had – her body, her voice, her bike, and her guitar. Sometimes, however, she just wanted not to feel.
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Tau Leander was utterly perplexed by the entire scenario. He sat at a table close to the door, on his own and looking the part of a trendy coffee house dweller fairly well in his slightly flared jeans, brown sandals, grey skin-tight T-shirt (it had long sleeves) and black suit jacket. All he needed was a multicoloured scarf wrapped around the broad column of his neck to fully embrace the part, except he didn\'t have that much fashion sense.
Unfortunately, he didn\'t have a great deal of common sense either, for as the object of his observation finished her song, he was the first to begin applauding - with gusto. It was a human tradition, one he was certain of, and so he went with it, clapping loudly when others remained awkward in an almost stunned silence. He wasn\'t sitting up overly straight and tall in his chair - in fact, he was sprawled in it with his long legs splayed beneath the table as he always chose to sit - but he got obvious looks of rebuke anyway. The audience seemed determined to condemn him for his applause and although he stopped it around the time the third person looked his way, it was enough to label him as odd.
That wouldn\'t do. He was attempting to remain under cover here, observing the woman his spies had informed him was most likely to be the leader of Wild Hunt and therefore the one who probably knew the most about shifters the band had encountered in the past. He was also keeping an eye on the Hunt because they\'d sounded informed and troublesome; what he\'d just witnessed seeping into the room out of the tattooed girl\'s mouth wasn\'t troublesome, though. Something about it had stopped people returning the usual amount of polite audience enthusiasm, but it hadn\'t sounded like trouble, it had just been... raw, in a way he connected with and took no discomfort or pity in (unlike the rest of the socially-adept listeners).
Tau\'s gaze flew to the figure of Morgaine as he realised he\'d attracted stares and that he\'d stood out. Stupidly, he froze mid clap and now his hands were pressed together before him, his expression the perfect advertisement of guilt as he watched the teary woman walk his way. Maybe she wouldn\'t hear him, or look up? She was looking rather... preoccupied right now, after all.
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The entertainer in her, as ever, was piqued by the enthusiastic applause emanating from one of the patrons. In this instance, however, it only served to provoke her ire – because, as an entertainer, she knew what kind of performance drew what sort of applause. And – as Tau had probably gathered by now – he\'d gotten it wrong, just now.
The red-eyed glare she leveled on him as she approached could have razed buildings.
Attention drawn, she looked him over. The guilty look on his face, coupled with the raised hands, palms pressed together – reminded her of a penitent worshipper, which played nicely to her vanity. The look softened, but only slightly.
She noted his attire – perfect for the setting, but something about him was slightly off. Slightly apart from the rest of the patrons. Maybe the way he sat, or the way he held himself. He was uncomfortable; perhaps only playing a part, as she was.
Perhaps the most curious thing, however, was the fact that he didn\'t bother t hide his guilt. He didn\'t look away from her, and he didn\'t seem to be paying any attention to the kid who\'d taken a place on the stool– which, logic would dictate, was the sort of act he\'d come here to see.
Morgaine stopped as she came upon his table, that tight, venomous expression still dominating her somewhat tearstained face, guitar slung over her shoulder.
"You\'re watching me." It wasn\'t a question, so much as an accusation. A fairly innocuous one, from the singer\'s viewpoint, since she had no way of knowing that he had, in fact, been tailing her – and no inkling of such. The way she said it, one would think she\'d caught him peeping into her window as she undressed.
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Believing he\'d been caught in the act (and inwardly cursing himself for his ineptitude when it came to human stealth, when he was superb at it in cougar form, it was what he was built for - but a fully grown male cougar prowling the streets of the city was going to stand out even more than an inept man doing it), Tau lowered his hands to the table, palms pressed to the surface as if he\'d covered something private on the furniture\'s surface.
"I am," he admitted in his deep, rumbly voice, still holding her gaze and wondering how she\'d react. He\'d been told things - read reports as well - by his trained spies... things that led him to believe this woman would react gregariously to his admission, to his presence. She was frequently drunk, always coarse and near deranged when she sang at the front of her band. She wasn\'t the type of woman who would take being spied upon mildly and his feet moved automatically, bracing him better, so that he could spring to the side if she decided to lash out.
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The singer admired the way he held his ground. She had expected him to flounder and stutter and look away – so she could sneer contemptuously, and stalk out, leaving him feeling like a bug under her heel. But he held her gaze, and so earned a bit of her respect.
What little that means. She pushed the thought away.
In fact, instead of avoiding her ire, and the confrontation that it might provoke. Sensing motion, her eyes flickered downward. She noted the way he moved his feet, as if in preparation for a physical fight. There was something automatic about the movement; almost instinctual.
"Why." Even if he hadn\'t met her meager expectations, Morgaine wasn\'t about to back down. Her expression, after all, hadn\'t softened in the slightest. Once again, she didn\'t ask a question, but simply demanded an answer.
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Confusion flickered briefly in his bright blue eyes, though his features didn\'t alter in any way as he maintained eye contact. Her expression was hard, distant, but her brown eyes were filled with a fascinating broiling that was easy enough to keep staring at, despite the way her words threw him.
Ami obviously hadn\'t said anything to Morgaine about her encounter with him, yet she\'d figured out he was tailing her... or had she? Tau couldn\'t decide and since he wasn\'t nearly as limber mentally as he was on his feet, he decided he\'d have to play it fairly safe.
"Because... you\'re of interest to me."
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Of interest?
Of interest?
"No shit," she spat contemptuously. If she wasn\'t of interest, he wouldn\'t be watching. She\'d liked his directness at first, but now he was sidestepping the question, and the contradiction was trying her patience, "Give me a real answer."
Her brown eyes – slightly red at the edges – bored into his piercing blue ones in an open, animal challenge. Though, the whole eye-contact thing had more of a canine bend to it, so it might not mean anything to Tau.
Ami had, of course, told everyone about her meeting with the shifter, but Morgaine had far too much on her mind at that moment to think about a conversation she\'d had weeks ago. The thought of being tagged and tailed had crossed her mind, but she figured that they were public enough on that scene that word would get around eventually – even without Ami\'s meddling – that such a thing was an inevitability. The thought of someone relegating her to a dossier in a drawer somewhere made her grind her teeth, but she wasn\'t thinking about that now.
All she was thinking about now was this jerk in this coffeehouse, squirming away from a question he didn\'t want to answer.
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He dropped eye contact then to glance around the café, trying to ascertain how much attention they were getting. Morgaine was used to being in the limelight, he knew that, but he found the prospect of notice intimidating to the point of wanting to retreat quickly. Having a beautiful, fiery woman who moved like a cat and sang like an angel looming over his table with her guitar slung negligently behind her and challenge flaring ominously in her eyes was not the way to avoid notice.
Thankfully, whoever was on the stage at the moment had captured just about everyone\'s attention and Morgaine wasn\'t blocking anyone\'s view but his since he was at the table farthest to the side. A few glances came their way as he scanned, but they were looks of annoyance at the fact he and Morgaine were talking through the performance, judging by the body language he was reading.
"That is a real answer," he murmured, looking back up at Morgaine. The left corner of his mouth lifted in a softening smile. He liked her rawness and her aggression; the same story was not told in the way she stood or the way she bearing her weight just then, but he\'d learned to understand that that was the way with humans. They always said one thing and acted another, so he didn\'t judge her for it. "You\'re a person of interest to me and my organisation," he elaborated, tilting his head so that the tattoo on his neck might become more apparent and might answer her question without too many details stated out loud. "So, I\'m watching you."
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Morgaine felt as though she\'d won some small victory when he looked away; gauging the reactions of others. It made her feel slightly more in control; back on solid ground –and she would take all of that that she could get. As for herself – Morgaine couldn\'t care less what other people thought, for the most part. This – as far as she was concerned – wasn\'t making a scene. This was simply a tense conversation.
Morgaine was a master at making scenes. She made more scenes than Hollywood. It was almost like a hobby.
The next words out of his mouth, however, took her completely by surprise. She visibly stiffened when he flashed the tattoo.
Her immediate thought process went much like this:
Gang mem–
No
Oligarch
Shit
SHIT
Wait
Ami
The last thing she needed was more trouble of the supernatural kind. She just hoped this was the fella Ami had been talking to. "I haven\'t gone out of bounds." Her tone was confident (She was pretty she hadn\'t done anything to upset the Oligarchy), but wary, and slightly hushed, now, as she\'d decided that gaining attention to this particular subject was unwise. Angrily, she pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
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Her action drew his gaze, just as flickering movements always draw a cat\'s attention, and he admired her hand, the smooth look to her skin, the graceful way she curled her hair behind her ear, before he looked back into her eyes.
"I know you have not. I was just interested in learning more about what you know, that is all. Ami did not have many details to give me; I wondered if you did, or if you have had other contacts since being here. Contact with other Shifters," he clarified, gaze dropping to follow the line of her arm and then move sideways to assess her body language again, as he dropped this very important word. He felt he would learn more by looking at her body than he would into her eyes, as interesting as they were.
It was a damn shame that the place reeked so strongly of coffee as well, for it interfered with any extra information he might be able to gain from the scents her body emitted. It didn\'t matter, though; they were having a nice, polite human conversation for now. "Also, I wanted to hear you sing. I was told you were good," he said bluntly, the smile twitching about his lips but not materialising just yet. It was an ironic expression, really, though he was unaware of what his face was telling her. The only thing he knew was that his lightly coloured eyes tended to give nothing away and that was reassuring.
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The singer\'s tight lips almost twitched upwards at the corners at those last words. Almost. But it was a big step away from hateful glaring, anyway. Apparently, flattery would get him everywhere.
Morgaine\'s singing voice wasn\'t traditionally beautiful, but it was versatile, and her range was astounding. It didn\'t hurt that her passion and vitality were evident in every word she sang, be it ancient ballad or Weird Al.
She wasn\'t particularly pleased about having been ambushed with this conversation at such an oddly vulnerable moment in her life – but it would be better to have done with it now, before things got more complicated. Besides – she couldn\'t help but note – the guy was more-or-less straightforward about what he wanted, and she liked the frankness in his eyes. It was what she\'d liked about the shifters they\'d had contact with, briefly, in the town before this, as well.
It occurred to her that it might be a good idea for her to sit down, since it was awkward to conduct a conversation with one person sitting and the other looming menacingly. Not that Morgaine would ever loom over Tau; even sitting, he was just about as tall as the dark-skinned hurricane. "You mind if I sit down?" she asked, at length. Her voice was still tight, but it had lost most of it\'s wariness – replaced by something that might have been exhaustion, but barely a hint of even that.
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"I would be pleased," he nodded, straightening up a little so that his legs weren\'t entwined with the chair opposite him - where they\'d strayed after she\'d continued talking and not made a move to swing that instrument of hers at his head. The way he slowly pulled his body into a more upright sitting position made his seem very reluctant to be doing anything except sprawling but the fact that he did it was testament to how much he wanted to talk to her.
He watched her intently as she organised herself to be sitting in a chair, rather than standing above him, liking the way her body flowed like a hot chocolate poured into a mug at the counter, the strain of her simple T-shirt over her breasts and the pull of denim covering her rear. She had an attractive body, small but curved in the most appealing of places and it caused a pang he hadn\'t expected. He didn\'t often catch himself admiring people just because of the way they looked or staring at them because their movements were appealing, not suspicious, but he did with Morgaine.
The index finger of his right hand began to tap the table silently, in time with the flicking of his right foot beneath the table, but he didn\'t give the impression it was an act of nervousness, more of contemplation. His arms shifted forward onto the table also, rounding out his broad shoulders as his arms curled into a vaguely circular pattern. It was almost as if, if his whole body couldn\'t pour itself around the table, his arms would do the job for him, atop it.
His gaze followed the line of her jaw, grazing over the tattoos that covered her scars before settling on her nose and sliding slowly up that to her eyes again. He had the urge to tell her he thought she was beautiful and that he would like to be alone with her, so that they might have contact rather than sitting across a table, but he restrained himself. Things weren\'t done like that in the human world and besides, she was a work contact. It would be unprofessional (or so he\'d had situations like this described to him, anyway; professional really wasn\'t what he was all about but he was striving for it, especially now he had a new boss to impress).
"Do you have any information for me?" he asked, watching her eyes steadily now, his blue eyes flicking as he looked from her right to her left and back again. "Anything that Ami has not told me?" He assumed the other girl would have told her leader everything about their encounter, but this was one way to be sure.
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Once seated, Morgaine leaned forward to swing her guitar around, and then slip it over her head, leaning it against her chair, though she kept one hand wrapped protectively around its neck. She took the opportunity to give Tau the once-over again, keeping in mind what she knew of him now.
He was quite handsome – though, she hadn\'t yet met a supernatural who wasn\'t attractive – but in a less pretentious way. He was much more solid – both in build and manner – he seemed somehow more real, more attached to this realm. She liked the shape of his mouth, and the cut of his brow – the latter, she noted guiltily , reminded her of Buffy\'s Angel.
She didn\'t really know much more about the shifters than Ami did, but Ami didn\'t generally communicate very well, unless you knew what to look for in her speech. And Morgaine knew she\'d left things out intentionally, as well.
"I haven\'t had any other contact with shifters here," she told him, first off, "That I know of. You don\'t exactly go announcing yourselves." Her eyes unconsciously followed all of his little movements, taking them in as she talked, before returning her gaze to his "But – Jesus Christ, son, try sitting still! You\'d think somebody put springs in your ass."
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He blinked at her in surprise as she chastised his constant movements and it made him aware of what he was doing in a way no-one had since Jed was around. The thought of his brother caused a wash of warmth to enter his chest and he laughed out loud at Morgaine, grinning broadly at her as his foot and his hand stilled.
"Sorry," he apologised, not sounding very sorry at all. He sounded happy, if anything. "It is a habit to move something when I do not have a tail. Mostly, people do not notice." His smile stretched just a little bit farther as he regarded her, his eyes twinkling as he shared this private joke with her. Suddenly, talking with her about shifters she\'d known didn\'t seem nearly as important as pursuing the fact that she\'d noticed him in a way no-one else bothered to.
Of course, since she\'d also told him she\'d had no further contact with shifters in this city, that also helped conclude that side of his business with her, so he wasn\'t sure how to continue being in her presence if that hook was gone. "You are as observant as you are beautiful," he told her cheekily, warming to the sentiments he was feeling and, as usual, not really monitoring what came out of his mouth.
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She hadn\'t meant to lighten the mood. Really, she hadn\'t. The comment had just come out!
But then she saw how that brooding, serious face of his lit up when he smiled, and she couldn\'t help but feel at least a little bit better. The corners of her mouth lifted, and she allowed herself a chuckle.
Oho! But what was this? Were we flirting, now? That was certainly an improvement from all this serious business.
Morgaine could never resist a good flirt. Even if they didn\'t use contractions. she laughed, too ; a louder, more raucous sound.
Usually, she would have written him off as sleazy; maybe he\'d heard that she was a freak in bed, but something about the way he said it told her that he wasn\'t just flirting – he was saying something he honestly believed to be true. "Ooh, charmer" she raised a brow, glad to be back on familiar territory, "Pretense, pretense. If you wanted my number, you could\'ve just asked."
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"I do not have a telephone," he told her mildly, pleased that her mood had shifted but disturbed by it as well. This persona wasn\'t as wary or aggressive but he also felt it wasn\'t as genuine and he didn\'t like the way her brow quirked. It seemed... assumed and defensive. She\'d been guarded before, of course, but had been listening and not closed off as it felt she was (somewhat) now.
His smile lessened because hers grew and he glanced lower, paying attention to the tendons in her neck, the angle of her shoulders, the amount of pressure she was putting on the chair she was leaning back against. Her laughter was a puzzle to him; it sounded false but read in her body as genuine. She was perplexing.
He blinked as he looked back into her dark eyes. "Besides, I have many details about you already, Morgaine. I could have called you, but I wanted to see you. There is no pretense, I simply wished to watch you. Now that we are talking, I am glad, though. I find you... intriguing," he decided, having paused as he searched for the appropriate word. It wasn\'t that the one he spoke hadn\'t come to him quickly, it had been the fact that there had been numerous options that had sprung to mind, wanting to escape on his tongue as he voiced his perception of her that had slowed him down.
It was very different, for him to have so much to say to someone, especially when he usually chose to show rather than tell. This really wasn\'t the forum for such advances, however, and he wasn\'t sure that this woman would be open to such anyway. He liked that about her, though. It made him want to try harder, even though he doubted there was much point.
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The face he saw wasn\'t entirely false – it was definitely part of the singer\'s personality, and it was the one most people saw, most often – but it was also partially a mask. Something she wore to keep people from asking her the difficult questions. It was easy for her to slip on, much harder to take off.
Somehow, oddly, she was saddened by the loss of his smile. She had the feeling that people didn\'t get to see it that often. As if in sympathy, hers died a little bit as well. It died almost entirely, however, as he continued to speak.
Intriguing. People were intrigued by Morgaine a lot. She snorted, "Intriguing, huh? That word makes me feel like a lab animal. It\'s better than \'fascinating\', though." She couldn\'t count the times she\'d been called either of those things, and each time it made her feel as though – if she let them – the person who called her that would lay her out on a slab, poke about at her insides, and put her aside when they\'d figured out all of her mysteries.
But he already knew all about her, apparently, and that in itself gave her pause. "What do you think you know about me, then, O omniscient Oligarch?"
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He watched her, feeling her bristle and liking the figurative hackles rising on her. Obvious feelings made him more relaxed, even if they weren\'t happy feelings. He dealt best in the realm of honesty, though her final statement was one that told him she would play games with her mouth when her body was clearly speaking for her. Did she realise how her body betrayed her? He\'d have thought her smart enough to know, but he wasn\'t put off by her ignorance. Oddly, he felt protective of it, wanting to teach her about what he sensed so that she\'d know in future.
"Only facts," he demurred, watching her from beneath his heavy brow. "I do not know you. That is what I had hoped to learn, by observing, but I see now that that was an arrogant assumption. You would take longer than the life I have left to know, so I will concede that I know nothing and leave it at that. Would you prefer I offered one of the other words I thought of, besides intriguing?" he enquired, honestly attempting to placate her and willing to use something different. The comment about her feeling like a lab animal he didn\'t touch, for that was likely to offend him, if he explored it.
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The singer nodded, more or less placated. Facts were impersonal, and altogether too static. She wished she knew exactly what facts he had, though. Like her birth name. If he didn\'t have that, he\'d have found that no one with her name had existed before the year 2000.
One thing he\'d said stuck in her mind, though. All the years he had left? It made it sound as if he were on his deathbed. He had an odd way of speaking, however; perhaps this was simply part of it. She shrugged, and said nothing about it.
"Sure," she said, "I\'m sure it\'s all going into a file somewhere, anyway, right? Doesn\'t matter whether I like it or not."
Oddly, though, she found herself wanting to know him better. "Though, in the spirit of fairness, I think I should get to go through your apartment, or something, so I can find out stuff about you to tell all MY buddies."
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He frowned, tilting his head in an a very feline manner as he observed her. "This has nothing to do with your file. You are not a threat and you have told me you are not a worthy information source. I will record nothing and speak of this with no-one, though if you wish to visit my apartment, you may. There is nothing intriguing there, though," he told her and then grinned at his little joke. "Certainly nothing worthy of telling your buddies about."
The left corner of his mouth remained uplifted as he watched her with twinkling eyes, a challenge glowing in them. He understood why she\'d mentioned his apartment - because she felt violated by his observation and recording of her movements - but he hoped there was more to it. The thought of taking her there... now that was an intriguing thought.
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So this conversation wasn\'t going to be a footnote. That, at least, was nice to know. She smiled, and said as much. "I\'m glad."
"Oh, I\'m sure I could find something to report," she said, eyes a-twinkle, "Or something I\'d rather keep to myself." The words were said lightly, joking.
Then, she said something she had never planned on; especially not considering the gorgeous, primal, genuinely interested male sitting across from her: "But I think we should do it the old-fashioned way, don\'t you? Do away with the sneaky stuff. After all, I do know a few things about you, too. More than simple facts, if what Ami told me is true."
It was the genuinely interested part that got her. Usually, Morgaine was the predatory one; the one that went after a guy with enough gusto that he was left dazed and confused in a tangle of bedsheets before he even knew what hit him. But Tau was interested in her – or so it seemed.
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"I didn\'t tell her any lies," he said, giving a nod as if encouraging Morgaine to state what she knew - or simply because he was agreeing with himself, after recalling he\'d told Ami that he was a cougar shifter and that he doubted there\'d be any further investigation into the band after their conversation together. That hadn\'t been true, in the end, for Halen had insisted he find out more and document everyone\'s knowledge. It had been a long time happening, what with everything else that went on at the chambers (including a new boss instating himself into the position).
"And I am all in favour of doing away with sneaky stuff, but I do not understand what \'old fashioned\' means," he confessed, looking genuinely perplexed. "I am not very experienced with human things, you see." He glanced around as he added this final part, biting his tongue on explaining he was only seven years old. He\'d never had a good reaction to that declaration and doubted it should be stated in public, even if he saw that no-one was paying attention to he and Morgaine.
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Being a person who preferred her privacy, Morgaine assumed the shifter was simply confirming Ami\'s story, and nodded as well, leaving it at that.
A smile touched her lips as he spoke again, "You know, old-fashioned. Wholesome – drive ins, letter jackets, class rings..." She trailed off at the blank look she received. She, of course, had never lived in that world – nor had she any desire to, until this moment – and appeared so far removed from it that the words were almost absurd.
Her fingers, still wrapped around the neck of her guitar, ran idly over the strings. The urge to coax a melody out of the instrument was driving her to distraction, and she pressed her palms to the table in a decisive flurry of motion. It was then she realized she was nervous. And it showed.
Suddenly, she lifted her eyes to peer into his, and, after a moment\'s consideration, she stated: "I want to see what you look like." The abrupt and abstract subject change was designed to take focus away from the awkwardness of the previous conversation. The singer was unsuited to awkwardness, and disliked it intensely – unless, of course, she was causing it intentionally.
Certainly, the tactic was sneaky, but usually effective. And the thought behind the words had been bubbling beneath the surface of her mind, anyway, as they spoke: she wanted to see Tau in his other form.
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His frown of consternation melted away when she declared she wanted to see what he looked like as a cougar - he assumed, since they were talking about Ami\'s information, that Morgaine knew him to be a big cat - and he quirked a playful eyebrow. Addressing this comment was preferable to continuing to attempt to decode what her explanation of old fashioned meant.
"So you can look at my apartment and have something to tell your buddies, right?" he teased, thinking about Alacer and whether or not she\'d be home when he got there. They\'d only been housemates for a few days and were still settling in to getting to know one another; they hadn\'t seen each other in animal forms yet, either. Part of him hoped she was there, so he didn\'t have to transform again, at a later date... part of him hoped she wasn\'t.
The thought of Morgaine being in his home inspired far different feelings to the ones he got when thinking about Alec being there; he couldn\'t say for sure that the influence of living with a female was the catalyst, but he was certainly experiencing a lot more stirrings of interest in the opposite sex since she\'d come along. There was a very definite heat in him, for Morgaine, based solely on the way she moved and sang. He would demand she sing for him, once she\'d seen him in feline form; he felt that would only be fair.
"I would be happy to take you to my apartment and show you the other me," he relented, eyebrow lowering as the corner of his mouth lifted once more and he stared at her intently, blue eyes twinkling playfully. "Shall I call for a car or will we catch a cab?"
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The singer chuckled softly at his words, surprised that he\'d guessed her meaning so easily, "Maybe. Maybe I just want to see for myself, this time. I\'ve been told I can be self-centered that way." She liked his eyes. Especially now, when they were alight with mirth and possibility.
Tau was something of a mystery to Morgaine - which wasn\'t surprising, on reflection; cats were mysterious creatures. She was having a hard time guessing at his intentions – he was apparently attracted to her, and obviously eager to get her back to his apartment. He didn\'t seem to care why she wanted to see; only that she did.
Her motivations couldn\'t exactly be called pure, either, however. Morgaine was intrigued with the possibility of seeing more of this half of the Shifter.
She wanted to see his cougar form, also, because she thought, on some level she\'d be seeing him as he was meant to be. Every gesture he made was colored by a certain feline grace– not to mention the way he was always moving; as if the energy from a missing tail was just spread throughout the rest of his body. Morgaine doubted he acted like a man when he was in the form of the cat.
A brow went up at the mention of cars and cabs, "I\'ve got my own transportation, " She said primly, though a devious grin touched the corners of her full lips, "Though Ami tells me you\'re not so fond of the ol\' Thunderhorse, eh?" The tattooed bassist had made a point to tell Morgaine of Tau\'s abject terror when it had come to riding her bike.
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Tau sat up a little straighter in his seat, paling visibly at the memory of riding the motorcycle. It was obvious that it was not a fond one - and not something he wished to repeat willingly.
"Uh... well," he hedged, licking his lips slowly, as if encouraging the words he seemed to be lost for to come out and save him, "no," he admitted. "I\'m not fond of motorcycles. Why don\'t I just supply you with my address and I will meet you there?"
Unwittingly, he batted his eyelashes, his hopeful look speaking volumes as he willed Morgaine to agree to them finding their separate ways to his apartment. With her guitar on her back (the only way he assumed she could ride), he doubted there could be enough room for the two of them on one vehicle anyway.
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"Sounds good to me," agreed the singer, allowing a bit of the smugness she felt to seep into the words. Morgaine only ever accepted rides from others when she was too drunk to care that she was in a car, as opposed to on her bike. Cars made the singer claustrophobic. She also liked being able to leave on her own terms – having her bike simply meant the difference between walking home and driving, early in the morning, when whoever she\'d gone home with was usually still fast asleep.
And he was right about the guitar; her bike wasn\'t even technically built for two, to begin with.
Excusing herself, she went to the bar to grab a pen and some paper – as well as to retrieve her guitar case – and took down his address when she returned. As she wrote the information he relayed to her, she was surprised to find that he lived in a building in her area. Morgaine rarely got lost but this fact made finding her way all the easier, as she knew the neighborhood well. "I\'ll stick around \'til your cab comes," she declared. It wouldn\'t do any good to have her reach the building before he got there to let her in.
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"Oh. Okay," Tau agreed, blinking at her as he had a mental conversation with himself over the need for her to do that
I don\'t need to be looked after
She is being polite
But I can look after myself
That is not her point; it is polite
Perhaps she does not trust me?
No, it is just a human custom, to be with the person who you are going to visit
Who you are going to watch change form?
Exactly
What if she \'freaks out\'?
Does not strike me as the type
It will still be a shock
But you want to shock her
Well, she is interested
Few are
Exactly
and eventually decided it wasn\'t a bad thing.
His smile became more natural (though was still a little reserved, he thought, compared to the smile that most men by her side would usually wear) as he unfolded himself from his chair and accompanied Morgaine out of the café. Once out there, he was overcome with awkwardness once more, as they took up a position on the sidewalk. Thankfully, there was only about two minutes of her fiddling with her guitar and him pretending interest in that while scanning the street for a cab, before one happened by. He hailed it and was on his way home, waving a cheery farewell to his companion, in no time.
(Continued in \'Anything But Numb (http://www.roleplaycity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=66711#post66711)\')