multiversallogs | → how do you play the game?

Who: Irene Adler & Sol Koenig.
What: Dream voyeurism, voyeurism, and then introductions, in that order.
Where: The Vault.
When: 8th Shadri.
Notes: All your logs comm is belong to Irene's social life. Also yes I have a small business breeding teal deers.
Warnings: Sex of the public variety, the Vault, ...Irene and the warnings on Sol's dream: religious persecution, torture and martyrdom, losing children.

A few nights ago, Irene Adler woke up with a mutter of oh God, her heart in her mouth and her breaths coming fast, waking up the woman next to her; it took all her self control to laugh it off, to promise it was nothing, to be charming and sleepily attractive at four AM after waking up from a nightmare and then she had curled herself around the other woman perhaps a little too tightly and dozed fitfully, trying to rid herself of the feeling of the brand on her chest.

Cleopatra, what was the significance of Cleopatra? And where had the cross brand come from? It had gnawed at her unspeakably, something half-formed in memory, like trying to reach out and touch mist- visible from a distance only and indistinct.

For some reason it stuck with her, unnerved her, irritated her, because it felt important, felt like a dream she'd had before or should have had before- she had thought maybe in a metaphorical way it was about Kate, or about the woman whose name she didn't want to know, who ended up Irene Adler on the slab with her face bashed in- or maybe it was about both of them. Maybe it was about her habit of leaving people a bit broken in her wake and not being sure she ever meant to do it.

Maybe it was just a strange dream.

When the news comes that it's likely a glitch, Irene is:

1) Relieved.

2) Curious.

And suddenly, in a lightning flash and crack of realisation, as she's trying to match the content of her misplaced dream to people in the cohort, it comes to her; the cross-shaped brand.

Which is why she's in the Vault tonight, despite the fact that she doesn't work here anymore- because the first time she saw that brand was at the Vault- on the chest of one Solomon Koenig, who was at the time very much occupied.

('Very much occupied' and 'at the Vault', when used in conjunction, tend to have their own particular connotation; well, at least Irene can say, as an impartial viewer, that he's got technique, and the brand suits him).

Standing around and hoping he approaches her is not Irene's preferred MO. Too passive, too wishy-washy, too hopeful. If you want something, you make it happen. What's the good of being Cleopatra in a past life, anyway? That, to Irene, sounds like a whole lot of lost glory. No, the secret is in making your current life as interesting as you want it to be, and then you don't have to fall back on but in a past life I was because you can say right now I am.

And right now, just over a week after that dream, Irene is cutting through the crowds and attracting attention with absolute ease and- oh.

By complete accident, half way through her sweetly declining a man with I'm sorry, darling, I'm not working, she makes eye contact with Sol.

Eye contact with a stranger (for all the voyeuristic insights into his life she's gotten) is a funny thing; people look away quickly, as if they aren't meant to be staring, as if even this tiny level of connection is taboo and wrong. Especially when someone's so busy.

Irene doesn't look away, just raises her eyebrows- not sceptically but as if to say tell me more- and raises her glass, a rather cheeky sort of toast- and gives him the audience he wants. Well, why not? She's more of an exhibitionist than a voyeur, but sex fascinates her from every angle.

And that brand- if she tries, she can remember it on her skin.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The list of places Sol has been caught having sex is not embarrassingly long, but only because he's never been embarrassed; it's been inconvenient, exasperating, hilarious, any number of other things, but not that. Nearly as many times, in his adult life, the audience has been entirely deliberate - in places not unlike this one, in more private encounters with casual and less casual partners and voyeurs, and (sometimes most satisfyingly) in a ritual context.

So it makes sense that the way he grins when Irene catches his eye is almost savage, somehow, reckless and wanton and brief, because his focus is on the woman on top of him, right where it should be. No one can say the man doesn't achieve what he sets out to do, and a good deal of the time he's inclined to think if nobody comes away bruised or bloody, an opportunity has been profoundly wasted.

--afterwards, though, he remembers; barefoot in dark jeans low on his hips, he carries himself like a king, signaling the bartender lazily and greeting Irene with, “Tips and hints for the amateur crowd?”

Irene enjoys watching, though she finds it more interesting and aesthetically pleasing than anything else- his partner does more for her than he does, but the point is how they move together, all the raw savagery in every line of their bodies.

And afterwards, he takes the bait, and she raises her eyebrows, rakes her eyes over him thoughtfully and replies, "I think you were getting on just fine without them."

“I thought so.” His is a casual, unstudied confidence - there's an edge to him, something controlled and a little too intense, but utterly unselfconscious, like not quite tame. Sol is many things and domesticated is not (has never been) one of them. “I don't suppose I could get you to put that in writing.”

Look, if he can present his sexual credentials as approved by the Woman, he will. He'll have a little card made with her signature. That'd be a great birthday gift, actually, someone should get it for him.

Irene laughs. Her confidence is genuine; nothing else is. Which doesn't mean that she's tamed or domesticated- just that there is nothing unstudied about her. And she plays that up, of course, laughs at it, like she's constantly sharing the joke with whoever she's talking to, joking about how untrustworthy she is so that people don't notice they're trusting her until it's far too late. "Quite right, you couldn't. That would be making things far too easy for you."

A beat.

"That said, were I prepared to compromise my honesty-" a grin, she would never "-I could probably turn that into some sort of sideline."

Amusement crinkles the corners of his eyes; he doesn't quite laugh, taking a second to order a drink (bourbon, neat) before he responds. “It's not getting laid that's the challenge,” he says, which begs the unanswered question of 'what is, then, Mr Saucy'. “But as sidelines go, I've sure heard worse ideas. Then again, you never know what's got a market.”

People are strange beasts, and it can be truly astonishing what they'll pay for. Non-sexually, more; not much surprises Sol about the things that get people off.

"Don't I?" she says, eyebrows up, smilingly mock-offended; that's what she prides herself on, her ability to know what people will pay for in money and more- the ability, in fact, to get them to that point, make them want something with every part of themselves.

“You have a nasty little mind I wouldn't put anything past,” he says, which sounds like a compliment in the complacent way he says it, “but the more general 'you' population can't seem to keep track of what they'll be a market for, much less what they're going to have luck selling to anybody else.”

Of course, he isn't a businessman, even if he tends to look like the sort of person who uses 'businessman' as a polite, well-armed euphemism.

She raises her eyebrows, quirks her lips, whoops, you got me. "I'll give you that." Both his judgement of her and his judgement of others. (It's always good when people start talking about those people to her, it means they've already closed the doors between them and the rest of the world, it's intimate).

"I think it goes hand in hand. Once you realise how easy it is to sell something to somebody, you don't ever fall for the same trick." A beat, and deviating slightly from her played-straight femme fatale act for a second, she adds lightly and cheerfully, "Well, not unless you're a complete idiot."

“It's the 'demand' part of the equation where things tend to get interesting.” Which is a bit of a fun thing to say in and of itself, Sol reflects. “You don't have to be an idiot to be susceptible to your own wants. Magic tricks look different from the audience, and convincing a smart person they're not falling for anything, that's a good trick.”

Clever boy. ...She doesn't say.

"Mm, so it is. And so much more satisfying, like all good tricks tend to be."

She's doing well at both looking and not looking at the brand, because avoiding his bare chest entirely would be absurd, considering the situation. She's free with her glances, comfortable and casual but never losing that edge of hunger she always has- not always for the people in front of her per se, but that doesn't matter. The truth is transferable.

“Psychological sleight of hand. Not my game--” and thus not very satisfying to him, but he's not a magician, either, and he can still appreciate a good magic trick, “--but interesting. People interest me.” The things that make them tick. The things that make him tick; that tends to go a little more along the lines of the truth, pulled out bloodily and bare-handed, and that's probably why despite friendly interest in Irene's expertly put together look he doesn't seem interested in doing more than looking.

Still. He appreciates the view, while she's over here talking to him.

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