multiversallogs | 003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

Who: Hasibe Ozcelik, and OPEN.
What: A show premieres at The Vault.
Where: The Vault.
When: Evening til the wee hours of the morning.
Notes: I will set up sections in the comments for people to hang out.
Warnings: WELL IT'S AN ADULT CLUB, SO.

The show starts at nine o'clock, and the bar is full pretty quickly thereafter, but the variety in the club is pretty striking. Xenians in their best suits, non-Xenians in leather and ripped fishnets, everything in between. There doesn't seem to be a lot of cultural divide here between human and not, even given recent issues. Hasibe makes good on her promise to have members of her cohort given seating preference, as she's sweet-talked the cocktail dress-clad hostesses, and the bartenders (in their vague approximations of suits with very open shirts) are aware that she's invited a lot of heavy drinkers. ...she just assumes people in her cohort want to drink--they've been kidnapped to a strange city with many new things to offer, so why wouldn't they?

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He returns the hug, smiling assuredly once she withdraws. "You were fantastic. I can honestly say I've never seen something like that before, but I'm a bit of a beginner when it comes to watching magic acts. At least I'm assuming there was some sort of magic involved since you're not on fire."

That usual, nice persona freezes in place for a moment as he considers the crowd outside. "Yeah, I've bumped into a few familiar faces." Whatever that might mean.

Hasibe tilts her head a little, moving back a step further to acquire her dark green silk robe -- it isn't something she intends to tie, of course, but she slips it on and pulls her hair out from under the collar.

"It's part of the gift," she says, possibly regarding witchcraft, but she is significantly more interested in that lapse of persona. "Is that good or bad?"

"You tell me," he says, fingers idly trailing along furniture as he makes his way away from the door and into the centre of the room. He looks at her askance, still smiling faintly, not quite one thing or the other.

The dressing room has the chair next to her vanity, a longer low-slung velvet sofa gilted with gold paneling, and a chair across from that. There's also a folding modesty screen to one side, ornately painted, but that's ignored for the time being. Hasibe sinks into the sofa, not quite reclining, but tucked up against the tall arm facing the wall. She rests her feet on the ground, tilted at something of an angle, and watches Mitchell.

The difference in his tone is beginning to more completely strike her, now.

"Not bad, thus far," she speculates. "Or you wouldn't be in here with me."

"That's true." He stops almost a little abruptly, fingers hovering in mid-air, then turns and slides into the seat across from the sofa.

He leans forward, elbows on thighs, fingers steepled together. If it gives the impression that he's on edge, it's because he is. His time in the city has been full of temptation, everyone telling him it's okay to be a certain way, you can even do it legally or just make sure you don't get caught. It doesn't take much these days to rub away the nice exterior and reveal the jagged edges.

"And I am in here with you." He wonders why that is, given everything Hasibe knows about him.

She tips her head back, mulling that statement over. The implications don't escape her--it's a question she imagines anyone would have, unless they knew her really well. Mitchell doesn't. Ilde might even be a bit surprised, but that's because Hasibe has disappeared further down the rabbit hole in six years than anyone might have imagined.

When she lifts her head again, she looks Mitchell in the eyes, like always.

"It's a little bit of a dangerous place to be, isn't it."

She could mean for her. Or she could mean for him.

"Precisely." Again, it could mean for him or for her, depending on which way you look at it.

He continues to look at her intently. It's not quite predatory, but it's not exactly innocent either. If anything, he's quietly fascinated by the idea that it's ambiguous which side the danger is coming from.

She straightens up, now, moving to a proper sitting position, her knees together, robe tousled at her thighs. It brings them closer in proximity, but that was sort of the point.

"And now I know you're not the type to let that stop you."

"No," he says, only now he reaches out to trail fingers across Hasibe's knee, up her outer leg slightly. Not completely unlike his movements a moment ago.

"Although I'm curious whether you would."

Attuned, as he is, to blood--even blood that is as deeply poisonous as her own--he can probably also tell when Hasibe's heart is beating faster. Like right now. Predator vs prey is not the dynamic here and it's not how he looks at her, but she is aware that he is more firmly in the former category than she is either one of those. Existing outside the paradigm doesn't mean those who belong to it change.

But that's what she likes: everything a little bit faster, scarier, stronger, until it hurts.

"So am I."

(But she doubts it.)

"It's all rather dependent on two things."

He can sense the change in rhythym; in fact it distracts him for a moment. Excites him even, for many varied reasons. For a moment, his eyes almost close as he listens, trying to maintain patience for reasons other than hunger.

Although he does remember to ask, "Yes?"

With her tongue barely touching the back of her teeth--she has those little unusually pointed incisors at the top, a genetic trait, nothing so pronounced it speaks of inhumanity, but enough to be sharp when she presses there--she takes a moment to breathe out, not realizing she...hadn't been, for a second. The red lipstick she was applying when he came in suddenly seems a million miles away.

"How far you're willing to go," her accent thick, sotto voce, and in this case, 'go' might sound a lot like 'fall', but then he was never really all that close to grace, anyway, "and just you."

Mitchell and his wants.

She knows eventually she'll have to go out there again, see the crowd, socialize. But being able to disappear into the moment with someone, however dangerous, is a gift that Hasibe never takes for granted.

(The fact that it's a bad idea is what makes it so irresistible.)

He seamlessly shifts over to sit on the sofa and his hand travels with him, brushing Hasibe's hair back to trace a forefinger up and down her neck. He knows it would be a bad idea to bite but the fact that he's been told he can't only intensifies things.

"I don't think the latter is going to be a problem any more," he says, coolly. He has a tendency to seem completely detached from his human persona or else pushed into a heated frenzy. So far he seems to be favouring one over the other. "As for the former... I've never really had a chance to explore."

Firmly but gently, he tilts her chin towards him. "Sex is a weapon. It leads to the thing I crave most and the two tend to become confused. I used to think it ruined things," and for a moment it looks as though he'll break into a slight laugh, "but I was fooling myself." Along with a lot of the other parts of his nature.

"I can't promise I won't hurt you, but unless you gave me a very, very good reason, I would never try to kill you. I just, I want you." His free hand grips at her thigh as if to demonstrate the intensity of his feelings. "Not for absolution, or any other reason I've ever --but I want you." It's not something he really knows how to explain.

Edited 2011-11-20 13:51 (UTC)

There's something a little curious in how she responds--an obedience, a willingness to be posed. A certain pleasure she takes in it. The more you know about what she can do, the more the way she embraces being told what to do is interesting--it's as though she's exhausted with how easy it would be to superimpose her own will over things, and it becomes vastly more exciting to reverse the process.

Hasibe is so used to taking care of herself, of others, of thinking on her feet, being the leader. A touch of reversal is a weight off she sometimes forgets she carries. Familiarity strikes her, here, again--the calm steadiness in his voice, the predator's lilt. She half-closes her eyes, lashes fluttering on her cheeks, when he touches her neck; apparently that is a bit of a preference.

It strikes her that maybe she's using one of his own weapons against him, that her allure is the same as it often is on her fellow monsters...but at the moment, Hasibe doesn't really care. Seeing the reality of Mitchell is enough to put the barest shiver in her spine and her heart in her throat. Her instincts skip over 'fear' and land on 'thrill', a much more dangerous cousin to the former.

(The promise he makes is one Hyde never would, and she doesn't think he's intending to bind her so permanently; this is sex, not consumption. Killing her was always the end game, a final mark of ownership. And with this, she rationalizes her decisions: it's not as bad as before, so it's not that bad.)

"I don't mind being hurt," she says, "Sometimes it's what I need--it keeps me here on earth."

It always comes down to the spirit versus the flesh.

"Take what you want, Mitchell. I want you to."

...she does not, however, want to get fired, but it wouldn't be the first time a soloist at The Vault entertained company in her dressing room.

It's almost as though there's an audible snap in whatever there is left that's holding him back. He pins her back onto the sofa, pushing himself up to tower over her. This part feels familiar: the desire to push, to restrain. Although in this case, the end goals don't quite match up.

Instead he kisses Hasibe, but it's more like a bite as he presses his mouth against hers, rough and fierce. Then he moves to press smaller kisses against her cheek, her jawline. One hand goes to tug at the neckline of her robe, to really make sure there's no material in his way.

When he moves back, his eyes are an inhuman black and he breathes deeply to get himself under control. On resuming his attentions, he kisses her neck before lightly dragging teeth against her skin, around to her collar bone.

The aggression is something she tends to press as many buttons as necessary to attain in men she likes--they all have this under the surface, although Mitchell is undeniably an unusually perilous breed; not all of her men, or even most, have actually been killers. She responds in kind, prone to pressing close and then drawing back to lure him closer, playing at coyness until she can't and doesn't even want to anymore: she pulls his hair, a little, and bites back, though not as strongly. It's a way of baiting the beast until she sees the claws.

Or, in this case, the black, black eyes, an alien indication of monstrosity in an otherwise human-looking face. It's not difficult for her to guess what that means. Her own widen, slightly, but though she's startled, she isn't stopped. Later, she might have questions, but Hasibe isn't thinking about consequences right now. She makes a little sound, kitteny, threadbare, painfully delicate in direct juxtaposition with his teeth on her skin, and with that provocation, she abandons the robe entirely.

"Mitchell--" Her voice is a bit fractured-sounding, and since she's given toward having a high, soft voice in general, it makes her barely audible. She tries again. "Mitchell, I don't want anyone to hear and come in, so just--keep your hand over my mouth if I get loud."

It's solid advice, all things considered.

When that time comes, it's something he's more than pleased to do.

Later, breathing slightly ragged and eyes back to their more usual brown, he moves away from Hasi and sits back on an unoccupied part of the sofa. One hand grips the back of the seat as he composes himself, although a brief look of irritation crosses his face until he realises he's sitting on something. He reaches down and holds up a button that's popped off from his shirt, looking a little confused, before giving a half-shrug and dropping it down on the floor.

That small matter resolved, he opts to sit side-on and laze against the seat. He's still watching Hasibe intently, albeit his eyelids are somewhat heavier.

Hasibe was not planning on being so thoroughly mussed before going out to meet and greet, but this is...hardly an issue, she thinks--she works in a physically active role, and while maybe some of the other predators afoot will have some clue, would anyone really be surprised? She stretches, on the sofa, back arching, head tipped back, eyes closing. One hand slides through her long hair, finding it significantly more tangled than before, though that's easily repaired.

"You know," she says, accent even thicker than before--maybe it's the laziness, as she comes back to herself, "I should invite you back here more often."

Her eyes open, now, but with one hand over her brow, body skewed languid, only one is visible. She smiles a little, crooked, and drops said hand to her side. "Am I a mess?"

In so many ways.

Edited 2011-11-20 16:35 (UTC)

He reaches out to tuck back a stray lock of her hair, smiling slightly as he does. It's not the nice smile she's so used seeing, but it's not the cold calculating face of a predator either.

Everyone should look blissed out after good sex, regardless of the species or depth of their monstrosity.

"A little rumpled," he offers graciously, then reaches to take her newly dropped hand and bring it towards his mouth. "I like rumpled," he clarifies, nipping a little at her fingertips. "And invitations."

The gesture makes her smile widen, as does his more delicate description of her undoubtedly somewhat tousled state. Though she certainly had no qualms about returning the favor. Hasibe draws herself up to kneel next to him on the sofa, close enough that her body brushes his.

"And I like a man who leaves a mark." Look, she might not be able to see them, but she is pretty sure they're there. She can explain it away if anyone asks, but...more likely she'll just be aggravatingly enigmatic about the whole thing, as is her standard MO. "I'm surprised I didn't go under; I wouldn't have been able to go back out there again if I had."

Now she's going to explain the ego reduction thing that sometimes happens to her. It is, in fact, pretty lucky that didn't happen, considering what a shock it can be to someone who's not accustomed to seeing it unfold.

"Go under? How do you mean?" He tilts his head to the side, forehead creasing in a show of concentration. Which does seem only to be show for moment --there is a beautiful, naked woman next to him after all-- but he jolts to attention. He's listening, really.

Mitchell is, she thinks, the first man since Hyde she can explain this to and trust he won't be too deeply alarmed--or so she hopes. Even Henry was sort of discomfited at first, though that quickly changed.

"You may have noticed," she says, idly combing fingers through her hair again--it's not that she's showing off, per se, she's just wholly comfortable with her body--as she speaks, "that I have a little bit of a thing for pain. Ego reduction--subspace--it's a term for when enough pain and enough pleasure combine and you sort of lose your mind. The whole world disconnects except for the person with you. They sort of become your god for however long it lasts."

And it is the only way she ever really detaches from the omnipresent feeling of her powers, of the sutures in her psyche. It's how Hasibe escapes.

"Slightly more clinically speaking, the parasympathetic nervous system goes wild as a result of an enormous amount of chemicals--the ones from the 'fight or flight' instinct--flooding through the body. Afterward I'm..." There's a trace of a shrug, and then a shiver, as though she's remembering how it feels to disappear that way. "Cold, at first. Disoriented. It requires a little aftercare. It can have lasting effects if those are denied on a regular basis. But it's worth it, it's always worth it."

She watches his expression.

"I'm not freaking you out, am I?" But that mild, knowing little smile has returned, so perhaps that's not really what she's expecting.

"It's...not the weirdest thing I've heard," he says, after a moment. Mitchell, at least, has the benefit of having lived over a hundred years. It sounds alarming but he doesn't let it show much. Instead, he tries to focus on the scientific information that's just been relayed to him.

"I can even sort of understand it." He thinks about his own state of mind when it comes to going clean and the savage euphoria that overtakes him when he gives in to his desires. With himself, he knows the reasons, as convoluted and twisted up as they are inside of him. Which prompts him to ask, "Although I'm wondering why?"

He still doesn't have any idea about the extent of Hasibe's powers, despite the explanation of her origins.

"Try it with me sometime," she suggests to Mitchell, lips quirking upward in one of her wilder grins, "and you'll see."

She leans forward to kiss him, then, because by now her lipstick is totally gone, and she feels like re-initiating physical contact. Her body temperature is always somewhat warmer than a human's by about two or three degrees, and the contrast is enjoyable with anyone who isn't preternaturally warm.

But she makes a little sound of protest a moment later.

"I should really get dressed, though. I hate getting dressed." And this is accompanied by the jut of her lower lip in what is probably the world's least serious approximation of a pout. It's also debatable whether that shimmery white thing she intends to keep wearing really constitutes 'getting dressed'.

"Really," he says, both hands firmly staying on her hips in order to keep her close. "Because I don't think I like clothes right now."

Interestingly, he might protest against the idea that he's the sort of vampire with possessiveness issues. And he would be wrong, although they are somewhat unusually defined compared to most. It's something that both of them will no doubt discover in time (God help everyone).

Kissing her pouting lower lip, Mitchell does relent with, "But I realise you're working." That gets a theatrical sigh, despite the fact there are a few matters of his own he intends to take care of tonight.

003 | OPEN. red lipstick on the end of a cigarette.

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