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Who: Ivan and Ilde
What: Probably failing to talk about their relationship again.
Where: Ivan's flat.
When: Newdi evening or thereabouts
Notes: More fallout. Talking and not talking and still having things to not talk about.
Warnings: TBA

Ilde has calmed down a bit, since Sukkardi, and Ivan feels confident leaving her long enough to go feed. He manages his addiction adroitly, but it still does need tending. Aside from that, though, he's stayed close. Partly because Njoki told him to take it easy after cleaning out his lungs, but partly because he still doesn't understand what Ilde went through, so he doesn't know what she's likely to need.

Ivan still isn't sure what she wants from him, and he's even less sure with how to cope with caring. He's always been astoundingly bad about getting too attached and not letting go, but until recently, he hadn't been sure he didn't just want her for her blood.

Now that he is sure it's more than that, he's trying to decide what to do. But in the meantime, he keeps going back to his flat without staying out too long at any given time.

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It's been quiet, mostly, since Sukkardi night; she hasn't cracked again, but she hasn't quite come out of wherever she went in her head afterwards either. It's like diving in the water, she thinks, like going so deep that you can't come up too quickly. Pressure, and movement, and...things like that, that make logical sense and mean she doesn't have to do much more than eat take out occasionally and think about painting her nails instead of actually doing it.

She hasn't touched her CiD besides a brief exchange with Hasi - Rhade's number was on the filter, it's abstractly good to know he hasn't vanished - and she hasn't moved much from where Ivan left her when he gets back in, on the sofa in her underwear and his shirt, sometimes writing and sometimes flicking back through the pages of the notebook he's not allowed to look in.

(It's not a diary.)

"Are you hungry?" he asks, from the kitchen. He would forget to remind her to eat, if he didn't take care. Theoretically, she should remember to eat herself, but he doesn't entirely trust that yet. "I brought some things for you, if you want them."

An open-plan apartment is useful at points like this-- she can still see him, having looked up when he came in, and she shrugs in answer. She feels more like a drained battery than someone on edge; like she's just run out of give a fuck for a while, and needs to breathe until she can muster the energy to go back to pretending.

She's just not entirely sure that would fly as a more comforting explanation, all things considered.

"Okay." A beat. "What were you talking about before, for Coardi?" When she wasn't paying attention, yes.

"There's a party," he says, putting the sandwich on a plate with some fruit. "For the cat and rat... thing." He's not terribly surprised she was paying more attention than she appeared to be at the time.

"...cat and rat thing." Her expression is vaguely puzzled; she really hasn't been touching her CiD much, besides to respond to what Hasi had specifically filtered her into, and it takes her a minute to remember that she's heard mentions of this from a couple of her younger students, and that Penelope had called to find out if Angus was with her.

(No, and she'd been vaguely concerned that neither of them knew where he was instead, at the time.)

"It's sort of a Disneyesque holiday, it seems to me, but given the time of year, I think there's a lot of combining it with Christmas celebrations. Njoki found a recording of It's a Wonderful Life somewhere."

'Disneyesque' isn't terribly accurate.

He brings her the small meal, coming to sit nearby.

"I haven't seen that in years." She hasn't done anything remotely resembling 'Christmas' in half a decade, so that'll happen, yes; she picks at the sandwich and tries not to dwell on it (her first December - sort of - out of captivity, and she just wants to know that he at least knows she's alive). There's salmon, that's nice. "Do you even celebrate Christmas?"

"I have, sometimes. It depends on where I am, and if the mood strikes." He watches her pick at the sandwich. "I should make an appearance, at least briefly, at this one. You're welcome, but don't feel obligated."

"I don't." ...well. Ilde picks the salmon out of the bread with a certain fastidiousness, licking the butter off both the fish and her fingers, and eats just that part, focuses on what she's doing and not her company because it's still odd, having company while she wriggles back into her own skin. That's probably one of those things they're supposed to talk about, but it's so much easier if she doesn't think about it too hard.

Most things are.

"Maybe," she says, belatedly. "I don't know. Just-- see how Lost Society goes."

"That's fine." He gets up and goes back to the kitchen to fetch himself some wine. "Your friend has all sort of useful talents, doesn't she?"

"Hasi?" That actually warrants her full attention, momentarily, as opposed to the vague way she's been not quite poking back. She's still not quite sure what to do with him in this mood - this 'taking care of things' and this 'fetching sandwiches', and she's not sure if she should ask him if it really is as odd as it seems in case drawing attention to it makes it stop.

She feels so awkward, now, which is almost funny (in a different way to 'my scary vampire boyfriend just bought me a sandwich', which she's mildly concerned is going to tip her over into inappropriate hysteria if she starts laughing, also not helpful) when that's not infrequently how thinking about Hasi makes her feel. Coltish and unready all over again.

"She does," after a moment, with remnants of that pride she tends to have when she talks about her. There's something lovely about being around her.

"She's certainly got Mitchell wrapped around her finger, it seems." As anyone who involuntarily made Ivan hallucinate would be someone he would generally stop seeing. Then again, Mitchell's decision-making process was... Mitchell's decision-making process.

Ilde considers, very fleetingly, pointing out that she attempted to murder him and he's making sure she remembers to eat.

"I guess things just happen."

"I suppose they do. He could certainly do much worse." And had. Ivan was still adjusting himself, and he supposed he should restrict his problem with Mitchell to sleeping with Daisy and letting Herrick die and generally having mental ideas about vampirism.

"I can see why you like her, though, on a brief acquaintance."

"I'd never met any of Daddy's girlfriends before her," she recalls; Emery had had his moments of clarity in parenting, and worrying about Ilde getting too attached as a child to women who wouldn't be there for long was one of them. Hasi had been young, though, and Ilde had been growing up, and he'd thought it couldn't do her any harm -- maybe the opposite, maybe they'd get along and wouldn't that be lovely? And it was, she thinks. "Anyway."

"That must have been slightly surreal," he observes, coming to lean on the near side of the counter with his wine in hand.

"No, it was-- it was fine." Normal, or what they had that passed for it. She misses him so much it hurts in her throat when she thinks about it, and it doesn't seem fair after she'd been so good about not missing him so much. Too good, even, sometimes, when she'd felt grateful and guilty for that gratitude.

He'd get it, though, that she's a mess. Maybe he'd be all right long enough to make it all right for her.

He thinks of his own daughter (a few times in the same week, which is more than he's done for years). He's not sure she'd have been so blithe, had he bothered with anyone after her mother.

"If you vouch for her, I'm sure she's well enough. She seems pleasant."

'She mentioned you punched her vampire', Ilde doesn't say; just not asking questions is too ingrained a habit to swiftly lose, and she hasn't quite made all the relevant connections that if she has to talk, so does Ivan. She doesn't ask people things because if she does, they feel they're able to ask her, and there are much less uncomfortable ways of figuring out what she wants to know, she usually finds.

"You're very mild."

"On the subject of Hasibe, or generally?" he returns, with a small smile. "I think I may like her, I just don't decide quickly."

"Generally." Reserving his judgement, being terribly mild at things; though admittedly that seems more like stepping on eggshells right now than Ivan's temperament, and as the thought crosses her mind she regrets bringing it up.

He shrugs, lightly. "It's been a strange few days. I'm not sure what I'm thinking yet." And it's seemed prudent to err on the side of mildness (except when he goes out to feed).

Her faint smile here is fleeting, reflexive and wry; she keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, and turn out to be glass, and shatter. (And she'll mix her metaphors if she likes, fuck you.)

"Did I, um-- with-- are your lungs okay?" ...better late than never.

"Fine," he says with a bit of a smile. "Njoki informed me that the smoking was much more of a mess than the water." It hadn't been good, granted, and she'd made clear he was right for coming. But even so.

"I said that it's not as if it will kill me."

Her wince on that point is more of a flinch; it's exactly what she was trying to do, and she's trying very hard not to think about how much worse this would've turned out if she'd been sleeping with somebody who needs his lungs for things other than smoking and being a prick at people.

"Okay."

"I really am fine," he says, less glib. "It hurt, but I've had worse."

"I didn't even know I could do that," she says, her gaze veering away from him once she's speaking and he's not. She's used to the fact that sometimes her clothes get a bit damp at the ankles when she isn't paying attention, but that was-- a little more dramatic.

Quite a bit more.

"I'm glad you know now, then, if not precisely thrilled with how you found out. It could be a useful thing, in the future." Not so much with vampires, but still.

"If I can do it again." Practising is going to be complex, she thinks; maybe it's just summoning water and not necessarily the murder part, that would help, and Christ knows they're not recreating the initial circumstance. Ever.

"I don't see why you shouldn't be able to," he says, with a shrug, "though it's not my area. Still, I should think now that you know you can." He spreads his hands. There's no reason for her not to be able to.

"Once I figure out how I did it." It must be said that she wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time.

"Just because emotions triggered it once doesn't mean they're necessary." Briefly, he lets his eyes go black, but then they're back to normal. "I shouldn't assume, at least."

"Emotions don't trigger that, it's bloodlust or your cock," she observes, off the change in his eyes; reflexive mockery of Ivan and/or his penis is sort of like progress, at least in assessments of her mood.

"Those too," he says, wry, "but not only those. Anger will do it without bloodlust, especially in the very young."

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