multiversallogs | [closed]

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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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