Logs:Dance and Sing

Dance and Sing
Dramatis Personae Damien, Matt, Ryan
In Absentia	2024-06-18 "Your blood and your money is a dear price." (followed by sealing the deal.)
Location <NYC> Mockingbird - Tribeca
With blacked-out windows and a tasteful but plain facade, the Mockingbird doesn't look like much at all from the outside. You'd probably miss it if you weren't specifically searching for it, and once inside you'd be informed the establishment is members-only--on a technicality, since membership costs next to nothing. Inside, the cozy club is styled after an early 20th century lounge, complete with vintage furniture, an antique long bar, and live music nightly. All of the employees and many of the regulars habitually dress in a melange of '30s and '40s fashion. The dance floor is not large, just an irregular space between tables and booths, but there's almost always someone cutting a rug. It's a busy night at Mockingbird -- busier than it might usually be on a Tuesday and that is possibly due to the many people who have been not-so-surreptitiously snapping pictures and posting online since Ryan and his date arrived. Ryan doesn't look to have a date right at this moment -- though he's kind of absently watching his companion on the dancefloor as he sips at his fruity drink. He hasn't been dancing at all, which may have something to do with the pair of forearm crutches propped up in the booth beside him. He is dressed appropriately for dancing here all the same, in a jaunty purple lamé zoot suit, a black shirt cinched with a duochrome tie that flashes blue from some angles and pink from others, tied in a sharp Eldredge knot, and heavy black boots with rainbow-hued hardware. Ryan's date might not be here right now, but there is a man slipping into the booth across from him, setting a second drink -- also fruity but quite different from the one Ryan has -- down in front of the other man. "This one will really make your palate sing. Perhaps not as well as you do, but." Damien is certainly not likely to be the first person who has hit on Ryan tonight but even in this place he might be one of the strangest. He's dressed in a black velvet fencing cape lined in emerald green satin over a faintly translucent blue-purple ombre mesh shirt, its stand collar cinched with a bright gold cravat, a night-black waistcoat with a gold-chained watch that ticks in the rhythm of a heartbeat tucked into the watch pocket, and white leather trousers tucked into black turn-down boots with gold hardware. "Are you not dancing?" Ryan is glancing up with a reflexive sort of pleasantness that shifts into a more genuine interest when he takes in the stranger. "Oh -- oh, thank you, I --" He's just polishing off the last of the drink that he has, and though he pulls the new drink close he doesn't actually taste it. "Thanks, I don't really..." Whatever he was about to say trails off. He glances to the crutches, and then back to Damien, with a small shrug. "Haven't been big on dancing this past year. Still enjoy this place, though." His eyes are gravitating to the watch, hidden though it is in Damien's pocket, as it -- beat. "Don't think I've seen you around here." "Oh, you haven't. I'm quite new in town -- just learning my way around the place." The watch's heartbeat is ticking slightly differently than it was just a moment ago. "I've been seeking out all the most lovely parts of the city, but I hadn't even known one of this planet's most bewitching bards was here. You really are sure about the dancing?" The quiet thrill of desire in Damien's tone is neither subtle nor cloying. His fingers unfurl towards Ryan's crutches indicatively. "It really just takes a little creativity to figure out what works for your body." Ryan rests his chin in his palm, fingers curled loose up against his mouth; his lips have curled into a small smile at this compliment. His own expression isn't disinterested, but he answers light and mildly apologetic: "Sorry, I have a... I'm here with someone. I do appreciate the drink, though." His other hand lifts, fingers flicking toward the watch pocket. "I think your watch is off." Ryan's date is nowhere near as eye-catching as Ryan himself, but Matt looks sharp enough in his own subtly roguish fashion, wearing a pale rose dress shirt with rainbow moonstone cufflinks, a puff tie in leafy green arabesques that make his eyes uncannily vivid, a vest of the same pattern in royal purple, gray linen trousers, and black derby shoes. If the woman he's swinging with came here to see Ryan, she seems to be enjoying her consolation prize plenty by the song's end. He takes his leave of her and returns to his date just a touch winded, which makes his "why, hello there" sound more rakish than it has a right to. Ryan, at least, can discern a faint note of interest in there quite apart from being out of breath, humming alongside wary protectiveness and a kind of pride. "Don't mind me," he tells the other men with a flash of a smile as he picks up his water glass, "and do carry on, if you please." "Mmm?" Damien curls his fingers beneath the chain to slip the watch out of his pocket -- it's an intricately etched thing, and the several hands on its face when he pops it open certainly don't seem to be telling any kind of legible time. "I think it's running well enough. -- is this your man?" He inclines his head slightly to Matt, and then tips his hand out toward Ryan. "I was just getting terribly rebuffed by this gentleman. On your account, I assume." He doesn't sound -- or feel -- particularly put out about this, tone amiable and, to Ryan's senses, a bright curiosity buried beneath. "Got me a drink and all before he asked to dance." Ryan isn't drinking it, still, though he's plucked the little cocktail sword from it to twirl lightly between forefinger and thumb, its speared cherries glistening. "New friend says he's brand new and looking for the very best New York's got to offer. You already found this place so I'd say -- the Bazaar's Night Market in Flushing, the Cloisters up in Fort Tryon, and the travel sites won't tell you this yet but the very most magical garden in the entire city is over at Le Bonne Entente in Queens. Where you coming in from, anyway?" "Goodness, on my account?" Matt lays his fingertips delicately on his chest, feigning surprise, but there's an indefinable sense of grounding behind those words, and a much more definable swell of pleasure. "Well, I am--ah, but we're both rather good at buffing, no?" He sips slowly, eyes lingering on Ryan as if he hasn't had plenty of opportunity to check him out, then slipping easily back to Damien. When he lowers the glass and speaks again his voice spills a heady mess of pride and love and sorrow, all of which feel incongruously intense for the single word, "Subway." Then, by way of clarification, "I second everything he said, but if you've got the leisure for it, ride the subway for a while and let the city show you the very best they have to offer." There's a glint in his eye and an edge in his smile. "Maybe some of their worst, also." "I imagine so," Damien answers Matt with a playful cheek, "I was having difficulty imagining anything else that could give him pause -- until I saw you and it became quite legible." He snaps his watch back closed, twirling it by its chain to land neatly back in its pocket. "Oh, I've been traveling quite a while, but I was in Ankara before I came here. Some truly lovely gardens there, too," his voice is brightening with a quiet delight -- somewhere within it, for some reason, Ryan can feel the blush of pride that stirs it, "but you are right -- I visited the crossroads at the hotel and it was one of the most magical places I've had the good fortune to see in this world. I may well return." As he sips at his own drink he's warming to this idea, his eyes gleaming with more wicked humor than seems necessary for: "On the subway." Ryan's brows raise, but there's something in Damien's brazenness that is putting him more at ease. His smile is brighter, his posture more at ease as he scoots inward in the bench to make more room for Matt beside him, now that Matt's own seat has been taken. "He is hot as hell but how you know you just ain't my type?" he's asking, in a tone fairly dripping with sensual interest. He finally does settle back, drawing the mystery drink in nearer to him. "Oh, you've been there! The owner's --" This starts out warm but here he's flicking an uncertain sidelong glance to Matt and continuing just a touch subdued: "-- kind of magical himself. Lounge there's got great dancing, too, and some of the best cocktails around." Matt preens at the casual praise. "I am," he agrees shamelessly, bumping Ryan's shoulder gently with his own, "but really, have you ever turned down a dashing fellow in a swashbuckling cape?" It does not take powers to catch his prurient interest, nor his delight at word of Damien's travels. "Oh, how splendid! The ancients of the Near East held gardens to be sacred places of communion with the gods." His smile doesn't dim, nor the wonder in his voice, but to Ryan's ears a confused warring tumult of desperate adoration and betrayed anger is trying to creep into his tone before collapsing into eerie stillness. "He is most assuredly magical." This, at least, sounds altogether confident. "I would certainly expect that he is." The pleased pride running through Damien's words has grown. Oddly, his cocksure tone is mellowing -- a little -- even as what he says is: "I have quite a knack for discerning people's desires, is how. A little magic of my own, really." He takes another slow drink, and it's Matt he's looking at now, something uncannily piercing in his dark eyes. "You, though, you are harder to read." His head quirks slight and curious to the side. "Tell me, beneath that coy smile," there's something ineffable underlying his words now -- it does not feel like a compulsion but like a comfort, a trust that prompts wanting to answer, prompts a self-scrutiny that might not otherwise be easy, "what is it you really desire?" Ryan's fingers curl back over his mouth. His quiet hum is laced with bright intrigue and amusement that washes over the other two. He half-turns, studying Matt expectantly. "You wound me, sir." Matt is the very picture of affronted innocence. "My heart is an open book." The aforementioned coy smile returns perhaps too quickly to support that thesis. "Surely I've made my desire clear enough?" His voice is softer when he does reply, but it sings out a blaze of passion and frustration and hope all the more striking in contrast with his muted baseline. "I want Ryan to realize he is damnably gorgeous and hot as fuck and it isn't just me." The only indication this isn't quite what he expected to say is a single too-quick blink. "Oh! There now, you see." Damien turns his hands up, out, giving a very earnest look to the other two. "I came here with every intention of trying to entice your man here into a dance -- on the dancefloor or in bed, I'm quite flexible -- and there I was playing into both of your desires without even knowing it." He tips his drink out towards Matt, though he's looking more now at Ryan. "You wouldn't want to let this charming fellow down, now, no?" Ryan blushes at Matt's reply, and Matt can feel a distinct ripple somewhere in the shift of his power. He's still smiling, though, and nudges Matt's shoulder with his own. "Tch, I know I'm hot. People Magazine knows I'm hot. Everybody knows I'm hot. It's kind of a whole thing. -- Do your mojo again," he's asking of Damien, "I want to know what he wants for him." Somewhere in here he has evidently decided that Damien doesn't seem like a poisoning-him type; he's picking up the drink Damien brought to take a sip. His eyes widen and his flush of delight ripples out, brief but strong, to the others. "Oh my god you talk about magic, this is magic, what is this." He's offering the drink to Matt for a taste. Matt sighs and scrubs a hand down the side of his face. "Darling..." His frustration is dull and distant. "Of course it's not the only thing I desire, I do also find this fellow highly appealing..." Notwithstanding the altruistic ulterior motive he just professed, there is still plenty of lust in the words that trail off into the elegant turn of his hand--and then his eyes--in Damien's direction. "...and highly relatable. Are you altogether sure he isn't the one you should be asking?" He accepts the glass from Ryan and drinks, never taking his eyes off of Damien. "Oh, this is exquisite. Is that also knowing-what-you-want magic?" "This was another type of magic entirely. Rami," Damien is nodding over toward one of the tenders at the bar, "is putting it on the menu, if you want in the future. Persephone's Promise, he's called it, though I'm sure if you want it named after you he would be obliging." He sets his drink back down on a cocktail napkin. "I suspect I will be asking you both quite a bit about your desires more specifically later. The night is young." He has slipped his watch back out of his pocket, checking its face again, little though it still seems to be showing the time. "But he wants to know and thus -- so do I. Aside from a confidence-boosting ravishing for him, what do you want?" "Mmm." Ryan has taken his glass back after Matt drinks, rolling the next sip slower in his mouth. There's another flush of pleasure, quieter, this time. "I do like the pomegranate. If it's tryna trap me here, though, it's too late, New York's already full-on stolen my soul." He's dropped his hand to rest on Matt's, squeezing light. "You can't say another of these drinks, either, because we already know that." He's lifting the drink up indicatively as he makes eye contact with the bartender, gesturing for a second. "I'm pretty sure you gave it up, with pleasure," Matt purrs indulgently in a way that suggests he definitely would like to be draping himself over Ryan but is Being Good. He straightens up slightly to peer at Daimen's watch when he checks the...time? But if he was going to ask or make some kind of witty remark about it, he's sidetracked by the squeeze of Ryan's hand. His eyes snap back to Damien at the question. "I want--" The coy smile vanishes, and in place of wry amusement in his voice there's a sudden wrenching sense of loss. "I want my brother back." His breath hitches, his eyes widen, and he puts a hand to his mouth as if this would silence the words that have already slipped from him. "I'm so sorry." Damien's reply sounds a gentle sympathy, and quite eminently unsurprised at this stranger opening up to him. "Did he die?" is his first fleeting guess and, with a small frown after that he's musing half to himself, "or have you had some falling out, that can be trickier." He lifts his eyes back to Matt, thoughtful. "What would you give to get him back?" Ryan pulls in a quick breath. "The dying already worked itself out, it's the rest..." His hand squeezes once again at Matt's, and he passes the cocktail back over. "What wouldn't he give might be a better question." Matt gives a faint, hysterical laugh that's full of muted confusion and grief and some small measure of real amusement. He doesn't trust himself to speak until he's taken another gulp of Ryan's drink, and even then he still sounds off-balance. "I was going to say I wanted one of these, but you beat me to it." He's been tense under Ryan's hand, but at that squeeze he relaxes with a will. "We had a falling out. I don't think it's really fixable, but if it were, yeah." He tips the glass at Ryan, takes another swallow, and hands it back. "I'd sell my fucking soul if I thought that would help." "What does a soul mean to you?" There's something that's shifted in Damien's voice, his flirtatious tone traded for a quiet thoughtfulness. "What happens if you part with it? Humans seem at once to think it is the most valuable part of them and something that can be bargained away." This doesn't sound like critique so much as puzzlement. He's waving the server over when they come with Matt's second pomegranate drink and slipping them a large tip before they leave, together with a preemptive request for another round all round. "Relationships are a much more delicate beast than most, but, with the right kind of magic I do not think there is anything that is unfixable. Though perhaps that is just my own foolish optimism. I came to this city seeking lost kin, myself." Ryan frowns, deep, in here, but it's not so much about his companions' personal problems or about Matt selling his soul, just a slightly put-out: "We aren't human." He does not stay petulant for long, not after another sip from his newfound favorite cocktail. "I think it's a figure of speech. You can't really sell your soul --" Though now he's frowning, unsure, "probably. Right?" He's not lingering too long on this question, instead asking -- "Who're you looking for?" Matt stares hard at Damien, no discernible expression on his face. "But you are--" He breaks off when the server arrives, his smile abruptly bright again. "I was speaking figuratively. Why, are you in the market for one?" He drinks deep and closes his eyes momentarily, his smile easing away. "Thank you. I'm not drunk enough to get into whether you can actually buy or sell souls. But if you're talking literally, I'd give every last cent I own and the house--although that might technically be his again? Or still." There's not much empathic resonance in any of this save for 'the house', painted in wistful layers of joy and pain and solace. "Mother would be pissed, but I'd give her up, too, if she couldn't abide reconciling." This blares a garish discordant palette of fierce loving devotion and stark unreasoning hatred. And it's gone as quickly as it came, leaving a listless grief. "Alas, he took the right kind of magic with him, and I doubt he could abide reconciling, either. I dearly hope," he interrupts himself with a pull of his drink, "your family is a bit less dysfunctional." "No?" Damien's mouth twitches, small and meaningless, and though his tone sounds perfectly polite Ryan can feel the deep amusement within it. "My apologies, I oughtn't have assumed. And I'm very sure you can, I've traded a few in my day. But what that means is going to be quite individual each time, no? A soul isn't -- gold bullion or a stock, there is no market that can tell you what its imaginary value is. Its worth is -- well. Personal. If a young child offered to trade me their most dearly beloved stuffed toy, the one friend who has loved them their whole life long, I dare say that would be a great deal more valuable than several politicians' souls combined." Though his tone is glib there is something under it that feels to Ryan more melancholy and more fierce than this whimsical hypothetical should account for. As he continues this is melting away into something else -- warm, but grieving. "Mine is -- mostly very, very far away. I've outlived too many of the ones nearby and -- apparently been neglecting some entirely." His eyes have dropped to his drink, which he lifts for another sip. "Forgive me my melancholy. Families are always complicated, aren't they? This brother must mean a lot to you. Your blood and your money is a dear price." Ryan, who has been drinking steadily while Matt has been dancing this evening, is taking another sip of his drink -- but then pulling back at Matt's not drunk enough comment, squinting first at his drink and then at Damien. This scrutiny yields him very little conclusion as to where The Weirdness of this discussion is stored and so he's just blithely plowing ahead as if the world makes perfect sense: "Wait no what did you take their souls for. How do you collect a soul, I'm very much imagining --" He doesn't finish saying what he is imagining but he is halting again and peering, more intent, at Damien's strange heartbeat-watch. His brow creases. He shakes his head hard, blinks, and finds his easy smile again. "Anyway even if you did take his soul -- uh, mother's so... uh, no, his mom, even if you took that you can't just --" He mimes waving a wand. "Poof away problems. Or at least, we have strayed very far from the problem you came here to -- wand." "The way I think of souls--I guess it could be sold..." Perhaps Matt is becoming drunk enough to get into it about souls, but his interest in the topic feels wan and dissociated to Ryan. "I'm just not so not sure it's worth much on its own. My soul is a single thread in a tapestry." He sings this last sentence--or at least tries to, so poorly that the tune might not be identifiable. He shakes his head and tsks. "Oh yeah, not drunk enough." He downs more of his drink in service of remedying that, then tells Ryan in a stage whisper, "I imagine you have to pick it out with a magical crochet, but what do I know?" He studies Damien now, his voice gentle and warm, though Ryan can't hear any sympathy in the heavily suppressed grief behind his words. "I'm sorry. We know from complicated family, and know from outliving them, too. My brother...apparently meant even more to me than I thought, and I thought that was a great deal. He'd also mislike to lose the house--which, again, might not actually belong to me yet, probate is a bitch--but if he also wants me back, he would make the same trade." He frowns, glancing aside at Ryan. "Though I doubt he'd go about it so haphazardly, while getting shitfaced at the second best club in New York with Ryan Black and a very odd, very fuckable stranger." "Fame, riches -- a lot of the souls I've been offered have been from people with very little imagination." The disappointment in Damien's words here sounds heavy, but lightens just a touch with his continuation, "-- though enough to take a chance on the bargain without even believing in magic. That's not nothing." He is finishing his drink up just as their next round arrives, and starts on his next the moment the server has left again. "Forgive me. This is quite a digression. What do you say we get out of here and get back on track? We can discuss this bargain later." "Very odd," Ryan is emphasizing. He's downing his latest drink quickly, and nudging at Matt as he picks up his crutches. "Your place, man," he's telling his partner, "I am not coordinated enough to get back to mine and I want to see what kind of magic this man has to offer." --- Matt has a king size bed and a dozen pillows for practical reasons. They have been put to good use over the last few hours, and though now he and his lovers are merely lounging, there's plenty of space for that and a generous tray of meze and drinks. He's somewhat clothed again, likely against the possibility of his mother returning while he was downstairs fetching said meze and drinks, but luckily she has not. "All the framed pictures of him are gone, but..." He rolls onto his side to fish his phone out from under the pillow propping him up. "I'd be shocked if you haven't seen him in the news for one reason or another. Mostly he's been New York-famous, even after L'Entente took off, but the whole aliens thing probably made ripples even in Ankara." Notwithstanding, he's summoned up a photo on his phone of a brightly smiling Steve Rogers and a not at all smiling but clearly pleased Lucien Tessier sitting at a tea-laden picnic table in the back garden. "He's the Cap on the left. People did actually get them mixed up from time to time, when he was bulked up for the show." "Yes, we saw a lot of news of that commotion." Damien has been carefully loading up a small wedge of pita with spicy muhammara. He pops it into his mouth, licking off a fingertip before he turns back to Matt. "In a roundabout way it's what brought me to this place." Somewhere in his heap of discarded clothes, his watch -- whose heartbeat, very quiet but still audible to Ryan, has increased through this evening -- ticks into a sudden arrhythmia and then, briefly, stops. It's restarting again, slow and calm, as Damien's eyes widen at the picture. "Oh! Lucien. Yes, he's who I came here for." There's a soft delight in his words, and though there is surprise here it's less perhaps than it ought to be for this coincidence -- "I think he is my son." Ryan has sobered up a good deal in the last few hours; with his second glass of rosé in hand he is making a slow attempt to rectify this situation. Unfortunately he's not actually there yet, which makes this revelation a good deal more startling than it would be after another glass or so. He claps his hand to his mouth, not quite fast enough to stop the entirety of the spray of wine he's spluttering out. As he plucks a napkin from the tray to wipe his palm and face, and he's shooting a puzzled look first to Damien's pile of clothes before managing to look back to the other two. There's a million questions churning in his mind but none of them quite seem to coagulate yet; instead, the first bemused thing he blurts out, staring hard at Damien, is: "How the fuck is Luci so white?"