Nathan is a Pervert

Nathan
The less time Nathan spends outside after dark the safer he can convince himself he is.

This time last year he didn't have that same wariness of nightfall. This time last year he hadn't seen a lake fill with blood and hadn't been attacked by ducks. Or maybe this is around the time the weirdness in his life hit a boiling point and spilled over and splattered all over everything. Made it so he walks faster than he used to so he can get back to the parking lot where he stashed his bike so he can get home and assure the paranoid part of his brain that everything is as he left it.

He does have a sense of self-preservation. Doesn't seem like he does sometimes but he very much does want to live. So as much as he wants to get on his bike and get the fuck home he adheres to traffic ordinances and doesn't bolt across the street when the lights shout HALT at him and car headlights cut through the darkness.

Which leaves him standing on a corner bathed in the neon from a bodega's beer signs and smoking an electronic cigarette that glows blue when he inhales and waiting for the light to change.

Kali
Nathan avoids the darkness, and it's a wise move for him.  For her part, Kali would live out and about at night even if she didn't have to by virtue of her very nature.  It isn't even a case of the Rroma woman's businesses, both of which are evening-oriented ones.  Kali just has a certain level of appreciation for the fact that people seem to be more comfortable acting as they feel when the sun goes down.  Sure, she lacks a bit of perspective on that but she's not completely in the dark (hah, hah).  It's been many years, but she still remembers what life was like in the daylight.

And why does she remember?  Because she spends as much time as possible among the living.  She's determined not to be one of those kinds of Kindred who become disconnected from humanity and thus lose who they are.  She doesn't lie to herself and imagine that she's a human the way that some Camarilla do; her actions are calculated when she acts like an average, everyday drug dealer/strip club owner.  But the more she stays close to mankind, the more she remembers why she should.  Mankind moves forward and does wonderful, terrifying things.  Vampires stay static and let the years pass them by.  In that at least, Kali has a human mindset.

And that's what brings her walking down the street, six-inch heels clicking on the pavement toward the corner.  The woman has her traditional shock of red hair, entirely unnatural-looking even if you didn't discount that it doesn't fit her dusky skin.  She's wearing a strapless outerwear corset, white with a black print over it underneath a leather jacket.  Torn and bleached jeans complete the look, right along with the cigarette that burns red as opposed to glowing blue.

She has been careful as of late, with all the strange events taking place lately, and that makes her observant.  That's partly how she notices Nate, waiting at the corner for the WALK sign to click over.  A crooked grin hits her face and she picks up the pace a little bit to get her to him.

"I know you.  You're the guy from the bloody bird-slash-lake incident way back when.  S'up?"

Nathan
Some of the time those three words end in the recognition come in the form of a Denver Post reader. Other times are disparate and not entirely comforting especially this time of night when he's alone and doesn't recognize the person.

It's a woman with chemical-red hair and punk-rock fuck-you attire. The sort of woman who Nathan would think would never talk to him in a million years. It's harder to get in trouble if he considers himself the sort of person to whom other people don't talk in general. He gets in enough trouble just minding his own business.

So far as he can tell he was just minding his own business now. He doesn't startle when she clacks her way to where he's standing but his dark eyes always look a bit wide in contrast to his skin. Like he's some innocent woodland creature wandered into the city can't find his way back out again.

Woodland creatures are innocent but that doesn't mean they're harmless. Even a fawn can kill a motorist if the car strikes it at the wrong speed.

"What?" he asks. He must be one of those speak-before-you-think types. It takes his brain a second to process the question and he's frowning as it happens. The frown only deepens when he calls up the incident in question. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

Kali
For all that Nate's frowning, Kali's smiling.  And it's not even her snark-filled, amused smirk either.  Well, I guess it's best to say that it isn't all that, or even a majority; she almost always has an element of it on her face, but underneath that she's actually glad to see him up and around.  She had a pang of regret when she had called the Camarilla on him and Bo, and she's managed to get the latter out of safety through her own designs and the power of vitae.  She has always rather assumed that something terrible had happened to Nate--mindfucked, killed or worse.

There's always a worse, trust her.  She knows.

But none of those are the case, and the question of whether his mind was wiped is answered in the way he frowns deeper.  It's rather the reaction she expected.  "Name's Kali.  We met, albeit briefly, just before that whole fuck of a clustering capacity.  I'm a friend of Bo's.  The little bundle of enthusiasm and mischief that was there too?  You remember her, I'm sure.  You've gotta."

She passes the cigarette from her good hand (the left) to the off-hand (the right) and extends the now-free hand to shake.  If Nathan accepts it, he'll find her as warm to the touch as any normal kine.  It's something Kali's always careful to do.  The little things are important.

"Gotta admit, I've been a bit curious about what happened to you after all that."

Nathan
At mention of the name Bo his frown disappears. A quick quiet laugh knocks it out of the way. If he doesn't remember Bo from a year ago it's because their meeting wasn't an isolated incident. When two people can go out of doors during daylight hours their chances of running into each other improve and Nate has the added misfortune of being a somewhat public figure.

"Yeah," he says, "I know Bo."

He has to pass the vaporizer into his left hand to shake Kali's but he does accept the offer. His own hand feels cool. One of the downsides of quitting drinking. He has rough palms despite the business casual style of his clothing.

And then the voicing of curiosity. He laughs that humorless laugh again. Kali can see part of what's happened to him if she glimpses his bare forearms or his eyes. No way of knowing if the scars on his arms were there a year ago but that scar on his left temple sure as shit wasn't. It's still pink.

"Was something supposed to happen?"

Kali
She's observant, this one.  She acts all jokes and snark and sometimes even oblivious, but don't ever believe it.  Kali makes note of the scars, the rest of it.  The electronic cigarette, which in her experience kine only use when they're tying to wean themselves off nicotine or at least care somewhat about their health.  Kali tried them once because it would be frankly easier than having to have a small burning ember near her face, but she hates the chemical taste.  She's made a few assumptions about him and some may be right while others are probably very wrong.  She doesn't voice them though, because she knows they're nothing more than guesses and she hates being wrong.

Instead, she laughs a little bit, softly, and takes a drag off her own cigarette after their hands part.  "Something always happens to people.  Life happens.  Good and bad, you know?  Usually more one than the other, though which you get depends on those freaky guys in the sky playing human chess in their miniture Colosseum while the clockwork owl squawks somewhere."

She shrugs her shoulders lightly.  "It's not often you find someone who throws themselves into the line of fire to pull someone else to safety.  That usually doesn't bode well, but here you are.  So you can't be doing too bad."  The tone suggests she's appreciative of what Nate did for Bo, way back once upon a time.  She admires it, as much as it amuses her.

Nathan
Hard to tell if Nathan is the sort of guy who is as boring as he appears on the surface or if his quiet means folk wisdom has some substance to it. Nothing about him hints at his being anything more than a hapless newspaper reporter with bad hair and all the bad habits that come from working twelve hours a day. Probably neglects all of his personal relationships just as he neglects combing his hair and derives most of his calories from liquids and grease.

Might be quitting smoking to impress a girl but like as not he wants to eliminate cancer as a contender for things that are going to end his life if the blood lake and whatever put that scar on his face are what some nights are like for him.

He manages to follow along as she draws reference to Greek gods and their interference in human dramas only to frown again this frown amused if not entirely sure why on earth he is amused at the sentence's twist ending.

Alright. The light changes. He walks with her as they circle back to what he did for Bo.

"Yeah, well..." He takes a quick drag off the vaporizer before pocketing it. The stream he blows out is weak compared to a lungful of smoke. This is how people wean themselves off of it. It tastes funny and it burns like hell going down and coming back up. "I've been lucky, I guess."

Kali
Those are all possibilities for quitting smoking, but Kali's already drawn her own assumptions and she'll wait and see whether they're going to pan out.  She's curious about this one now, and that's either a fantastic thing or a terrible one.  Which of the two it will end up being...

Well.  That's something that only Nate's svhadharma can answer.  And while she has certain connections to ephemeral things, Kali isn't the kind who can just reach out and see someone's purpose like that.  Give her time.

The light clicks over and Kali starts walking with the reporter, shifting her eyes around the traffic and then to him.  She walks with the kind of confidence that either comes from being far more capable than she might seem, or complete foolhardiness.  Tough to say which, really, from the outward demeanor.

"Mmm," she says, the sound contemplative yet already made up in judgment.  "If you were lucky, you'd have not been at the lake in the first place.  Or more to the point, you'd be a leprechaun on the back of a unicorn that was crapping a pot of gold and pissing rainbow juice.  Luck is bullshit.  You're either good, or life gets you, you know?  And sometimes, life even gets you if you are good."

Nathan
The view of the two of them walking together has to strike a dissonant chord to onlookers. In her heels the woman is a couple inches taller than the man and she doesn't strut so much as she strides. Not so much one with the night as the night belongs to her and her temporary companion trudges along as if he hasn't got much of a choice. His steps are regular and measured and it's obvious he's spent most of his adult life in some sort of uniform. This workaday getup he's got on isn't that uniform.

He doesn't slouch. Wasn't slouching while he waited for the light and isn't slouching now. Isn't holding himself tall-as-he-can to try and compensate for the loftiness of her heels either. This is just how he stands.

And yet he doesn't offer up the origins of his posture as an explanation for why he dove after Bo that night. He doesn't offer up much of anything. His voice has been a deadpan this entire time and it doesn't change now.

"Lux didn't tell you to tell me all this, did she?" he asks.

Kali
If there are people looking and questioning their brief companionship across the street and onto the sidewalk, Kali isn't paying it any mind.  She doesn't dress and act the way that she does in order to stay low-key, and she's used to people looking at her oddly.  She makes note, then lets it go and that's that.

There is a raised eyebrow at the mention of Lux.  It's curious, her interest piqued...an indication that she knows the name.  It's also matched with a slight upward curl of the right side of her lips, turning them into something that looks vaguely lopsided.

"Lux didn't tell me to tell you anything.  I know her, though.  Small world, I guess?"

Nathan
"Feels like it."

Assumptions are heavily steeped in cognitive biases and attribution errors and yet it's easy to make assumptions when assumptions end up proving themselves true with no small amount of frequency. The circles Nathan inhabited last year intersected with other circles and those circles eventually drew into each other. The world isn't small. He just also isn't lucky.

The deadpan voice and the pallor and the darkness of his eyes all point to sleep deprivation but people become sleep deprived for specific reasons. He hasn't got a new parent's beleaguered contentment or a college student's jangling energy. He doesn't look sick. Haunted is a better word for what he is. Haunted or depressed.

Depressed people have a tendency to make more realistic assumptions about the world than do people who aren't viewing everything through a gray lens. Lord knows what Nathan assumes about Kali now that he knows she knows Lux or what Lux has already told him.

"So, uh. How far you going?"

Kali
"As far as I feel like," she says with a casual lift and fall of her jacket-clad shoulders.  "I'm not really heading anywhere particularly.  Thought I'd get out for a night, duck underneath the bright lights of the big city and see what my baby browns could take in."

She cocks her head, watching him as they put foot after foot.  The smile slips away...not that she's concerned or angry.  It's simply more evened out, returning to a relaxed expression.  Perhaps even studious.  She finishes the cigarette, flicks the butt into a storm drain as they pass it by.

"You know, if you want me to fuck off somewhere else, you're allowed to say it.  Worst thing I can do is be a little twat and say something like 'Make me,' but I give you my word as a proud Rom that I won't say that."

There's the little grin, already returning.

Verna
She doesn't look it, but Verna's a woman of few (and dwindling) means. She's not walking down the street tonight to go to dinner or have a drink or a nice time, no. She's turned off her cable, started conserving energy with care, and yes -- is living on ramen for the time being. So all day today, she's been at various places around downtown, leeching wi-fi and air conditioning until she gets kicked out.

She's been sending out resumes with that precious wireless internet. Unemployment checks don't exactly pay well, and the last thing she wants to do is go and beg for her old (old) job back. Feels too much like failure as it is.

She's walking down the sidewalk, head held high, because a Verna who's 'between jobs' needs to work at it to feel some pride in herself. Must be why her clothes look so nice and crisp too, like this is a girl who knows her way around an iron. There's straight-edge pleats in her black pants, like she's on her way back from a job interview. She isn't.

Nathan
Nathan was drunk the first and only time he laid eyes on Verna. Even if he weren't he wasn't at his most observant that day and what little he knew about the Verna-shaped person-blob at the edge of his vision was that his companion had no business going over to her.

But it was noon on a Sunday. He was obviously lit. It's after dark now and he's walking along with his hands in his pockets. His clothing is sturdy but not expensive or tailored. He looks rumpled. Like noir chic isn't something to which he aspires but just crawls into in the morning between his first cigarette and his first cup of coffee. His button-down shirt is still tucked in and he's still wearing his tie but he looks like a kid despite the adultiness of the outfit.

Plain as he is Nathan's plainness makes him memorable. His plainness and his public swerving into alcoholism. He doesn't recognize Verna and other than a brief flick of his eyes at the movement in his periphery he doesn't acknowledge her.

"I mean," he's saying to Kali as they draw within earshot of each other, "I'm heading into a parking garage here soon, I wasn't sure if you were gonna follow me, or..."

Awkward dot com is loading.

Kali
Verna gets a few moments of attention from the swarthy-skinned woman, and there's a moment when the living woman may feel the brown eyes of the dead one focusing on her in a quick but sharp bit of appraisal.  Verna is dressed in a way to look professional, the exact opposite of Kali's bustier, leather jacket and torn-and-bleached jeans (not to mention those heels).  But dress and first looks mean nothing to a person like Kali and there is that brief moment that she examines the woman before throwing her a wink for no other reason than the fact that she feels like confusing someone, before she looks back to Nate with a chuckle.

"Yeah, I don't go into parking garages with guys whose name I don't know.  June 19th isn't my birthday, if you catch my drift.  Besides, people might see is and start wondering, and I'd hate for people to want to associate you directly with me too much.  You're probably far too credible for my blood."

This doesn't mean she's not still walking alongside Nate.  Because she is.  They aren't at the parking garage yet.

Verna
The kinds of people you meet on the street at night...

An obvious prostitute winks at Verna, and then tells the man next to her that she's not going to go into a parking garage with him. Verna's eyes bug out a little, but then it's back to cool and collected, in the attempt to ignore. There's something about that guy though...

He's kind of familiar.

It takes a while to place him, really. But yeah, he's the one who -- drunk at noon -- tried to keep his friend (a crazy woman on drugs) off of her.

And he must have just been propositioning this 'lady of the evening' for a magnificent trip to the parking garage.

Verna... well, she can't exactly hide the inward shudder going on. How utterly skeevy. Her footsteps increase in pace a bit, after a look of disgust flashes over her countenance.

Nathan
"That is the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day."

Either no one has said anything nice to him all day or he thinks he's being funny. 'Credible' is one of the highest compliments a person can pay a newspaper reporter. They're almost as maligned as tabloid writers.

Or drunken louts who can't get laid unless they pay for the privilege.

Nate may be psychic but his powers only apply to the dead. What corporeal creatures are thinking is a goddamn mystery to him and he isn't paying enough attention to catch the look on the woman's face.

Kali
If Verna thinks that the look of disgust is going unnoticed, she's very wrong.  Kali picks up on it, and it puts a smile on her face.  She loves it when people don't look any further than skin deep.  She dealt with it her entire life, and then well after that.  She wants people to do it now, because it means that she will be underestimated.  Kali loves being underestimated.

And so she just looks back at Verna when she looks disgusted, blows her a kiss, then calls out in Romani, her voice briefly taking on an accent that seems similar to Spanish, but just a bit off. "May kali i muri may gugli avela."

And with that done, she looks back to Nathan.  Verna's seemingly left to her own devices at that point.  "Well, then...you need better company.  I can count the days in the last calendar year when I delivered the nicest thing anyone had heard on...oh, probably about one finger."

Verna
Well, nobody ever said that Verna was a particularly great judge of character. Except for perhaps Verna. She passes by oblivious and wordless and judgmental as ever on her way back home.

She doesn't understand the words Kali speaks. How could she? The blown kiss and all has Verna sidestepping a bit, to give the other woman more space. Or just give everyone else around them the impression that no -- Verna is not friends with this lady, not not not.

Once passed the whole sordid affair, there's a bit of an embarrassed blush on her cheeks.

[And Verna's out!]

Nathan
Nate has no idea what Kali called over her shoulder to that woman but the fact that she does call over her shoulder snares his attention and has him looking back at her himself. That doesn't do anything to help refresh his recollection. If anything it puzzles him more.

But Kali and her ilk are puzzling creatures. By now he's come to expect that even if that is about all he can hope to expect.

He needs better company. One finger houses the instances of Kali voicing the nicest thing a person has heard.

"Maybe there were loads of days like that." He coughs into his elbow one two three and then pockets his hand again. "People tend to keep shit like that to themselves."