Li had settled into the seat and so, too, had his eyes settled on Jean-Paul with the unwavering focus of a creature perched on the edge of a burrow, rapt and attentive for the stirring of some smaller creature within.
The stirring, in this case, was of Jean-Paul’s heart, ephemeral and silly and pink and ephemeral as it was, all candy-coated, champagne-bubbled, tremulous and naked as it was beneath the veneer of business and cocktail sips. The devil’s eyes were alight blooms of living flame that reflected all light and was echoed by the still spear-like flames that stretched above the still-lit candles.
No; not a word was missed from Jean-Paul’s shifted mouth, nor was a single quaver of yearning that battered their insides, saccharine and sweet as it was to a devil’s tongue. Li’s expression was intrigued intensity, but calm–and so it remained when he was suddenly walking in a long, ponderous pace across the floor despite there being no clear transition between his sitting and his standing, as though he had himself shifted through ghostly smoke and reassembled mid-stride, one arm tucked behind his back while the other raised his own glass to his lips.
Sip. Pace. His ears, now pointed, swiveled to keep his company’s voice clear. Faint cobwebs seemed to kiss his steps as he walked, like the stirring of dust, if only dust was an unearthly, spirit-bright blend of teals and greens shaped like trailing hands grasping for his shoes and legs. The whispers of souls followed him, not-quite visible and gossamer-like. They whisped and thinned to nothing with the faint imprint of pleading eyes.
Li stopped when Jean-Paul did and, after a considering and gentle stir of the glass in his hand, turned. There was a smile on his face.
“I am fond of you, Jean-Paul V. Poinsette.” There was no mocking to the devil’s tone; it rang as truth, for it was. Devils rarely dealt with those they weren’t fond of in some way, after all. Why draw payment you wouldn’t want to keep?
Li set the empty glass on the table. The faint imprints of where his fingertips rested glowed a faint kiss of red.
“And I am quite fond of your request. You don’t want to settle for what this world has, in its pointless, writhing chaos, decided to give you. It is loveless. It cares nothing for you or Vladimir Volchenkov. It should.
“And so it must be broken.”
The glass shattered, silent, cracked by heat-lines coasting beautiful webs across the glass. The shards danced across themselves and along Li’s fingertips before they snapped back into place in a new form, faceted and crystalline. The reflection of Li’s infernal slitted pupils shifted up from the glass.
“You want Vladimir to be close to what you are; to have a vaporvolph’s strengths and not the human weaknesses that disservice him. For him to no longer be beholden to the tick of the clock, or shape; to be strong, to know some joy of Home.
“This can be done. And no–” (A devil’s smile, kind and wicked.) “I will not need your life to do so. As you said, what’s the point, then? You will live.
“But though we devils break the world and are damned for doing so, we can’t create from nothing. You say you are willing to give for your love to receive.”
Li leaned forward and began drawing infernal sigils in the air with a fingertip. The candelight dimmed low to sharpen the shadows of the room. The iron-hot flickering of the devil’s writing, incomprehensible at first, would slowly begin to pulse and shift in Jean-Paul’s vision as a strange, temporary understanding crept through them. It was every point they had brought up, layered by flame.
“To gift Vladimir a life eternal, unyielding shape, tireless feet and swift hand and biting teeth and the light of Home that will bring him as close to vaporvolph as he could be, as an innate understanding and merger of the two–I will need to sample these things from you, as I myself am not a volph. There’s no way around that.”
The devil’s eyes shifted up to find Jean-Paul’s face.
“Unless you would like to settle for something less? Or ask another vaporvolph?”
Through it all, Jean-Paul remained perched and poised, hands folded in their lap as they tracked every minute movement of the devil with a small, polite smile. If Li was a predator, then Jean-Paul was the doe putting their neck into the wolf’s mouth willingly in spite of the fangs. Of course, much like deer, Jean-Paul would also gore you if push came to shove. It wasn’t Vampiru who made them that way, not really. It was Earth.
Vaporvolphs had no natural predators back Home, a paradise of nothing but sparkle and stardust for aeons upon aeons. Vampires may have given them their first taste of fear but it was only after the Entity devoured home that they truly understood what it really meant. Did they fear now? Yes. They feared losing Vladimir much worse.
“Are you? Marvelous,” they said, and it truly was if true...but then again, Vivi learned quickly on Vampiru that fondness never compelled anyone to take off their collar. Still, it was nice enough, they supposed, being liked by someone holding the leash. Made life easier. Volphs that fall out of favor get sent to the fighting rings.
(To Jean-Paul’s credit, they did not even flinch when the glass shattered, though the frivolous little part of them that hoarded trinkets like a dragon wanted to point out that was good Waterford crystal and not the lower end stuff sold at Macy’s. Jean-Paul wisely decided to say nothing about that and focused on the pretty showmanship instead.)
“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that, darling,” the vaporvolph said. “I mean that in the figurative sense; of course you do. A living volph is much more useful than a dead one and I do so like to be useful.”
They also, naturally, had a vested interest in continuing their life as long as possible. Were they human, they might be so inclined as to let out a breath they didn’t know they were holding but as they were a vaporvolph and one whose human facade didn’t extend much further than purely surface level (and certainly not to the level of lungs when they didn’t need to speak), they instead delicately put aside their glass in preparation for what was to follow. Vladimir wouldn’t have wanted them to give up eternity just for him but Jean-Paul would’ve spent the last few decades of his life living as a human on all levels for his sake. Still, they liked living and Vladimir would’ve hated spending eternity alone. Jean-Paul had loved others in his life but Vladimir, despite his idle wanderings, only loved one man in his life.
"I never expect anything to come free, let alone something like this,” the vaporvolph said, bathed in flame and new understanding. “What you need from me, take it. If it hurts, then so be it. And no, don’t be absurd.”
The dainty little shopkeeper suddenly dissolved into smoke, replaced by the rapidly changing forms of the vaporvolphs he had come to know again in the past few months, even the horrid one who broke all those plates, which he was still cross about when he thought about it.
“They don’t have anything to do with this. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Meaning has to account for something, doesn’t it?”
Their form flickered to a tall, rail-thin rock star, both biter and bitten.
“It’s not actually a sacrifice if you’re taking it from someone else.”
A little pink volph, shivering in anticipation.
The problem with The Little Mermaid isn’t that every step hurt her feet.
And then a shopkeeper again, standing at the devil’s side.
“It’s that she chose the wrong fucking prince.”
“I don’t settle for anything less than the best, darling, and you shouldn’t either. Don’t you want the best, hm? I’ve been told I’m very good.”
