serpntsmile:
Steering Linse’s attention back away from the rest of the world, and the nearly maimed bartender, was about as easy as he’d expected it to be. If not just by voice but action as well, it was difficult to ignore physical direction, but in that situation also a legitimate risk of losing a body part if it irked him too much. That didn’t seem to be the case, but less than five minutes ago Linse also seemed fairly human and not armed with a set of jaws that put most nightmares to shame, so nothing was ever really a certainty.
“Well, I can’t say it’s not a little…unexpected. Anyone would be a bit…ah…nervous at the sight of those.” He admitted with a chuckle, lightening the moment just a hint. “Lots of people in the city have sharp teeth though, you stick around long enough you see all sorts of interesting things.”
He wasn’t human himself, at times it was hard to judge others when you tucked away all of your own little secrets under false skin. And just as much it was the terrible affliction of his ego’s reassurance that he could handle most anything, or anyone, life threw into his path. Those teeth hadn’t been barred at him after all.
Either Linse had no idea just how brazen his actions were or he knew exactly that and Everett couldn’t decide which he hoped was more true. In the end it didn’t matter, very little did when he felt that almost nip and, truth be told, he was just a little hesitant to get too close to those teeth with someone he had just met but it was a null argument from his brain when the rest of him was perfectly fine with the prospects of sacrificing a finger or two.
It was all about perspective really, and right then his view was full on gorgeous monster with a sweet smile and hungry eyes. Hopefully not the wrong sort of hungry, but Everett was banking somewhat on luck and the Gods of overly eager libidos to be on his side that evening. When weren’t they, honestly?
That pleasant twitch in the pit of his stomach, he distantly wondered why the question even was one; after that he might have followed Linse to some dark corner even with the certainty of losing a hand. But he wasn’t going to look too eager about some time away from the crowd with the pretty creature, he had an image to keep after all. So he waited a moment before picking up his drink to follow, admiring the view during the short trek. If admiration was as far as he was bound to get that evening he wasn’t going to be entirely disappointed.
Maybe just a little.
His brow knitted in almost-humor at the sight of the other nearly gulping down water, hands clinging and eyes seeming wider with the satisfaction of it; how could someone so distracting a moment before look so adorable the next? Razor jaws and all, it was baffling how a warm spot hit him when he watched Linse with that pitcher. He chuckled at the thought as he sank into the seat next to him and shifted sideways to face him and put a shoulder to block out the other people around them.
He wanted Linse’s attention all to himself, he wasn’t in the mood to share.
“For someone who doesn’t speak you’re very talkative,” he mused with a curl of his fingers as he turned his palm upward. his eyes lingered on the other’s face. “You don’t have to say everything, Lovely, there’s plenty I can read just fine just watching the way you move and those pretty eyes.”
There might be many in the city with fangs, but Linse was sure there was no one quite like him. After all, he was the only siren who had volunteered to leave the freedom of the sea in favor of walking the dry land beneath it. It was a decision he regretted some days. The days when he struggled to communicate without his voice, the days when this fragile human skin itched and ached in the dryness of the open air, the days when he spent long hours undergoing the testing that was one of the conditions for his residency, the days when the artificial flesh he fed on sat cold and dead in his stomach in pale reminder of the decadent taste of hot coppery blood mixed with the salty sea: all of these days made him long for the boundless depths of the sea outside and the freedom of moving in his true form.
But the sea outside did not have the man looking at him with hungry eyes, who touched him with hands that kindled a warm hunger of his own inside the siren. And though it was far different than everything he had known before, Linse was excited to see just where it would end up. Something in him said it would be well worth every uncomfortable day spent on two legs so far.
The siren shifted in his seat after Everett found a space beside him, Linse moving to close what little gap was left between them so that a warm point of contact opened up where his thigh pressed against the other man’s in a line of heat nearly from hip to knee. The siren curled a finger around Everett’s wrist, pulling so his hand rested palm up on the firmness of Linse’s thigh. Almost shyly he slid his fingers up the smoothness of his forearm until they pooled in the cup of his palm, his own resting comfortably against Everett’s wrist.
|| I’m usually quite vocal. || Linse replied, eyes crinkling with a playfully coy smile, as if he wasn’t half distracted by the feel of Everett’s skin beneath his finger as he traced out the words. || Maybe I’ll show you sometime. ||
Linse studies the other man’s face, drinking in the alluring line of his jaw, the clever glint in his eyes, the expressiveness of those dark brows. Pressed together in the low light of the club, this was as close as he’d gotten to someone of another species while in this form. At one point the siren had worried the hunger and instinct of his predatory nature would rule within him even in his shape. Sitting here, there was instinct and hunger that rose in the pit of his stomach, but it was of an entirely different kind.
He watched as Everett spoke, finding his gaze drawn back to the curve of his lips where he could catch quick glimpses of that tempting tongue. Confusion. Curiosity. What was it that this body wanted from that tongue, that merely the teasing sight of it would arouse such a response in him?
His attention dropped down to the hand that lay open and relaxed, palm up beneath his own. Long fingers, short dark nails, delicate creases that spread like a roadmap beneath his fingertips. This hand had touched him twice, brief moments of skin against skin but still his body sang with it, as if he were a harp whose strings Everett’s fingers were barely starting to play along. Slowly, reverently, Linse slid his fingers along Everett’s palm until they found the spaces between the man’s own digits and slotted neatly between them in a tangle of warm skin and nerves.
Heat flushed through the siren and he quickly withdrew his hand to once again clutch at the pitcher in his lap, lifting it to greedily gulp down more of the cooling contents within. Maybe he was overheated after dancing? And his heart was fluttering from the earlier effort and the thrill of confrontation with the bartender.
Linse continued drinking deeply as he considered this, taking comfort in the familiar feeling of cool water rushing over his tongue. What was happening? What was the cause behind all of these new sensations that were so out of season for the siren?
As he drank he eyeballed Everett where the other man sat beside him. He was pretty sure he knew the cause behind all of these new sensations. That cause that was eyeing him back from over the rim of the pitcher, with sea glass colored eyes Linse could see his own strange hunger echoed in.
In his hands the pitcher grew lighter and lighter, until he relinquished it empty to the table, tongue chasing the last hints of moisture that still lingered on his lips. Feeling flustered but bold, he snagged the glass of liquor from beside his abandoned pitcher and took a reckless sip from the edge.
Mistake.
Burning heat flooded his tongue and shot up through his sinuses in a rush of eye watering fire that made Linse gasp and cough, the siren leaning into the firmness of Everett’s body beside him. Still coughing and blinking back tears, he was happy to relinquish the offending glass when it was gently tugged from his hand. Covering his mouth as he fought to drag air back down his burning throat, he reached out with his free hand to find Everett’s leg against his own.
|| You drink that? || He signed against Everett’s thigh, twisting to peer up at Everett with disbelief through eyes wet with tears. || How?? ||
They were close enough now that even in low light Linse could see the individual lashes that curled dark against Everett’s skin. It was hard to breathe for an entirely different reason now. The siren’s eyes widened, the hand cupped over his mouth slowly dropping away and coming to rest in his lap. Brought to stillness with unexpected anticipation Linse breathed, and he yearned.
"That, and all manner of other vile, posionous things," he chuckled and found the reaction not at all surprising; whatever Linse was, it was certainly not anything familiar to typical vices. "They're terribly bad for me but, like most bad things, the more you indulge the more you want to. Until you forget they were bad at all and miss them when you're denied." He was nothing, by his own admission, if not a hedonist by design.
Maybe that was too new to the strange creature staring at him with only mild understanding of why, maybe it was in some way unfair; Everett was cautious but never so much so that he lost sight of possibility. And the possibilities for that night were warm and luring, peppered a bit more by the exotic risk of sharp teeth and murky-water glances. Pretty little thing, monster; but who wasn't in some way or another?
But Everett abhorred the expected, even when the expectation was all large eyes and baited breath he could all but see Linse holding somewhere deep inside whatever mysterious design made up their insides; anymore Everett couldn't pretend he really knew if those were even the same as his own.
Well, he could venture a fair guess that at least some parts were not, if Linse was at all the image they showed outwardly, but who really knew about those things and it was a conversation for, hopefully, just a bit later.
"You can't stare me down with that look and expect me not to think there's more than the burn of alcohol on your mind," he pointed out in playful chiding and lifted a hand with slender fingers to Linse's chin to tip it to an incline, noting the marble-solid fine lines that it cut, offering more room for the tilt of his own when he quelled that bright-eyed stare with a simple press of lips to the the curve of pale throat for a fleeting instant. That was all he needed to learn a great deal; the temperature of skin, the strange subtle ocean-twinge to it, something wholly not human and fascinating.
It was a tricked learned from vampires, as Everett didn't descriminate in the company he kept, but not for want of blood in his case but chasing a reaction, risky as it may have been to toy with the intetests of that pretty monster. Very few things stirred a person more than the distraction they didn't expect. Everett had confidence though, could scent the none too subtle flare of arousal when he licked his lips, silly that it was that snakes had to taste the air to learn such things, so he doubted it was those teeth that he was likely to earn for the gesture.
Anything else he was more than happy to entertain; there happened to be at least few parts of Linse that his mind kept returning to with nagging certainty that they might just be very entertaining indeed, if the lovely nightmare were more curious than perplexed by the attention Everett was willing to devote the night to showing them.
