verità svelata dal tempo - matteo and quinton
When he moved through the club it is not with the fluid, harmless grace of a dancer, passion en pointe, strength in delicacy. He moved with a slow grace that was muscular tension and purpose, lazy restiveness, a great shark cruising. Like the predator he was, he did not duck and weave and make room for others in the heated crowd, but allowed them to part for him and his consistent, easy motion. A predator – and yet not one that was sanctioned by an inability for conscience, not one born with instincts to survive, to kill. A bespoke creature, a miracle of heightened and rapid-fire evolution.
His short life had been a single unshakable lesson of eat or be eaten, and without the diversions of a schoolyard to pull him away, he had learned well the laws of the streets, to walk with keen ears and open eyes, to never turn your back or to display fear save when it could garner protection, and above all, to seize opportunity. A meal today may not mean a meal tomorrow; just as one day spent breathing did not guarantee another. His world was a savage one, and so he was savage, but it was a savagery cloaked in beauty and so too often many forgot. An honest savagery comprised by his very appearance, by a cruel and bounteous nature, and yet he could not curse the physical lie too vehemently.
For so long, he had existed at the whim and pleasure of others, kept as a living ornament, extolled for virtues that he had done nothing to claim, but time had changed that, time and quietly building a reputation, like endless shifts in chess – a game that he would have loved if he had known it as a boy – time had given him some legitimacy. He was no longer the starving innocent on Night City’s heartless streets, and no longer desperate, and by giving him power – carefully, hard won power, it was true – he had finally found himself an opportunity to build himself part of a life he might have wanted if he had been given the ability to choose.
For as much as the constant pounding of the music, the frenzied buzz of voices, the flashing, overwhelming lights irritated him, there was something to be said about this den of honesty, this monument to shallow aches, this dance of will-you-come-back-to-mines that were as fascinating to him as any nature documentary. True, the trappings were all falsehoods, flexing of nonexistent muscles and fluttering of rather unimpressive eyelashes, the delicate ballet of the sexes, but in the end, it all boiled down to one of the only things left that were most often left without lies – sex, death, and a mother’s love. Those things were real when driven by desire – for pleasure, for revenge, for love. Here, there was an unspoken contract, and it was refreshing – understanding, social telepathy, or perhaps a manner of reading people over time. He hadn’t been a natural at it, but he had learned the algorithms, the patterns of behavior for the organic computer, repeated, with differences, like mathematics or music.
Matteo liked it better here than the decadence of the old boys’ clubs bought by the free-flow cash of the junkies, wine sourced from up North where the grapes would not be soiled by the corpses of forgotten children that resulted from their little – business. Liked it better when he could dress as he choose, and not as a doll for others’ amusement, a practice that had slowly trickled out by careful enforcement. Simplicity was what he chose when he could and it reflected here, an open-throated white shirt that softened the pallor of his skin, dark wash jeans cut well to slender legs, and little else for a warm, frantic night. Simple glass of water in his hand as he leaned against the bar, watched the patrons come and go like so many colorful fish. They were relaxed in his presence, simply, because he was not their enemy, and because he was many things but very rarely foolish.
He saw one in particular, and he paused as he took a sip of his drink, slender fingers curving tight, just enough of a flirt with a strangle of flesh against glass. Everything minute, but the large dark eyes sharpened, and he watched him over the wet curve of the rim before he gently placed it down again. His heartbeat had sped, his mind flooded questions, but there was a tinge of amusement that rose in him as well, a distraction from the strong emotions that he inspired. He didn’t like strong emotions, but he had long found that accepting them, letting them flood through him like water without resistance to be gone, was more constructive than repressing them. He would do his battle with them tonight, but not now.
He rose, and made his way over to the other man, still cloaked in shadow, sat next to him with the same tragic gravitas as an old master’s painting falling ruined onto pavement. He wore no cologne, and no adornments, but his voice was soft and sweet. “You came with someone,” he asked, his voice far more Americanized now, trained without noticing, but with a hint, a lilt still, of a country where he had never been. The darkness, broken only by flashes of light like bioluminescence in the deep, caressed him like a lover, against his cheek, the curve of his neck, buried itself in soft, deep eyes. It took a great deal for him not to give the game away – he rarely laughed aloud since Quin had left, but he very nearly cracked a smile - not entirely appropriate to an even faux-seduction. He managed.
Whispered in his ear, in a voice like silk and like secrets, of sordid passions without regret, for harmless and harming no one, they were just the actions of honesty and choice.
Without words, his heart – you came back.
With words, a verbal caress – “you’ll leave with me.”
