draino | guess who!

[ The hunger, she thinks, was always there. But he was better-fed before, and that appetite was more manageable. Here want is razored down to a cutting wire. She suspects he would not like it if he knew she were internally dissecting the differences in selves, and carefully controls course against showing her hand, either in game or in general communication. ]

They'd be pretty disappointing right now, [ with an illustrative little shake of her head, black hair settling against her shoulders, ] too tiny.

They do. They will. [ Hey, there's that phrasing again. ] Does yours have powers?

Still enough for me.

[enough to rake through and pull back. yeah, she's got plenty he can work with.]

Mhmm. [the repetition is a straight shot to a recess of his mind, a rusted screw loosening. an uncomfortable reminder of someone.] Are they Eula?

Generous of you. What else do you like, besides long braids?

[ That's a conversational tack that has not a thing to do with the game, but Roza's favorite subject is as ever other people's favorites. Where they twine with hers, where they become disparate, where they don't actually reflect in their choices — sometimes there's a spoken favorite and a real favorite. She watches him an attentive warmth.

Strange animal. One that exists in defiance of something. Maybe himself. ]

No, not Eula. Is yours blond?

Edited 2025-07-01 21:21 (UTC)

[her warmth is met with heat. she's engaging with him in a way that leaves him no choice but to breach a potential boundary, but he thinks she must want him to tell the truth or she wouldn't be asking. not like ani or shauna or cellar, no, she hasn't sidestepped or disuaded him. she has to be encouraging him.]

I like a lotta things. I like telling women about 'em when I touch them. You want me to touch you?

[the cards stay in his peripheral. not eula but a bartender who wouldn't call themselves a dancer. options don't lie, he's smacked down so many little faces he knows he's got to be close.]

You're shooting blanks here, sweetheart. Not blond. Is it Sebastian?

I think so, yeah, [ truthful, matter-of-fact, ] but I'm still figuring out if I should. Want and should are concepts pretty far apart.

[ Amid the real spirits and real ghosts are figurative ones. The path to this new place where she knows the difference between these two has been an arduous one, lined with mistakes made of blue eyes and back alleys. Also, she doesn't think it would be fair to him when she has little pieces of a maybe-imaginary past staining her memory. ]

It's not Sebastian. But you're warmer! You're warmer. I'm going to narrow it down: does the first letter of his name begin after the letter L?

[he's cocky, a hook on a fish line hoping for just the right snag inside of her.]

You think so? Then who cares about should? You'll never have somebody like me and that makes you want me, doesn't it?

[when it's really more of the other way around— saber wanting someone he just knows breathes an air he never will, so he wants to take and take til they live and breath only him, which is when he tires of them.]

Huh. Down the alphabet not up, okay? Goddamn, who am I missing. Are they a girl?

Maybe. I like rare things. [ This is also genuine. ] Tell me what you're like. What you'd be like with me.

[ Not that she hasn't made her own deductions, rapaciousness written into his movements and voice like wildness is in hers. Her wildness says make a game of it for him; if he guesses, he gets anything he wants. Her better angels say girl you are crazy and not in a good way. A third part of her thinks she's being absurdly self-aggrandizing to presume the gambit would even work. All three sections argue somewhere in the high seats of her mind, watching the theater play. She crosses her legs, right thigh caught under the left, skirt fabric snug betwixt them where the line between limbs is created, defining the distinct shapes. ]

No, a man. Definitely a man. But okay, now I've cut out half for yours. Is he close to my age, your person?

Edited 2025-07-02 00:11 (UTC)

[saber thinks of himself as a rarity. no one from his operation is alive anymore and it's not often raíz gets a frontline man ready to tear up and apart whatever lies in front of him, human or monster. he's special, hopes to be seen as such, even with his teeth bared in a smile and gaze lingering on her legs. he'd been there, only he was someone else and she was, too.]

With you? [debating, head tilting from one side to the other.] I'd tell you things you don't want people to know you wanna hear, but you really do. I'd make sure you'd never have to lift a finger, but most importantly, [elbow to his knee, chin resting in his palm as he tips the remaining cards down,] you'd be the best fed body in this manor.

I guess so. [thumb and forefinger pointing to make a gun.] Danny.

Edited 2025-07-02 00:44 (UTC)

[ The ungentle magnetization of the ego tugs through her mind's eye. It's very feline, that certainty: I, predator, am worthy of your respect. Your admiration. Killing things is good work and I'm good at it. Death moves around him like a slow dark cloud. Vulture circling a big cat, waiting for a taste of his prey.

Roza wonders if he thinks that this is her; if so, she makes no move to dispute it. ]

I think all that's true, but: [ she says this settling her little card down, leaving Danny's picture face-up, ] I don't have a lot of shame, [ that's a complicated half-truth, right there, ] and I think you might not always like what I want. You'd have to dig really hard to find things I won't admit to. I think you have a lot of practice at that, though, don't you? Sticking your hands in people and opening them up for you.

But you win! It's Danny. [ The vocal inflection on 'Danny' has intimacy in it. His is a name she can't say normally, or casually. ]

I surrender. [ Hands up in submission, open palms framing her face. ]

Don't lie. Everybody's got shame, [the type that shivers under the tongue, under the skin, the kind he wants to flay out between bodies and lap up like a sick reward.] and what would you know about me sticking my hands in people, huh?

[he hold his card up – neon – for her to see and places it on the bottom of the pile. the win is barely celebrated.]

I can feel you in here, y'know. [tapping at his temple.] Like a fuckin' radio. In, out, in, out. What kinda things are you gettin'?

[ Well, since he brought it up. Her focus narrows so intently that it could burn a hole through both of them, zing through air like a sniper's bullet. Only when she is perfectly attenuated to her reception is she still. Spatial changes sometimes invoke themselves. The room itself distances itself, grows smaller, more remote. Time falls away like dead leaves from an autumn tree, orange, yellow — ]

Red. Blood all over you like a patchwork of DNA. Some of it is really old. [ Now her fingers tick off one, two. She leans forward, airy voice observational. Every microexpression is absorbed into the vast library of her memory, each lash flicker and frown, drop or rise in voice. These physical tells matter in the scope of what's in his head, calling out to her. His signature is not loud, per se, but it is unusual, and that compels her curiosity. ] Id, ego. The superego has very little hold on your spirit. If you were an animal, it would be a hunting animal. Something big tagged you in the wild, wrote its name on you. You think in pictures, but the pictures don't stay the same. I like seeing it.

And you, you like being different. It doesn't scare you. I guess that's what shames me, sometimes, though, so you're right about that.

[ A beat. This is a test. She wants to see if he'll be disturbed by her insight. Roza settles back in her chair, more cavalier but no less truthful: ] You were thinking about putting me facefirst on the table. That is different. Real different from the one people usually want from me.

Edited 2025-07-02 02:57 (UTC)

[no bracing, no sharp inhale when she lines her energy up for a straight shot of absolute precision in his head. he takes it because he's here with her and watching, expression slack and without the mask he puts on for pretty faces. a bit late for masks.]

Huh.

[saber's not so good with thinking before acting, curiosity coming secondary to anger, dark eyes scanning their strange room. he hates spatial changes, but raíz does that shit so much he got used to the ebb and flow of reality. like when she has to put him away somewhere, when neon has to choke him out and drain his powers to make him stop. he doesn't like her in here as much as he likes being talked about by a beautiful woman who doesn't seem to care what sort of violence stains his hands. his mind. roza isn't wrong about any of it– the blood, the animal, and most of all not being scared.

she'll get choppy bits of a repeated memory (a serrated knife straight down the throat of a man), an OCD repetition of steps one through five, steps one through three, then it's just one over and over. a trick he learned to keep the psychics in the house out. a tape stuck running.]

Why are you scared, hm? People get you for that or somethin'? [grinning. amused, annoyed. turned on.] I wanna do a lot more than put you face first on the table. Bet you already know. What do they usually want? Tell me, since you wanna play show and tell. It's only fair.

Edited 2025-07-02 04:00 (UTC)

It's not the scared that shames me, [ thoughtful, ] but the places I ought to be scared.

[ Her existence is one big atonement project, an accounting of inherited deficit. Margins born in the red. Wrong father, wrong grandfather.

His boat does not rock, Roza grants, and she feels a little surer of herself — hard to believe, maybe, that beyond the flirtation lives an ounce of uncertainty, but she learned long ago that even in the scheme of what is strange she may be stranger yet. ]

You don't have to do that, [ now she's pulling his pigtails just a little bit, although Roza transitions it to something smokier thereafter, ] by the way. 'Cause what I see's not just in you. Every thing you touch has you on it. Leaves memories like a trail. When you touch me, you'll leave yourself on me, too.

[ What she doesn't say: and vice-versa. With an uptick in ebullience, like she wants to get giggly: ]

I'm a cowgirl. But not all the time. [ Her surfeit of energy sometimes means it's just easier for her to ride until the sun comes down, and Roza likes to make things easy for people. ] You wanna see? Put out your hand, and I'll show you.

You don't have to be scared of me.

[a boldfaced lie said oh-so-sweetly. no fear unless he's the one protecting her from it, unless he's the one making the fear grow inside of her. his head twitches as if a fly is in his face and in his eyes with a constant buzzing, nose wrinkling when he feels her pull. she digs into places he doesn't look at anymore or doesn't have the capacity to see the same, murky waters thick and hazy. he's not like her, he can't hold what she can.]

Ugh, yes I do. [waving her reassurance away.] I was made to leave a mark. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't and I like it that way. I wanna leave myself on you.

[cowgirl. did she say that on purpose? does she know his thoughts will go straight to her on top of him with his hand on her belly to feel himself inside of her? they do, and so he obeys without question to lean forward and outstretch that same hand he pictures on her bare skin over the table between them for her to take.]

Show me.

[ She wonders what he'd feel if she were as he imagined. Blitzed out, fucked stupid, delirious. Eyes showing their whites. Whether that big-predator twitch nestling at the corner of his brain would alleviate with other distractions. Roza turns the corner at her decision-making process, and in doing so, feels the rustle of satisfaction she associates with some inhibition left behind. ]

Okay.

[ Is she saying it in response to him leaving himself on her like a bloody tattoo? Maybe. But she likes being made a mess of, half-destroyed; the incessant energy build of her brain and body and spirit mean that what is ruined rebuilds itself. Setting the heavy bed of her inner forest on fire is a particular vice. The undergrowth reveals sides of herself she's never met before.

Roza gently turns his hand palm up. With the edges of her nails, kept just long enough to administer this kind of gesture, she traces thin white lines in gentle, stimulating circles. Consequently the message of shared memory looks a lot like her, reflected through someone else's eyes, and it comes in like a slow fade, rather than a bright and arresting pop. The melting expression, girl dissolving into raw want. The unknown man's gaze panning down the long blade of her body, undulating there. ]

Which way?

[ That or bent over the table, she means. She liked that idea of his, but also derives a certain satisfaction from giving him control. ]

Edited 2025-07-04 01:00 (UTC)

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