Dal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dalicious) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
speaksoftlylove2019-04-09 01:24 pm
dalicious) wrote in speaksoftlylove2019-04-09 01:24 pm
(no subject)
been nearly two years since i wrote a damn thing and this fell out because life is full of little disappointments, a song by fall out boy
charlotte + balthazar; whatever weird rp au they've got going on
2710 words
redd please just take this idek
The courtship is surprisingly nice.
It's not really fair to say it's surprising, maybe, but at the same time Balthazar isn't like any of the other men she's known; he's a product of a different time, a different world altogether, and while he's quick with numbers and plays easily with people he isn't exactly great at other things. He doesn't show her off as much as she'd like, though that isn't to say he doesn't do that; it's just that it's by way of odd gifts that she's not sure what to do with, old things they've found in this place that he lets her keep or jewelry that decidedly isn't ever a ring that he slips onto her without her noticing, somehow - there's just suddenly a bangle around her wrist or a pendant on a dainty chain clasped around her neck, and it's almost infuriating that she never sees him do it.
It's infuriating, but it's fun, too, and honestly, that's why she likes him. His words are teasing but they aren't ever cruel, not to her - and she has seen him be cruel to those that he doesn't like, he's sharp-tongued and easily irritated even though he manages to keep the worst of it back, but his ire is never aimed at her and it's always when he thinks she isn't around. That's likely saying something - and after all, it isn't as though she isn't keeping her share of things from him too. They keep their anger from each other, and to some degree they keep their strength from each other as well. Though that isn't to say she's never seen his; there's been at least once that he's simply picked her up as though it was nothing before tossing her into something - the bed, the lake at the edge of town - and she'd laughed the whole time because it'd been exhilarating, and even if she supposes that sort of force would be terrifying coming from anyone else, somehow it isn't from him.
There's something dangerous about him that she likes, almost as much as she likes his money or his company.
His skills lie in places that she doesn't understand, and he doesn't try to explain them to her; she knows rather little about where he comes from, honestly, but she finds that doesn't really matter here. But once in a while he'll describe the city he's from, this Los Angeles place - it seems like something from a story rather than somewhere that really exists, with its spires and sparkling lights and carriages that drive themselves. It's a city on the coast, near the ocean; for some reason, he always seems very fixated on the water.
He's fixated on the water here, too, often choosing to spend time with her by the river, near the spot where it feeds into the lake. Sometimes he just plays with that coin he has while they talk; she likes it when he brings that weird deck of cards with him, shuffling it easily while he tells her a bit about people he knows - about Papa Midnite, who once fought in a war against Hell itself, and about John Constantine, who's still fighting, and once he tells her about Gabriel, though in the end he doesn't say much about Gabriel - and once he's decided he's bored with shuffling, he draws a card and then they play the game.
"Open your third eye," he says, his voice quiet as he holds the card up, back facing her. "Tell me what you see."
It usually takes her a while to see anything, though it's not for want of trying; she does try to do the whole third-eye thing, but if she's honest she's got no idea what he means. And so she'll usually stare at the card very seriously, like maybe if she looks hard enough she can see through it, and her brow furrows in deep concentration (though she isn't sure what she's concentrating on) and usually what comes to her is some sort of nonsensical image that makes her giggle at the thought of it.
"All I'm seeing is a rat in a dress," she says, lightly.
"It's what you should be seeing," he replies just as lightly, turning the card around to show her the image.
"Truly?" She takes it from him, which he allows, and looks at it almost too excitedly - still delicately so, always delicately so, but it's always difficult to contain it when she gets it right.
"Of course."
And while she does get the feeling that he knows something she doesn't - she often gets that feeling around him, but it's usually something attributed to the difference in times, the difference in worlds - she can never figure out how the trick is pulled off; if it's a trick at all, it's certainly a fine one, not explained with sleight of hand or anything else that she can see, for that matter.
She doesn't think she has psychic powers or anything, but when she's playing the game with him she can almost believe she does, and there's something about it that makes her feel special; she never sees him playing it with anyone else, it's something that he's reserved just for her, and there's something about that that makes her feel strange.
The courtship is fun, and it's nice, but it's never exactly as she imagined it to be; perhaps it's just how they do things in Los Angeles, where there isn't a war and people like him can just prosper into infinity, but it seems to go on for an incredibly long time - long enough for it to drive something cold into the pit of her stomach, to send up twisting tendrils of doubt that sometimes make her go out into the woods and punch things until her knuckles bruise and she has to wrap them before he sees, telling him that she just tripped as she was headed out to the well - just an unfortunate accident befalling a delicate maiden in the woods, and after he's disappeared into the other room she huffs a bit in his direction for believing her without asking further.
But she knows, in some ways, that that's just how he is; he's not an emotional person unless he has reason to be, and she's sure she can feel it from him at certain times - when she's sitting on his lap on the bed and his hands are in her hair, and sometimes she's kissing him but sometimes she doesn't need to, she just runs her hands back over his shoulders and she looks at him, and his eyes are dark but once in a while she sees something there, something bright and burning and almost red-tinged in color, and no matter how odd she finds it the burning seems to eat away at the doubt and the worry until there's nothing left but a sense of warmth and bliss that seems to come on so suddenly that she has to question where it came from.
She's been here long enough to know that some people have powers and abilities that they don't show to anyone; it's on one of those occasions when her own thoughts melt away to be replaced with that almost intoxicating warmth that she asks.
"Is that you doing that...?" she murmurs, letting her fingers curl up to play with the back of his hair.
He seems to shrug a bit, rolling his eyes a little in that odd, idle way that he tends to when he doesn't see much point in a question. "And if it is?"
She doesn't respond right away, not in words; she just offers a light hum in response. Thinking, though it's difficult when it's like this, when most of her thoughts are gone. Eventually, the words come. "What else do you do?"
"I can do lots of things."
"Do you do this a lot...?"
"To you, only once in a while."
"Would I recognize it, if you were doing it all the time?"
"You recognize it now, don't you?"
Another quiet noise; her fingers run idly through his hair. "...This is nice," she says eventually; perhaps she should second-guess it, if he's able to do things like this whenever he pleases, but in the end it's the fact that he can do this whenever he pleases and yet he chooses to do it like this and only like this that lets her trust it. "What do you call it?"
"Influence."
She nuzzles up against him then, burying her face in his neck; she can't explain why it feels more intimate now that she knows what he's doing, but the fact of the matter is that it does. "Don't stop."
She doesn't tell him when they're having one of those weirdly intimate moments on the bed, those times in which nothing happens but most of her thoughts are gone, replaced by heat and influence and weird oblivion otherwise; it wouldn't feel real then. So she asks him to meet her at the well, and she's found flowers and threaded them through her hair, and she's got a short, flowing dress on that she wouldn't be able to fight in if she tried. The very picture of femininity, delicate and fragile, and he arches an eyebrow when he sees it, though he doesn't complain.
"Look at you," he says, sounding almost mildly impressed. "Is there an occasion?"
She smiles, but there's a pause. Those tendrils of doubt again; maybe they're right, maybe no one will love her.
But she has to try.
"I think I'm in love," she says; she isn't prepared for the reply.
"Congratulations?" It's idle, as many of the things he says are, but tinged with something else - it isn't rejection, just an uncertainty as to why he's being told this.
She stares. "Oh, please don't."
"'Don't' what...?" The coin is out, though she's not sure when he retrieved it; it's being passed over his fingers, back and forth in that oddly mesmerizing way that he tends to employ when he's not doing anything in particular - it doesn't anger her, and if anything it's distracting for the briefest moment before she snaps her attention back to him.
"I... With you." She can hear her tone going sharp, almost brutishly condescending, and she's quick to clasp her hands over her chest. "We do work well as a couple together, don't you think? And we've been courting for some time now, so- "
"Courting." And now he's likewise staring, though that coin continues to flip idly over his knuckles; after a moment he glances off, a light laugh behind his words even so. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
"Yes?" She can't even begin to cover the incredulity, the roughness in her tone. "What did you think we were doing?"
Another light laugh, under his breath. "I don't recall saying no to anything, so you can calm down now."
"...Ah." She steps back a bit. Breathes. "Right, of course, I..."
"There are some things you should probably know," he says, though his attention is more on the surroundings than her; not awkward or self-conscious, just taking things in. "If this is the direction you want to take things."
She pauses. Smiles, after a moment. "I'm sure it's nothing we can't handle."
That gets a soft sound out of him. "We'll see."
She's quiet for a moment, sitting on the pier near the lake. "So... You're third in line for the throne of the kingdom of the damned."
He shrugs. "Something like that. I'm in a bit of a...position, right now, to have that right revoked for a very long time."
"But you didn't lie, either, you're one of those banker-people. From Los Angeles."
"Also something like that, yes." He tips his head back a bit, gaze trained up towards the sky for a moment; it's a casual gesture, something he clearly isn't thinking too much about. He seems more relaxed, now that she knows.
She likes it. Not what he's been telling her, not really, but it's a good look.
"So what do you...do, exactly." It's a flat question, something that she probably should have asked when all of this explaining started. "When you're not handling people's money."
"I help my family, I suppose." It's almost sardonic, the way he says it. "I tempt people. Lead them down a path of suffering and torment until they die. I'm very good at what I do."
She swallows hard. "But you haven't done that to me." There's a pause. "Or...anyone else here?" That last part is more of a question than she would have liked.
"No, I haven't."
She plays with the bangle around her wrist; it's one he gave her, one he'd slipped on without her noticing. "Why?"
"There's no reason to," he says. "No interest, either."
It's the second part that strikes her as more honest, though she really couldn't say why. "Do you like us?"
"As much as I like anyone. Humans are interesting creatures."
She pauses. Keeps messing with the bangle. "Do you like me?"
He shrugs again. "More than I like most."
"Is that good enough?" She doesn't know what makes her ask it, because if it's a negative answer she really doesn't want to know; if it's a negative answer she'll fight him, if it's a negative answer she doesn't know how she's supposed to fight him but she'll do it anyway, better that her axe meet his neck than have him killing people left, right, and center. Better that he die than use his influence on her again, because if he can wipe her thoughts at any moment and make her think what he wants her to think, it's hard to say what he'll use that for if all of this isn't good enough.
So she doesn't want to know. But as a warrior, she needs to know.
Is that good enough?
"Perhaps." It's noncommittal, infuriatingly so; she doesn't know what else she expected from him.
She looks at him. Studies him, really. If she's honest, she isn't sure what she's looking for. "Can you love me?"
"It's possible."
"Is that a lie?"
"Do you think it's a lie?"
She hesitates. "I don't know. I haven't really dealt with...people like you."
He tips his head a little, conceding the point. "I've been in relationships with humans before. Believe me, human affections are some of the most inconvenient things they can shove at me."
"Wow, thanks."
That draws a laugh out of him, quietly. "I wouldn't bother putting up with it if it weren't worth my while, now, would I?"
She'll turn it over in her head for a little while. "Don't...do that, while we're here. The tormenting and sadism and killing."
"Or...?"
"Or I'll take your entire damn head off. I can't just let you run around doing that."
Again, he looks almost mildly impressed. "That's fair."
"So you'll stop?"
"It's hard to stop something you haven't done."
"Oh," she says.
"You did tell me 'not here.'"
"...Right. So I did."
"For now, this place is the only one that matters," he says, returning his attention to the water; even knowing where he's from, she can't say she fully understands why he's so transfixed with it. "Isn't it?"
"Open your third eye," he says, drawing a card from that weird deck of his and holding it out, back facing her. "Tell me what you see."
The image floats up hazily to the front of her mind. "It's a dog with a parasol." She tips her head at him a bit, though, once it's out there, something hitting her suddenly. "You're just humoring me, aren't you. You fed it to me."
"Fed it to you?"
"With your influence. You tell me what I'm supposed to see - you let me win! That's the trick, right?" Honestly, she should be mad; for the time being, she's just pleased with figuring it out. She can be annoyed with him later.
He turns the card around, showing her the image of the bichon with a parasol clutched daintily between its paws. "Actually, I didn't this time."
charlotte + balthazar; whatever weird rp au they've got going on
2710 words
redd please just take this idek
The courtship is surprisingly nice.
It's not really fair to say it's surprising, maybe, but at the same time Balthazar isn't like any of the other men she's known; he's a product of a different time, a different world altogether, and while he's quick with numbers and plays easily with people he isn't exactly great at other things. He doesn't show her off as much as she'd like, though that isn't to say he doesn't do that; it's just that it's by way of odd gifts that she's not sure what to do with, old things they've found in this place that he lets her keep or jewelry that decidedly isn't ever a ring that he slips onto her without her noticing, somehow - there's just suddenly a bangle around her wrist or a pendant on a dainty chain clasped around her neck, and it's almost infuriating that she never sees him do it.
It's infuriating, but it's fun, too, and honestly, that's why she likes him. His words are teasing but they aren't ever cruel, not to her - and she has seen him be cruel to those that he doesn't like, he's sharp-tongued and easily irritated even though he manages to keep the worst of it back, but his ire is never aimed at her and it's always when he thinks she isn't around. That's likely saying something - and after all, it isn't as though she isn't keeping her share of things from him too. They keep their anger from each other, and to some degree they keep their strength from each other as well. Though that isn't to say she's never seen his; there's been at least once that he's simply picked her up as though it was nothing before tossing her into something - the bed, the lake at the edge of town - and she'd laughed the whole time because it'd been exhilarating, and even if she supposes that sort of force would be terrifying coming from anyone else, somehow it isn't from him.
There's something dangerous about him that she likes, almost as much as she likes his money or his company.
His skills lie in places that she doesn't understand, and he doesn't try to explain them to her; she knows rather little about where he comes from, honestly, but she finds that doesn't really matter here. But once in a while he'll describe the city he's from, this Los Angeles place - it seems like something from a story rather than somewhere that really exists, with its spires and sparkling lights and carriages that drive themselves. It's a city on the coast, near the ocean; for some reason, he always seems very fixated on the water.
He's fixated on the water here, too, often choosing to spend time with her by the river, near the spot where it feeds into the lake. Sometimes he just plays with that coin he has while they talk; she likes it when he brings that weird deck of cards with him, shuffling it easily while he tells her a bit about people he knows - about Papa Midnite, who once fought in a war against Hell itself, and about John Constantine, who's still fighting, and once he tells her about Gabriel, though in the end he doesn't say much about Gabriel - and once he's decided he's bored with shuffling, he draws a card and then they play the game.
"Open your third eye," he says, his voice quiet as he holds the card up, back facing her. "Tell me what you see."
It usually takes her a while to see anything, though it's not for want of trying; she does try to do the whole third-eye thing, but if she's honest she's got no idea what he means. And so she'll usually stare at the card very seriously, like maybe if she looks hard enough she can see through it, and her brow furrows in deep concentration (though she isn't sure what she's concentrating on) and usually what comes to her is some sort of nonsensical image that makes her giggle at the thought of it.
"All I'm seeing is a rat in a dress," she says, lightly.
"It's what you should be seeing," he replies just as lightly, turning the card around to show her the image.
"Truly?" She takes it from him, which he allows, and looks at it almost too excitedly - still delicately so, always delicately so, but it's always difficult to contain it when she gets it right.
"Of course."
And while she does get the feeling that he knows something she doesn't - she often gets that feeling around him, but it's usually something attributed to the difference in times, the difference in worlds - she can never figure out how the trick is pulled off; if it's a trick at all, it's certainly a fine one, not explained with sleight of hand or anything else that she can see, for that matter.
She doesn't think she has psychic powers or anything, but when she's playing the game with him she can almost believe she does, and there's something about it that makes her feel special; she never sees him playing it with anyone else, it's something that he's reserved just for her, and there's something about that that makes her feel strange.
The courtship is fun, and it's nice, but it's never exactly as she imagined it to be; perhaps it's just how they do things in Los Angeles, where there isn't a war and people like him can just prosper into infinity, but it seems to go on for an incredibly long time - long enough for it to drive something cold into the pit of her stomach, to send up twisting tendrils of doubt that sometimes make her go out into the woods and punch things until her knuckles bruise and she has to wrap them before he sees, telling him that she just tripped as she was headed out to the well - just an unfortunate accident befalling a delicate maiden in the woods, and after he's disappeared into the other room she huffs a bit in his direction for believing her without asking further.
But she knows, in some ways, that that's just how he is; he's not an emotional person unless he has reason to be, and she's sure she can feel it from him at certain times - when she's sitting on his lap on the bed and his hands are in her hair, and sometimes she's kissing him but sometimes she doesn't need to, she just runs her hands back over his shoulders and she looks at him, and his eyes are dark but once in a while she sees something there, something bright and burning and almost red-tinged in color, and no matter how odd she finds it the burning seems to eat away at the doubt and the worry until there's nothing left but a sense of warmth and bliss that seems to come on so suddenly that she has to question where it came from.
She's been here long enough to know that some people have powers and abilities that they don't show to anyone; it's on one of those occasions when her own thoughts melt away to be replaced with that almost intoxicating warmth that she asks.
"Is that you doing that...?" she murmurs, letting her fingers curl up to play with the back of his hair.
He seems to shrug a bit, rolling his eyes a little in that odd, idle way that he tends to when he doesn't see much point in a question. "And if it is?"
She doesn't respond right away, not in words; she just offers a light hum in response. Thinking, though it's difficult when it's like this, when most of her thoughts are gone. Eventually, the words come. "What else do you do?"
"I can do lots of things."
"Do you do this a lot...?"
"To you, only once in a while."
"Would I recognize it, if you were doing it all the time?"
"You recognize it now, don't you?"
Another quiet noise; her fingers run idly through his hair. "...This is nice," she says eventually; perhaps she should second-guess it, if he's able to do things like this whenever he pleases, but in the end it's the fact that he can do this whenever he pleases and yet he chooses to do it like this and only like this that lets her trust it. "What do you call it?"
"Influence."
She nuzzles up against him then, burying her face in his neck; she can't explain why it feels more intimate now that she knows what he's doing, but the fact of the matter is that it does. "Don't stop."
She doesn't tell him when they're having one of those weirdly intimate moments on the bed, those times in which nothing happens but most of her thoughts are gone, replaced by heat and influence and weird oblivion otherwise; it wouldn't feel real then. So she asks him to meet her at the well, and she's found flowers and threaded them through her hair, and she's got a short, flowing dress on that she wouldn't be able to fight in if she tried. The very picture of femininity, delicate and fragile, and he arches an eyebrow when he sees it, though he doesn't complain.
"Look at you," he says, sounding almost mildly impressed. "Is there an occasion?"
She smiles, but there's a pause. Those tendrils of doubt again; maybe they're right, maybe no one will love her.
But she has to try.
"I think I'm in love," she says; she isn't prepared for the reply.
"Congratulations?" It's idle, as many of the things he says are, but tinged with something else - it isn't rejection, just an uncertainty as to why he's being told this.
She stares. "Oh, please don't."
"'Don't' what...?" The coin is out, though she's not sure when he retrieved it; it's being passed over his fingers, back and forth in that oddly mesmerizing way that he tends to employ when he's not doing anything in particular - it doesn't anger her, and if anything it's distracting for the briefest moment before she snaps her attention back to him.
"I... With you." She can hear her tone going sharp, almost brutishly condescending, and she's quick to clasp her hands over her chest. "We do work well as a couple together, don't you think? And we've been courting for some time now, so- "
"Courting." And now he's likewise staring, though that coin continues to flip idly over his knuckles; after a moment he glances off, a light laugh behind his words even so. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
"Yes?" She can't even begin to cover the incredulity, the roughness in her tone. "What did you think we were doing?"
Another light laugh, under his breath. "I don't recall saying no to anything, so you can calm down now."
"...Ah." She steps back a bit. Breathes. "Right, of course, I..."
"There are some things you should probably know," he says, though his attention is more on the surroundings than her; not awkward or self-conscious, just taking things in. "If this is the direction you want to take things."
She pauses. Smiles, after a moment. "I'm sure it's nothing we can't handle."
That gets a soft sound out of him. "We'll see."
She's quiet for a moment, sitting on the pier near the lake. "So... You're third in line for the throne of the kingdom of the damned."
He shrugs. "Something like that. I'm in a bit of a...position, right now, to have that right revoked for a very long time."
"But you didn't lie, either, you're one of those banker-people. From Los Angeles."
"Also something like that, yes." He tips his head back a bit, gaze trained up towards the sky for a moment; it's a casual gesture, something he clearly isn't thinking too much about. He seems more relaxed, now that she knows.
She likes it. Not what he's been telling her, not really, but it's a good look.
"So what do you...do, exactly." It's a flat question, something that she probably should have asked when all of this explaining started. "When you're not handling people's money."
"I help my family, I suppose." It's almost sardonic, the way he says it. "I tempt people. Lead them down a path of suffering and torment until they die. I'm very good at what I do."
She swallows hard. "But you haven't done that to me." There's a pause. "Or...anyone else here?" That last part is more of a question than she would have liked.
"No, I haven't."
She plays with the bangle around her wrist; it's one he gave her, one he'd slipped on without her noticing. "Why?"
"There's no reason to," he says. "No interest, either."
It's the second part that strikes her as more honest, though she really couldn't say why. "Do you like us?"
"As much as I like anyone. Humans are interesting creatures."
She pauses. Keeps messing with the bangle. "Do you like me?"
He shrugs again. "More than I like most."
"Is that good enough?" She doesn't know what makes her ask it, because if it's a negative answer she really doesn't want to know; if it's a negative answer she'll fight him, if it's a negative answer she doesn't know how she's supposed to fight him but she'll do it anyway, better that her axe meet his neck than have him killing people left, right, and center. Better that he die than use his influence on her again, because if he can wipe her thoughts at any moment and make her think what he wants her to think, it's hard to say what he'll use that for if all of this isn't good enough.
So she doesn't want to know. But as a warrior, she needs to know.
Is that good enough?
"Perhaps." It's noncommittal, infuriatingly so; she doesn't know what else she expected from him.
She looks at him. Studies him, really. If she's honest, she isn't sure what she's looking for. "Can you love me?"
"It's possible."
"Is that a lie?"
"Do you think it's a lie?"
She hesitates. "I don't know. I haven't really dealt with...people like you."
He tips his head a little, conceding the point. "I've been in relationships with humans before. Believe me, human affections are some of the most inconvenient things they can shove at me."
"Wow, thanks."
That draws a laugh out of him, quietly. "I wouldn't bother putting up with it if it weren't worth my while, now, would I?"
She'll turn it over in her head for a little while. "Don't...do that, while we're here. The tormenting and sadism and killing."
"Or...?"
"Or I'll take your entire damn head off. I can't just let you run around doing that."
Again, he looks almost mildly impressed. "That's fair."
"So you'll stop?"
"It's hard to stop something you haven't done."
"Oh," she says.
"You did tell me 'not here.'"
"...Right. So I did."
"For now, this place is the only one that matters," he says, returning his attention to the water; even knowing where he's from, she can't say she fully understands why he's so transfixed with it. "Isn't it?"
"Open your third eye," he says, drawing a card from that weird deck of his and holding it out, back facing her. "Tell me what you see."
The image floats up hazily to the front of her mind. "It's a dog with a parasol." She tips her head at him a bit, though, once it's out there, something hitting her suddenly. "You're just humoring me, aren't you. You fed it to me."
"Fed it to you?"
"With your influence. You tell me what I'm supposed to see - you let me win! That's the trick, right?" Honestly, she should be mad; for the time being, she's just pleased with figuring it out. She can be annoyed with him later.
He turns the card around, showing her the image of the bichon with a parasol clutched daintily between its paws. "Actually, I didn't this time."