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Post by Aurel on Dec 4, 2008 16:30:37 GMT -5
Aurel sat in his chair, trying to finish the book he had intended to do last night - but since Nicolas climbed in through the window, the book had been put aside for a while.
With a frustrated snarl, Aurel closed the book. His mind was wandering and there was no use to read now. He got up and moved over to one of many bookshelves, staring at the back of the books in front of him. He might as well have been staring at nothing at all.
Nicolas... where did you come from?
Aurel didn't quite trust Nicolas, and the hospitality he had showed him last night had gone over into a kind of irritation instead. He did feel sympathy though, for Nicolas seemed to be... distracted, somehow. But he still didn't trust him.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 4, 2008 19:34:02 GMT -5
Nicolas woke up late, as he found from a clock he discovered in the room, which he was not sure whether or not to trust, but saw no immediate reason not to. Usually he managed to wake himself the moment the sun set, but he had not managed tonight. He blamed the bed. He had been sprawled out on his stomach, hair in utter disarray (not that he quite noticed that - it still was; he was unused to needing to restyle it), an arm flung out over the edge of the bed. How pathetic it was. He shut the door as quietly as he could, but it still made more sound than his footsteps.
Nicolas had been going to creep out the way he came and invest in a coffin that instant when he paused in the hallway. He frowned pronouncedly as he remembered having promised Aurel a favor. Damn himself for that, anyway. But he might as well tell the man that he couldn't promise that he would stay in touch. It didn't cross his mind to thank him for the hospitality he'd shown - he wasn't comfortable with charity, particularly not from those he didn't know. Perhaps if he had gone to Armand - although he most certainly did not want to go to Armand - it would have been different.
Though he wouldn't exactly thank Armand for offering him a place to stay the night, either.
He recalled the library and decided it was a good first place to check. Intuition - or madness, or luck, or some sort of mental scanning of the place - decided his route, and he headed down the hallways of the large estate imagining he would settle upon it sometime.
Eventually he did indeed catch a glimpse of the well-dressed vampire lord's back at a grand bookshelf. Nicolas did not introduce himself, but stepped instead and leaned against the doorway nonchalantly. He couldn't imagine it would take him long to be noticed. Immortals always had a second sense about these things, like being watched. Paranoid, to the last dregs.
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Post by Aurel on Dec 6, 2008 14:31:20 GMT -5
As Nicolas had guessed, Aurel noticed him right away. He had felt his precense a while before he actually were there. Slowly he turned around and faced Nicolas. The irritation he had felt was still there. He couldn't ever imagine an other vampire, let alone a lord, that would show such a hospitality for no reason, and he as angry with himself for showing Nicolas such sympacy. What a softie he had become. He nearly let a growl come when he thought about it, but restrained himself.
He glared at Nicolas for a moment before collected himself enough to smile.
"Leaving so soon? Where will you go now?" Aurel asked dryly.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 6, 2008 15:08:25 GMT -5
Nicolas touched the wall beside him, white fingertips exploring the grain of it, the age, with as much interest as one caressing velvet. He tilted his head against the doorway and watched Aurel passively. It was peculiar how quickly he'd come to dislike Nicolas. Of course he had been furious with him the previous night, but he had become so charitable in so short a time. What had changed? It was only a mild, detached wonder, as he did not really care.
"To see an old friend I doubt will be pleased to see me," said Nicolas with as much dryness; but a smirk blossomed across his features, wry and amused. No, Armand wouldn't, would he? He hadn't realized that was what he would be doing at the time, but now he knew it was; it made all the sense in the world. It was as though he had had it entirely in mind.
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Post by Aurel on Dec 7, 2008 6:25:43 GMT -5
Aurel kept staring fiercly at Nicolas. He wished him to leave, yet he wanted him to stay. He wanted to rip him into pieces, yet he wanted to befriend him. How insane it all seemed. Tormented by sudden unexpected, unreasonable emotions, Aurel finally looked away. His jade green eyes staring into space.
He had been thinking about how long he had been by himself. It couldn't have been much more than a year, but Vincent had been by his side for so long, and now that he wasn't, he felt as if he'd gone mad. Or at least more viscious since he left. Maybe it was for the best Nicolas left too. He was way too wierd for Aurel to be around anyway - sooner or later he'd grew furious and throw him out or kill him.
"Fine" he muttered, not really listening. He had to sit down, it felt as if the room was spinning. What was going on with him?
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 7, 2008 12:54:20 GMT -5
Nicolas was not generous or gentle-hearted and it was not really a matter of much concern to him if Aurel despised him or not. But his curiosity was easily provoked, and sometimes it was a great deal of pleasure to find out what thorn someone had in their side, if only to push it in further and listen to it scrape against their ribs.
"It doesn't sound fine," said Nicolas, leaning against the wall and regarding him curiously, eyes flashing. "It sounds a bit as though you're going to miss me." Had he been louder, that might have sounded derisive. It was ambiguous enough as it was.
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Post by Aurel on Dec 7, 2008 14:17:52 GMT -5
"It sounds like what?" Aurel snarled. His eyes flashed of anger as he quickly turned to Nicolas and by the blink of an eye suddenly towered in front of him. "Why would I miss someone like you, you lowlife bastard!" he growled. He took a tight grip of Nicolas's arm and threw him, as if he weighed nothing, down on the floor. At this point, it didn't matter to Aurel if he had Nicolas killed, still, he knew he wouldn't kill him. Yet.
"Watch your mouth, or it will be the death of you", he said in a low icy voice.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 7, 2008 15:24:11 GMT -5
Madmen in general have less fear of death than the general populace, and Nicolas was certainly, by most accounts, quite mad, even for an immortal; but his experience with death had left him almost bitter of it, and he was not certain he even believed in death anymore. If nothing else, he had probably tasted more of it than Aurel had, and - vampires registering pain differently than people do, and Nicolas feeling the wounds in his arm and the rest of him knitting healed already as it was - the threat in his mouth only provoked outrageous laughter. Nicolas was almost helpless for laughing, tried to hold his head in his hands as though it would help, but only lay back on the floor and laughed, a mixture of vulnerability and insanity.
He was still choking on his own amusement when he shouted up at him, "You can't kill me! I can't even kill me!"
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Post by Aurel on Dec 9, 2008 6:42:40 GMT -5
Aurel stared in wonder at the madman in front of him. This one seemed even more messed up than himself! He hissed viscously at Nicolas.
"Don't try my patience" he said dryly. "You have no clue of what I am capable of."
He slowly walked over to him, and kicked him halfheartedly. "Get up" Aurel said as his rage seemed to wear off. "It would be a pity to kill you now. With a lunatic like you around, things might get interesting for a while." Aurel smirked slightly as he noticed a servant who came in with a glass of blood. He took it, nodded a thanks to the servant and looked down at Nicolas. "Care for a drink, freak?"
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 9, 2008 10:12:58 GMT -5
Nicolas scarcely felt the kick. It was a strange sensation, however, a rather tingling one that spread through the limbs like intoxication, to be treated like a plague, a monster himself, as though Aurel was not one. Nicolas did, of course, have some sense of his own insanity, but it was a far cry from being actually aware of just how insane he could be. He simply assumed that this was a fate that befell all of their kind, and that it manifested with greater passion for him - and that was all.
He pulled himself up so that his chest was leaning against his knees and stared at Aurel as though, for a moment, he were indeed a gaping fool who didn't understand him. Then he moved almost gingerly to his feet, dusting off his clothes, which had not been in wonderful shape before as it was. "Yes," he said. "You are a curiously hospitable host, for someone who would like to kill me."
He did not look at him, however, walking noiselessly along the wall and gazing at the titles on the bookshelves. He had not sat and read something for some time. He had not written anything in a while, either. No plays, and no mad songs... His arms were folded so that he hugged backs of his arms as he moved, but he seemed very much unperturbed. "You'd have a hard time of it," he warned absently as he went on. "I don't say this to try and discourage you. You see, I've been dead once already. Once more than the rest of us, I mean by that."
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Post by Aurel on Dec 9, 2008 14:43:40 GMT -5
Aurel raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he asked, sipping blood from his glass. "And how did that happen, one might wonder?"
He walked slowly over to his chair, the same he had sit in when Nicolas dropped by last night. Sitting down, his eyes didn't leave Nicolas.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 9, 2008 15:29:22 GMT -5
"I'm sure one might," said Nicolas darkly in a low voice, tinged with amusement. He shook his hair back, tracing his fingers through the tangled curls as though he had never heard in all his entire life of a comb, then traced a fingertip down the spine of one of the books with particular voluptuousness. The title looked dirty. He slid it off the shelf, flipped through it nimbly for naughty engravings, saw none, made a sour face and replaced it. That was disappointing.
He continued on the same topic with a new tone of voice, continuing down the aisle, admiring the bindings, the leather, the varied fabric, colors, and fonts. Some of these books were enormously old. It was one of the few things Nicolas still had respect for, age. Although as Armand could doubtless testify, it was not a respect that meant he would behave civilly. "It was years ago," he said airily. "So many years. I went into the fire. As you can see, it seems to have had little effect. I wish I knew more, but I don't. I don't suppose I'd tell you, anyway."
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Post by Aurel on Dec 10, 2008 14:53:30 GMT -5
"You probably wouldn't" Aurel agreed.
He finished his drink, his expression slightly numb. A fire - that was exactly the way his beloved had died. He knew the destruction caused by a fire, how devastating it could be. Once again lost in his own thoughts, Aurel put his glass away and was about to get up from his chair, but changed his mind and sat down again. There was a deep sorrow in his eyes, probably very obvious for anyone that would see him now. But he didn't care, or rahter, he didn't even think about it.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Dec 10, 2008 15:01:18 GMT -5
Nicolas recognized obscurely that Aurel was thinking very deeply about something that clearly had wounded him, but it did not occur to him the implications of that, nor that he should be respectful because of it. He strode across the room to where the servant had left the carafe of blood and Aurel had set down his glass, and, leaning back against the arm of Aurel's chair as he might with Armand (who was certainly not immune from his rudeness), lifted the glass and poured a glass with a nonchalance that was sort of charming if you had the state of mind to appreciate it.
He swirled it as though it were a fine, expensive wine, gazing into its depths curiously before taking a drink. If he knew it was rather an affront to his host to drink out of his emptied glass, it didn't show (not that Nicolas was above doing things simply because he knew them to be offensive). He made a face. "It's very cold. Don't you ever kill?"
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Post by Aurel on Dec 10, 2008 15:15:19 GMT -5
Aurel looked up, Nicolas's question brought him back to reality. Aurel saw the glass in Nicolas's hand and realised how his way of behaving was - least to say - special. Realising this, he chuckled sofly. Nicolas almost seemed like a child sometimes, totally carefree. Thinking it would be wise not to tell him that, he answered his question instead.
"I do kill now and then. However, I'm known as a human in this city, and I have to be careful. I can't afford being seen by anyone while I hunt, so I mostly let my servants do it for me." He smirked. "Though I do miss it sometimes."
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