It has taken Hien a good couple of weeks of establishing himself at the various bars and singles meetups in the area, some clean, some less so, but there's something different in the air tonight. The particular bar he's at is called The Love Nest, and it's an insult to the eye, so pink, so fluffy, so filled with bric-a-brac and doilies. Most of the people here tonight are the quietly desperate, the lonely weepers, the cat ladies and the gentle souls too polite to admit they think the bar is hideous.
The one thing it has going for it is good food, truly excellent drinks, and dirt cheap prices.
There are floofy tables for two all over the place, none of them quite large enough to comfortably fit someone of Hien's height.
Hien is nothing close to fashion foward. So tonight he's wearing what's been picked out by one of the local Fairest's because his closet's full of t-shirts and jeans as his fanciest apparel. However, he doesn't wear any of it well. Khaki slacks pressed and ironed to perfection, a brand new pair of unscuffed and undirtied leather loafers, and he caps it all off with his one demand. A navy blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up along with a striped blue and black tie.
He'd be fairly good looking if he wasn't slouching as he usually does. His usual leering gaze is even, but he does pay the patrons that little bit of extra attention that would mark him as something strong.
A shark stands out in a pond full of minnows, and this watering hole is definitely filled with little fish.
As it is so often told in stories, it isn't until Hien is close to leaving for the evening that the doors open, and -she- appears. Whatever he considers most beautiful in a woman, whatever features he prefers, soft or strong, race, ethnicity or species, that is what she is, though he's the only one in the room who can see it.
She could be a Changeling, as powerful as he is. Whatever she is, her presence is strong, and her love for each and every one of those desperate souls is effortless and pure...but it is not THEIR love she has come for. She zeroes in on Hien the instant she walks through the door.
Hien grows restless as he waits. The seating was a pain in the ass, and only now does he see the light of being closer to Lolly's height. He was digging his claws into the ugly table before him when she arrives. He relaxes for a moment, and in those few seconds he's left defenseless. His jaw doesn't hit the floor, but she does give him pause. Enough so that he's staring and narrowing his gaze as she approaches. Two predators roam the valley, sizing each other up before any niceties can take place.
Ever the gentleman is Hien as he rises from his seat. A smile of sharp teeth is given, revealing those terrifying pearly whites to everyone else in the bar. A squeek and a shuffle from the floor as he goes to move the chair for Her, and dips his head low in greeting. "I was afraid you wouldn't come," he says with a brief glance to the door.
To the others, assuredly, she is the soft, sweet and undemanding love they yearn for, no challenge, nothing to make them feel inadequate. To Hien? Definitely not a fluffy marshmallow, though the way she regards him is deeply personal, deeply intimate, as though they had always been lovers, would always -be- lovers.
"They said you had been waiting for me," she offers, accepting the chair-related courtesy with a look which oh so perfectly combines the warmth of someone who has known Hien for eternity with the fresh delight of the new lover, meeting him for the first time. "Come with me. Be with me, be mine, and you need never be lonely."
As she sits down Hien keeps his eyes on her, and only on her. He pushes the chair forward just a bit for her to find some measure of comfort in this place, and then moves to take his own seat. As he sits down he places his hands on the table, head tilting ever so slightly to the left. "Is that?" His head bobs the other way, brow arching after the question. "What I truly desire no living mortal can provide, and I've scant seen any among my own ilke that could."
He leans back in his seat, his gaze searching hers for a moment. "And wherever would you take me? I hope somewhere interesting as I haven't had a vaction in long time." His words come with warmth, unusual for him until he flashes another smile.
The Lover, on the contrary, seems quite comfortable precisely where she is, everything sized ever so perfectly to fit her, even if it wasn't so before she came. Hien, too, finds his furniture more comfortable, his height less of an issue than before, the world subtly rearranging itself to suit his comfort and his needs.
"What do you desire?" The question is earnest, eager to please, and has a few of the other patrons sighing in envy or regret. "I need only your love, and offer mine in return. You needn't stay." She smiles, eyes on his. "We travel. There are so many here, so many bright lights."
@Hien grows still as the world around him changes. His breathing his slow, and his eyes remain locked on her. "Why do you need my love?" he asks. The tentacles of his hair flutter around for a moment, the only movement that comes from him. "The lights? Is that what you search for? Your own desire?" He clears his throat, and shifts in his seat just a bit. Enough so to betray his dicomfort. "That is what I want right now."
The question seems to bewilder the woman across from him, posture straightening, retreating a moment as if taken aback. "Because I love you," she answers, as if it were the only answer in the world which could make any sense. Hurt enters those perfect eyes, tears beginning to fill them. "Did you not seek me to share our love? Was your attendance all a lie?" She scoots her chair back, then appears to think better of it, frowning at him in a mercurial shift toward teary anger. "Did you think to hurt those I care for? To use me?"
The audience of mortals around them pays rapt attention to the show. Really, this is a better soap opera than this place has had for a VERY long while.
"I mean you no harm," Hiem comments. "What I've learned about myself I learned is that I've grown stagnant. Then I was told something that changed my world." He shakes his head then, and leans back in his saet. "If you love me and wish to give me what I desire is information. Knowledge. If you can do that then I could show you all of my love."
Anger fading, the woman subsides, settling back into her seat and folding her arms as if to state that she is listening, but not convinced. "I am a lover," she points out, dissatisfied, but not outright denying his request. "Not a librarian. I cannot promise that I can help you." Ah, heartbreak. Those perfect tears rise again, but this time, they are for Hien's sake. "What would you like to know?"
The dramatic reversal! One of the people eavesdropping spills his coffee when his arm moves too far to the side, and yelps at the heat on anatomy which very much doesn't appreciate being scalded. So much for finding 'more' than romance.
Hien stops speaking. The Fae can see the shifting of his mantle, a flourish of shadows that wreath the area around him in preternatural darkness. The humans may not see it, but they do see the dead stare Hien points at the man. No baring of teeth or rising of hackles. He's being respectful, for a Beast. Eventually, he turns his gaze away and back to the Lover.
"Promises are usually made to be broken. Answers will suffice." He offers a smile, his usual off-putting sort. "Trust me when I say that the truth is the way to my heart. What is that you want, in the end? You would have my love, so what is it you desire?"
The woman has no mantle, of course, and seems briefly fascinated by the shifting of his, a hand reaching out as if to touch a shadow -- though of course it can't. Illusions are illusions.
The man, on the other hand, stammers something, goes pale, and hastily takes himself off to the restroom, his pace the stiff-legged and rapid walk of one attempting not to run.
"Love," she answers, simple and truthful by any metric, magical or otherwise. "I desire love."
Hien studies her during her short response. "I can give you my love, for half a year's time." He takes a deep breath, and offers his hand to her. "During that time you have to promise that you'll offer your love to none other than I. If things go well enough it can potentially go further."
Disappointment in her eyes answers his question before she even speaks, head shaking. "I cannot accept. I have promised my love to others, and I will not be forsworn." A single perfect tear rolls down over her cheek, disappointment diving deep and straight toward grief and mourning for Hien's loss. "Will you not ask for something else?" Naturally, she doesn't get blotchy or snuffly. That's a human problem.
"What you're doing draws attention. The type of attention that means something bigger, badder, and stronger will come by." He leans back into his seat, and scans around the bar. "I won't take you away from the ones who already have your love, but it needs to stop some way and somehow." He smiles, as gently as his beastly visage might allow. "I can even bring you more than what anything you've had before has."
The woman frowns again, tears ceasing, and leans back in her seat to give Hien a put out moue. "I am making people happy," she protests, still frowning. "These businesses cater to those who wish to find love, no? I give them what they want, and they give me what I need. No harm comes to them. Your people should have no quarrel with me." A tear rolls down again, hurt this time instead of grieving. "I do not enslave my beloveds; they are free to leave whenever they wish, wherever they wish me to take them that is within my power to give."
"You bring love as I bring fear," he comments. "I wonder how much control they have over themselves after the fact, but I ain't got a right to judge too harshly." He stops to reach back at his hair and give the tendrils a little shake. "I believe you, and I understand it. Where do your lovers go? They've never returned home, and seemingly disappear into thin air."
"Some do," she protests, earnest. "Those from this city are too new." She drops her eyes, then slides them toward one of the gentlemen still eavesdropping nearby, who almost swallows his tongue in his haste to look away and take a sip of his coffee. He only stares at her a -little- bit out of the corner of his eye, wordlessly longing. The woman returns her focus to Hien, a challenge in her eye. "How much control do -you- give them? I cannot force their love. Infatuation is all that it would be, in the end, and that is sweet, but not enough."
Hien has to stop for a moment. Where she met the man with a loving gaze he turned to give the peeper a silent stare. "I give them none. That is fear. However, I only do so to push them away from places they don't need to be. Either for their own good, or our own. Is it the nicest thing, or the most pleasant? No, but I also am trying to change some of my ways. Better then scared than on a milk carton for no one to find them again," he responds with the glint in his eye of a predator on the defensive.
The man gulps, gives Hien a 'I'm harmless really oh god please don't murder me in my sleep' sort of look, then hastily beats a retreat, patron #2 to flee the Beast's vicinity.
"It is their choice, whether or not they speak to their families," the woman points out, perfectly reasonable. "They know that they are free to leave, free to return to their old lives." But how many of these limp noodly souls would have the gumption to DO it? Changing moods yet again, going from reasonable to sorrowful and teary in an eyeblink, The Lover asks, "Is my presence here so terrible? Do your people hate love so much? I would not harm them." A finger indicates the humans in the establishment, though she never even looks their way. "I give them the life of their dreams."
"Love? Nah, not in the slightest," he responds with a laugh. The first genuinely warm thing to cmoe out of him. "The people here don't hate love, but my kind of people hate you. Well, things like you. People like you. The ones with-" He blinks, the gears in his head moving.
"Think about me. With a hat. A big ol' church crown like my grandmother would wear." He lifts his hand, and circles is head for the wide brim of the supposedly gaudy hat. "You have a bigger hat with more feathers, and it has a big neon sign on your head." He sighs, and his tentacles sag. "If your love wasn't so quickly wide spread maybe it won't look so bad to them. Maybe."
She seems confused. "They wish for me to withhold my love to only a few? Why?" Utter incomprehension. "Would that not be cruelty? To hurt those whom I could help?" Distracted immediately by the prospect of imagining Hien's grandmother, the Lover's cheeks flush with pleasure, almost shy, and she asks, "You would show me to your family? Would they approve of me?" She worries, fretting. "I have never been to church."
Hien nods, and appears as blank as he usually does. "Think of it like overeating. No one really notices when you have a few meals. Maybe even a morsel. When you get greedy people notice. People like me notice. Everyone notices the greedy one that takes too much. Be it one meal too many, or a million." She can see that nictitating membrane move while everyone else see him stare her down without a blink. "You don't want to meet my family, though. My father's in prison for beating my mother half to death, and she still ain't recovered. My sister is-" He stops for a moment. A very long moment. "I haven't thought about my sister in so long that I don't know."
Still confused, and now hurt all over again, the Lover protests, "I've fewer lovers than almost any of my kin." That said, she frowns, emotions as volatile as one would expect from an embodiment of storied love, and thrusts herself up to her feet. "I will help your mother." A small bouquet of flowers is drawn out of seemingly nowhere and tossed down upon the tabletop as she hurries out of the bar, leaving human sighs of longing in her wake, an audible echo of her perfume.
The flowers are Forget-Me-Not and, within them, a single petal-plucker of a daisy. Love me, love me not. The daisy, should he inspect it with properly Autumnal powers, is a token which will call her to wherever he is, though she needn't answer if she doesn't want to.
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