milliways_bar | (no subject)

His hair is surprisingly touchable--he's not one of those dirty pirates, he'll have you know. They have soap in Armada and they know how to use it.

Or at least, he does. The scents of Garwater would imply that not everyone does.

"It's lovely," he says. "A bit like we used to do, in some ways."

"We could match, at least that far," Ganymede laughs gently. "It would take a good deal longer, but I can draw the eye on myself." Just not as cleanly, perhaps.

"But first...if I'm going to be drawing on your spine, I need to know you'll be able to keep still," he says, rising and offering the un-inked hand to the vampir. "And I believe you mentioned how to do that."

"Alcohol," he says with a smile, taking his hand and standing. "Lots of it. Preferably filtered through the veins of sailors, but then I'm not very particular."

In his experience they do tend to be the only people capable of getting drunk enough for him to really be able to feel it in their blood... but that isn't the plan here. It's just a side note.

"It may take a while for me to drink enough that you'd feel it," Ganymede replies offhand. He hasn't been able to actually get drunk in a long, long time--once you've learned how to make nectar and have been drinking it for a thousand years, rum and beer and vodka and all manner of other spirits just don't have the same effect. "But depending on how much other than blood you can drink, I might have some you'd like."

He smiles at the vampir, knowing full well the conversation they're having isn't about what's going to happen when they get up the stairs.

"We might be able to try mixing it," he says. "I never have, but if my fellow vampir can drink it watered down, well... diluting it is diluting it."

He hopes it would work. If it's an important part of his life, something he's proud of, he'd like to be able to share it.

"What's the worst that could happen?" he asks. "Do you never drink it from a person directly anymore?"

Ganymede opens the door once he gets to it, and the room is dim inside; the windows are blocked. The walls are a cool bleached-white stucco, and the floor is multicolored glass tiles in shades of blues and greens, forming swirled patterns under their feet. He whistles a note and a slender fox-colored hound pads through the room to them, though she stops, apprehensive at the new visitor.

"Only when I'm giving someone a chance at infection," he says. "And then, it's not so much about the drinking."

He looks around, curious, tasting the air. The style, particularly the tiles, remind him of his long-ago home port.

And he holds a hand out for the hound, doing his best to be as nonthreatening as possible. He's been doing a lot of that, lately.

"You've got a lovely room."

"Do you like it? It takes a moment to light all the candles so I can see you properly." He can see in the dim light, and a fair amount for a human, but still illumination is good.

The dog regards him for a long moment with a calm expression, as if she simply isn't sure whether to come to him or not. And then she does, pushing her head against his hand. "I had hoped you'd be comfortable here. At least mostly."

"When I was a child," he says, giving the dog some gentle scritching behind the ears, "I remember going into the city with my father--it had been a very profitable trip, and he wanted to buy some very nice things for his sister. And we bought things, and then he took me to lunch in a place that had tiles like this, and fountains. There were fish in the fountains, and you could pick which you wanted to eat, but he ordered us goat instead, because he said we had more than enough fish when we were at sea."

Ganymede stands back a moment, just watching the interaction and listening to the story, and moving to light the pillar candles that are scattered around the walls in groups on little wooden shelves at about head-height.

"I remember when my brothers and I--I was the youngest of three--used to race up and down the pathways in the garden when it rained, to see how far we could all slide. I loved the colors and patterns even before I could read any of the words that they made. There was a place in the courtyard that had a little labyrinth, a maze with no walls. It was where I went the most often of anywhere, I think."

"It's so strange, looking back," he says. "The idea that one day, we would end up where we are now--much further into the future than we could ever have imagined. If someone had told me as a child, what would become of me, I would never have believed it. You're born, you live sixty years or so if you're lucky and fairly healthy, and that's it."

A grim thought for such a nice evening.

"Did it look like this, these tiles and all, in your courtyard?"

"Not precisely, but they were these colors. It made a strange sort of spiral that you walked around, following the lines of tiles until you got to the middle, and then followed them back out."

He smiles, and looks at the floor--whose pattern is like a lotus-scattered pond. "I used to walk it until I was dizzy, and stare up at the sky when I fell over."

He smiles as well.

"I can picture you as a child," he says, and for a moment at least, he can.

Not a full picture, but an image of a small boy running on tiles, and the scent and taste of a summer rain.

He laughs a little at that. "The stories say I was blonde and fair," he murmurs. "I never was. What do you think I looked like?"

Ganymede wishes he could remember his childhood clearly; he barely remembers anything of his parents and his brothers.

"Barefoot," he says. "Tousled. Tanned. Looking around with a sense of wonder--it's a beautiful morning, surely just one of many such mornings. A wonder that the entire sky could fit over your courtyard, but somehow it did."

"You have quite the imagination," Ganymede murmurs, tilting his face up just so he can look at the Brucolac. "I can imagine you... As a young man, playing at the water's edge with other boys, smiling, snatching a kiss here or there."

"Chasing each other along the beach, wrestling there just where the water met the shore--so whoever was losing would end up getting dunked as the waves came in."

And they were beautiful.

"Oh, I can see that like it was right in front of me," he murmurs, kissing his lover's cheek.

"You'd look absolutely breathtaking."

"I haven't gotten to do that in years," he says.

The last time he'd gone running along a beach with anyone, it had been Uther Doul--but they were in battle, and they certainly hadn't been wrestling each other.

"Is the beach where you live suited for that?"

He smiles. "It is. It's incredible for that, actually." He's never played that game before--never had anyone to play it with--but suddenly he misses it like it was a favorite activity.

"Let me paint you, and when you're dry we can play," Ganymede smiles, amazingly and surprisingly seductive when he says it.

"We'll have to wrestle then, on your beach."

He'll probably lose. He often played to lose, in those days; it's one of the few games he knows where a man can lose and still come out a winner. Have some strong, beautiful young man on top of him, pinning him to the beach? He'll count that a victory.

He slips his coat off, and starts unbuttoning his shirt. "How much do you need me to take off?" he asks.

"For the actual painting, or for the process of getting you to lie still?" he questions with a crooked smile. "Come sit on the couch first."

His mouth--he's been told--was practically built for sex. He intends to put it to good use.

He does have a lovely mouth. And a lovely everything else.

"For any of it," he says, folding his coat and draping it over the side of the couch, then taking a seat as instructed. "But I'm yours to command."

"You give me such power," he murmurs, first unbuttoning the Brucolac's shirt, kissing the hollow of his throat once the silver clasps are undone. "Sit back, and spread your legs a bit."

Ganymede slides to his knees gracefully, pushing the shirt off fully and beginning to undo his belt.

He unbuckles his baldric and slides it off, setting it--and the cutlass and flintlock it holds--aside.

It's weaponry not very well suited for sitting on couches, and certainly not like this.

With that done, he settles back contentedly.