RP:MIA

Coastal Street

For the past week, Cesaria had gone about her days with only half a brain. Any idle thought melted into honeyed daydreams. Active thoughts were crowned with halos of questions: what would Haakon think, do, or say in this situation, or if he knew about this, or knew about that? Her infatuation made her feel deliriously foolish, and she reproached herself often when her thoughts grew too fanciful. Impatient to see him again, she buried herself in research and work to make each day without him pass more quickly. She had been tempted to send Haakon a letter through one of his men who she knew protected her from the shadows, and whom she never saw, but her pride would not let her do anything so girlishly desperate. Little did she know that on the 7th day Haakon’s man, Raul, would fail to report back to Vailkrin. The man meant to relieve him of duty, Silas, searched for Cesaria but did not immediately find her in her usual haunts. Instead, he found Raul dead in an alley with signs of a fight and another’s blood everywhere. Panicked, he sent word via enchanted raven to his employer Haakon in Vailkrin. ‘Sir, Raul is dead. I am looking for the girl now. She is not home. I will update you when I know more.’

Haakon had considered the last night he’d spent with Cesaria one of many failures. Not just because the ritual had failed but also because he had failed. He’d convinced himself that his control, his will, was stronger than the woman’s tawny skin and curious mind. Instead, he’d found himself making promises he’d no idea he would not keep and in her bed spilling his bloody guts to her. Whispering to her in candlelight while she unwound him with every breath, every look. It was embarrassing. It was foolish, reckless. And so he’d stayed away. He’d brooded and he’d worked. He’d sent his men in his stead. That was, until one of his men hadn’t come back. And he’d rode like hell yawned at his heels when the raven reached him. The vampire flew through the dark night with murder and vengence on his mind. He’d tear Cenril, and all of the thieves in it apart to find her. He’d sent more of his men with him, though they’d fallen behind, and sent a messenger ahead to his other contacts in the damned, plagued, dirty city. Someone would find her. He would find her. The vampire passed over the bridge and opened himself up to the cursed city. Reeking death crowded him. Haakon pushed it aside searching for any sign of Cesaria within Cenril.

The trip from Vailkrin to Cenril, at full speed and without rest or incident, took 4 hours. By the time Haakon reached Cenril, Cesaria was back at home with Silas none the wiser. Silas had already checked her apartment thrice and the reinforcements had not yet arrived. Cesaria paced her apartment angrily. As far as she knew, Haakon was somewhere else, likely Vailkrin, clueless to the close curtain call on her life. She wanted desperately to contact him, but that damned control freak left her no way to reach him. Everything always had to be on his terms, she thought to herself, her anger a poor cover for her recent scare. Well, she had news for him, she fumed, the world doesn’t bend to his f****** will! Beneath her energizing performance of anger, a thought nagged like a stone in her boot. What if Haakon was done with her and didn’t care what happened? She had begun the night under the assumption that his men were still stalking her shadows, but after tonight’s close call, how could she be so sure? The doubt was irrational, but it stuck to her like a barnacle and complicated her anger with feelings she could not yet name.

Haakon stalked the streets of Cenril like a hound on the hunt. He stopped to speak to his men, to bark orders and threaten. But something called to him, some unknown intuition that went deep into blood and bone. He was shown to Raul’s body. Anger rolled through him, black and burning. The vampire cursed, spared a man to take Raul’s body home to return him to his family. Following his intuition Haakon went to Cesaria’s home. It was the beat of her heart that led him. He’d heard it sooner than even his heightened senses should have allowed. There was relief, though not enough to drown the fury, that pounded into him even as he slammed through her door. Locks be damned. Cesaria might see, for only a single moment, Haakon filling her doorway with all of that relief and fury written darkly across his face. He would be on her then, moving with his gifted speed to take her arms in his hands. To get a good look at her. “Did someone touch you?” He demanded, voice ice and barely contained violence. “Are you hurt, Cesaria?”

Cesaria’s anger, and the fear that lay beneath, dissolved at the sight of him. “I’m fine, Haakon. I’m fine.” She yielded to his touch, embraced him, pressed her face against his chest and let relief wash over her. “It was a vampire,” she explained as she pulled away just enough to look up at his handsome, furious face. Her own face was visible sans veil, the ghost of her decrepit smile fading as she focused on the answers Haakon was impatient to hear. “At first I thought he worked for you and was defending me, so I didn’t run away. He killed the one who worked for you, who I thought was stalking me. I-I-” Words escaped her for a moment, eyes widening a little as she tried to wrap her mind around the sheer comedy of wrong assumptions and error. “Then he chased me and I managed to escape before he caught me. I wanted to contact you, but.” A hint of anger laced her final phrase. The recently dissolved anger did not evaporate. It trickled beneath more urgent needs and words and still lurked, giving off palpable heat.

Without reason, the grip of fear that had clutched his unbeating heart had not yet released even as the sound of her voice moved through him. Safe. She was safe, untouched. As she moved to embrace him his arms went around her, cold and hard. He tensed then, the hand that had moved to tangle into her curls stilling as she told him another vampire had been near her. It filled him with possessive rage. He leaned back, moved her with a gentleness he didn’t know he could possess while filled with such rage, to look at her face again. “Who? Who chased you?” And it occurred to him then that she’d admitted to knowing his men had been watching her. He might have felt embarrassed if he’d had any room to feel anything beyond his rage. There was guilt, a small and uncomfortable prick of it buried somewhere in there, that he’d left her with no way to contact him. To reach him when she needed to. And there was confusion, as he could see that anger reflected back to him in her dark eyes. “What? Did something else happen?”

Cesaria shrugged and shook her head weakly, the slight shake morphing into a peeved expression. “I don’t know who. No, nothing else happened. But if it had, how would you have known? For hours I had—” She cut herself off and slipped away from him to pace the length of the room. Whatever bitterness she harbored she swallowed. He’d made no promises to her. She had no claim to make any demand of him. Clarity pierced through her resentment. He was irreproachable by his design. That’s how Mr. Big Shot stays big. She crossed her arms and faced him with a small distance between them. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.” Her lips worked themselves into aborted words and at a loss for what to say next she simply clasped her hands and pressed her fingers against her thumbs.

Haakon let her pull away from him, wouldn’t stop her now. Bewilderment painted the sharp lines of his face. In frustration, the vampire pushed at the mess of his hair. For the second time he was undone, his tie loose and his shirt askance. It was a physical manifestation of the new lack of control, his loss of balance around her. He frowned as she cut herself off, stopped herself from explaining whatever it was that caused the frustration that he could feel rolling off of her in waves. He curses in his native tongue. “It matters.” Suddenly, the vampire was hungry for an argument. Ready to push her into whatever it was she was holding back. “What is it then? You’re angry I’ve kept my eye on you? I keep an eye on all of my investments.” His tone was ice.

Cesaria’s expression relented, became soft immediately after his first guess. It was enough to disabuse him of that idea. No, it was not the men he hired to— Nevermind! She smiled sharply in bitter surprise, her brows arched, lips tight. “An investment,” she echoed back. “Got it. Well, your investment is safe. Would you like to touch it before you leave?” On the phrase ‘touch it’, she pushed at either side of her breasts with open palms, jiggling them beneath her blouse for a second.

Haakon’s face darkened again in anger. His eyes strayed from her face, how could they not, but he found her again quickly enough. He was caught then, somewhere between anger and confusion and bitter regret. But he wasn’t ready to fold yet. “And if I would?” He asks darkly, closing the space between them in a few easy, long legged strides. “Would you stop me?” Haakon pulls her to him, not gently, an arm around her waist while the other tangles in the hair at the nape of her neck. With his lips close enough to have his breath feathering across her ear he challenges, “Stop me.”

Cesaria shivered in his arms. His threat did not pierce her heart, not yet. Despite the barbarism and violence she’d seen him so easily dispense and despite his anger now, she did not fear him. Her kiss was taunt. Did he really want this? She met his challenge with impudence. Kissing him, she backpedaled to the kitchen table and sat on its surface, opened her legs on either side of him and willfully allowed lust to take her. Despite her rage, it was easy to succumb to the desire he stirred in her. Within a minute her curse had replaced her soft lips with chewy hunks of leather that tasted foul in his mouth. Her hair fell out in clumps in his hand. Her body wilted under his to nothing more than a dried husk. Her cheek and nose reeked as they fell away from her face during their feverish kissing. The wet sounds of their lips were replaced with something gurgling and wheezing. Stop him, he had dared. How naive. Yea. Okay. No problem. She’d make him recoil.

Haakon rode on his anger, took what she offered and pushed for more. He was blind with it and hungry for her. He pressed for a moment even as the curse began to change her, just a moment. With pale, dead hair now trapped in his hands he pulled away to look at her, fully caught in the curse. Trapped in her even now. The realization that he’d caused her pain, was causing her pain even now, crossed his face. But what more could he offer her? What more could she ask of him? He didn’t move back, wouldn’t look away. He wasn’t blind, wasn’t immune to the sight of her, or the smell, but he didn’t pull away. Disgust never came. He softened again, the anger finally dropping away from him like a curtain. All that was left for him then was that cold fear and pain. It painted the features of his dark face. “Cesaria,” He touches her ruined cheek tenderly, “Come back now.”

Cesaria pulled her gaze away from him and frowned. The frown blossomed into her full lips and the white, stringy hair sprang back up into loose, black curls. She couldn’t meet his gaze. Tears stung her eyes and dampened her lashes but did not spill. “You made a pretty bad investment,” she said, her voice tremulous.

Haakon watched as life sprang back into her entranced, lost, helpless at the sight of her. Guilt ached in his chest like a bad tooth but pride stopped him from making an apology, stopped him from correcting her. Stopped him from offering the truth. He brushed a thumb over the returned softness of her cheek. “Look at me,” He commands softly, “Look at me, Cesaria.” He gripped her chin softly, turned her face to his. He didn’t know what she’d see there, how much of him his eyes would reveal. “I can not be more than what I am.”

Cesaria met his gaze reluctantly, afraid of giving away more of herself than she already has. Resisting him proved impossible, as always, and in the tenderness of his gaze she rediscovered the depths of him that have made her his captive. She didn’t want to cry, so she took her time. Sitting on the table still, her fingers raked through his silky locks and curled behind his perfect ear. The silence swelled between them and pushed away her desire to win a fight. At length, she could say without crying, her voice thicker with her accent than usual, “You don’t even know what I want from you, and still say you can’t give it to me.”

Haakon waited for her. He found patience, like the tenderness of before, that he’d not know he’d possessed. Or perhaps he’d forgotten. Watched her as he did, admired the glossy darkness of her hair and the attractive lines of her face. Waited with considerable regret to see if the tears that welled in her lovely dark eyes might fall. And then he marveled at her when they did not, her strength another nail in his coffin. He smiled then, darkly and without humor. Unanswering, he pressed a kiss to her temple before stepping away. “I’ve got to call my men off. They’re searching the city for you,” He hesitated. Frustration crossed his face again, some inner turmoil causing him grief.

Cesaria puzzled over his humorless, dark smile. His eyes gave him away at times, but the rest of him was inscrutable. Her fingers slipped away from him slowly as he pulled away. “Go.” She nodded towards the door. “I’ll be here when you get back, tell you every detail of what happened tonight.” As he started to pass through the door that he broke, she said, “Wait. Just in case I don’t see you again…” She smiled a little impishly as she pulled a pencil and notepad from a kitchen drawer. “Write down where I can reach you.” Her gaze was alight with mischief. “For the damages,” she teased as she nodded to the door.

Haakon hesitated for a moment still, unwilling to leave her so soon. Annoyed that he was. He lingered in her doorway like a shadow, brooding and dark. When she called to him he answered by turning back, crossing the room to take the notepad and pencil from her. There was a wry smile tilting the corner of his lips. He wrote his business address neatly, “For the damages.” He didn’t move away again, only looked down at her with a closed off smile as he reached out to capture a lock of dark hair between his index finger and his thumb. “I won't be long.” He left her then and closed the ruined door behind him. It was an excellent excuse, he thought as he moved through the night, to start convincing her to move into a better neighborhood. One more suitable for a woman living alone.

Cesaria :: Haakon’s wry smile gutted her. Cesaria felt absurd standing there, watching him, weak at the knees at the slightest provocation. In his absence, her mind returned to the sweet and heady thoughts that made her unsteady. Twice now he had warned her that he cannot be anything other than what he is. She let the warning slip away into the pink haze of a fragile, sweet life not yet promised, not yet denied. She played music from the lip-engraved stone and sang along to dreamy love songs in her native tongue. The overwrought lyrics would make local bards blush, or cringe. Her monstrous form took over, but she didn’t mind. His memory was fine company and it didn’t flee. She kept the music low so that when he returned she would hear him and quickly compose herself, before inwardly and outwardly. She told herself she would not keep him all night, like the last time, nor play that game of touch-but-don’t-take. It was inherently cruel to them both, no? Her resolve started out strong enough. She spoke of what happened while music played softly. There was a man in an alley peeling potatoes. He addressed her as ma’am and pointed out the vampire that stalked her shadow. The stranger moved to protect her from the stalker, so she thought that maybe the potato peeler behind the restaurant on Coastal Street was Haakon’s man under cover. It sounded so stupid to her now in hindsight, and she relented to the stupidity by exclaiming through a bout of self-deprecating laughter, “Haakon, how am I supposed to know who the friendly vampires are and are not?” The vampire in the shadows, who she now knew to be Haakon’s employee, attacked the potato peeler, who defended himself and won. He seemed angry about the kill and demanded answers from her, so she fled. She did not know if he planned to attack her or not, but did not linger to find out. Haakon and Cesaria spoke while lying in her bed and the game she had prohibited herself from playing slowly crept back into her hands, her body, her lips. There were so many opportunities to stop, but one thought lead to another, one touch explored somewhere new, traced his tattoo, discovered a new muscle. After speaking of the potato peeler she revealed she had known about his men for some time now. She grinned and nearly purred with satisfaction as she thought of the lengths he went to for her sake. That hideous smile surfaced often, like last time. She should really let him go, she thought to herself more than once with no conviction. Tell her, again, what exactly was it he said he could not be?

Haakon delegated. It was easy enough to find one of his men and give him marching orders. It was ridiculous, laughable even, that from the moment he stepped beyond her door he was already anxious to return. Not that he would admit it. Like an addict that insisted he was in control even as his hands shook and he hid another bottle beneath the sink. And what good would come of it? Haakon knew, somewhere inside of him, he knew it had already gone too far. Knew that he shouldn’t return. Knew that a better man would ride back to the Dark Land and stop this madness. But how could he? The image of her spread around him with tears not yet spilled burned through him. So he returned to low music and dark eyes, to one more stolen night filled with light and warmth and skin kissed by sunlight he would never again stand beneath. She told him of what happened to his man, as she’d promised, and he was able to listen intently and without temper turning eyes cold. Her vulnerability had taken the poison of his rage. He told her of Raul, because it mattered, and revealed another piece of himself in doing so. And when he could no longer stand to keep his hands off of her took her to bed even as his better judgment demanded he leave. In exploring each other, body and mind, he became something else. With every touch she unwound him further. The hot and cold, ache without release, was so unlike the instant gratification the vampire had known in his afterlife. He laughed easily, the humor softening the severity of his face, when she revealed how soon she’d caught on to him and his men. Murmured how clever and attractive her mind was as he pressed his lips against her wrist and felt the intoxicating call of her blood there. He touched, tasted, and explored only what she gave. Stopped when he sensed she needed a moment and again revealed more of himself to her. In the darkest hours of the night Haakon became the man he had promised Cesaria he could never again be. And like before, he was gone with the first morning light.