starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

[It's Sanguis, and for the first time in a long time, Jotaro hasn't wound up a wolf; instead of the now-familiar feral rumblings he's generally grown accustomed to dealing with for the first five days of the month, he's back to being a dragon again.

It's not altogether bad, really. The dragon is calmer than the wolf is, for the most part. It's quieter, more confident, because it has no reason not to be. Why should it? It's an apex predator, threatened by nothing, with plenty of room to be hedonistic and languid.

So, when the knock at the door comes, he stalks easily to the door and opens it without hesitation. On his head, a pair of ridged horns extend out and back, disguised at the base by his thick curls, his hat fitted neatly between them. The armored scales he's developed are almost ethereally beautiful, resembling black fire opal — each one jet black until the light hits it and sets off starbursts of color within.

Unchanged, or seemingly so, are his eyes — still green, but now unnaturally so. Green with magic and with power. There's something different about his voice, too. It's silkier, more weighty despite being so smooth.

Funny how Trevor is so hung up on the possibility of vampire compulsion, and yet here it is in a faint and benign form — silver threads through a honeyed voice, warm and easy to obey.]

Hi. Guess you found the place okay, huh.

[The interior of the apartment smells like something's been cooking. Meat, absolutely. Something rich and hearty.]

C'mon in. Take your shoes off at the door.

[ The thing is? Compulsion terrifies him when he knows it's there, but he can't recognise it in the first place to save his life. Literally, on occasion. Compulsion, by its nature, feels like safety. It's impossible to distinguish from someone simply seeming trustworthy, especially to someone who's trusted far too few people to understand the intricacies of how it feels. ]

So you're a dragon. Huh. I'll be honest, the turnip thing was weirder.

[ He's carrying a *BTSB mug filled with a grey paste and wrapped with clingfilm, because that's how one transports medicine and also he's the type of person who scavenges all their household items from stuff other people have discarded. So he has a lot of *BTSB merch right now. These last few days have been kind of great in terms of getting free stuff with boyband faces on it. He sets it down on the floor while he unlaces his shoes. ]

I told you how to use this stuff, right?

Normally I'm a wolf. Today I'm not.

[His impulse is to reach for the mug as soon as Trevor lets go of it, precious priceless thing that it is. As it is, he manages to restrain the urge, but he still doesn't take his eyes off of it, like he's got to watch it every second lest something happen to it the instant he looks away.]

It's topical, you said. Rub it on and let it sit. It hardens after awhile and chips off slowly. Right?

Yeah. Better to let it chip off a little at a time than to wash it off, but you can do that if there's residue still there after a while. He took blood not too long ago, so there shouldn't be much keeping him from healing once the stuff's neutralised. He might need a little more.

[ Shoes attended to, he kicks them off and picks up the PRECIOUS BOYBAND MUG again. Bone and ash from burned pages of scripture and oil and dust. ]

Fucked up how quickly it gets normal, right? To just see someone in the street and they've sprouted wings and you just think 'yeah, that's the red moon, better not piss them off too much'.

[Hmm. That's an interesting emotion that rears its ugly head deep in the lizard portion of his selfish dragon brain. He took blood not too long ago, Trevor says offhandedly, and a cold and scaly impulse inside him demands how do you even know that, who was it, that's mine, how dare you, that's mine.

And it's — good that he's a dragon, the rational part of him thinks through a colder sweat, because Sanguis doesn't usually hit him anywhere near that strongly, and if he'd been a wolf in that moment instead of a dragon, he honestly doesn't know whether he would've snarled or not.

It's not like he scares easily. Still, that flash of a reaction — there and gone, like a strike of lightning — brings with it a sobering realization. Maybe he doesn't have Sanguis nearly as figured out as he's grown complacent enough to think he has. He thinks of all the analogies he's heard between Sanguis possessiveness and vampire possessiveness, and thinks of Wallachia burning, and then stops thinking about any of that as quickly as he can.]

What?

[Right. Right. Pay attention, idiot. Fuck is wrong with you.]

...Yeah. I mean...I guess after a while that's just "how it is".

[He's not going to snatch for the mug. He's not. He is going to control the stupid dragon inside him and behave like a normal NOT-DRAGON human being and let Trevor carry the fucking mug because he is NOT STUPID.]

You get into a habit. Don't schedule anything important for those five days. Organize your life around it, or whatever.

[ ALSO HE HIT ON HIM A WHOLE LOT IF THAT MAKES IT BETTER but he will. not be discussing that.

He tilts his head at Jotaro's apparent distraction, though he doesn't press it. This medicine shit's meant to be important. Weird time to lose focus. ]

It's funny. People get all fucked up about this stuff, you know? About weird shit happening that doesn't match up with how they see the world. But once there's no choice but to accept it's the case, people adapt to it quick. Almost stupid how easy it is.

[ He does put down the precious, precious mug before too long, as soon as there's a convenient-seeming table. ]

I'm not complaining, but you really didn't have to cook. You don't owe me shit.

It's not about owing you. It's Sanguis.

[Cryptic, but whatever. He double-checks to make sure that the mug is securely in the middle of the table (it is) where it can't spill (it won't) before motioning Trevor into one of the chairs, already moving for the kitchen to get some dishware.]

Do you really want me to try to explain it, or is that enough?

No need. Moon bullshit, I get it. And I'm not complaining about getting fed.

[ He waves a hand dismissively as he sits down. ]

Just didn't want you to think you owed me a favour or anything. I'd really rather not have to keep track of shit like that.

Hm.

[That's sort of interesting, isn't it? The idea of not keeping track of favors owed. It's reassuring, in a way; the last thing he wants is to have to deal with trying to balance out one good deed for another until they're even, assigning value to action and tallying up either side. But on the other hand, exchanging favors is also an easy way of building a relationship in its early stages, and he wonders vaguely if that's Trevor's not-altogether-graceful way of suggesting that he doesn't want anything to do with him, once this is over.

That doesn't seem right, that latter idea, but who knows? Trevor Belmont is a man who won't throw a punch until the other person "is finished". Fuck knows how his mind works sometimes.]

Well, anyway. Here.

[He brings over a bowl and spoon, sets them in front of Trevor, then stalks back into the kitchen and returns summarily with a pot of beef udon, which he clunks down in front of him.]

This is what noodles taste like when they're not garbage. Eat.

Edited 2020-05-04 22:12 (UTC)

[ If there is any further explanation behind not wanting to keep track of favours, he doesn't seem to be offering it outright. Instead he looks over the contents of the pot, tilting his head while he decides whether he wants to fuck with Jotaro by saying that the thicker noodles look way more like worms, or- ]

What the shit, these aren't noodles. They're all wet and floppy.

You've got five seconds to put it in the bowl and start eating, or I'm taking it back and you're not getting any.

[LEAVE HIS FLOPPY WET NOODLES ALONE]

Eat.

The ones in the packets are all crunchy.

[ What was that he said before about trying not to piss of sanguises? APPARENTLY IT DOESN'T APPLY HERE.

But he does serve himself some of the noodles, because he does actually want food. ]

It's not the noodles' fucking fault you eat them wrong.

[OH MY GOD]

This is one of my better attempts. Not that you'd know the difference either way. But I care, and it came out right. So there.

[ So the words 'I care' are kind of magic words when it comes to dealing with Trevor. Anything like them. A statement that something matters. And so he shuts up, long enough to finish serving himself and set about eating. To take his first few mouthfuls in silence and actually consider them rather than just interacting with them the same way he usually interacts with food and trying to not starve as efficiently as possible. To eat the slower way that he usually only eats when Cordis is up. ]

So this is how it's meant to taste?

[...Hm. Well, that's certainly a change in attitude, isn't it? He wonders, vaguely, what it was that struck a chord. Something to think about another time, maybe.]

Close. It's still not the same as my mom's, but it's getting better.

[He hesitates a minute, then disappears into the kitchen and returns with a bowl of his own, sinking into a chair and spooning himself a helping — heavy on the meat — as well.]

...I didn't used to. Cook. Used to just drink beer and eat...whatever.

[He shrugs a little, ducking his head into his food.]

Now I cook.

[ Eating is useful, because it means he doesn't have to speak right away. There's a built-in reason to not respond immediately and he takes advantage of it, taking another few mouthfuls before he speaks again. ]

What changed?

[ It seems like the natural question. Even if he's half expecting 'and then I met this rad vampire who taught me the error of my ways'. Jotaro said he cared, and so at least for now he's trying. ]

Dr. Acula said my diet was shit.

[He actually doesn't know if Trevor will get that joke without seeing it in print first, and knowing what to expect. But maybe he'll get the connection anyway, just from the "doctor" part.]

...I didn't want to moonlace when I first got here. Didn't really want to do anything. Didn't sleep. Smoked a lot. Just ate whatever, I didn't care. Drank.

[HMMM SOUNDS LIKE DEPRESSION AND BAD COPING MECHANISMS SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE FROM THE 1400S TO THE 1900S I GUESS]

Seemed kind of hypocritical to be hassling him about not just taking a forever nap, but then not listen when he told me to take care of myself too. So. "Eat better" is one of the things I worked on.

Doctor-? [ It's easy enough to guess who Jotaro's talking about from context, but he's never seen 'Doctor' abbreviated like that. ] Oh.

[ It's almost laughable, isn't it? How pathetic the person he is sounds when it's someone else. It's also kind of laughable how predictable that all is. How he probably already knew, or why would he have gone out of his way to actually eat properly for the few days before offering Alucard blood? He knew that Alucard would be the exact fucking type to make a big deal of it. ]

Did it change anything? The eating better shit?

...I didn't stop having nightmares.

[That...wasn't what he meant to say, he doesn't think. It's more candor than he was expecting to show. But the words hang in the air, and he sort of gauges them as they fade into silence, and at the end he decides that saying them...wasn't as bad as he might once have expected it to be.

He shovels another mouthful of noodles past his lips, unknowingly using the same trick as Trevor, to buy himself a minute.]

But it meant I wasn't just sitting still. All of a sudden I had stuff I had to figure out. Choose something. Find a recipe. Go to the store, buy the stuff it needs. Figure out how to put it together. Make food come out.

[He's quiet another minute, reflecting.]

I had to try. That's what it changed.

[ His expression doesn't really change. Relaxes a little, maybe, though it wasn't particularly tense before. There's no pity. He doesn't look away. ]

You had to break living down into stupid little tasks with rules. That you could do right or fuck up and you'd know right away whether you did it right or fucked up.

[ He considers the noodles, and his tone is even. ]

Where if you follow all the rules to the fucking letter, it just works. Like it should.

Yeah.

[His spoon clinks against the edge of his bowl, idle tapping that does nothing to scoop up the contents within.]

Thing about cooking, you do it right and you get food. Then you have to eat it, or what was the fucking point.

[He pauses another moment.]

You know anything about boats? Sailing.

Less than most. Spent most of my life pretty far inland. Closest I'd know anything useful about is how to deal with the shit you might find out there.

[ He pokes idly at a vegetable that isn't, for once, a sliver of mystery green stuff rehydrated into something resembling a piece of paper that thought about a spring onion once. He's still thinking about the cooking thing, in truth. ]

A lot of it boils down to 'if you see a horse in the sea, that's weird and you shouldn't try to ride it', which seems like common sense.

O...kay.

[LORD TALKING TO BELMONTS IS SO WEIRD you never know when they're just going to say some shit like DON'T RIDE WEIRD HORSES YOU FIND IN THE SEA like okay, man, I wasn't gonna to begin with but thanks for the heads-up, cheers to that.]

So there's these parts of the ocean where there's no wind. Ships that sailed into them would get stuck, they'd be going and going and then all of a sudden there wasn't anything pushing them anymore. No wind filling their sails. They were just stuck.

[He swirls the broth in his bowl with the edge of his spoon.]

Hard to get out of something like that. You have to get down and row. But rowing's hard. You get tired. It'd be so much easier to just stop, except the wind's not coming back unless you get yourself out first.

[ He listens, despite the fact that Jotaro has not given proper confirmation that if he encounters a horse in the water he will not try to ride it. ]

Oh. That was a metaphor. [ And he lets go of his spoon for a moment. He could fuss at the food to pretend that that's the reason for the long silence but- at this point, there's no deception in it. ] Yeah.

It's fucked up. Things are so much easier here. I always know I'm going to be able to eat. Him and you are the only people who've ever even heard my name, as far as I know. Weird shit happens, but everyone ends up more or less safe. Can't even fucking die for real. Everything should be- you know. Better.

And it's not. Half the time it feels harder. Nothing but time to think.

...Are you waiting to see if I'll tell you I won't ride a water horse.

[Trevor's silence here is eerily like when he was just waiting around in the grocery store with are you done hanging in the air, and, well, Jotaro learns fast and hangs out with a lot of weird people.]

You get used to...

[What was it Alucard had said? Something something the whole world hating Trevor Belmont. He's probably not supposed to even know that, but there's the echo of it in what he says. The only people who've ever even heard my name. Like that's a good thing.

Funny how easy it would be to substitute in Joestar for Belmont and still have that sentiment make sense.]

...Everyone's out to get you. And then all of a sudden no one's out to get you. And it feels like you're what's wrong. You're what doesn't fit.

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