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tampered2007-08-22 11:34 pm
repairedbywebs.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-08-22 11:34 pm
(no subject)
When; 22nd August
Rating; PG
Characters; Saya Daphne![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
repairedbywebs and Joshua apostleofhope
Summary; Joshua goes to meet a certain lady...
Log;
It had been a trial saying goodbye to Nill. He really didn't like the idea of her going out into public at all, let alone when she was still recovering...and especially not when he knew people would be seeing her naked. He didn't care if they were other girls. Still...with Fiore watching her, he felt a bit more at ease.
No less neglected, though. It didn't help that Rosiel seemed to be favoring Fai. Joshua wanted to tear him to pieces and he wasn't even allowed.
As soon as Fiore had left with Nill, Joshua had snuck into the kitchen to dig around for any sweet snacks she had made, pleased with himself when he located some candy and cookies. He wasn't going to wait until dinner this time.
Flying over the City irritated him more than it ought to have, if only because he just wasn't feeling his best today. He was upset over various things, and he could tell his health wasn't at it's best. People's noise didn't make it any easier.
With a voiceless sigh, Joshua landed outside the warehouse that Saya had described, the glowing wings shimmering a bit before vanishing.
-----
Saya twisted slightly, the familiar vibration of someone approaching echoing slightly in her head. She didn't mind meeting new people, especially when they were as intuitively interesting as Joshua. It was almost a challenge for her, to watch someone as clearly on the edge as he was and not prod back.
She was especially entertained by his devotion to his sister. It was sweet, enthralling, real and actual. It reminded her...she shook her head in a disturbingly human movement. Nevermind.
She stepped outside, wearing a woman's well-cut pinstripe suit, and wondered what she should expect from him in person.
-----
She looked normal, which was strange. Well, the suit wasn't really normal... Didn't she know girls were supposed to wear dresses?
But ignoring that, her noise was on a completely different frequency from normal people. Curious about that, he stepped closer and reached into the pocket of his long black coat, pulling out a baggy with candies inside. He was rather disheartened to find they had melted a bit, not to mention visibly confused.
Sometimes it was the common sense of the simple things that passed him by, like he had the mental process of a five-year-old. Looking rather sheepish, Joshua held them out for her. Hopefully she liked melted butterscotch.
----
Saya smiled; it was the kind of smile she realized made her look predatory, and took one of the candies gently. "Thank you so much," she whispered in her usual soft voice, popping it carefully into her mouth. She didn't much care for real food anymore.
notfoodnotfoodnotfoodstopstopstoptastelessnutritionlessnotfoodnotfood
The buzz in her own head hightened as she swallowed, then dimmed. She watched Joshua and turned to look at the warehouse behind her. "Would you like to go inside? It's a bit open out here, don't you think?"
She moved back, careful not to touch him, and waited for his reaction.
----
Joshua recognized the look in her eyes. It reminded him a little bit of some of the Sinners that had worked for Aion. ...They had never really gotten along, but that wasn't his fault.
At her suggestion, he was quick to nod, shooting wary looks at the few people in the area. It was nice that this place wasn't highly populated, but it was bad enough so that the noise pressed at the edge of his mind.
As he turned to walk inside, the boy reached into his other pocket to pull out a small notepad and pencil attached to it, accustomed to carrying it around with him considering very few people could understand him otherwise. As he walked slowly inside, Joshua scribbled sloppily onto one of the pages, then turned to hold it up to her, the letters looking like something a little kid had written.
'Do you know sign language?'
----
Saya took a look at the paper, then back at Joshua.
"You can't speak. I didn't know." She thought about it for a moment. There was a way she could communicate with him, but it was frightening, and just a touch painful. It also revealed more than she would like revealed, and would probably kill the boy anyway.
She decided against it. No need to leave the girl without a brother. She shook her head. "No, I don't. I was always better with spoken languages." She thought about it. "Is writing everything down terribly bothersome?"
---
Looking vaguely disappointed, Joshua flipped the notepad around to scribble out something again. He probably should have told her before that he wasn't able to talk, but he always just forgot. He was still adjusting.
At least he was a quick writer, thanks to his Devil speed, but that didn't make his writing any neater. Flipping it back around, Joshua grinned.
'Worth it. For her.'
----
A sacrifice, then. Saya nodded. "Of course," she said, understanding the sentiment on a vaguely distant level. He would do the same for her.
Of course, he would probably bungle it somehow and they would both end up mute.
"You hear thoughts," she said, more a comment then a question. "That's interesting. Does it hurt," she asked, watching his face, then slipping her eyes to his hair; blonde and fluffy.
She must have been losing her mind. This boy was not even remotely similar, except in sibling devotion. She shook her head again and said, "I have a bad habit of doing that; shaking my head. Bad thoughts."
---
Tipping his head, Joshua thought about that a moment before shrugging and writing on the notepad again. 'Sometimes. Depends on the day, and the people. Can't always hear the words.'
Stepping closer, the Apostle scribbled out something again before pushing the notepad right in front of her for emphasis. 'But really, it's written all over your face. Who is he?'
There was a smirk on his face, then, and a glint in his eye that revealed the little boy in him was gone for the moment.
----
Saya was impressed. Most humans couldn't read her face; and if they could they were too frightened by her aura. "Socrates. My brother."
The pain of saying his name was sharp. She didn't talk about Socrates; not now, not ever, not unless he was there. He was her everything, and she couldn't admit it to herself, because spiders didn't feel, they didn't feel anything. It was unnatural. It was dirty, and wrong, loving her brother.
She smiled. "You're very perceptive. I like you very much."
She moved like a spider for a minute, one long, disconcerting minute, and then asked, "What do I sound like to you? Clicks?"
----
At being called perceptive, Joshua stepped back and laughed. Or it would have been laughter if a voice had accompanied it. Instead it was quiet, his shoulders shaking from the silent effort. Then he moved to the side to begin to circle her. She wasn't human, that much was obvious to him. He just had to figure out what she was.
Pain caused by her brother? Interesting.
As he moved, his dress shoes were silent against the hard floor, the air seeming to still as he opened his mouth to try and mimic the noises in his head. Even without a voice, he was able to let out a heavy hiss, followed by a few clicks of his tongue.
Stopping just at her side, Joshua reached out to touch her arm, fingertips walking along it with emphasis on the creepy-crawly aspect of the clicking in his head.
----
The touch was soft, his skin cool against her own burning temperature. She nodded. There was no point in hiding if he could hear the spider.
With a bizarre, wet tearing sound, her skin split near where Joshua's fingers were. Two small spiders, both her and not her all at once fought their way out. One examined the hand next to it, reaching a tentative foreleg toward a finger. The other realized, just as she did, that it was outside and pressed its way back into her skin.
A skinbag, her older sister had called her once, in hope of getting an emotional response. There hadn't been any, of course, but it was an accurate description. If anyone were to cut her, there was no blood, no flesh, no internal organs. Just a bag of spiders.
----
Sometimes he enjoyed touching people who were alive, if only for the warmth factor. Being cold was the only real drawback to being dead. He couldn't say he missed having a heartbeat, since it was just senseless noise to him.
But what he found wasn't normal warmth. Spiders. Blue eyes widened in shock at finding out just where they were hiding. Not in the lights, or under the couch, or in any cabinets. They were inside her.
Utterly fascinated with this concept, Joshua's hand moved to grab her wrist and yank it over to him. His horns appeared then, jutting out just behind his ears. The mark of a Devil.
But it wasn't like he wanted to hurt her. Well...not with a bad intent, anyway. He just wanted to see more of the spiders. With his power source now visible, the talons grew were normal nails should have been, and he moved his free hand to push up at her sleeve to reveal her wrist. Glancing up to her face with a pitiful attempt at seeking permission that he didn't even bother to wait for, Joshua sliced a talon across her wrist.
----
Spiders spilled over, and she smiled, feeling her body collapse just a little bit. She watched his horns and licked her teeth, watching herself pour over him, over his hand and wrist. She tasted his skin with her legs, savored the movement, the freedom, and dissolved into thousands, frothed around him suddenly.
She moved until she was behind him, two thousand spiders rebuilding, regrowing, remerging. She stood again, the skin healed. "See something you like?" she asked sweetly.
---
More and more, he was reminded of Rizel. He bet Aion would have liked this one. She would have been useful, considering one couldn't damage her in the normal way.
Still, what was she? A Devil, then? Or something else? He knew that different worlds had different kind of beings, but she was reminding him more and more of Devils from home.
Spinning to find her back in tact, he seemed hardly bothered by having had spiders all over him previously. If anything, they simply tickled, and he was just utterly delighted by her power--so much that he lifted his hands to offer applause with a pleased smile.
---
It was rare a human didn't run screaming, but this was no human. She nodded slightly. "Thank you," she said, "I'm quite pleased myself." Of course, being crawlerling form, it was quite the friendliest of the ways she went, as opposed to Lilian, which inspired delirium.
"And you, Joshua?" She reached up. "May I touch them? I won't hurt them purposefully, I promise." Her hands hovered over the horns, just slightly. She was careful enough to know that some creatures didn't like being touched; she was not one of them.
She didn't mind touch - it didn't do much of anything for her, or against her. She waited patiently. She could have waited forever.
---
This startled him, and he started to take a step back. It wasn't that he didn't like touch, as that didn't really affect the 'noise', but he surely wasn't used to it. He also was rather fearful of someone attempting to yank his horns off. That bitch of a nun had managed it once when masquerading as his sister.
Wary, but figuring it was only fair, Joshua folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head a bit to make it easier. He was going to be still, and be ready to shred her to pieces and escape if she tried anything.
---
She ran her fingers over one of the horns, gently, careful not to apply any pressure. They were astoundingly durable under her fingers. She pulled her hand away after a moment and thanked him.
"They're beautiful," she remarked. "Really, very nice." She was being honest; she liked his horns, they were quite lovely. She was entertained by them. "What are you, then? You're not a shifter like me." She thought about it. "You're not a vampire, either, I can sense those."
She looked at him, a sidelong glance. "Are you a demon?"
---
So she was something called a shifter? What on earth was that? Maybe Fiore would know. She seemed to know so many things, after all... Or maybe he could ask Rosiel.
Pleased that his horns were still in tact, Joshua pulled the notepad back out of his coat pocket to scribble out a response. Turning to look around, he held it out for her to read as he looked for a place to sit. 'Devil. Apostle. Both.'
Realizing there wasn't any furniture of any kind, he shot her a disapproving look before pocketing the notepad and heading for the stairs. Surely she had some human things, right? Not that he couldn't sit on the floor, but then Fiore would get on his case about dirtying up his nice suit. She already scolded him enough for never keeping his tie straight.
---
He was heading up the stairs, towards her sylie, the fool. She waited for the realization, for the panic to hit him as she followed.
It was her sylie because it was her haven, her home, her nest, and above all it was covered in webs. Hopefully he would notice before he ran into one and got himself stuck - she would have to pry him off and out. "Joshua," she said mildly, thinking that perhaps his name would stop him, "That's not the best idea," she continued.
She wondered if it was too late now - he knew her secret, and she wondered if asking him to keep it was a fool's endeavor. She liked her privacy. People would attack her if they knew. She called up, "Would you not tell?" she asked calmly.
----
He didn't need to touch the webs to know they were there. He stopped only a few inches before one, having heard the way the air whispered through them. Stale air. Stale living. She was completely a spider.
Creepy crawly. He grinned.
Then she mentioned keeping it private, and he tilted his head to look over his shoulder. Perfect.
For now, he didn't answer that. Instead he had another idea, stepping back to lean against the railing of the stairs as he wrote out carefully this time, then pointed to the page.
'What do you eat? Bugs? Plants? Or people?'
---
She tipped her head. He was thinking of something that she wasn't sure she liked, but it didn't show in her bearing.
"I eat blood, and the liquified organs of various living things in the primary stage of decay." She pointed towards the back of her sylie. "Like there," she indicated towards a cocoon. "It used to be...well that one used to be a dog. It's in preservation, for when I get hungry."
She stood in front of him and watched, and waited. The human was beginning to slip, and the spider was taking it's place. The emotions were no longer faked - her face was neutral, severe, clean.
---
Well that was fairly disgusting. It made him wrinkle his nose a bit at the thought of eating organs. That was almost as bad as having to eat carrots!
Tapping the pencil's eraser against the notepad, he looked thoughtfully at the coccoon she had pointed to before scrawling out his response, a wicked grin on his face when he showed her.
'I won't tell if you help me out with some things. Not right now. Later.'
---
She didn't like owing anyone anything. But she didn't want everyone to know, and she understood the concept of a deal.
"What do you need done?" she asked. She didn't mind killing - it wasn't an issue of morals for her - but she wasn't getting dirty. She refused to be the fall guy. If it was a matter of cleaning something up, she didn't care; of course, that was easy enough, but she wouldn't tread on the toes of any of her new allies, either.
She thought about it; a mind blank, pumping enough pheremone that he would be instantly sexually aroused and after that hypnosis was easy. But if he wanted was simple...well, there would be no need to waste the energy.
----
His request was pretty simple, and it annoyed him to have to explain further. The irritation was evident in his gaze as he wrote out his response before offering it back to her.
'Don't know yet. Probably just disposing of bodies. Rosiel doesn't like me killing random people.'
---
She shrugged. "Fine." It would feed her, anyway. "I would prefer it if they were just barely alive, but if they're dead, it's no matter."
She cocked her head. "And I will only do it once, so choose the bodies carefully, yes?" She extended her hand out in a gesture for a handshake.
---
He didn't like those terms, and it brought about a visible pout as he eyed her hand. What was the big deal? He was offering her food, here.
With a sigh, Joshua shook his head and wrote out again, underlining the last word. He might not have been a mastermind like Aion, but he knew how to get his way if needed. He didn't have a lot of connections in the City and he wasn't going to let this one slide.
When he turned the notebook around for her to read again, he had a childlike smile back on his face. 'Thought you liked me. Once a month. I'll keep them barely alive.'
---
Guilt. Pathetic.
She nodded. "Fine. One month, then. I'll clean up your bodies." She blinked roughly, remembering that it was a human reaction. "And we'll be friends enough that after that, you can ask me, and I'll consider it. Does that sound fair?"
---
Even more than he had asked for. Rosiel would have been proud.
Flipping the notebook closed, Joshua stuffed it into his pocket and reached out to take her hand with a grin. Instead of shaking it, though, he turned it so that he could carefully draw out the letters with his fingertip against the back of her hand. F-A-I-R.
Happy that they had agreed on terms, he even remembered his manners well enough to lift her hand to just barely brush his lips against the skin in thanks. He could hear the spiders even more now, and it was too bad he had promised not to tell anyone. It was such an exciting story, and all.
Rating; PG
Characters; Saya Daphne
repairedbywebs and Joshua apostleofhopeSummary; Joshua goes to meet a certain lady...
Log;
It had been a trial saying goodbye to Nill. He really didn't like the idea of her going out into public at all, let alone when she was still recovering...and especially not when he knew people would be seeing her naked. He didn't care if they were other girls. Still...with Fiore watching her, he felt a bit more at ease.
No less neglected, though. It didn't help that Rosiel seemed to be favoring Fai. Joshua wanted to tear him to pieces and he wasn't even allowed.
As soon as Fiore had left with Nill, Joshua had snuck into the kitchen to dig around for any sweet snacks she had made, pleased with himself when he located some candy and cookies. He wasn't going to wait until dinner this time.
Flying over the City irritated him more than it ought to have, if only because he just wasn't feeling his best today. He was upset over various things, and he could tell his health wasn't at it's best. People's noise didn't make it any easier.
With a voiceless sigh, Joshua landed outside the warehouse that Saya had described, the glowing wings shimmering a bit before vanishing.
-----
Saya twisted slightly, the familiar vibration of someone approaching echoing slightly in her head. She didn't mind meeting new people, especially when they were as intuitively interesting as Joshua. It was almost a challenge for her, to watch someone as clearly on the edge as he was and not prod back.
She was especially entertained by his devotion to his sister. It was sweet, enthralling, real and actual. It reminded her...she shook her head in a disturbingly human movement. Nevermind.
She stepped outside, wearing a woman's well-cut pinstripe suit, and wondered what she should expect from him in person.
-----
She looked normal, which was strange. Well, the suit wasn't really normal... Didn't she know girls were supposed to wear dresses?
But ignoring that, her noise was on a completely different frequency from normal people. Curious about that, he stepped closer and reached into the pocket of his long black coat, pulling out a baggy with candies inside. He was rather disheartened to find they had melted a bit, not to mention visibly confused.
Sometimes it was the common sense of the simple things that passed him by, like he had the mental process of a five-year-old. Looking rather sheepish, Joshua held them out for her. Hopefully she liked melted butterscotch.
----
Saya smiled; it was the kind of smile she realized made her look predatory, and took one of the candies gently. "Thank you so much," she whispered in her usual soft voice, popping it carefully into her mouth. She didn't much care for real food anymore.
notfoodnotfoodnotfoodstopstopstoptastelessnutritionlessnotfoodnotfood
The buzz in her own head hightened as she swallowed, then dimmed. She watched Joshua and turned to look at the warehouse behind her. "Would you like to go inside? It's a bit open out here, don't you think?"
She moved back, careful not to touch him, and waited for his reaction.
----
Joshua recognized the look in her eyes. It reminded him a little bit of some of the Sinners that had worked for Aion. ...They had never really gotten along, but that wasn't his fault.
At her suggestion, he was quick to nod, shooting wary looks at the few people in the area. It was nice that this place wasn't highly populated, but it was bad enough so that the noise pressed at the edge of his mind.
As he turned to walk inside, the boy reached into his other pocket to pull out a small notepad and pencil attached to it, accustomed to carrying it around with him considering very few people could understand him otherwise. As he walked slowly inside, Joshua scribbled sloppily onto one of the pages, then turned to hold it up to her, the letters looking like something a little kid had written.
'Do you know sign language?'
----
Saya took a look at the paper, then back at Joshua.
"You can't speak. I didn't know." She thought about it for a moment. There was a way she could communicate with him, but it was frightening, and just a touch painful. It also revealed more than she would like revealed, and would probably kill the boy anyway.
She decided against it. No need to leave the girl without a brother. She shook her head. "No, I don't. I was always better with spoken languages." She thought about it. "Is writing everything down terribly bothersome?"
---
Looking vaguely disappointed, Joshua flipped the notepad around to scribble out something again. He probably should have told her before that he wasn't able to talk, but he always just forgot. He was still adjusting.
At least he was a quick writer, thanks to his Devil speed, but that didn't make his writing any neater. Flipping it back around, Joshua grinned.
'Worth it. For her.'
----
A sacrifice, then. Saya nodded. "Of course," she said, understanding the sentiment on a vaguely distant level. He would do the same for her.
Of course, he would probably bungle it somehow and they would both end up mute.
"You hear thoughts," she said, more a comment then a question. "That's interesting. Does it hurt," she asked, watching his face, then slipping her eyes to his hair; blonde and fluffy.
She must have been losing her mind. This boy was not even remotely similar, except in sibling devotion. She shook her head again and said, "I have a bad habit of doing that; shaking my head. Bad thoughts."
---
Tipping his head, Joshua thought about that a moment before shrugging and writing on the notepad again. 'Sometimes. Depends on the day, and the people. Can't always hear the words.'
Stepping closer, the Apostle scribbled out something again before pushing the notepad right in front of her for emphasis. 'But really, it's written all over your face. Who is he?'
There was a smirk on his face, then, and a glint in his eye that revealed the little boy in him was gone for the moment.
----
Saya was impressed. Most humans couldn't read her face; and if they could they were too frightened by her aura. "Socrates. My brother."
The pain of saying his name was sharp. She didn't talk about Socrates; not now, not ever, not unless he was there. He was her everything, and she couldn't admit it to herself, because spiders didn't feel, they didn't feel anything. It was unnatural. It was dirty, and wrong, loving her brother.
She smiled. "You're very perceptive. I like you very much."
She moved like a spider for a minute, one long, disconcerting minute, and then asked, "What do I sound like to you? Clicks?"
----
At being called perceptive, Joshua stepped back and laughed. Or it would have been laughter if a voice had accompanied it. Instead it was quiet, his shoulders shaking from the silent effort. Then he moved to the side to begin to circle her. She wasn't human, that much was obvious to him. He just had to figure out what she was.
Pain caused by her brother? Interesting.
As he moved, his dress shoes were silent against the hard floor, the air seeming to still as he opened his mouth to try and mimic the noises in his head. Even without a voice, he was able to let out a heavy hiss, followed by a few clicks of his tongue.
Stopping just at her side, Joshua reached out to touch her arm, fingertips walking along it with emphasis on the creepy-crawly aspect of the clicking in his head.
----
The touch was soft, his skin cool against her own burning temperature. She nodded. There was no point in hiding if he could hear the spider.
With a bizarre, wet tearing sound, her skin split near where Joshua's fingers were. Two small spiders, both her and not her all at once fought their way out. One examined the hand next to it, reaching a tentative foreleg toward a finger. The other realized, just as she did, that it was outside and pressed its way back into her skin.
A skinbag, her older sister had called her once, in hope of getting an emotional response. There hadn't been any, of course, but it was an accurate description. If anyone were to cut her, there was no blood, no flesh, no internal organs. Just a bag of spiders.
----
Sometimes he enjoyed touching people who were alive, if only for the warmth factor. Being cold was the only real drawback to being dead. He couldn't say he missed having a heartbeat, since it was just senseless noise to him.
But what he found wasn't normal warmth. Spiders. Blue eyes widened in shock at finding out just where they were hiding. Not in the lights, or under the couch, or in any cabinets. They were inside her.
Utterly fascinated with this concept, Joshua's hand moved to grab her wrist and yank it over to him. His horns appeared then, jutting out just behind his ears. The mark of a Devil.
But it wasn't like he wanted to hurt her. Well...not with a bad intent, anyway. He just wanted to see more of the spiders. With his power source now visible, the talons grew were normal nails should have been, and he moved his free hand to push up at her sleeve to reveal her wrist. Glancing up to her face with a pitiful attempt at seeking permission that he didn't even bother to wait for, Joshua sliced a talon across her wrist.
----
Spiders spilled over, and she smiled, feeling her body collapse just a little bit. She watched his horns and licked her teeth, watching herself pour over him, over his hand and wrist. She tasted his skin with her legs, savored the movement, the freedom, and dissolved into thousands, frothed around him suddenly.
She moved until she was behind him, two thousand spiders rebuilding, regrowing, remerging. She stood again, the skin healed. "See something you like?" she asked sweetly.
---
More and more, he was reminded of Rizel. He bet Aion would have liked this one. She would have been useful, considering one couldn't damage her in the normal way.
Still, what was she? A Devil, then? Or something else? He knew that different worlds had different kind of beings, but she was reminding him more and more of Devils from home.
Spinning to find her back in tact, he seemed hardly bothered by having had spiders all over him previously. If anything, they simply tickled, and he was just utterly delighted by her power--so much that he lifted his hands to offer applause with a pleased smile.
---
It was rare a human didn't run screaming, but this was no human. She nodded slightly. "Thank you," she said, "I'm quite pleased myself." Of course, being crawlerling form, it was quite the friendliest of the ways she went, as opposed to Lilian, which inspired delirium.
"And you, Joshua?" She reached up. "May I touch them? I won't hurt them purposefully, I promise." Her hands hovered over the horns, just slightly. She was careful enough to know that some creatures didn't like being touched; she was not one of them.
She didn't mind touch - it didn't do much of anything for her, or against her. She waited patiently. She could have waited forever.
---
This startled him, and he started to take a step back. It wasn't that he didn't like touch, as that didn't really affect the 'noise', but he surely wasn't used to it. He also was rather fearful of someone attempting to yank his horns off. That bitch of a nun had managed it once when masquerading as his sister.
Wary, but figuring it was only fair, Joshua folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head a bit to make it easier. He was going to be still, and be ready to shred her to pieces and escape if she tried anything.
---
She ran her fingers over one of the horns, gently, careful not to apply any pressure. They were astoundingly durable under her fingers. She pulled her hand away after a moment and thanked him.
"They're beautiful," she remarked. "Really, very nice." She was being honest; she liked his horns, they were quite lovely. She was entertained by them. "What are you, then? You're not a shifter like me." She thought about it. "You're not a vampire, either, I can sense those."
She looked at him, a sidelong glance. "Are you a demon?"
---
So she was something called a shifter? What on earth was that? Maybe Fiore would know. She seemed to know so many things, after all... Or maybe he could ask Rosiel.
Pleased that his horns were still in tact, Joshua pulled the notepad back out of his coat pocket to scribble out a response. Turning to look around, he held it out for her to read as he looked for a place to sit. 'Devil. Apostle. Both.'
Realizing there wasn't any furniture of any kind, he shot her a disapproving look before pocketing the notepad and heading for the stairs. Surely she had some human things, right? Not that he couldn't sit on the floor, but then Fiore would get on his case about dirtying up his nice suit. She already scolded him enough for never keeping his tie straight.
---
He was heading up the stairs, towards her sylie, the fool. She waited for the realization, for the panic to hit him as she followed.
It was her sylie because it was her haven, her home, her nest, and above all it was covered in webs. Hopefully he would notice before he ran into one and got himself stuck - she would have to pry him off and out. "Joshua," she said mildly, thinking that perhaps his name would stop him, "That's not the best idea," she continued.
She wondered if it was too late now - he knew her secret, and she wondered if asking him to keep it was a fool's endeavor. She liked her privacy. People would attack her if they knew. She called up, "Would you not tell?" she asked calmly.
----
He didn't need to touch the webs to know they were there. He stopped only a few inches before one, having heard the way the air whispered through them. Stale air. Stale living. She was completely a spider.
Creepy crawly. He grinned.
Then she mentioned keeping it private, and he tilted his head to look over his shoulder. Perfect.
For now, he didn't answer that. Instead he had another idea, stepping back to lean against the railing of the stairs as he wrote out carefully this time, then pointed to the page.
'What do you eat? Bugs? Plants? Or people?'
---
She tipped her head. He was thinking of something that she wasn't sure she liked, but it didn't show in her bearing.
"I eat blood, and the liquified organs of various living things in the primary stage of decay." She pointed towards the back of her sylie. "Like there," she indicated towards a cocoon. "It used to be...well that one used to be a dog. It's in preservation, for when I get hungry."
She stood in front of him and watched, and waited. The human was beginning to slip, and the spider was taking it's place. The emotions were no longer faked - her face was neutral, severe, clean.
---
Well that was fairly disgusting. It made him wrinkle his nose a bit at the thought of eating organs. That was almost as bad as having to eat carrots!
Tapping the pencil's eraser against the notepad, he looked thoughtfully at the coccoon she had pointed to before scrawling out his response, a wicked grin on his face when he showed her.
'I won't tell if you help me out with some things. Not right now. Later.'
---
She didn't like owing anyone anything. But she didn't want everyone to know, and she understood the concept of a deal.
"What do you need done?" she asked. She didn't mind killing - it wasn't an issue of morals for her - but she wasn't getting dirty. She refused to be the fall guy. If it was a matter of cleaning something up, she didn't care; of course, that was easy enough, but she wouldn't tread on the toes of any of her new allies, either.
She thought about it; a mind blank, pumping enough pheremone that he would be instantly sexually aroused and after that hypnosis was easy. But if he wanted was simple...well, there would be no need to waste the energy.
----
His request was pretty simple, and it annoyed him to have to explain further. The irritation was evident in his gaze as he wrote out his response before offering it back to her.
'Don't know yet. Probably just disposing of bodies. Rosiel doesn't like me killing random people.'
---
She shrugged. "Fine." It would feed her, anyway. "I would prefer it if they were just barely alive, but if they're dead, it's no matter."
She cocked her head. "And I will only do it once, so choose the bodies carefully, yes?" She extended her hand out in a gesture for a handshake.
---
He didn't like those terms, and it brought about a visible pout as he eyed her hand. What was the big deal? He was offering her food, here.
With a sigh, Joshua shook his head and wrote out again, underlining the last word. He might not have been a mastermind like Aion, but he knew how to get his way if needed. He didn't have a lot of connections in the City and he wasn't going to let this one slide.
When he turned the notebook around for her to read again, he had a childlike smile back on his face. 'Thought you liked me. Once a month. I'll keep them barely alive.'
---
Guilt. Pathetic.
She nodded. "Fine. One month, then. I'll clean up your bodies." She blinked roughly, remembering that it was a human reaction. "And we'll be friends enough that after that, you can ask me, and I'll consider it. Does that sound fair?"
---
Even more than he had asked for. Rosiel would have been proud.
Flipping the notebook closed, Joshua stuffed it into his pocket and reached out to take her hand with a grin. Instead of shaking it, though, he turned it so that he could carefully draw out the letters with his fingertip against the back of her hand. F-A-I-R.
Happy that they had agreed on terms, he even remembered his manners well enough to lift her hand to just barely brush his lips against the skin in thanks. He could hear the spiders even more now, and it was too bad he had promised not to tell anyone. It was such an exciting story, and all.