[Fury] Desire at Grindhouse (August and Bon 4.2)

Rich

August and Bon,

The two of you are upstairs at the Grindhouse. The place is nearly empty, with the audience gone (no show) and most of the players at Yellowhouse. This room is furnished with a big mattress, a pair of mismatched couches, a vanity and doors to smaller rooms. Bon, there's a smell of old, dried blood here amid the rot. It's like the rest of Grindhouse, a Monet. Beautiful at a glance, gilded upon inspection.

But not August. She's the shining jewel, as ever. And she's about to undress you, Bon, if you'll alow it. Already nude herself, she is moving to some silent beat and treating you in every way you'd dreamed.

And August, are you here merely to fulfill Bon's wishes, her dreams so recently spoken aloud? Or is there a desire in your heart for the normally taciturn healer?

What do you do?

trevis

Posting our last two from the other thread.

slickhop said:

The ride to Grindhouse isn't long -- I almost wish it was longer, to savor this anticipation. My whole body feels charged with it. I take the turns hard, make a point of rising out of my seat enough to press my backside against Bon just a little bit closer.

No shows tonight at Grindhouse or I woulda been told. That means just the peepshow artists and whoever didn't make it over to Yellowhouse -- had I seen anyone on the way over? I must have been distracted.

The bannister that I fell onto, that Bon removed splinters of from my leg, is still broken. I'm taking the stairs two at a time, throwing smouldering looks over my shoulder.

When I enter the room and see the chair that I made Millions pleasure me in, I picture myself sitting again, but not yet. I peel off my shirt and my leggings so I'm standing there in nothing but beads, feathers and my glove.

"Let me undress you?" I ask, hands at my sides until she says "yes."

trevis said:

I glance around the room when we enter. My mind still a jumble as every look August has sent me as we made our way here has scattered my thoughts to the rains, leaving me to sort them again when she looks away.

When I look back at her she has already discarded her clothing and I forget to breathe as I am transfixed by her glory. I have seen August before in various states of undress and am utterly practical and not at all shy about bodies. But never have I seen her like this and had her focused upon me at the same time. The effect is startling and hypnotic.

A trick, my childhood mentors would call this feeling. An illusion of the humors, to be avoided as it will compel and compromise judgment as surely as any drink or drug.

She asks my permission to undress me and the spell is weakened enough that my growing turmoil and doubt reasserts itself. My heart is racing and loud in my ears. I manage to take a small step back.

My words suddenly come out in a confused and nervous torrent as I try to keep up with scrambled thoughts that seem to confound any attempt at order.

“You need not… I mean we… you… We do not have to… I did not intend… No no, not that, I did mean that… most profoundly…oh by the flood, you are so… it… It has been years… Truly years…I mean I have loved you, adored you, for years now, and you, I mean, not just… but… you are not obligated…of course… to feel the same way or to… uh… Oh furies, what a puddle.”

My cheeks are flaming hot as I cover my face with my hands in mortification.

slickhop

Desire is a strange, kaleidoscopic beast and I devour it in all its forms. Sometimes it is the hunter. Sometimes it is the prey.

Today, I am hungry.

Bon's heart is a puzzle box, one I've been pushing and pulling at between my fingers for a long time. I have still not yet found the trick of it. But today, I want to tear it open, make her cry out with need. With my name on her tongue. She doesn't believe that yet. I might yet convince her with my mouth, but not with words.

I push Bon against the wall.

I press my lips to the pulse at her neck.

I take her hands, put them upon me. Until she knows my desire is real.

"Let me undress you," I say again. My feelings are naked, obvious.

trevis

I have been near detonating rounds before, both sight and sound overcome completely. The effect of August grabbing me is the equivalent and the wash of sensation overwhelms. All is smoothness, heat and sweet pressure. Under my fingers. Against my body. Upon my neck. Inside me. And I am pulled under by the tide. I gasp and squirm overwhelmed as my disordered thoughts scatter like so many pebbles bouncing away.

The petition-demand comes again. My worry, formless now, is not entirely gone, but I cannot hold out, whatever my misgivings.

“Yes” I whisper.

slickhop

I don't hesitate. I nearly tear Bon's clothes to rags in the effort to press myself against every inch of her. I fall to my knees and let her fingers twine in my hair.

I don't stop until Bon's voice is hoarse. Until the walls ring with my name. Until she's falling, weak-kneed, and has to gather her strength on the mattress.

While she recovers, I trace the cross on her forehead, skin sweaty and gleaming, with the hand she restored, the remains of amputated fingers following the swirls and loops of names across her skin.

When she's ready, I pull her tight. "It's been years, eh? Let me show you," I say.

When she brings me higher, I can't help but reach for it. The red wave. I was in this very room when I saw it crashing down on us all, and even though we stripped the Leviathan clean, it still fills my dreams. Heart-beating faster, spine-arching against the mattress, I'm slipping from my skin through dimensions but yet I'm still searching for it. That crest, white-capping over the blood red sea.

slickhop

Opening brain. Marking experience.
(Rolled: 2d6+1. Rolls: 3, 1. Total: 5)

trevis

She holds me helpless at first, an onslaught of pleasure and passion. Far from being intimidated by August’s passion, I find that it magnifies my own. Day to day I a creature of the mind, for all that I work on bodies. But this experience feels like coming home. Heart, mind and body cease to be seperate things, merging into one luminous whole.

I turn out to be vocal too, a surprise contrast from my usual reserve there seems to be a constant stream of words, endearments, excalimations.

In the end I lie, trembling at first, basking in this gift, while my beautiful lover traces the memorial on my skin. If she has any surprise at the sheer number of names forming a dense and expansive pattern on my body, she shows no sign of it.

I recover my wits enough to focus my caresses and to begin to explore, intent on discovering how I can bring her even a fraction of the pleasure she has wrought from me. She pulls me tight to her and offers her guidance in sweet whispers and I smile unreservedly and nod, not correcting her mistaken supposition. The truth is that she is my first.

The Medicai are chaste, unless directed to be otherwise by the Attending. And after I simply never made time or opportunity, too occupied with greiving and clinging to the rules of my old life as a bastion against the chaos of the outside.

Fortunately I have clever hands, a sharp eye for reading the messages of the body, an excellent memory, and, currently, a pure joy of heart.

As I push her to her own pleasure I suddenly feel the other place, an undertow of energy radiating from her to which I am connected. I realize she’s extending herself and taking a deep breath I push that feeling in my heart to support her.

trevis

Helping August.

(Rolled: 2d6+3. Rolls: 6, 1. Total: 10)

Rich

Your coupling rises and falls, from sensation to emotion and back again.

August, there's a moment where you nearly lose your rhythm, when the music of your bodies together is lost and you're left a little out of sorts, almost like you're falling. Bon brings you back from that moment of losing yourself. She knows you better than you expected, and for that moment, she knew you better than you knew yourself.

Together, the pair of you feel something pulling at you. Right at the moment of release, something draws up, like a massive undertow, draining you, pulling your essence, your lust, your love, your devotion, all into it.

Crashing down, the red wave, eye blurring torrent of the maelstrom splashing over you, tumbling, fumbling towards ecstasy that held back until now. Pleasure, rolling over top of the confusion. Your minds meet, your souls mix and dip like minnows in the tide.

The barrels of weapons aimed forward, rumbling on wheels, riding hard over the swampy ground.

Men and not-men shambling from the Forest. A ragtag menagerie of people stand defiant at the low walls of Pike, a pale, frail girl and a shining, bearded man.

Broken glass and wasted greenery, tears and loss and hunger.

And love. Aching love, denied love, fitful passion and heartache.

Finally, the wave passes over, withdraws, leaving you wet only with your own sweat, and other "puddles" you've made together, arms and legs entwine, eyes meeting.

Please fire your sex moves.

August, what is the truth you mutter to Bon?

Bon, who was it that flitted through you mind unbidden in a moment of passion?

slickhop

I hypnotize Bon as if I rolled a 10+. I hold three over her. I can spend my hold at any time to:
• distract her with the thought of me and must act under fire.
• inspire her with the thought of me and she takes +1.

Bon is beautiful when she sleeps, an angel come to earth, the names on her skin like armor. "I will break your heart," I say sadly to myself.

Coming back from that place between here and that other dimension, I am struck by the fact that this might be the first time I've ever taken that journey with someone else. When she stirs, my fingers push back stray locks of her hair away from her eyes as she comes back to me. "You saw it, didn't you? The wave? I felt you there."

I'm trying to hold onto the images. "That was Vignette, wasn't it? And Gates. Or someone else? I just remember the beard."

Rich

Bon,

You were sleeping, as August suspected, but woke as she muttered those words, "I will break your heart."

trevis

My Hx for August goes to +3 and hers for me gains +1, resetting if it’s already at +3

I am aware before I open my eyes and I hear the quiet declaration.

The vision before I dozed was frightening but I was too exhausted, too intoxicated and too physcially satiated to not drift off in her arms, even after such a thing. The sleep itself was deep and dreamless.

Her assertion is but the first hitch in my heart upon waking, my mind organizing itself again, albeit more languidly than is its usual. The second is the thoughts of Dog that flitted through my mind in the midst of my passion. The third is the reason for those thoughts.

Something tugged at me when August reached for the red wave, for the vision on the point of her climax. I do not know whether it is something deliberate on her part or if it is something that happens to her unbidden. I supported it, because I understood she wanted it, but I could not help but think that Dog would not reach for something other than what was between us in that moment. It felt as if August turned from me at that most crucial pinnacle, and struggled to let in something other. It felt for a moment that somehow I had just been the means for that goal. And that… hurt a little.

But perhaps it could not be helped, that reaching. Perhaps it is all imagination on my part. Jealousy. Unbalanced humors. Who knows. Perhaps my feelings for Dog are distorted by the lens of a long denied appetite finally met. There is something altogether more subtle, quiet and tender and… deep about those feelings. Something to do with her strength and strength of heart. Something harder to hear over the siren call of August, yet still… something.

Have I opened the door to such things that they might bedevil me forever?

I blink my eyes open taking in the vision before me and give her a gentle smile on the great swell of feeling that seems to pump from my heart.

I reach to skim her face and neck with my fingertips.

“Yea, I was there.” I say softly. “And yes, Gates and Vignette, I am fairly certain.”

I am silent a moment. Searching her dark eyes.

“Does that always happen to you in the throes of passion?”

slickhop

Oh flood. That smile. I forget my questions, briefly undone. Extend my arm and pull her to me, try to trap that warmth between us in the midst of Grindhouse's chill.

But then I try to think, to find an answer for her. Is it true? Is it always that way for me? "It has been for ... some time now," I'm thinking out loud. HM. Bon. Millions. Portar. Dog. Buck. A sly smile almost finds it's way onto my face at the thought of Buck.

"It fascinates me," I say earnestly. "I know it should scare me but whenever I get close to it, I can't help but try to get closer. I can get there myself, but with someone else, well, it's better."

There's a dark feeling that unfurls inside me then, a sad blooming fear that I try to ignore. "Maybe you'll take me back." I haven't felt this nervous with anyone since Harbormaster. The Bon that yearned but refused to touch was something that I knew and thought I understood. I'm anxious this new Bon sees me differently now.

But I have long perfected the art of false countenance. Nothing shows on my lips but a lingering show of bliss.

trevis

When she pulls me in, I wrap my arms around her again eagerly, settling her weight and warmth upon me, my fingers tracing slowly down her spine.

Her pause tells me she is thinking through her lovers, then she explains. Somewhat a compulsion then, but not entirely involuntary. I glance down to enjoy the elegant line of her collarbones and mask my sense of disappointment. Perhaps it is just me. I am being foolish without realizing it, too demanding in my ignorance. The experience has been wonderful. Certainly I have heard plenty of stories as a healer and a confidant and on the whole firsts seem to be disappointing and awkward. By comparison I have nothing at all to complain about.

And this… this. Her weight. Her softness. Her smell. Her presence. How can I deny her anything? She could require the bloody sea be put into a tin cup and I would probably try to achieve it.

“If you wish it, dear one, I shall.” I murmur against her skin, having slid down a little and now giving in to the temptation to trace with my lips the elegant line my eyes have been following.

Once I have reached the pit of her neck and made my way to the middle of her sternum I say. “You need not worry about my heart.” I say, kissing that spot over hers.

slickhop

I laugh and then I am moving downward, back to where I'd earned my name upon her lips like a benediction. "Then I shall try to make it explode," I say, before beginning again my intimate ministrations.

When I've exhausted her again, I start to rise. "I'll be right back," I murmur into her skin. Then I slip away from Bon like a snake shedding its skin. Leaving her in the warm cocoon of the bed.

I glance at the sky to determine the hour, step into the hall. I collect a cast-off silk kimono -- Icona's, perhaps? -- pull it on and make my way to the little room on this floor that Queen Anne turned into a kitchen. I set the kettle to boiling and slide back the false tile from where he stashes his green tea. I sing to myself, leaning against the peeling wallpaper.

trevis

August leaving the room is like the sun hiding behind clouds again after one of its too-brief appearances. A chill seems to settle despite the warmth of the bed, attenuating the blissful floating feeling she has again gifted me with.

I shiver. I sigh. Then I rise, moving the blankets and feeling the real bite of the colder air in the room and letting it pull me out of the warm idyll I’ve been in tonight and back into something resembling reality.

I get up and begin to gather my clothing and put it on, or improvise repairs to what needs it. Fortunately I still have Dog’s jacket to cover up with. I have been away too long now. Shy and Mox will be wondering where I am.

I stand at last, drawing the jacket around me and look out the window. I can hear August singing something haunting and lovely down the hall. I do not know where things go between us now, if anywhere at all.

I will not make demands. I will hold her when I can and when she is done as we both know she will be, I will treasure the memory of us together. The wound no longer festers, the only choice now is to let the infection run its course and pray the patient survives.

I stare into the street, weighing the paradoxical lightness and heaviness of the thought.

Rich

August,

Tell me a little about the Grindhouse this time of night? With most of the players dancing and partying at Yellowhouse, who would stick around the theater? Who lives here?

Who sleeps on the stage?

Who has the nicest room and how did they get it?

slickhop

Nobody lived at Grindhouse until recently, although plenty of people crashed here whenever things went on too long or they went too hard. But Queen Anne did me a solid and let a bunch of the displaced Leviathan folks stay here at night. They sleep backstage and in the basement I don't know all their names, but they look up to Magda. When I see her, I'll tell her that Vignette agreed to find real places for them.

Two of them, Kite and Townie, talked Queen Anne into signing them on as bouncers. Townie's been sleeping in a pile on the stage at the end of the night. It's a little weird, but he's got Queen Anne wrapped around his finger so nothing's been said yet. Kite took over this huge prop room filled with broken crap. Emptied the thing out, and furnished it from whatever wasn't totally nasty. It looks amazing now. She'll probably stay even after Vignette finds places for the rest.

This time of night, with no stage show on, only folks here are gonna be the ones sleeping downstairs and whoever is running their peepshows. Gemma stays real late, gets in a weird crowd. I wouldn't want to live in the warehouses opposite her booth, because she pipes out that thrash polka from her phonograph and makes the custom shout her name a lot. Sometimes Rizzla falls asleep in his booth.

When the kettle boils, I pour it into cups for myself and Bon, then pad back into the room. The steam hits your nose like grass and lavender. When I see her against the window wearing Dog's coat, I sip deeply from my own tea and put it down. I step carefully around the mattress and reach around her, to both embrace her and place the warm cup between her hands.

I lean against her back and breathe out a small sounds of contentment then breathe in, savoring the intoxicating scent of Dog's jacket and Bon's clean sweat.

"Heading back?" I say into Bon's shoulderblade.

trevis

I look down at the tea, take it into my hands, enjoying the warmth both from it and her.

I nod without turning from the window. “It’s my shift. Shy will be annoyed with me as it is. I promised I would be back early.”

Rich

August and Bon,

Bon leaves on her h-bike, August, leaving you to Grindhouse. Some of the players come back from Yellowhouse a half hour after she's gone, buzzed and rambunctious. They put on a bit of a show, impromptu-like, but it devolves without much of a semblance of plot, just pithy one-liners and showy acting.

Then it's time for bed. And like Bon, you sleep alone tonight.

--END SCENE--