Shinobi and Tamara, backdated to Nov 25
Nov. 24th, 2017 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainTam and Shinobi have an afternoon at the HFC, and become A Thing over champagne.
The greenhouse on the roof of the stately building housing the Hellfire Club was one of Shinobi's very favorite spots in the whole building--and that was saying quite a lot. But it was especially appealing when the weather began to take a turn for the chilly. It was a lovely bit of vibrant green in the increasingly graying city, and just what he needed to keep his spirits buoyed. He and his guest sat at one of the little wrought-iron tables near the center, beside artfully-manicured hedges and flower beds, the scent of floral perfume heavy in the air. Narrow, artificial streams carried the sound of running water through the whole steel-and-glass structure, and their attendant had just left to fill their drink order.
Shinobi was dressed in his typical Hellfire ensemble of blue and black and white, though he'd shed his brocade coat in deference to the relative heat. Still, he was cheerful as always, and happy to point out little details to his companion that might otherwise have escaped her notice. "The roses that make up the main display were specially bred over the past hundred years or so by the Club's gardeners," he explained. "You won't find those exact colors anywhere else in the world. I'm particular fond of the black ones--though they're really more a deep lavender, once you look at them up close."
No longer shy about showing her wings at the Club, Tamara let them swell behind her, soaking in the warmth of the air, wing tips gently brushing some of the nearby plants. In fact, all the shyness and nerves of her first visit were completely absent now. Shinobi had treated her to the outfit of the day (easily the most expensive clothes she'd ever worn, and tailored to fit her and accommodate her wings). It had been a request from her - she liked the Club, and had zero problems using clothes to make a statement, but she didn't want the statement to be 'look at the trash on Shinobi Shaw’s arm'.
Still, she looked completely at ease in the deep burgundy lace-trimmed dress, and wore the classic black pumps like she'd been born to do exactly that. "You know every detail of this place," she teased him, a sparkle in her dark (and flawlessly outlined) eyes. "They should hire you to give tours."
He looked back at her wryly. "We don't really do tours of the Hellfire Club," Shinobi said. "The whole point is to keep the tourists out. But I suppose I do know a bit more about it than some of our less dedicated members." Dark eyes studied Tamara closely. "Have I told you recently how lovely you look this afternoon?"
"I think it's been half an hour," Tamara replied, smile going a little soft. "I was starting to worry."
"Clearly, I was distracted by the foliage. Never fear! It will not happen again. Still," he went on grandly, "it's definitely worth noting. You're definitely at your most magnificent when surrounded by opulence with those gorgeous wings on full display. The day when you can do so as readily on Fifth Avenue as you do here in the Club cannot come soon enough, I think."
"I'd do it today if I was allowed," Tamara replied, lip pouting for a moment. "Though I'd miss your company," she added, wings settling behind her as she smiled up at him. "I suspect you're much more comfortable here than there, hm?"
"Oh, I'm a perfect chameleon, darling," he told her brightly. "I'm comfortable positively everywhere--self-consciousness is just too bourgeois. What I feel for this place is more ..." Shinobi considered for a moment, as if trying to put it into words, trailing off. "I suppose it's more like fond nostalgia? It's more like a home to me, in many ways, than anyplace where it was convenient for me to store my belongings."
"I meant with me and my wings," Tamara told him, though she liked listening to the way he talked about this place, though it also made her... what, sad? Maybe a little confused - how could anything this surreal be home? "You don't seem like the paparazzi type. But maybe I'm wrong?" He did tend to surprise her.
"Sou ka," he said, tapping a finger to his pointed chin. "Well. That I adore your wings is a matter of record. And, if I were not in a somewhat delicate position just now with my larger social circle, I would take the utmost delight in being photographed all over town with the infamous Dragoness of YouTube." Shinobi sighed. "Sadly, as much as I enjoy being a spectacle, I'm right in the middle of something that already strains the usual latitude I am afforded. Can't become more trouble than I'm worth, now can I? I'm far too spoiled at this point to figure out how to live honestly."
"And I do love when you adore my wings," she teased, shuffling them behind her suggestively with a perfect little smirk, "so I guess we'll try not to cause too much trouble. In public, anyway."
"For now," he added. "Once things calm down a bit ... The sky's literally the limit, isn't it?" Shinobi's eyebrows vanished into his bangs suggestively. "I'm normally a great proponent of public trouble."
It earned him a broad smile from Tamara. "I'll look forward to that, then." Although - and her smiled faltered just a bit - she couldn't help wondering, "Do you really think things will ever calm down again, though?"
"Oh, inevitably," the half-Japanese mutant reassured her with a negligent wave of his hand. As he spoke, their impeccably-dressed attendant returned, resting a glass of something clear and bubbling in a tumbler before Shinobi and Tamara's beverage of choice in front of her before withdrawing again. Shinobi went on as though he hadn't noticed. "People can't live in a state of heightened anxiety indefinitely--not most of them. The fight will become a quieter, behind-the-scenes sort of thing, in time, with only the hardliners on either side really interested in the outcome. Everyone else is more worried about making car payments, or figuring out how they'll afford little Billy's orthodontic surgery; the struggle for mutant coexistence is much, much too nebulous and distant a concern to give tremendous thought."
Tamara's smile was strained. She wanted to believe that, but it scared her too. "It's our lives, though. Much as I love it in here with you," and she genuinely did, "the real world's out there."
"The real world," Shinobi snorted, taking a drink from his glass. "The real world is greed and laziness and the desperate need to think well of oneself. The real world is the handful who desire control, the majority who wish to be controlled, and the rest in between who only want to make their own way as best they can, and end up ground between the two. The real world is an argument between a pair of idiots, each so consumed by the wrong-ness of the other that neither will ever be able to acknowledge what the other has gotten right. I much prefer the real world stay out there, so that I can be free of it when I need to be."
"And what am I in all that, then?" Tamara asked hotly, hand frozen with her champagne halfway to her lips. "A bit of greed and laziness that you think is pretty enough to keep in here with the priceless roses?"
"If that was what I thought of you," he told her lightly, "we'd never have gotten through that first conversation, much less all the way to champagne in the greenhouse. I speak of generalities only; people, in particular, are much more fascinating than type. Mind you, most never manage to be anything more than a type--I suppose that's why they're so persistent. But I am too happy to leave them to their bland aspirations and their insipid boundaries. When I find something special, I tend to latch on tenaciously. Special is very rare, despite what the self-help gurus would have us think."
Tamara's wings had deflated completely, tips brushing the ground. "Christ, I need to stop doing that to you," she muttered into her glass apologetically. Like Shinobi hadn't proved himself to her time and again, and put up with that exact attitude from her over and over. Looking up at him again, she managed a rueful smile. "Forgive me?"
"Always, darling," he told her easily, raising his glass now in salute. "What's a little misunderstanding between friends-with-benefits, after all? And it's probably good I be checked regularly; I have a tendency to get too caught up in my own perceived cleverness, and fail to notice the collateral emotional damage that can ensue as a result." His shoulders rose and fell. "But I suppose none of us are without room for self-improvement of some kind or another."
Tamara smiled and finally drank some of her champagne, wings settling against her back, before looking up at him again. "You really don't think like anyone else, I'll give you that."
"I've always been the most special of special snowflakes," Shinobi agreed with a nod. "I've never had very much use for the way most other people think, so I either had to come up with my own way or remain permanently intoxicated. And one's liver is only so durable, after all."
"And one's brain," Tamara pointed out with an amused little smirk, zero actual judgment in the comment.
"And thank the fickle gods of evolution for it," he returned fervently. "All mine is good for is getting me into trouble, I've noticed." Often back out of it again, too, but still. "That's why I generally prefer to live in the Impulse Zone."
Tamara considered for a moment. Shinobi was impulsive, sure, but with an unusual deliberateness - and certainly this, whatever it was between them, had outlasted any kind of 'impulse' by now. "Can I ask you something?" she ventured carefully.
"Of course," he told her. "I am nothing if not open to the interrogative."
"Are you and I impulse-only then?" Tamara was doing her best to keep her face and voice neutral - she didn't want him to think she'd get weepy or something if he didn't answer the way she wanted. She put her glass down and put her hands in her lap, just so she wouldn't fidget. "Don't get me wrong, I know you care about me," or at least she really, really hoped he did, "and I do really like the impulses we indulge in. It just seems to me that... maybe we're more than just friends. Or at least, maybe we could be."
...shit, was she blushing? Tamara rolled her eyes at herself and gave him a lopsided smile. No matter his answer, they'd be okay, as far as she was concerned. The worst thing would be if he tried to spare her feelings or something, or felt like he couldn't be himself with her anymore.
He watched her carefully for a moment, then emptied his glass in a single, long gulp. This was not a situation he'd ever had to navigate before, and he was, he had to admit, not entirely certain exactly how he wanted to proceed, much less how he should. Oh, similar propositions had been made at various points in the past, of course, but the context this time was entirely different. Before, it had only been a question of whether or not the individual making it was significant enough to dismiss with joking humor and deliberate obliviousness, or in a position to damage him and thus requiring more cautious handling. It had never been a question of whether or not he wanted to reject the idea of an actual relationship, but rather how he would do it.
In this case... was the idea really so laughable that his foremost concern would be how to soften the blow? Shinobi wasn't sure, and that uncertainty itself was almost as disturbing as the question. He didn't do uncertainty.
"My understanding of friendship is possibly a bit more esoteric than most," he began slowly. "Before coming to the school, I would only have called Warren and Nolan friends. Since arriving, I seem to have added you, without ever quite having been conscious of it. Everyone else is just a friendly acquaintance, or an utter non-entity, in terms of where they stand in my affections. I admit, I don't entirely know what a 'more than friends' kind of thing would even look like."
Tamara listened attentively, wings going still behind her to give him her full focus. That... was somehow a huge compliment, wrapped around, what, rejection? No, Shinobi would be direct with her. Which meant he genuinely didn't know. (And had she scared him?)
"Well... it might look a lot like this, actually," she began, honestly considering as she spoke. What would be different? The question made her smile playfully. "But with more making out, maybe more cooking lessons... just more, really." Right, that's what it was. "Because I like you, a lot, and I think I'd like more you in my life." She took a sip of her champagne before using a wing to puff air at him, adding, "And that's about the cheesiest thing I've ever said, and if you repeat it I will be forced to kill you. Just FYI."
"You'll have to catch me first," he teased, sticking his tongue out at her over his glass. But he gave what she'd said careful consideration, despite his teasing response; hiding behind a mask of flighty eccentricity was the key to his survival to the ripe old age of seventeen, and it was a difficult habit to break. More. That ... didn't sound so bad, actually.
Still, he sat back in his chair lazily and raised his drink in salute. "Well, of course you want more, darling. I'm the best sort of bad company. But," he added, a touch more seriously, "I think a little more wouldn't be so terribly amiss. Perhaps it will become a lot more, before we even realize it. Things have been sneaking up on me a great deal, lately."
Relieved, Tamara had leaned in, elbows on the table, quietly beaming as she watched him toy with his empty glass. "I like the sound of that."
The greenhouse on the roof of the stately building housing the Hellfire Club was one of Shinobi's very favorite spots in the whole building--and that was saying quite a lot. But it was especially appealing when the weather began to take a turn for the chilly. It was a lovely bit of vibrant green in the increasingly graying city, and just what he needed to keep his spirits buoyed. He and his guest sat at one of the little wrought-iron tables near the center, beside artfully-manicured hedges and flower beds, the scent of floral perfume heavy in the air. Narrow, artificial streams carried the sound of running water through the whole steel-and-glass structure, and their attendant had just left to fill their drink order.
Shinobi was dressed in his typical Hellfire ensemble of blue and black and white, though he'd shed his brocade coat in deference to the relative heat. Still, he was cheerful as always, and happy to point out little details to his companion that might otherwise have escaped her notice. "The roses that make up the main display were specially bred over the past hundred years or so by the Club's gardeners," he explained. "You won't find those exact colors anywhere else in the world. I'm particular fond of the black ones--though they're really more a deep lavender, once you look at them up close."
No longer shy about showing her wings at the Club, Tamara let them swell behind her, soaking in the warmth of the air, wing tips gently brushing some of the nearby plants. In fact, all the shyness and nerves of her first visit were completely absent now. Shinobi had treated her to the outfit of the day (easily the most expensive clothes she'd ever worn, and tailored to fit her and accommodate her wings). It had been a request from her - she liked the Club, and had zero problems using clothes to make a statement, but she didn't want the statement to be 'look at the trash on Shinobi Shaw’s arm'.
Still, she looked completely at ease in the deep burgundy lace-trimmed dress, and wore the classic black pumps like she'd been born to do exactly that. "You know every detail of this place," she teased him, a sparkle in her dark (and flawlessly outlined) eyes. "They should hire you to give tours."
He looked back at her wryly. "We don't really do tours of the Hellfire Club," Shinobi said. "The whole point is to keep the tourists out. But I suppose I do know a bit more about it than some of our less dedicated members." Dark eyes studied Tamara closely. "Have I told you recently how lovely you look this afternoon?"
"I think it's been half an hour," Tamara replied, smile going a little soft. "I was starting to worry."
"Clearly, I was distracted by the foliage. Never fear! It will not happen again. Still," he went on grandly, "it's definitely worth noting. You're definitely at your most magnificent when surrounded by opulence with those gorgeous wings on full display. The day when you can do so as readily on Fifth Avenue as you do here in the Club cannot come soon enough, I think."
"I'd do it today if I was allowed," Tamara replied, lip pouting for a moment. "Though I'd miss your company," she added, wings settling behind her as she smiled up at him. "I suspect you're much more comfortable here than there, hm?"
"Oh, I'm a perfect chameleon, darling," he told her brightly. "I'm comfortable positively everywhere--self-consciousness is just too bourgeois. What I feel for this place is more ..." Shinobi considered for a moment, as if trying to put it into words, trailing off. "I suppose it's more like fond nostalgia? It's more like a home to me, in many ways, than anyplace where it was convenient for me to store my belongings."
"I meant with me and my wings," Tamara told him, though she liked listening to the way he talked about this place, though it also made her... what, sad? Maybe a little confused - how could anything this surreal be home? "You don't seem like the paparazzi type. But maybe I'm wrong?" He did tend to surprise her.
"Sou ka," he said, tapping a finger to his pointed chin. "Well. That I adore your wings is a matter of record. And, if I were not in a somewhat delicate position just now with my larger social circle, I would take the utmost delight in being photographed all over town with the infamous Dragoness of YouTube." Shinobi sighed. "Sadly, as much as I enjoy being a spectacle, I'm right in the middle of something that already strains the usual latitude I am afforded. Can't become more trouble than I'm worth, now can I? I'm far too spoiled at this point to figure out how to live honestly."
"And I do love when you adore my wings," she teased, shuffling them behind her suggestively with a perfect little smirk, "so I guess we'll try not to cause too much trouble. In public, anyway."
"For now," he added. "Once things calm down a bit ... The sky's literally the limit, isn't it?" Shinobi's eyebrows vanished into his bangs suggestively. "I'm normally a great proponent of public trouble."
It earned him a broad smile from Tamara. "I'll look forward to that, then." Although - and her smiled faltered just a bit - she couldn't help wondering, "Do you really think things will ever calm down again, though?"
"Oh, inevitably," the half-Japanese mutant reassured her with a negligent wave of his hand. As he spoke, their impeccably-dressed attendant returned, resting a glass of something clear and bubbling in a tumbler before Shinobi and Tamara's beverage of choice in front of her before withdrawing again. Shinobi went on as though he hadn't noticed. "People can't live in a state of heightened anxiety indefinitely--not most of them. The fight will become a quieter, behind-the-scenes sort of thing, in time, with only the hardliners on either side really interested in the outcome. Everyone else is more worried about making car payments, or figuring out how they'll afford little Billy's orthodontic surgery; the struggle for mutant coexistence is much, much too nebulous and distant a concern to give tremendous thought."
Tamara's smile was strained. She wanted to believe that, but it scared her too. "It's our lives, though. Much as I love it in here with you," and she genuinely did, "the real world's out there."
"The real world," Shinobi snorted, taking a drink from his glass. "The real world is greed and laziness and the desperate need to think well of oneself. The real world is the handful who desire control, the majority who wish to be controlled, and the rest in between who only want to make their own way as best they can, and end up ground between the two. The real world is an argument between a pair of idiots, each so consumed by the wrong-ness of the other that neither will ever be able to acknowledge what the other has gotten right. I much prefer the real world stay out there, so that I can be free of it when I need to be."
"And what am I in all that, then?" Tamara asked hotly, hand frozen with her champagne halfway to her lips. "A bit of greed and laziness that you think is pretty enough to keep in here with the priceless roses?"
"If that was what I thought of you," he told her lightly, "we'd never have gotten through that first conversation, much less all the way to champagne in the greenhouse. I speak of generalities only; people, in particular, are much more fascinating than type. Mind you, most never manage to be anything more than a type--I suppose that's why they're so persistent. But I am too happy to leave them to their bland aspirations and their insipid boundaries. When I find something special, I tend to latch on tenaciously. Special is very rare, despite what the self-help gurus would have us think."
Tamara's wings had deflated completely, tips brushing the ground. "Christ, I need to stop doing that to you," she muttered into her glass apologetically. Like Shinobi hadn't proved himself to her time and again, and put up with that exact attitude from her over and over. Looking up at him again, she managed a rueful smile. "Forgive me?"
"Always, darling," he told her easily, raising his glass now in salute. "What's a little misunderstanding between friends-with-benefits, after all? And it's probably good I be checked regularly; I have a tendency to get too caught up in my own perceived cleverness, and fail to notice the collateral emotional damage that can ensue as a result." His shoulders rose and fell. "But I suppose none of us are without room for self-improvement of some kind or another."
Tamara smiled and finally drank some of her champagne, wings settling against her back, before looking up at him again. "You really don't think like anyone else, I'll give you that."
"I've always been the most special of special snowflakes," Shinobi agreed with a nod. "I've never had very much use for the way most other people think, so I either had to come up with my own way or remain permanently intoxicated. And one's liver is only so durable, after all."
"And one's brain," Tamara pointed out with an amused little smirk, zero actual judgment in the comment.
"And thank the fickle gods of evolution for it," he returned fervently. "All mine is good for is getting me into trouble, I've noticed." Often back out of it again, too, but still. "That's why I generally prefer to live in the Impulse Zone."
Tamara considered for a moment. Shinobi was impulsive, sure, but with an unusual deliberateness - and certainly this, whatever it was between them, had outlasted any kind of 'impulse' by now. "Can I ask you something?" she ventured carefully.
"Of course," he told her. "I am nothing if not open to the interrogative."
"Are you and I impulse-only then?" Tamara was doing her best to keep her face and voice neutral - she didn't want him to think she'd get weepy or something if he didn't answer the way she wanted. She put her glass down and put her hands in her lap, just so she wouldn't fidget. "Don't get me wrong, I know you care about me," or at least she really, really hoped he did, "and I do really like the impulses we indulge in. It just seems to me that... maybe we're more than just friends. Or at least, maybe we could be."
...shit, was she blushing? Tamara rolled her eyes at herself and gave him a lopsided smile. No matter his answer, they'd be okay, as far as she was concerned. The worst thing would be if he tried to spare her feelings or something, or felt like he couldn't be himself with her anymore.
He watched her carefully for a moment, then emptied his glass in a single, long gulp. This was not a situation he'd ever had to navigate before, and he was, he had to admit, not entirely certain exactly how he wanted to proceed, much less how he should. Oh, similar propositions had been made at various points in the past, of course, but the context this time was entirely different. Before, it had only been a question of whether or not the individual making it was significant enough to dismiss with joking humor and deliberate obliviousness, or in a position to damage him and thus requiring more cautious handling. It had never been a question of whether or not he wanted to reject the idea of an actual relationship, but rather how he would do it.
In this case... was the idea really so laughable that his foremost concern would be how to soften the blow? Shinobi wasn't sure, and that uncertainty itself was almost as disturbing as the question. He didn't do uncertainty.
"My understanding of friendship is possibly a bit more esoteric than most," he began slowly. "Before coming to the school, I would only have called Warren and Nolan friends. Since arriving, I seem to have added you, without ever quite having been conscious of it. Everyone else is just a friendly acquaintance, or an utter non-entity, in terms of where they stand in my affections. I admit, I don't entirely know what a 'more than friends' kind of thing would even look like."
Tamara listened attentively, wings going still behind her to give him her full focus. That... was somehow a huge compliment, wrapped around, what, rejection? No, Shinobi would be direct with her. Which meant he genuinely didn't know. (And had she scared him?)
"Well... it might look a lot like this, actually," she began, honestly considering as she spoke. What would be different? The question made her smile playfully. "But with more making out, maybe more cooking lessons... just more, really." Right, that's what it was. "Because I like you, a lot, and I think I'd like more you in my life." She took a sip of her champagne before using a wing to puff air at him, adding, "And that's about the cheesiest thing I've ever said, and if you repeat it I will be forced to kill you. Just FYI."
"You'll have to catch me first," he teased, sticking his tongue out at her over his glass. But he gave what she'd said careful consideration, despite his teasing response; hiding behind a mask of flighty eccentricity was the key to his survival to the ripe old age of seventeen, and it was a difficult habit to break. More. That ... didn't sound so bad, actually.
Still, he sat back in his chair lazily and raised his drink in salute. "Well, of course you want more, darling. I'm the best sort of bad company. But," he added, a touch more seriously, "I think a little more wouldn't be so terribly amiss. Perhaps it will become a lot more, before we even realize it. Things have been sneaking up on me a great deal, lately."
Relieved, Tamara had leaned in, elbows on the table, quietly beaming as she watched him toy with his empty glass. "I like the sound of that."
