Graham Ross is a (hauntedsoul) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-09-24 12:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, sherlock holmes |
Who: Deacon & Lyra
What: Half-sibs meet.
Where: The Vega.
When: Reeeeeeeeeeecently.
Warnings/Rating: None?
His night started early, on the cusp of dusk when the sky still held a sliver of light and darkness hadn’t crept in to consume just yet. Deacon ventured out of the Palms a lone wolf, spiked hair and a navy blue suit over a red shirt and a shiny tie. Layer after layer of class and wealth but it didn’t last. Fast forward to nightfall, when the big hand crept past twelve and the little hand followed; past midnight was when he really hit his stride. Somewhere along the line he’d lost his suit jacket and his tie had become askew, shirtsleeves were rolled up past his elbows and he licked sweet lipgloss from the corner of his mouth and powder from his fingertips, bright-eyed and perpetually smirking. People flocked to him in droves, some following and some only staying for a while, orbiting around him, before they fluttered off to other pastures. He moved from club to club and his entourage trailed along like puppies; he felt as though he was deserving of a crown, if only he could find one.
Deacon was freshly twenty-two but never felt it. He was immortal, ageless, a benevolent god. Booze flowed like water and he could procure whatever one might desire; needles and baggies and pretty crystals, it was all the same to him. And then, in the midst of stumbling and laughter and some warm presence at his side, he found himself approaching The Vega, a club he’d heard about in more than just reputation. Vega was Lyra, the half-sister he’d never known. Lyra, Lyra, it rolled off his tongue and he made a split-second decision that railroaded over plans he’d made in the light of day while marginally more sober.
“Here.” He veered course without warning, leaving his clan to teeter and totter and either follow or get left behind. The door might have been intimidating to some, big and black and thick, but Deacon flashed a smile at the men stationed outside, a sharper one for the woman, and the crisp bills between his fingers did the rest. They were granted passage like it was a palace and not a club at all, but he strolled inside like royalty himself, whispering in the ear of the girl in the sparkly dress as she fumbled to straighten his tie while giggling all the while. Suit jacket was lost, damn, but he hadn’t liked it much anyway. Instead of going down he veered his companions right, where they scattered and wondered where they would.
For his part, Deacon drank in the interior with a shrewd gaze. “Nice place,” he remarked out loud to no one in particular.
No maestro steps out along the pith of orchestral pit, that blackened crust between the orchestra (obedient, a kedgeree of music conjured with the flick of a stick, beneath, below, the maw of the pit forever open, bleeding notes) and the stage without a spotlight. Silvery-blue and virginial to stroke along the shoulders, slide over the throat, the hands, scrubbed fingernails and the slim baton, the conjurer, snake-charmer of so many sliding minor chords slithering up from darkness. So too it is, the Vega - she who sits in shadow, diva dressed in soft-ruffled silk and mystery, the lights outside gilt-gold and promises over painted-black windows. Lyra knew night the way a lover knows the vertebrae of her spine, could count the hours rubbed between her fingers. The Vega was incandescent, the heady-heavy richness of bodies-musk and sweat and candle-wax, and the slow, ropy stroll of the trombone in the club rising up the stairs to the office and summoning. Her girls (hers, she thinks of them as hers and she, even when they line up in their false silks, pick their nails, complain in the wings as if the mystery is illusion that can be shed and summoned, pulled up like a pair of wrinkled stockings and smoothed out. As if mystery is not a grand thing, something to be worn until it is skin, until your heart beats beneath it, until your breath is warm-soft within it, until you live mystery as you live life. Lyra knows) began the kick-kick-kick line and Lyra glided, shadow-thin black and the suseration of silk around bare ankles, lily-white feet on black-painted wooden stairs, to the door, to the world-beyond-the-wings, where Management drew critical breath, looked with an eye for the spotlight and all that would be seen after it fell.
Young men fell in and out of the Vega like puppies, they come to learn, they come to gawp, little boys with their ties schoolboy-unknotted and off-kilter, the pathetic poetry of undone cuffs and important heads tip-tilted toward the stage to so much undulation, the rhythm of Eve and the hip-hip-hip sultry roll of Perpetua, center act tonight, voice husky-whiskey and indecent thoughts.
“A compliment to me or to the place herself?” The woman who peeled herself apart from the obliging darknesses, the shadows between the corners and the cramped entrance-way that said welcome to initiates, to acolytes come to worship, was cool-water words and the gutteral-clip beneath them as they rolled together, at sea. Her smile was half-moon sly, eyes green as sea-glass, the feathering of her fingers stark white in low light as her hands clasped, came together like a penitent at prayer. “She hears you not, and I may hear you even less, but we are both willing to accept your accolades, little boy.”
An oversight, perhaps, but he’d come to Vegas with a name and nothing more. Oh, there were those who could describe his sister dear but the words could have fit any number of women in the city. Deacon had never been one to plan, though, he often changed his mind and said one thing only to do another. Why commit to one thing when life was full of possibilities and choices? So when he turned in the direction of the voice where there had been none, where faceless bodies of men and women who moved around him seemed to have melted away to leave one, a woman, one who didn’t look like any of those who had waited in line with barely disguised anticipation to get inside, there was no recognition or familiarity. Some might wax poetic about blood ties and connections but there was no spark of the unexplainable, at least nothing strong enough to be felt. If there was anything it was quiet, buried deep, and he wasn’t in tune enough to notice it.
“This place is a she?” He grinned at that. It was one of amusement, for one who would apply human traits to a that which was not. Being called little boy dulled that grin, and with the dampening came an almost challenging raise of his eyebrows.“Not so little, since they let me past the velvet ropes,” he quipped. “Guess my, uh, accolades are wasted on her if she can’t hear me.” And then, as though what her words meant had just begun to sink in, he looked at her more closely. He’d always been lucky in a way no one could explain, beyond money and strings to be pulled, but could it really be this easy? “Are you the owner?”
Ships, machinery and the sea, all were female, all were undulation alike to hips, all were sly indecision and inaudible capitulation. The Vega was she, she who lifted heavy-lidded eyes like black-painted shutters, the glints of gold light beneath her door like jewels hung from her ears, like jewels painted across her forehead, the Vega was dancing girl and mistress, the oyster and the jewel at heart. The woman, her face thin, the cheekbones in it sharp and angular like the edge of a knife turned toward the light - her smile was slow, pinioned in one cheek like the moon deigning to show a sliver of herself. The palm of her hand parted from its other, the kiss of prayer, of piety in the fleckerel of fingers, the entertainer’s flare - and so? said that passing disinterest, that wave away of all indecent questions, all youth and male and insolence like smoke.
“Did they?” the rhythm of her voice was out-of-step cadence, throaty-shadowed, dark things done in dark places; the pale green irises caught, the pupils fanned a little wider. Lyra showed interest, brief and paper-flare alight. “The door might open once for you but it is no promise that it leans open, little boy. It is perception of entry, a passing through and any minute she might decide she likes you no longer and spit you out.” There was a laugh there, in the glint of white teeth behind the smile, the careful felinity of such a grin given without measure, without care. Little boys, they came with widened eyes, with thickened throats, with hands that reached. In Greece, her father’s day, they cut them off (stories told with women, stories told to little girl who sat on knee and whose hair-ribbon played the part of streaming blood, lasciviousness in father’s laugh).
She curled up a shoulder, the movement was a roll, stretch of sinew over bone like oiled silk pulled taut. Clear message, why and what does it matter, in the spread of fingers, the angle of the chin. Who was mistress, who was master, who owned a woman? Who owned the Vega, old sot that she was?
He’d been taught respect but too late, a father’s occasional visits hadn’t been enough to drill the concept into his bones until he was suddenly a permanent fixture in his life for that brief slice of time. By then his skin was tougher, more difficult to pierce, and Deacon liked to think he’d shaped himself despite outside influences trying to chip and hack away at him. This, of course, ignored the traits he’d both inherited and unconsciously copied from the man who, when he thought of him, still seemed more legend than reality. This woman was the sort who likely commanded respect but, though he’d learned his lesson all the same, his own inflated sense of self-importance made respect feel like having to bow like a subject would to their monarch and he hated that feeling; it made his skin crawl.
“Wouldn’t be standing here talking to you if they didn’t,” he said, insolence wrapped in smiles and a polite tone. He’d been kicked out of clubs before, that was hardly a foreign experience, but he’d always managed to grab the situation firmly by the horns and manipulate it to his advantage. Somehow, he doubted it would be as easy to do so here. “It sounds like she’s a tease. Letting you in, but not necessarily letting you stay in,” he remarked, mildly for one such as himself. He didn’t look worried, though, his posture utterly relaxed and at ease as though he belonged exactly where he stood.
There was to be no subtlety, no hemming and hawing and going round in circles before getting to the point. Deacon liked his games but he didn’t want to play one just then; he was fickle that way. “I’m looking for the owner,” he told her, blunt and honest. “Maybe you know her, or maybe you can point me towards someone who does. Figure she’d be here somewhere. Lyra.” The name rolled off his tongue. “Like the constellation or whatever.” He didn’t actually know a damn thing about stars but someone had mentioned it, once, across the ocean, and it’d stuck.
Infanta she had been, small, imperfect queen of vast court, cracked like a broken mirror that echoed back her own, inviolate smiles to her. Who could own something like the Vega? Who could own breathing air, who could own the way a bird sharded through the sky? A smile from the lady, a smile sharp as the blade tipped toward the man who stood in his fine suit with the squeak-slap of leather soles on polished parquet floor; she inclined her head, the part of her hair shocking white amid so much ink black, studied the cut of his suit across the hems. Lyra cared little for obescience, they gave her loyalty, they gave her blood, she demanded nothing except in the absence of what was given. A smile, then, a smile sharply sweet as winter, as blood on snow.
“Like the stars,” give a lady what was owed, nothing quick and rushed and clumsy up against the wall in the entry-way and the Vega laughing red-velvet smile from the stage, the slow, strumpet-call of the women on stage. The woman’s voice was dreamy-distant, as if she cared nothing at all for the little boy who smiled like he would rather snatch than be given in turn and his due. (Ready yourself, it is a slow, unbound thing, the Vega’s promises, she takes her time and she demands your patience as often as she promises you the world, cupped in your hand and split apart in hedonistic uncertainty) She laughed at his demand, she laughed - it was smoke-rich, and blue and crystalline.
“You look for her. Why?” The fingers flickered, a cigarette within them, she looked toward him and there was question in the incline of her chin, the gentle rebuke at not already offering some form of a light.
“Yeah, like the stars.” Deacon didn’t care much for what was in the sky. Sure, they were pretty enough on clear nights and he’d known a girl once who knew a lot, nights spend laid out on the roof while she traced a dreamy finger like it was a larger than life game of connect the dots and told him names he’d forgotten just as easily as he’d forgotten hers. He moved too fast for most people, there one minute and gone the next. Sometimes he remembered patience, sometimes he could go slow, but most of the time he was perpetually waiting for everyone to catch up and finding those who could when they failed. This woman, with her smiles and her distant voice, seemed to have all the time in the world. The selfish little prince wanted what he wanted and what he wanted, right now, was to find the woman he sought, who might be the one who laughed or might be elsewhere here, in the club that he saw as just a club, something to be owned and profited from, nothing more.
Again, he changed course as swiftly as he’d settled upon it. Whereas seconds ago he might have remained vague, secretive, he now sought to shock, to awe, and what better tool to do so with than the truth? He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter, all charm and politeness that he’d learned to wrap around himself like a second skin. “Well,” he began, flicking the light so a small flame leapt to life, “she’s my sister, you see.”
What did he look for, in the impassivity of her face? A flicker of an eyelash, the knife-blade punching home of something cutting, something cruelly casual? The woman was insolence curved in the corner of her mouth like a kiss and she leaned forward, her spine bowed, spilled-ink silk of her hair brushing past his shoulder as she leaned with the cigarette at her lips. “Does she wish to meet you, this sister of yours?” Wry; as if men thought often of what women wanted, the seam as they stitched their own wants to them. Was it true? Lyra did not know; Constantos (oh she thought of him thus, little acolyte and willing shadow, puppet bobbing at the dance of his strings, Constantos, rather than Papa) was not faithful to a memory, he was not even constant in his stories. A name like a lie; Lyra’s smile was a token, ash to sacrifice on an alter.
There were many lies. This boy lied like he knew how to tell stories.
“Why is it you seek her out?” She stepped out of ownership, shrugged it off like discarding one of the loose, looped silk scarves around her throat; Lyra was lithe, tight-strung like a violin string drawn too far past its point but she looked as if she had a night to idle, gossip of an owner who remained distant, unknown.
So very absorbed in himself, Deacon had refused to entertain the possibility that his sister might not want to know him. No one had never not wanted him. He didn’t know what it was like to be unwanted because he’d intentionally ensured that he left first, that he kept his circle fresh and current and under his spell. The only stirrings of neglect might have come from his father, whose interest was as fickle as the boy he’d borne, and those first ten years when he was irregular rather than familiar fixture in his life. Even afterward, the old man had wanted him to be more than he’d wanted him himself, but he was very, very good at not digging deep within himself to uncover what he’d unconsciously buried. “If she knows I exist, sure. Why not?” It was indicative of who he was that he thought it only made sense that, should she know of his existence, she would be just as curious as he was.
Why was a little trickier of a question. It was too many thoughts that didn’t quite translate well to words, feelings that could barely form thoughts themselves, and once the cigarette was lit he occupied himself by flicking the flame on and off, fire and empty air, before tucking the lighter back away once more. “Curiosity,” he said, finally. It was the only response he was willing to share. “He never mentioned a daughter. Wasn’t ‘till he died that I found out I wasn’t an only child.” He was his father, more appropriate than father or dad; he’d certainly had no nicknames, no fond words to which he’d referred to him. It went both ways.
Oh little boy, the best of magicians knows that to conjure, to capture the breath of the audience, to draw it from their lips as it is warm from their bodies, one knows what it is they must want. Shape the act from the clay of their desire, respond with the reflexiveness of the acrobat to the sigh, to the shuffle, to the suggestion of dissatisfaction. And then, oh the applause, the misdirection, the swaying satisfaction and gasps as the curtain closes. Wants are inconsistent, wants are fickle, they can be made from wisps of thought, made whole and beating until they pulse to nothing as abandoned. Lyra smiled, she shrugged as if so much was so little, why not sufficient for a woman who guided the hydra, who interpreted the whispers of Delphi. Little boy, you are not the king.
Constantos had taught want, he had taught desire as he had taught fear, until the two entwined like little girls’ hands, like hair ribbons; the smile now was cool disinterest, the blade turned, flattened. He did not deserve the knife point. “And you have heard nothing of curiosity and cats?” She spread a hand, the hall encompassed, the world beyond with the lazy jazz of the music, the shuffle of the stage, the cigarette glowed between her fingers, “People do not want the people they do not know. People want their dreams made life, they want fragments. What is it you have conjured for her?” The green eyes gleamed in darkness, “Or is it that you wish for this, not her?”
Disinterest was what Deacon doled out when it struck his fancy but he was so rarely on the receiving end that he hadn’t quite learned how to cope with it in a healthy, non-aggressive manner. He saw it now, in this woman’s eyes, and it raised his hackles like someone had flipped a switch inside him. Whoever his sister was he had just as much right to Constantos’ empire as she did, age difference or no, and he wouldn’t be discarded like he was nothing. He was not nothing. “Yeah, sure,” he said carelessly, any hint of a smile gone, good humor replaced by something dangerous in its deliberateness, like a predator realizing it might be in hostile territory. “But I’m not a cat, am I?” It was almost a challenge, and in reality he had little to offer her. Money she would need none of, power she already possessed. They shared a last name and a father, but otherwise, what was there? That was what neither of them could know, not separately.
“This?” He echoed the word back at her and tipped his head to the side. “You mean the club?” That made him laugh, and it was a cruel sound, not warm amusement but coldly mocking, something that would have befitted his father in one of his less savory moods. “I don’t need my dreams made life. Look, either you know Lyra or you don’t,” he said, giving her a long, pointed look. “If it’s the latter, I’ll be on my way, lady.”
There was nothing little boys born across the sea beneath the spread of wild stars, could bring her. Lyra had never been cosseted, never been told she was more than what lay above her, around her, beyond her - until those moments when she flared, hot and black and snapping eyes and Constantos laughed at her as he would any trained performer, extinguishing pride as effectively as burning her to nothing. This was not a club, the Vega was the lazy beat of blood in veins through the network and little boys who came to claim the spoils, the font of gold at the part of the Vega’s thighs - without knowing where and whence it came from - a tiger’s smile, all teeth and gentle examination of nails.
“Either I do or I do not,” she echoed, the inclined cant of her head a generosity of interest, “Must it be one or the other, or is there room for knowing without knowing truth, or knowing not at all but knowing of? Confinement to one or the other, are there rules or are you to dictate that as you do your interest? You come here, to this place,” she had taken a pace forward, was half-a-drift from him with the smell of sweet-dangerous opium and tar and ozone clinging to the soft silks but when she had moved was unclear, “And you dictate terms?” Lyra laughed; it was a ripple of a sound, sharp and dangerous in its softness. “I think you should leave.”
He stared at her like she was fucking insane with her questions that sounded more like riddles, and mind games were only fun when he was the one playing them rather than the one being played. This wasn’t how Deacon had imagined his search--or quest, as Blue would have called it--ending, and he was so very far from satisfied that leaving was not an option he was willing to consider. She’d seemed to have moved without the movement being seen but he held his ground nonetheless, a defiant tip of his chin and every inch the young prince he thought himself to be as he met her gaze. “You think I should leave,” he repeated, undeterred. “Are you telling me, or offering a suggestion?” He might have been toeing a dangerous line but he had no regard for lines or boundaries; he did what he liked when it suited him. “Are you her?” It was a question, yes, but once he had begun to suspect he knew the answer to.
Constantos had tied them all up, ribbons of conversation that did not end, reeled out like a promise - Lyra had read books instead of talking to people, sat with skinny white knees together in the soft, black dresses, splayed hard-covers across her lap and lost herself in worlds that no longer existed, had never existed. This little boy, who stood toe-to-toe in shiny shoes, little would-be regnant, he did not have the softened vowels and the sharpened, gutteral plosives that made him sound Greek, even if he had been born beneath the spread of stars she had been named for. Lyra’s speech rippled, it moved like the wine-dark sea Constantos had told her stories of. She thought of nothing, she thought of the Vega, the lip of the club that held her close.
“I tell no one anything,” and did she? An arch of one shoulder beneath the smoke-trail drapery; what would she tell? Orders did not come from a pleasure-haven, a Xanadu within the apex of pleasure-seekers, opium-eaters in a city devoted to soft eyes and reaching hands, carved out of dust and sand, “You would have me give you orders?” Her eyes were laughing, the smooth green was mocking. “You would have me tell you where to go and what to do, oh, little boy, there are places for that but that is not here. Here you ask and perhaps it is given, but the girls do nothing if they do not want.” She was too pale for the stage, too slender for spotlights and nakedness. Constantos had cloaked himself, the surprise, the arch of the eyebrows, the turn of the wrist - Lyra liked shadows, she liked the side of the stage, she liked the silk of the strings in her hand.
Deacon had been a poor student not for lack of intelligence but simply lack of motivation; when he cared to apply himself he excelled, but books had bored him and he prefered real, tangible experiences to words on a page. He hid a wealth of knowledge beneath his drawl that didn’t match up with his last name, and had he practiced his languages more, had he not been so rebellious in what he was told, he might have sounded more like she did. But he only ever used what he knew for his own means and, in his mind, words were only as good as the person who spoke them. Real power wasn’t verbal; there had to be something solid there to back up one’s claims.
“No,” he sneered. He hated orders, and nothing raised his ire more than being told what to do. “I asked if you were telling me, I didn’t say I wanted you to.” Asking wasn’t something he did often either, but here, he doubted giving this woman orders would accomplish anything other than further hostility. “I don’t take orders. I do what I want and I go where I want, all on my own.” He was scrabbling for purchase, trying to right himself on unfamiliar territory, and he fell back on old habits. Drawing blood, dragging out a reaction and getting under skin, he was good at that, and since there was no happy reunion in sight he went for the low blow. “Did he tell you why he left?” He looked up at her, eyes burning. “Twelve years ago, right? That’s when he showed up. Stuck around till he died. When did you find out?” A pause, then. “Did you find out, or is this the first you’ve heard of me?”
Constantos had taught her (with words, with the flat of his palm, with the spotlight of an empty stage, with the cruelty of a smile drawn slowly) that the possibility of power was far more than the might behind it. What terror a mind could conjure, what impossibilities and feats it could present if it had only suggestions? All of it, a liquid rush to the knees, a roar in the ears, Lyra knew and she laughed, a glassy-bright peal of amusement that curved the lips into a smile as chilly-sweet as sugar poured on snow. He thought to threaten, did he, little boy who lacked control, who was all defiance? She had learned manners, she had knelt upon the stage until her knees were raw and aching and her hands folded behind her back for a quick tongue forgot what it was supposed to say, and oh, Lyra thought he had never learned.
“Are you asking or telling, little boy?” Lyra’s smile was steady as the undulation of waves she had been born far away from and dreamed of as all little girls dream of the stories they are told in the twilight before sleep. He looked as if his rage were close to the surface, his anger sweet and sharp and the tip of her tongue pressed against the top of her lower lip, feline-pink and laughing as if he gave her a present instead of a threat.
“My name,” he said slowly, sharp as a blade’s edge, “is Deacon. Deacon Vasiliadis. Not ‘little boy’.” It was no constellation, nothing as pretty or poetic as stars, but it was spoken with pride and ownership that cared little for the meaning behind a name because what mattered was what it had earned rather than what it was given. “Maybe I don’t speak like you, and maybe I don’t sound like I just got off the goddamned island, but I’m as much his son as you are his daughter.” Until now he’d had no interest in his father’s empire aside from the benefits it gave him, money and immunity and enough power to keep him content, but as he stood opposite the woman he was now certain was his half-sister he wanted more. If she had the stupid club he could have something too, couldn’t he? He was young but he was the boy, the young prince, and he could take what he wanted. He was owed it as much as she was. “I’m telling you that,” he added. “I don’t need to ask. I wanted to see you for myself, and I wanted you to know that I’m here. So.” He smiled, and he held out his hands, palms out, as if to say that was that. “Pleasure to meet you, sis.”
Did they welcome him along the network, this little paper prince who came in his father-fire’s stead? Lyra examined him - slowly, with the care of something pinned down to flutter futilely during the wait - from the hair on his head to the tips of his shoes and it was slow, bruise-blooming quiet, the pausa breath before the high, shivering notes of the soloist, the prima-donna. It was dangerous, that quiet, dangerous for a boy who called himself Vasiliadis in a club that had been signed over when Lyra was so small she had held the pen with soft, wild loops, a club that was hydra-head to the whole and if he thought himself in possession of that... The blade-point of Lyra’s smile was silvery, a quiver close to bloody. He thought he could take, perhaps, he thought he could gather up the burn-bright cinders of what had been Constantos’ from her hands and Lyra laughed (she laughs as if it were a stage, as if there were audience to care, to listen, to clutch their tickets in their sticky hands) with silence.
“Do you want things often?” She asked it as she asked those that came, certain of their answer, certain of the satiation that the Vega presented and if not these needs, then the Bella beyond. She looked at the flex of his palm, the strong and solid youth of him, and she saw nothing of Constantos in his stalwart pride, in his temper flaring beneath the surface. One soft white hand, cool as water, clasped his fingers, turned his hand this way and that.
“Your life-line is abrupt,” the woman’s voice was husky, soft as moth-wings, “Sharp, careful with names that you have not earned, Deacon who-calls-himself-after-a-dead-man. And you are hot-tempered. This is a place of other passions,” she let leave his hand, and she drew herself to height; Lyra was not tall but she had the presence of a woman who could command an audience to silence. “There is power in names here. You earn them.” This is mine, in the careless spread of her hand, “You sought me out. You’ve seen me. I know of you presently. Now what does your wanting have you demand?” She was laughing at him still.
In his mind, Deacon was his father’s son through and through yet he had failed to realize that he’d done nothing to deserve to step into the footsteps he’d left behind. He expected respect because of his last name, as though Constantos’ reputation would carry down to him, and it was only as he looked upon the sister he’d never known that he began to realize the merit of proving himself and giving substance to his claims. He saw, for the first time, what he must have looked like through Lyra’s eyes, and he didn’t like it. But he wasn’t just an angry boy, he could be more and he would. Somehow. He’d figure it out.
“No more or less than anyone else,” he said, trying to do something he didn’t usually do-- corralling his anger before it could explode. He was good at heat and fire, rage that burned up all within range, but the cool, calm sort of anger evaded him. There was no response when she took his hand in hers, just a quirk of his brow as he watched. He knew nothing of life lines but he shook his head, then, because he’d been born with his name and like or not, it was his, he wouldn’t pretend or try to hide it. “I don’t call myself anything.” Quiet, once she let go of his hand and he managed to keep from yanking it back. “That’s my name.” Had he earned it? Maybe not. Yet, his mind supplied, because his pride wouldn’t let him slink back into obscurity of a different kind. He could be more than just the boy, Constantos’ son, he could make people listen and obey out of more than just loyalty to a dead man. For a long, long moment he looked at her, her laughter lighting a spark in his belly that clawed and snarled but no, he couldn’t react, couldn’t give her the satisfaction. What could he demand, here? She wouldn’t give him anything. He would come back, she couldn’t keep him away, but next time they crossed paths it would be different, he promised himself that much.
And so he smiled, an indulgent thing. “Nothing.” He stepped away, still smiling, and clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m sure you’re busy. I’ll leave you to your business.” All politeness, now, as though they’d merely engaged in a friendly chat.
His name? His name was not the metal taste of fear sliding up on the tongue against the back teeth like a gag, nor the champagne effervescence of a story told well and told in center-spotlight, the glory of a solo white light in the middle of the stage. His name was not a vivid dash of sprawling black ink, nor a murmur, a heartbeat through sluggish Las Vegas veins, a careless handful of coins scattered like glitter. No, this Deacon, this little boy who fastened his mouth as carefully as one beginning to learn how it was to be a Vasiliadis (oh she sees, that woman who stands at the back and observes the minutae of the dancers on the stage, who sees between the cigarette trails and the soft awed hush of the audience to the hard mundane of missed steps, of pinched faces, of tiredness and sweat wearing at human bodies beyond the poetry of the stage) he had not yet earned it. And would he? Could he, when the man who gave it was no longer there? Lyra did not wonder; Lyra did not think of a man with eyes like stars in night and mirth in cruelty.
She tilted her chin as grave as a geisha and her smile darted, like something hidden, palmed, shown only in a flash to the audience, now you see it; to look at her closely, she was solemn, the laughing red mouth was momentarily still and the green eyes were somber as the depths of the Greek sea.
"You have bought your passage in to my business and you will not look and see? Enjoy your pleasure once it's purchased; pleasure is rarely given without payment," and if the entry was coupled to the ticket in his hand or his pocket or his wallet, if it was enjoindered so then it could not be parted, sundered from an outsider's right to intrude, only invited and never with the knowing of the owner, the calm invasion of its sanctity and embrace. She bent, a fluid line of curved back and neat white feet and she stubbed the cigarette at the side of the floor, a bare, scarred mark that said it had been done before. Lyra stretched. She smiled. She turned in a soft spiral of silk, and she moved. The cigarette had gone, no butt left behind and nothing of the woman herself but the faint cloud of perfume, thick as incense, sweet as opium.
His intentions had been so focused on Lyra herself rather than the club that the suggestion of enjoying himself came close, but not quite, to surprising him, nipping at his heels before he nudged it aside. She wasn’t wrong, he had purchased a ticket and it would be a waste to just toss it aside and leave. But Deacon was uncertain if staying granted her victory or if leaving was admitting defeat, so he regarded her for a long, long moment before shrugging. Constantos had been a mystery in himself, a man he couldn’t even pretend to understand, and Lyra had taken after him more so than he had. He’d only had four years, though, after ten of only having seen him sporadically. And then he felt a stab of bitterness, as though his father had robbed him of what he should have had but which had been bestowed upon this woman instead. Maybe his father’s intentions had been to mold his son while he still could, but he’d died before the task could be completed.
In the end, he said nothing. He watched her stub out the cigarette, he watched her stretch and smile, and then he watched her go as though she’d never been there at all. Except no, that wasn’t quite right; there were traces of her, lingering. Now you see her, now you don’t.
Deacon shook his head, turned, and decided to take his half-sister’s advice. He was here, wasn’t he? Might as well get something else out of it other than a conversation that left him with a headache and no real understanding of the ground he stood on.