Julian Blackwood (synapticstatic) wrote in nybynightic, @ 2021-01-19 01:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | activity type: log/thread, character: julian blackwood, character: micah lucciano |
Focus, Julian.
Those haunting words of Maya’s that would just not leave him alone. Words that frustrated him because he didn’t understand what it could be she wanted him to focus on besides the vision. A focus that was getting him nowhere.
Then it had clicked. Julian had figured out what it was that he was supposed to be focusing on. He had stretched his mind to the point of almost breaking once more but he had found out what he needed to know. He had caught the rats. He just didn't know if it had been in time or not.
The prince of fools will be the death of them. Even him, Julian Blake Prescott. Beware the Justicar.
The Justicar had never been the pale horse himself but rather just the harbinger, the final sign of what was to come. Julian had tried to warn Micah and the Sheriff both but he had no way of knowing if they had seen it in time or if they had even been able to escape if they had.
Then Julian had felt Maya die and he knew that it was over. And in feeling her die, it had been the last cold, hard slap to the young Malkavian’s mind. The pieces shattered once more. Somehow he managed to make it to Micah’s bed and curled up in the middle of it before he slipped away, not knowing if Micah was alive. Not knowing if he’d be able to pull himself back together on his own if he wasn’t. If he’d even want to if it turned out he had been too late.
Thus he stayed there, curled up in the middle of Micah’s bed as the pieces of his mind slipped through his fingers like water, completely unaware of anything around him.
Hours later, across the room in the darkness, the glow of Julian’s phone lit up a stark contrast.
And on the screen: I’m okay. You got us out in time.
Days later.
The safehouse was smack in the middle of suburban New Jersey, a nondescript flat, nestled between other similar flats like itself, housing plain, middle-class kine families—the last place anyone would look for a Ventrue Primogen.
It was precisely for this reason that it was chosen.
Micah had texted Julian the location ahead of time. He hadn't been idle, moving from one safehouse to the other, never staying long, not taking chances. There was no telling what had been compromised. If they found out about the meeting location, they could have resources to find much else; their communications were not safe either, and Micah was taking no risks. Apart from that first text, Micah hadn't sent any more. Not until the single address sent from a burner phone an hour ago.
The flat was simply furnished, but complete for its purposes. In a different world, perhaps, it could even have been a place they lived in and built together—some place they called home. Like the many other couples in the building.
But they were Kindred. And reality was a much harsher mistress.
The door clicked.
Micah paused in the middle of pouring himself a glass, waiting.
Julian had clung to the words of that single text like a lifeline. It hadn’t been easy pulling himself together on his own but he had slowly managed to. As he did, he started to work to sort and re-piece together the things he had learned.
All the while he had sat and waited for that next text to come. No one thought anything of his refusing to leave Micah’s place. After all they figured that he was mourning the loss of the primogen.
Then the text had come.
He had wasted no time in slipping out and going, and now he was pushing open the door and stepping inside. For a moment all he could do was stand there and look at Micah in order to keep himself from launching himself at him.
"It’s a good thing you didn't go and die on me," he finally managed to get out.
Micah's answer was a wry grin.
It was in the tense lines of Julian's frame, the way he drank in the sight of Micah like a thirsting man in the desert, the way his body inched slightly forward without his notice, but stayed back as if afraid the slightest touch would cause Micah to disappear. All of it spoke to Micah and told him the truth that Julian probably wouldn't give voice to—that he was most likely afraid to.
He set the glass down on the kitchen counter and breached the distance between them, wrapping his arms around Julian in three quick strides.
"Thank you."
Julian’s body instantly relaxed the moment that Micah’s arms were around him. He buried his face against him, breathing in the familiar scent of the other Kindred as if it assured him that Micah was real. Just as Julian's hands curled in the fabric of his shirt tightly, as if Micah might slip away if he didn’t hold on to him.
A part of him was worried that was the case. Even with the text there were times when Julian had wondered if his mind had just been playing tricks on him. That it had only been seeing what it needed to see in order to keep going.
"I was so worried that I was too late." That it all had been for nothing because what good would it have been to him to have figured it all out only to lose Micah in the end.
Micah could tell. And he held Julian tighter, arms firm around the other’s waist, his palm braced against the back of Julian’s neck—simply holding. There was a moment, when the flames licked all around him as Amadeus whisked them away to safety, that Micah felt death snapping at his heels. It had come for him before—far more times than he cared to count—but none elicited the sort of emotion he had felt in that moment.
And he knew what emotion it was now: fear.
Fear of not seeing Julian’s face again. Fear of not returning—of what would become of the one he had left behind.
It was a humbling emotion. And not one he thought he had still been capable of. But Julian had a way of bursting past barriers and boundaries; of making Micah capable of many things he thought he had ceased being able to do.
“It was close.” Three words. Reducing their brush with death to a mere three words wasn’t Micah trying to protect a fragile Julian, but he saw little need in rehashing what was done and dusted. “There was only time for the Sheriff and I to get out. The rest…”
They had been dealt a severe blow. One that even Micah wasn’t so sure they could come out of.
"I know," Julian whispered. He didn't need Micah to go into the details. He had felt it for himself. The heat, the feeling of burning. At least it had been over quickly. The intense flames had overtaken them in seconds—powerful Kindred reduced to nothing but ash just like that. "Maya and I—we were somehow connected after all. I felt her die."
At least the broken Malkavian primogen wouldn't suffer anymore.
Still, feeling it had only made it worse while he hadn’t known if Micah had suffered the same fate or not. Julian didn't have to imagine what he would have gone through if he hadn't since he knew exactly how it had felt.
Julian finally raised his head and looked at Micah, those bright blue eyes full of emotions that he was afraid to give voice to. Instead, he unclenched one of his hands so that he could curl it around the back of Micah’s neck and draw him in for a kiss.
Micah pressed back, hands slipping to the small of Julian’s back, to the soft locks of Julian’s hair at the back of his head. There hadn’t been time, in the last two days, to really take a moment for himself. Instead, it had been phone call after phone call, tracing the leads they could, trying to piece together where the information got leaked. But now, two days, after the fact, when Micah had finally deemed it safe enough to establish contact, to have Julian in his arms again now felt right.
“I thought about this,” Micah confessed, slicing himself open with brutal honesty between tasting the warm sweetness of Julian’s lips. “I thought it would have been a pity if I never got to do it again.”
“I’m not ready to live without you. I don’t want to live without you,” Julian dared to answer back. The key words there were ‘don’t want to’. He wasn’t saying that he couldn’t, because while having Micah around made things easier, the last couple days had proved that he could manage on his own if he had to.
Mostly. He had been rather busy trying to pull himself together to remember to eat anything at all, the blood packs in the fridge having gone untouched.
But the whole time he had been texting Micah and then Amadeus to get out of there, Julian had realized he couldn’t stand to lose Micah. To lose this thing between them. It had been a passing thought before but the real risk of Micah not getting out alive had made it all come into focus for him.
Julian pulled away from another lingering kiss, just enough so he could meet Micah’s eyes again. “I mean it, even more than before, that I’m yours. In all ways possible.” It was the closest he could come without outright saying certain other words.
Micah was far from the sentimental sort. And certainly, his intention in telling Julian what he did was not to induce any kind of confession from the Malkavian. But he understood the words that Julian didn’t say as much as the ones that he did—in the space of the silence that hung between them, Micah could hear everything that Julian didn’t verbalise as plain as day.
He chased forward, a step taken for every that Julian pulled away, closing the distance between their lips again, licking and biting on Julian’s soft lower lip, drawing it with teeth, then releasing it again.
“I owe you a debt,” he said instead. “That’s not something I take lightly.” Emotions could fade. Feelings could change. But the debt that Micah owed Julian for his life—that was something far more intimate that fleeting fancies, in the mind of a Kindred that had lived for as many centuries as Micah had.
While most might have pushed and prodded for Micah to say something back, in true Julian fashion, he didn’t. After all he didn’t need pretty sentiments back. This, being in Micah’s arms, was enough. That and the affection and knowledge that he’d not be so easily put away anytime soon.
He pressed back, a low moan being dragged out of him from that kiss. “Everything you’ve done for me, I think we can call it even.” Julian chased after the taste of Micah’s kiss again, the hand not at the back of Micah’s neck sliding down and then slipping up under his shirt.
“Though that’s something we should probably talk about is what I found out. Before I start begging you to fuck me.” Though Julian’s lips curved up into a smile against Micah’s. “Or after that.”
Micah’s wicked grin matched the one on Julian’s lips. Hand around Julian’s waist slipping down to give that firm ass a good grab, he said, “I’m fully in favour of the latter.”
And with that, he dragged Julian by the hem of his shirt into the bedroom, where they wouldn’t emerge for a good while.
Later with Julian draped across Micah’s chest, Julian felt more stable than he had the past few days. He always felt that way after being well fed and well fucked but it was more than that. It was more than the grounding feel of Micah touching him. It was relief as well. Relief over seeing with his own eyes that Micah was okay.
It was also relief that now that it happened, he’d get a bit of peace. At least mentally. Maya was gone so that meant the pestering visions and messages had to be as well didn’t it?
“Do you think you can just stay ‘dead’ so that I don’t have to share you,” he asked. “And so that I don’t have to worry about it possibly happening again?” Because it really wasn’t over. If anything this was the real beginning of the end.
Anyone else and the question might have struck something unpleasant. With Julian, Micah simply felt the familiar tendril of amusement curl somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. But the Malkavian did have a point. Micah had his work cut out for him now—being one of the two important figureheads left in the city. Everything had to be rebuilt. A Justicar had been lost in their city. There were far too many repercussions from that alone. There was no end to the trouble they still had yet to face ahead.
He ran fingers through Julian’s blond hair, almost idly. “As appealing as it is to be your kept man, I doubt very much that trouble won’t find me anyway just because I’m pretending to be gone.” Even now, there was no telling what sort of eyes they had on them, what comms were compromised. For now, Micah was going with the default everything. But that could only work for so long.
“We’ve lost too much.” New York was a city that Micah had built much of his influence in. At the heart of it: he couldn’t give that all up too. He was as firmly embedded in the roots of this city as every other elder here—a large number of whom had been lost in that explosion too.
Julian had to frown at that. They had lost too much and they were likely to lose much more. “They didn’t stop until they cleaned London of Kindred. Only they got smarter this time and tried to cut off the head to begin with instead of waiting for it last like they did with Queen Anne.”
They had thought they were cutting off all the heads of the Hydra at once but didn’t know yet that they had missed two. Picking off the Kindred of the city one by one would have been a lot easier if they hadn’t missed two of the most powerful.
The question was for how long before they realized it. “Everything up until now has just been to distract us. It’s not just the communications. They didn’t learn about the meeting that way. There’s a mole. Though I couldn’t figure out who before the building blew,” Julian explained while his fingers idly traced over the scars on Micah’s chest. By now he had each one on Micah’s body mesmerized.
A mole. He supposed it made sense. An explanation so simple, but so often overlooked.
He knew that Julian wouldn’t say something like this without basis. He caught that hand on his chest, holding it down with a firm weight. “Do you know something?” Micah had long since learned to trust the instincts and premonitions that the Malkavian shared with him—something he had rejected for centuries as whimsical and unreliable.
Shifting for a better angle, Julian lifted his head so he could look at Micah. “The visions were never about what I was supposed to be seeing and figuring out but about what I was supposed to be doing. Visions have never been my thing, but listening to the things around me—digging into the minds of others to root out what I want to know—that’s what I’ve always been good at. It’s what I was supposed to be focusing on.”
The visions had just muddled things up for him until he figured it out and what Maya had meant about the Justicar. It had made it so much easier for him to focus and he may have been young but he had also diableritized two elders and fed from a powerful elder on a regular basis—all of which had made it simple for him to reach out even from a distance.
“I was able to get into their heads. The kine who set the building to explode. They were outside in a van so they could set the explosives off remotely. I was able to learn some things, including where they had gotten their information from just not who. There hadn’t been any more time.” And considering he had been digging through the minds of several kine at once, he had already been close to his limit when he had discovered they were about to set off the explosives.
Micah was one of those who had been able to observe first hand and up close how quickly Julian had grown in his abilities. And the magnitude of what the Malkavian was telling him now about what he could do wasn't lost on Micah. In times like this, as much as his powers were a help to their cause, it also put Julian at a position of great personal risk.
“And where was that?” It had to be from the inner circle. The location of the meeting hadn’t been public knowledge. It had been handed down from Prince to each individual Primogen. Even then, Micah was already running through the list of people who had access to that information in his head.
“A Kindred who claimed to have access to the Ivory Tower and the heads of the Hydra. If they gave a name, the kine other didn’t care enough to dwell on it or I just couldn’t reach it in time.” Julian frowned. He wished it would be as simple as finding the kine again to complete digging out the information but Micah had been the focal point in finding them that night.
“They’ve been watching as well. Not just through our communications, but in person as well.” The Santa on the street corner that Maya had shown him a few weeks ago. Ways to watch what was happening in the city. “They may even be in Elysium.”
That was a thought that bothered Julian considering the amount of time he spent there digging around for secrets. That they could be there and he hadn’t discovered them.
They had taken them all by surprise, that was for sure. No one even realised, not until it was far too late.
And right now, it was only a matter of time before they realised they hadn’t gotten all of them. It was the reason why Micah had not appeared before Julian immediately. Wherever he went, there was a risk. And there were just some risks that Micah was unwilling to take.
That they could have infiltrated even Elysium, however, that was a truly disturbing thought.
His hand squeezed tighter around Julian’s bare shoulder. “We have to tread lightly. We have the element of surprise now, but it’s the only advantage we’ll get in uprooting everything right from the start.”
Julian settled his head back down on Micah’s chest as he thought. Right now they did have the element of surprise. No one knew that Micah and Amadeus made it out of there. They were going to be in for a shock when it turned out they hadn’t died in the explosion.
“What if we can use that element of surprise,” Julian asked, thinking out loud as he worked through an idea. “What if we could get everyone together at Elysium—say a memorial or wake for what we just lost—and if you and the Sheriff showed up it’s bound to cause a reaction. I might then be able to get a read on them.”
It was a lot of what ifs, what Julian was suggesting. And again, a large part of it hinged on placing Julian in a position of risk—something Micah was increasingly unwilling to do. “Or they could pull yet another explosion,” Micah pointed out, matter-of-fact. They had lost too much. Gathering like that again, even in an event meant for remembrance of their losses, was way too risky.
What they needed to do was to put the news out there—their community needed to know that things were compromised. They needed to avail themselves to the knowledge of the SI encroaching on their freedoms and territories so that they could better prepare themselves.
“We need to prepare ourselves; everyone ought to know.” There was no Council anymore. It was just what was left of the Kindred against the incoming wave of the SI. They needed to all be on the same page.
And they had to figure out a way to do that without alerting the SI. Even if they had Connie encrypt things, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t get past it. Maybe there was some weird Tremere thing the Sheriff could do. Julian wasn’t sure. He didn’t know much about the clan of warlocks and what they could do other than what Amadeus had done for him in the past.
Julian shifted and sat up so that he was sitting on Micah’s lap, any remaining covers pooling around his waist. “How about I leave the mastermind scheming up to you and I’ll do what I do best and look pretty?” There was a teasing smirk on his lips before he ducked his head down to kiss Micah.
Micah had to laugh at that as he returned Julian’s kiss, hands taking full advantage of the expanse of bare skin exposed to him as Julian shifted. “Sounds perfect to me.”