. (spacecowboys) wrote in repose, @ 2018-07-31 02:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, cat dubrovna, daniel webster |
[Webster's Music: Kyle & Daniel]
Who: Kyle and Daniel
What: Visiting the vinyl
Where: Webster's
When: Fuzzy so fuzzy. Between Cat's Jersey trips, before her vacation
Warnings/Rating: No crimes were committed during this log
Kyle. He was trying to remember that he was Kyle. He'd been thinking of himself as him more and more often lately. Him and not her, but the name thing wasn't sticking. Cat. He was still Cat, and he was trying to fit his foot into the shoe that was Kyle to limited success. But, Cat had always been stubborn, and so he kept trying. Kyle. Kyle. God, Kyle, but the problem was that this whole vinyl thing was Cat's jam, and the interest in poetry was also Cat's thing, and there wasn't much Kyle in either of them. And it was a new problem, a new hurdle, the fact that Kyle and Cat were too different to be alike, at least in Cat's mind, and Cat was fighting against himself from morning 'til night. Stubborn, but it was Kyle that knocked on the door of Webster's Vinyl after dinner. Kyle was dressed in courderoy. Layers and hipster and he held an old fashioned blunt between thumb and forefinger. He didn't look through the glass, and he didn't look through the glass for good reason. See, he didn't want to break in, and it was one of those things that he was finding hard to resist these days. Theft had become something she hadn't needed anymore. She'd been loaded, and she'd thought that was why, but that turned out to be bullshit. See, he was loaded too, and his fingers still itched when he was around something he could pocket. His fingers were fast, and he'd been practicing. God, practicing was good. Practicing made him feel alive, and he'd even gone to church a few times recently in order to steal diamonds from under Jesus' proverbial nose. The window was soundly ignored and Kyle rapped his knuckles against the doorframe one more time. "Oh, Mr. Webster. Bring your reclusive ass down here. I'm here to see your vinyl," he called out, in case that was, you know, necessary. Recently Daniel had met a number of Repose denizens he might not otherwise have encountered within the two streets that passed his door, and though the radius did not reach near that it had been when he used to travel to the Capital twice meeting for mortal meetings of alcoholic woe, he was pleased with his effort. Newt’s experiences brought a wider circle of gossip despite a disappointing lack of detail, and he suspected that soon he would wheedle his way into the pianist’s good graces, perhaps earning news of the carnival and beyond. It all solidified Daniel’s sense of ownership of the town, the spreading of an old oak tree’s roots. That did not mean his door was a swinging one. Kyle was pushy, and demanded things before he asked. Daniel recognized moneyed privilege between the typed lines, his own people who were dangerous when you let them in too far. He was on guard after his conversation with the man, even more than normal, and the vampire didn’t have to sleep much. He was pleased when no one attempted to stealth into his home and make off with his children’s things, and everyone could keep their throats outside out and inside in. After several raps on that door, there were footsteps within Daniel made sure that someone might hear from beyond the door, and the creak of wood. The curtains were closed beyond that dusty glass Kyle so carefully did not attempt to penetrate, and they rustled before three locks broke open and a few inches of the air conditioned, dusty interior opened to admit the visitor. Daniel himself was not visible in said sliver of entrance, since he didn’t want to admit any light from the street along with the visible. The result was rather eerie. Kyle didn't have any mental image he'd crafted of the recluse above the music store. Oh, the town had theories and stories, and each tale was more dramatic than the one preceding. The stories all walked into the bar that was no longer his, and that had stopped feeling his long before he'd grown taller and lankier and less curvy. But, to the point, tales walked through the wooden doors of the bar, and Kyle was a good listener. Young, old, he listened, and he watched. Eye contact, Kyle knew, was the most important thing. Lean in a little, pretend to care, and round and round the world went, and Repose was no different. But, right, back to the matter at hand - Kyle knew the stories. His favorites were straight out of a Radcliff novel, and hello, Udolfo, how's the weather? Click, click, click went the locks. The door opened, after the footsteps and the clicking that announced the approaching reveal of the town recluse, and Kyle was casualness in hipster lean. He had good control of his center of gravity now, and he moved like he'd been born with these limbs. A wise man, someone who actually looked, might be able to tell there was something aged in the olive eyes that lived within angular face, but most people just saw a youth, and that was fine with Kyle. It was a novelty, going unnoticed. Dust motes danced, and this was straight out of a horror movie, and Kyle thought that was entertaining. His lip curled in a cat-in-the-cream grin, and he tried to peer at the romantic figure of the recluse at the door. He, Kyle, wore a women's perfume, something musky and spiced, and a narrow band of diamonds glinted at his throat. "Are you inviting me in, or am I standing on the sidewalk all night?" he asked, and, impressively, he didn't just shoulder his way inside. Though, you know, he absolutely looked like the kind of person who would. Daniel didn't overthink much of what the villagers here thought. (Villagers, yes.) A particularly determined watcher might get a glimpse of him, but rarely when he went on one of his nightwalks to visit Claire, perhaps, or one of his newer acquaintances. Newt, he thought, apparated precisely where he needed to be, and might be hidden from view, but as he wasn't feeding anonymously amongst the populace he thought they had little to concern themselves with him. Plenty of frumpy-looking young men and women with exotic facial hair (for the former) and fierce expressions (in the latter) came by the music store, banging on the front or peering through the shaded glass to see treasures within, but few attempted to actually break into the premises. The one or two that did regretted it almost instantly. Which left, unsurprisingly, just a shadow on the interior of the house, a few deliveries here or there, and a lot of curiosity on why he didn't need to go to the grocery store. The door remained open, barely enough for the span of Kyle's shoulders, and Daniel waited for him to come through it. He sniffed at the perfume, but people in this age wore a lot of perfume, in the hair and on their clothes, and in Daniel's time men wore more floral blends than they were wont to boast today. "You may come in," he said, finally, after mulling over the idea of leaving the young man out on the pavement for a while longer. Once both were in, Daniel pushed the door shut with a flex of elbow and bicep, stepping back in the shadow. He looked Kyle in the eye, taking him in, and then at the diamonds at his neck. One brow raised, then lowered. Daniel himself looked deceptively casual. He was not wearing shoes, which would leave five-print marks in the dust once they left the trail that went from stairs to door. The counter and register were covered with a ghostly sheet, but he'd left the shelves, the decorations, and everything that had been the girls exactly as it had been left. After a moment, he turned from Kyle, and found a light switch. The neon lit up, eerie without the floodlights, and the pink gave Daniel's grave, carved expression a devilish hue. "Look, if you like, but ask, if you wish to take." Kyle wasn't particularly curious about the town recluse. Tales made their way to his counters, and he listened. There was little about Repose that he didn't know, at least in a surface way, and this man was just part of the landscape that was the fabric of this strange little town. Oh, Daniel could be a myriad thing, and Kyle knew better than to make assumptions these days. So, inside, and Kyle glanced down at the bare toes leaving imprints of cleanliness on otherwise dust-coated floor, and then he walked toward the rows upon rows of vinyl. The place smelled of old things, and Kyle thought the scent fitting and right, and that was the stupidest thought, but, whatever, and the lights cast the entire place in a neon-glow, and Kyle chuckled as he started flipping through Joni Mitchell at the end of a dusty row. "The light makes it look like a bordello," he said. He had no accent that was in any way discernable, and he sounded a little bored when he talked, which, you know, he'd decided fit the exterior he wore. Kyle glanced back at his devil-light-carved host, and he grinned a smile that felt as if it had been lush once upon a time. One hip canted out, and the long-legged stance was decidedly feminine on masculine lines and angles. He pulled an album from its space amid the others and turned it over, and then he glanced around. "Where's your record player?" he asked, even though he'd just spied it behind the counter. "Have you heard this?" he took a step toward the record player, stopped, and politely waited for invitation with olive eyes bright and anticipating. Daniel shadowed the young man, not breathing down his neck, but within arm's reach. He didn't look at the items he was touching, but rather at him, and intensely. Like if he looked away for one moment, Kyle would disappear in a puff of smoke with all he held dear. He did, in fact, notice Kyle's stance, and recognize it for what it was, but that was not unusual. In Daniel's day such men where called mollies, and feminine they were, in their own way. Sometimes he found them attractive and sometimes he did not, but at the moment he had no admiration for anything in particular. At Kyle's observation of the light, Daniel scanned the room (keeping Kyle in view), his expression not seeming to agree. "Does it?" he asked, obviously not convinced but not arguing the point either. He thought about it. "Perhaps lamps with silk," he suggested, to bridge the distance between his own mental image of a bordello and Kyle's. Daniel's eyes traveled down between them to the record in the young man's hands. The painting on it meant nothing to him, and he stepped back out of the path toward the record player without further comment, his thoughts meandering in no particular direction… until suddenly they were not. For a brief, split second, like a lightning flash in the mountains, Daniel blinked hard and saw in his mind's eye a strange room: the white was peeling off the walls, graffitied with thin scrawls and blunt knives, the boards were bare and there were flies snapping at the unshielded lights. There were unmoving bodies in the room, and he sat at their eyelevel, the buzz of tainted blood on his tongue. He blinked hard again and then swayed, as if he'd been hit by something sudden and invisible. "Lamps with silk would be old school. The hipsters would like it, but I think you should embrace the neon vibe you have going here," Kyle replied. He had thin lips, but he managed to smile a lush smile in the direction of the shoeless recluse, and his sage gaze dropped momentarily to toes against dust-cleared floor. "The shoeless thing is kind of hippie. You can be an odd mix of hipster and hippie. Those things have to be derivative somehow, don't you think? It's all really retro." The smile had grown and tipped up at one corner, and Kyle fiddled with the record player behind the desk until he got it working. Joni played through the overhead speakers, and Kyle looked up. "Alright. I wasn't expecting the surround sound," he admitted, and he closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the music. It might be considered quaint, but Kyle liked it, and he was unapologetic in his new-youth. Kyle turned, then, intending to ask Daniel what he thought... not that it mattered, but he liked input. Alright, so he liked conversation, and he didn't have much of it recently. His life was an endless cycle of banter and salvation, and no one realized that facades weren't real. A few people had noticed that small fact during Kyle's lifetime, but they were needles in haystacks. And, anyway, alright, so things were not alright with the recluse. Kyle wound his way around the counter and away from the record player, and he approached Daniel with a fearlessness that was incongruous with his youthful features. Daniel blinked and swayed, and Kyle grabbed his arm, you know, in case he was going to fall on his ass. "Hey. Hey. Hey. What is it? What's wrong? What did you see?" Because, the blinking registered as something seen, at least to Kyle, and his grip remained firm as it slipped to Daniel's elbow. Kyle was slight and narrow, but he was toned from his recent obsession with acrobatics, and, at 6'1-and-change, and he wasn't an insubstantial youth. He tried to look Daniel in the eye. "Vinyl, hey, should you sit?" There was surely somewhere to sit... somewhere. The arm in Kyle’s grip flexed, the cotton hardly restrained by the kind of muscle the young man had recently cultivated, the skin an insubstantial wallpaper to tendon and largely abandoned strength. His return grip came up into Kyle’s elbow on immediate return, to stabilize himself. Daniel made a conscious effort to focus on the present, frightened that his mind was doing something he didn’t recognize. “Retro,” he babbled, almost incoherently, the word thickly accented on his tongue. Daniel’s weight shifted forward in Kyle’s direction, not quite falling, as if the ground had lately become an icy skin on Joni’s river. Her voice seemed overly loud to Daniel’s ears, not unpleasant, not familiar, hoarse and dejected. He cringed. “Yes,” he said. “I think perhaps I should like to sit.” Daniel put his opposite arm out and found the counter’s edge, as it seemed the most stable thing in the vicinity. “I rather think I was remembering something I don’t remember. It will pass.” He did not actually know that it would pass; it was just something to say, a theory, a hope. Whereas some might be less comfortable having such an incident occur with a stranger present, Daniel much preferred the implied anonymity of their current relationship, versus one that knew him well and might draw alarming conclusions. He felt akilter, but not exceptionally hungry, or out of control. He ran his tongue over his teeth, and found them reassuringly smooth and flat in front, the extra blades missing. Kyle smelled good, but not overwhelmingly so. No one else was in the vicinity. Daniel did not feel threatened. He glanced at the door, which was reassuringly closed. Alright, so Vinyl was gripping his elbow, and Kyle was young and strong, wiry and lean, but there was that hidden capability beneath Daniel's hand. It was training and rooftops, and it didn't necessarily make itself known in the sharp angles of the boy when he wore clothing, but it was certainly a thing that could be felt when he was grabbed onto. However, and this was probably a good thing, Kyle suspected Daniel wasn't actually noticing anything. The man was attempting to stabilize himself, and Kyle lifted a brow and watched as Daniel attempted to focus. So, it was a good thing for Kyle, even if it was, you know, selfish. But Kyle had embraced that label a long, long time ago, back when he was a she, and back when she'd considered greed a badge of survival in a world where giving and kindness were sure to get a person killed. But, right, Daniel teetered, and he said he maybe wanted to sit, and Kyle helped to guide the man that was reaching out a hand like a blind creature seeking its bearings. He watched as papery fingers grabbed the edge of the counter. "How can you remember something you don't remember?" he asked, but it was a stupid question, wasn't it? Kyle knew precisely what Daniel meant. "It doesn't always pass, does it? Sometimes you have to just sit your ass down and remember what you'd forgotten," he said, walking over there and grabbing up an old chair and dragging it over loudly, legs against the floor as he set the chair next to the counter. Once Daniel was steady, and with Joni singing about moons and Junes and ferris wheels, Kyle hopped up and sat on the counter. There was a litheness to his movements that was inherent, instinctive, feminine... or, right, dandified. He pushed a long and curly dark coil from his forehead, and he watched, ensuring Daniel wasn't about to fall over. His own sage gaze followed Daniel's to the door, then back, and he lifted a bushy-thick brow in inquiry. "You've got some shit going on." It was a question couched as a statement, and only the quirk of brow punctuated it as query. Daniel sat on a stool that had once been occupied by his many-times granddaughter. It was high for him as it had been high for her, and he was ill at ease on it, accustomed to low chairs stuffed under chintz. At least he was no longer standing. The skin over his face and neck felt cool, as if there was no blood moving under it, and he stopped breathing since the expansion of his lungs felt more unnecessary than usual. "It was another life," he said. "Not really lived by me. A dangerous one." He squinted at the boy, and looked for some similarity in his face to that of Damian's, mistaking the strength he felt for a relationship by blood. He had sensed the training and the balance as being similar to the other dangerous young man he met, but was otherwise too distracted to draw further connections. "I think you understand. You are not as skinny as you look." He smiled; it was not a flirtatious comment, for he didn't feel well enough. "I don't feel the thing," he said, pointlessly. He was looking positively gray. Daniel's tired brown eyes filtered through the dusty light in Kyle's direction. "It's not happened before." Kyle glanced over at Vinyl's face. The guy was pale, but this wasn't new... the guy had been pale since Kyle arrived. Now, Kyle was very observant, because being observant was a requirement when staying alive depended on being able to look over your shoulder without it being noticed that you were doing so. Anyway, Daniel here wasn't breathing, and Kyle had seen enough weird shit that it didn't immediately make him piss himself with fear. But, you know, it was noted, and Kyle swung his legs slightly and tried to determine how to bring it up, while still being able to dash for the door and survive, you know, if this turned out badly. But, all things considered, this wasn't a bad thing. It was a threat, sure, but Kyle only feared scientists in labcoats, and this guy wasn't that. "Another life when you still breathed?" he asked, sage eyes way too old as he regarded the man slouched and squinting in the chair. Kyle slipped off the counter... casually, but he didn't run. He stood there, all long legs and curiosity that killed the cat. "What are you? I'm not as skinny as I look, but my chest moves and I breathe." Which Vinyl's chest? Didn't do. "Don't worry. I'm not interested in outing you. There's nothing to be gained by it," he said, which wasn't true, but which was. He was too rich for five lifetimes, was Kyle, and it wasn't as if he was going to sell Daniel out to Jack's second-rate newspaper. "What don't you feel?" Idly, Kyle began leafing through the records at the edge of the nearest aisle, only a few feet away from where Daniel sat. "So, why's it happening now?" The thing that hadn't happened before, and Kyle pulled out some old Billie Holiday and turned the sleeve over to read the back. Daniel had to take in air to speak, and it was utterly visible when he was going to do so now that he wasn't breathing to take in air. It was like watching a dead body decide to yell, or a picture begin to move. He put one hand to his chest like an old man fearing a heart attack, sensing the beat when it came, very slow and unhurried. Thud. Then a long pause again, where there was silence overlaid with the female recording. Still Daniel sometimes looked for the source of the voice, even when there was none. It was a horrible, noisy world in which voices had no owners. Daniel watched Kyle move, forward and back. "I am old," he said. It was very vague, and he didn't think it mattered exactly what he was. Some anonymous young busybody, he knew those, and they liked to satisfy their youthful curiosity without knowing what trouble they caused. Daniel suspected this one had lived through hardship or tragedy, however, and that typically bred whipcord and sooty creatures that were dangerous when cornered. He felt fortunate he didn't have to deal with a rabid thief right now. His head felt light and the thoughts in it floated too high. What was this? "Outing me," Daniel said, huffing voiceless laughter. "What would you say? There is something living in the music store that I do not like, because he does not breathe?" He tilted his head from side to side, as if stretching it. No change. "Perhaps that would matter, on some dark night, if they were frightened enough. Or if they thought it was I that took that woman from the lake. It has happened before." And would again, he implied. He pretended not to be afraid of the faceless mob. He had seen them before. He thought that if they wished to kill him, then on they would come. The skinny child could bring them, if he wished. "I do not know what it is," he admitted. "I feel…" he searched for a word, and seemed astonished to find it. "Ill." Kyle watched. He watched it all as if it was a theatrical, one he had a first-row seat to. He watched with a calmness that would not have been present a year earlier, and we can thank Sasha's vodoo god and her sisterly snake scales. Kyle wasn't scared of the unknown, not in the way she'd been, and that had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with her BFF turning into a necromancer and making weird stuff impossible to avoid. Before that? The closest she'd come was a lover with a transformation problem, and these days Kyle accepted that dead things roamed the earth. Why not? Anyway, Daniel was clearly something, and 'I am old' didn't even begin to cover it. "The newspaper editor's in love with me," Kyle said with the casual confidence of someone young and sure of their own charms. He wasn't even bullshitting, which she'd always been. Cat's confidence had been a thing painted in thick strokes and deliberately covering a canvas that was insecurity and rejection poxed. "He'd believe anything I said. I don't know if he's the editor anymore, actually, but I'm sure he's still out there writing ridiculous exposés in an effort to silence his demons with an early demise." But Kyle wasn't running for the door. Kyle was still flipping through albums, and he currently held a gorgeous copy of Etta James in his hands. If Daniel didn't lunge at him, Kyle ambled over to the record player, and he changed the record. He listened for a few beats, eyes closed and angular features transported by the voice that filled the space. "Sublime, isn't she?" He opened sage eyes again, and he looked at the man sitting in the chair. "You should let me work here. It's a shame people can't buy this stuff, and it's not as if you're going to sell it. You said your family built this shop? Then they wanted to share this with the world." Which, you know, was massively off topic. Kyle walked back to where Daniel was, and he looked down at the ailing dead man. Kyle had jumped to that conclusion, that this man was somehow dead. "So, has this ever happened before? How old is old? Older than me, I think, and I'm 44 this year." Daniel did not think he was a particularly imposing example of his type, or even amongst Repose population. He was well aware there was a pack of savage dogs running around out there, at least one hellbeast, and if there weren't a handful of demons to go along with the angels he would eat his left shoe. Really, when he was in his right mind (and therefore: Daniel) he was a rather sedate creature, content to stay at home, read his books, and gossip with anyone who cared to impart their secrets. As the years progressed, they seemed to do so even more slowly. Daniel felt slow, as if his blood was cooling in his veins. The old vampire smiled at this new bit of news. "In love with you? Really? How delightful." It sounded like he meant it, his pale fingers tickling nothing as if playing on an invisible piano. "So he would believe you. But he does not have much of a reputation, even here." Daniel was an old gossip after all, and he had quite the large ears. "He might publish such a thing, but I doubt the hunters would come running immediately." Unless more people went missing at the bottom of the lake, or if Daniel himself turned into the calculating creature of hunger, but we will speak of neither. Daniel made no objection to the change of voice. His expression didn't bode well to the idea of working, however. "To work, you must sell. I do not like this idea of selling everything." He scowled, but looked doubtful when he mentioned family. It was obvious Daniel had no idea which records were meant to be sold and which were not, nor their comparative value. If the family had meant to share anything, he did not know it, clear as he glanced around the shop. "Old is old." He squinted into Kyle's face. "You do not look so old." Mirthless smile. "Nor do I. You do not smell like magic." If Daniel was imposing, well, Kyle wasn't feeling it. He mostly thought the man in the chair looked old and sick, so whatever supernatural thing he was wasn't one Kyle was afraid of. He was even less concerned when Vinyl wanted to talk about love being delightful, and Kyle rolled olive eyes in what was obviously an oft-practiced expression. "Delightful isn't the word I would use, but I would go for validating. That's the thing about being wanted, right? It makes a person feel on top of the world. Wanting someone back isn't a requirement." He shrugged his shoulders. "His reputation was fine until I set out to ruin it, but he pissed me off," he said unapologetically. Kyle could be a bitch, and he didn't desire being liked enough to hide it. Jack had pissed him off, and he'd ruined Jack as a result. "He's buying a business now. If I advise him, it'll succeed. If not..." Another lift of shoulders, and he listened to the music for a few seconds in silence. "Love is a pain in the ass, anyway. It hurts more than not." Another shrug of narrow, coltish shoulder. "Listen, baby, your relatives opened this place to share this stuff with the world, not to keep it locked away. If you want to honor their vision, then share it," Kyle said. He motioned to the rows of records, and he even walked over between them and plucked records up and named them off as he went. "This is a specific thing. It's old music on vinyl. It's like a lost art. The stuff they play on the radio now isn't like this." He scoffed. "No one even listens to the radio now. Everything's playlists online. This is the real stuff, and anyone who buys it must own a record player, and only people who love these own a record player." Why he was selling this so hard was beyond him, but it seemed important. Kyle came back to where Daniel was. "I gave away everything that mattered to me, and now I have nothing but time on my hands. You could use an employee, so why not help each other?" He looked down at himself. "I look good for mid-40s. You don't look as good for however old you are," Kyle said without mincing words, but he laughed at the concept of being magic. "Oh, baby, I have never been magic. I'm like pinocchio after he was turned into a real boy. I ain't got no strings." He spun around with an excess of grace and femininity, but whatever, and he grinned. "So, are you going to tell me what you're dying of? If you even can die? And, you know, are you hiring me?" The old, sickly vampire sat up in his chair, and his dull brown eyes seemed to focus through the centuries on Kyle's face. "What a strange thing to tell a man you just met," he said, softly, of the ruination of poor Jack the newspaperman. News was a trade for which Daniel had unusual respect, given his aristocratic origins, but he had always been one of these mad sponsors of even madder poets and artists. Even Jack's poor taste to work in such a town as Repose did not deter Daniel from reading the flimsy gossip pages whenever they were put forth. Daniel's hooded gaze stared unblinking. "Perhaps you hope to impress me with your cruelty?" He did not appear to expect an answer to this question, as he closed his eyes then as if he was his age, and slid off Harper's stool behind the covered register. "Very well. You will send me your references for the position," he agreed, waving one hand as if Kyle had devoutly come pleading for a job. "And I will consider the store. But you will not be pounding music through the ceiling during the morning hours, even if I do allow such a thing. One cannot sleep with the noise, and when I am disturbed I am like to rampage, tear through the throats of whomever is nearby." He began to move now back toward the stair, slowly, passing Kyle by mere inches unless the other did not move. Daniel groaned at the excess of fairy tale energy. "No dancing, I beg you," he said, though he smiled faintly at the suggestion. "When I receive diagnosis of my eventual fate, I will inform you." He mounted the stair. "You may take the two you admired, but only those." Kyle, despite his claim to agedness, had the impulsive and fearless manner of youth. He said things, strange or not, and he watched for reaction. His words about Jack had been blunt and with a serrated edge, and he smiled at Daniel's soft response. He shrugged a narrow shoulder in honor of Jack's fate, and, oh, well. Maybe Kyle should feel bad about poor Jack. Maybe Kyle, or whoever the boy who owned the body had been, would've been sorry for poor Jack. But Kyle was Cat, and Cat was cutthroat. Sure, she'd been contained recently, but no more. That was what he'd learned recently: Fuck 'em all, and he had no clue how he'd forgotten that along the way. "Perhaps I wish to just say things how they are. That's me. Take me or leave me," was Kyle's response, and it was a fallback to old days and not giving a shit, and, you know, it felt kind of nice. Kyle looked at the records Daniel said he could take, and then he looked at the sick looking man on the chair. "References?" He asked, incredulous and with an expression belonging wholly to the young, an insulted kind of thing that spoke of entitlement. "Who do you want me to give you? The head of the CIA? The FBI? Or the Secretary of Defense? The Russians? A cell in the Middle East? I know, I can give you any police department on the East Coast, and they can assure you I'm the best cat burglar they've seen in years. Or, you know, I can always have any of my numerous businesses contact you." His smile was feline and trouble and sage eyes glinted brightly with young mirth. "But I won't be loud, and everyone's throats can be safe," he promised. And with that, Kyle scooped up both albums and made for the door. "Lock up after me," he suggested, this over his shoulder and with more grin. "And go see a supernatural doctor or something." Or, you know, whatever it was supernatural people did when they were ill. |