Danny Alejandro (finalboast) wrote in summerview, @ 2019-03-11 23:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, oksana kuznetsovich, plot, zdanny alejandro |
Another One On Retainer
Traveling without access to a private workshop was an inconvenience at best. Living a month without one was an outright pain.
But with her would-be house still AWOL, Oksana's options were setting up shop at Tulip's (too greedy; she'd already encroached enough on her godmother) or suspending orders (too...unthinkable; she had to work). Theoretically she could've rented a workspace in AC, but Dad's stipulations on residing in Summerview and her projects' frequent need for close observations, not to mention the perils of leaving high level Enchantments incomplete and out of her sight...well. Needless to say Oksana wasn’t going to be renting a space in AC. Which left her with the Sleepy Satyr. As a B&B, the Satyr was lovely. It was comfortable, clean, and provided breakfast muffins fit for Olympus. It was also possibly as old as Summerview itself and thus completely blase about its guests magical ‘quirks’ - and the potential fallout of such. Nobody balked at Oksana's latehour (or early morning) requests for ice...or fenugreek, or bleach, or, on one especially memorable occasion, twenty-seven white tulips wrapped in undyed linen. Her current work didn't require calls to the florist or commandeering cleaning supplies, but it did keep her away from the dining room. Oksana put in a call for lunch to be sent to her room, emphasizing the need for calories. Also, ice. A lot, lot, lot of ice. In the meantime Oksana sat at the desk, dressed in "homebody" clothes suitable for a casual day's ‘tinkering’. (For Oksana this translated into a vintage Hermes blouse and 800 dollar silk-twill trousers.) A magnifying glass stood on the desk in front of her, surrounded by colorful bobs and bits: thorns, colored feathers, beaten coins, ball bearings, tufts of fur, horn slivers, buttons, and a gleaming array of differently sized hooks. It was a setup recognizable to any fisherman. The vague haze of crackling energy, however, indicated a less mundane hobby on hand. Danny had been asked by the manager to bring chef’s prepared meal up for one of their guests. When he was told which room it was going to, he groaned. The woman, Oksana, was a weird lady, to say the least. Maybe it was an enchanter thing? He’d made the same sound when Xi had asked him to get to know her a little bit more. Apparently, she was a person of interest for the Malcontents and it was good luck (and bad tidings) that she happened to be in Summerview. Prime for the picking. He gave a rapid knock on her door and announced, “Room service!” He stood awkwardly waiting for the okay to come in, juggling the tray of food and several bags of ice. Who the fuck needed all this ice? Where was it even going? Danny was more irritated than curious. He was a dragon, not a mule. But in order to do a good job at the inn, he had to comply with the wishes of the guests, no matter how strange – which was a relative term in this town – and no matter the time of day or night. It was something Elliot, their new maintenance person, was having trouble learning, but he enjoyed listening to her outbursts. Oksana answered the door with a vaguely impatient expression and half a yard of golden wire looped around her arm. “Yes, what is - ah.” She blinked in momentary puzzlement at the tray, but was quickly distracted by the sight of the ice. “Excellent. Come in, please, come in.” She picked the tray off the waiter’s - server’s? housekeeper’s? - hand, and motined him inside with her head. “Bring the ice into the bathroom. Actually, you know what, just dump it all into the tub. All of it.” “Wait.” She paused suddenly and turned a sharp eye on the guy. “You’re not Fae, are you?” “What? No!” Danny seemed genuinely insulted by the implication that he might be fae. “I’m a goddamn dragon. Fuck being fae.” He caught himself a bit too late but tried to make up for it right after. “That is, no offense if you are.” He would’ve felt it from her if she was, but he did sense the crackling energy coming from the space around them. It was a sure sign of applied magic. He was glad when she took the tray from him, giving him better control over the bags of ice, and stepped inside to make his way to the bathroom. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of the room and all the strange things that had made their way there. Shaking his head to himself, just hoping she didn’t leave any weird stains or burns on the carpet or the walls, he headed to the bathroom and the sound of cascading ice came from the room. “The hell you doing with all this ice, anyway?” he called out curiously. The answer to Danny's question was obvious to anyone who stepped into the bathroom and saw the ice-filled tub. Or more specifically, saw the lungs inside the ice-filled tub. "I'm not offended if you're not," Oksana said over her shoulder. She busied herself with trying to figure what parts of the desk could be cleared to make room for the food. In the end, she decided to simply put the tray on the bed. "The tissue is still growing and there's some sensitivity around Fae energy. Iron in the blood, you understand. Did they send up hot cho—oh, they did, how nice." Oksana poured herself a cup of hot chocolate, the dense aroma of cocoa filling the food. "So what's a dragon doing delivering towels?" Danny eyed the lungs with a mixture of disgust and fascination. He turned away from the tub when the ice bags were emptied and bundled them up to take back down with him for another inevitable ice run to her room later. Why was a dragon delivering towels? Good fucking question. Danny mused about this as he wandered back into the main living area. “Why? For the pleasure of talking to you, of course.” He grinned. It wasn’t that far from the truth. Xi said she’d already spoken to the Enchantress and that she wouldn’t need that much of a push to get her on side. Xi needed those experiments and Danny wasn’t going to let his boss down. “So, what’s all this?” He wandered over to the desk and immediately his eyes caught on the buttons that lay there. He reached to pick one up with a greedy gleam in his eyes. “If that’s what passes for pleasure in Summerview nowadays…” Oksana tsk’ed. It was good-natured ribbing, though; the presence of fresh hot chocolate went a long way in bettering Oksana’s mood. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the dragon reaching out towards the lures and snapped out her own hand to grab his. “Careful please,” she said firmly. “Those are nearly as sensitive as the what’s in the tub. It took a lot of very sleepless hours to sanitize this lot. It wouldn’t do to have them in contact with any foreign magic.” And having a heavy-hitter magical specimen such as dragon touching the materials would undo a lot of those hours. For a moment, she pitied the fact that she couldn’t wear magical implements while sanitizing. The hand around the dragon’s wrist was woefully bare, and without her helpful little silver ring Oksana couldn’t read anything about him. Smiling politely, she pointedly directed the man’s hand away from the table. “They’re tracking lures,” she said. “Rather like those gadgets that help people locate their keys, except that these have a slightly grander range.” Give or take a continent, she added silently. Or a Barrier. When his hand was intercepted on its way to touch one of his favorite things in the world, Danny couldn’t help the distinct snarl that came from his throat, teeth showing. He checked himself quickly enough and withdrew his touch back to a respectful distance, something akin to a pout on his face replacing the snarl. “My bad.” Still, his gaze didn’t move from the buttons for a long moment. “You sell them or something?” Because there were a lot of different items on the desk and if all of the were for tracking, it looked like more than any one person would need. “Or do you just have that many jealous exes you gotta keep track of?” He lifted his gaze to Oksana and smirked. Oksana's polite sangfroid didn't budge at the snarl. Growing up around people stronger, taller (agh) and significantly more supernatural than herself had taught Oksana grit in the face what Kitty charmingly referred to as "fangs, fur, and fuck off'ness". Working among them had taught her to adopt some of that energy for herself. "I sell a lot of what I make." She nodded towards the lures. "A couple of those are special orders, a few others are for later availability." Her smile turned a touch sly. "One set is a bonus for the would-be owner of the tub project." The ex dig she ignored. Oksana currently only had real ex worth tracking and at last check he was still happily ensconced in Rome, safe and continuously undead. "You're awfully curious for a bellhop – Danny, right?" “Danny Alejandro,” he confirmed and laced his fingers together behind his head to keep them from twitching. He’d had his sights set on the buttons and now that he couldn’t touch them, he was growing a bit more agitated. “Although the Alejandro is just a made-up part to fit in with the humans. Heh, so is the Danny part, actually.” He pondered that for a moment and then shook his head. “Anyway, someone told me that you’re pretty fucking good at what you do. You said you take commissions, right? What about commissions for a good cause?” "If that's a way of asking for a contribution to the Summerview Daycare charity raffle this is going to be a short conversation," Oksana said. The dragon's – Danny's question left her mildly bewildered, if curious. This wouldn't be the oddest way she'd ever been approached with a job, but it wasn't exactly the common mode either. And why the Dickens did he keep staring at the lure materials… "Did this 'someone' give you a name or am I'm the lucky beneficiary of the local rumor mill?" Danny was quite off put by the refusal to access the buttons, and he was descending into a bad mood. Which, for a dragon, could be spell bad things. For a human? There was definitely danger and Oksana didn’t seem like a person to soothe draconic ego – despite her other expertise. Danny flushed and then moved towards the exit, uttering the necessary articles as per Xi’s instructions. “Drosselmeyer,” Danny blurted, his hazel regard meeting Oksana’s. “Ta-fucking-da.” He was over with subtleties. He wanted those buttons above all else – up to and maybe including his loyalty to Xi. “Give me the buttons, I’ll give you more.” Well. Well. Well - sugar, honey, ice, and tea: Dad had been right. The old bleeding heart had always worried about ‘Drosselmeyer’ following her to Summerview and here they were. How terribly embarrassing. And potentially dangerous. “Why would I pay for a dead name?” She picked up one of the few unique specimens in the mix: a glazed satsuma button with chrysanthemums painted on. With a flick of fingers, the button went spinning through air towards Danny. “Consider it a tip for the ice,” Oksana said. “Now - talk. Or I’ll melt each one of the little buggers and make you watch.” Danny made a grab to catch the button and managed, his eyes glinting metallic in his eagerness to hold it and caress its edges. It was a spectacular one, beautifully painted and shiny, just how he liked them. When the dragon looked up, his pupils had narrowed into slits and he licked his lips and put the button into his pocket that already had several others. Danny always had some on his person. The threat to the rest of the buttons had gotten his attention, his gaze moving from the buttons to her, but he doubted she would go through with it. Not after how many hours she’d spent working on the lures. “It’s not a dead name,” he countered, jingling the buttons in his pocket together. Music to his ears. “Although maybe it should be. Maybe my employer was wrong about bothering to send me to you.” Xi wasn’t wrong. She never was. But Danny disliked being threatened when what was at stake was what he viscerally craved. Buttons. Oksana would bet half her wardrobe Danny wasn’t talking about Sid. “Maybe your employer wanted you to talk business instead of haberdashery,” Oksana said pointedly. Dear God, did he have more buttons in his pocket? What the hell was she dealing with here... “Come on, then, Danny boy. You don’t have a position to bargain until there’s actually something on the table. Figuratively speaking,” she added before the dragon could start campaigning for the rest of her supplies. “What does your boss want?” “Just your interest,” Danny tore his eyes again from the buttons on the table and focused on Oksana. “Xiofan Guerra wants to know if you’d pick up some work if it came your way. She would’ve come to ask you herself but…” Danny shrugged and scowled at the unpleasant thought of Jayati. “There are sibling issues in town.” He held out his hand for another button payment. "Ain't that the truth," Oksana muttered. She dropped three buttons – two lacquer, one glass – into the dragon's hand. "You can tell mademoiselle Guerra that I'm available. You can also remind her that discretion is appreciated by client and entrepreneur alike," she added pointedly. "Not all of us have the luxury of minions and distance; some of us have to live in Summerview. Preferably without the sheriff's particular attention." Oksana paused, expression turned briefly inward, before seeming to reach some internal decision. Resolute, she swept up most of the remaining buttons in her hands and extended her cupped hands, now full, to Danny. One eyebrow quirked upward invitation. Well, that was easier than he expected, Danny thought, pleased with his own negotiation skills. He rubbed the new button acquisitions together in his fingers, delighted by the way they felt and sounded as they clinked together. He couldn’t wait to get back to his studio to add them to his hoard. A shiver ran down his spine and he exhaled slowly. Then, much to his surprise, the Enchantress scooped up a huge handful of the lovely buttons and offered them to him. His eyes widened and his heartrate increased. His eyes darted from the buttons to her face, trying to read her eyes, trying to tell if this was some kind of trick. But she only looked as if she was waiting for him to accept. Not just accept the buttons, he realized, but accept her side of the deal and agree on discretion. “Yeah. Yeah, discretion. Yeah.” He nodded his head, agreeing easily that he’d pass it on to Xi, and then stepped closer and held out the bottom of his shirt in a hammock, showing off the belly of his human glamour, to catch all the buttons. |