Cirque Noir

It was another evening of lowlight and the lull of Suadela's seductive lure—of its cascading decadence and the liquor that made the atmosphere heady with disinhibition and lust. It was tangible, thick in the air and something that had become an almost necessary base note to the words that came as the vampire's only comfort after each night that he bent that hollow spine for a spotlight rather than a set of greedy hands.

The rough transition to Yokohama had forced Trystan to rearrange all of the novels that suffocated his sparse caravan, a few duplicates discovered in the reshelving of the thousands of pages that had scattered to the floor in their move. Though some of the books offered had been claimed by other residents, quite a few had remained, left to the blonde's considerations of the words he'd devoured years ago. It was because of this that a hardcover copy of Finnegan's Wake had become this evening's companion, the vampire and idiosyncratic text sharing a negroni in his favorite corner of the burlesque venue.

He'd been there for at least two hours when he looked up from the pages, assessing the scattering of men who lingered despite the show coming to a close even earlier than Trystan's arrival. The sanguine lure wafting through the air was stifled down by a gin and vermouth swallow, his lungs forcing a sigh despite it being unnecessary—

( habit, more than anything. )