Who: Raziel & Asmodeous (Regan & Davian) What: Cordial Loathing 101 (otherwise known as Heaven and Hell meeting over coffee.) When: Thursday. Where: Random Coffee Shop #1, London. Rating: PG? Status: Incomplete.
[OOC: So, um, we were doing this as a writing exercise, but... yay for game opening and we're really excited! Sooo... now we'll just post it.]
Raziel knew the moment she walked into the coffee shop. If she'd been paying attention, she would have known from the street outside - but she'd been distracted, thinking more about whether or not she wanted whipped cream with her spiced chai and what, exactly, constituted excess when there was no Creator to nudge his Earth-bound Host away from it. She kept thinking this all the way to the counter, to the queue waiting to place their orders, all the way to the moment that she recognized that feeling for what it really was. Demon. It was like a cold finger at the back of her neck, being dragged slowly down her spine - just once, just enough to get her attention.
Her glance over the patrons was casual, a cursory look around. Blonde woman, no. Bald man, no. Banker? Close, definitely evil, but no. Not the gay couple holding hands across a table, not the people in line. It intensified when she found him, that sense of recognition, until she could taste it on the back of her tongue. Once, that had been the taste of revulsion and hatred. But those centuries had come and gone; she'd matured, she'd learned. Demons were a fact of life, when one lived among Man. And she didn't know this one, didn't recognize his face. Did she? No...
They came to her sometimes, waltzing into her company offices in tailored suits or hipster jeans, with shark-like smiles or pursed lips. Usually she sent them away. Even with the Creator on vacationoutmissing gone, she found demons distasteful - it was a general sort of rule, par for the living-on-Earth course or not. But sometimes she listened. Once in a great while, she even bargained with them - this soul for that secret, this promise for that information, etc. This demon, though... this was a face that she hadn't seen before, but he still seemed familiar. His presence tugged at her, and she didn't bother to mask her staring as she might have for a human.
He would sense her the same way that she sensed him; a light presence in the room, where he was shrouded in a kind of sultry psychic darkness. She wondered idly, in that way that it hardly seemed like wondering at all, if the taste on the back of his tongue was sweet, a contrast to the bitter taste of demon that was on hers - or if she really did just imagine that sensory input.
For once, Asmodeous wasn't looking for an Angel. For once, he really was just looking to have a delicious cup of coffee before he started his day. But then - there she was. And there was something about her, something about...ah, yes. Raziel. It had been at least a century, probably two since he'd seen her, but he'd always been capable of picking out his favorite challenges from a veritable cornucopia of people. She was one in a million, and she'd never once come close to giving in. It made her a pleasure to speak to, a delight to see. And here she was, in London. How absolutely thrilling.
And yes, there was a pleasantly sweet flavor lingering in his mouth, like he could actually taste the tingle that her energies put into the air. Most demons would likely be put off by it, but Asmodeous was drawn by that flavor like a bee to honey. Hers, especially, was... delectable.
So he met her stare without hesitation, even raised his brows in what could only be interpreted as a suggestive manner, and nodded to the empty chair next to him, raising his own iced coffee in what was almost a toast. Join me? He said, more with his eyes than anything else. And his way of showing her respect was making it a request, rather than a demand.
It was that familiar sort of darkness that finally settled in her mind, her puzzlement giving way to recognition at almost the same time that he lifted his coffee in her direction. Asmodeous. Of course it would be him, of course. Some demons wrapped themselves in heavy darkness, in a sense of fear, in loathing so deep that it infected the humans that they came close to - like a virus, passing unseen from species to species. But Asmodeous' feeling was warm and sensual. Dark, because he was undoubtedly dark. But the sort of dark that was reminiscent of a July night in the American Deep South - warm and sort of sticky in that sinful way that Raziel could recognize but not understand.
Her eyes skipped away from him, disinterested. She ignored him, as a chaste cheerleader might ignore a boy with a motorcycle. But once she'd paid for her coffee, she found her steps turning her toward his table, toward the chair he'd offered her. "It's been a long time," she greeted, cordial because it was Asmodeous and they'd dispensed with the flashing of flaming swords several hundred years prior. Not that he would have had any better luck skewering her with that... "It's good to know that you take time out of your busy schedule for the little things. Corruption, sin, betrayal, then a spot of iced mocha before a working lunch?"
The briefest smile lit on his lips when he saw that recognition in her eyes. It was all he'd wanted, really. Part of him knew that she'd be accepting that seat once she was done making it a point to ignore him. So he settled back, sipped his coffee, perused the newspaper he'd picked up from... somewhere.
"It has." He responded, the faintest smile crossing his lips. He made it a point to give in to the demand his nature made, his eyes wandering over her shape and taking in her curves. For her, and her alone, he made sure that she felt like he was undressing her with his eyes...which, of course, he was. "You look...good." He allowed, kicking out the chair so that she could sit.
Her description of his actions brought a chuckle from him, and he took a moment to drink from his coffee before shaking his head. "Aah, the betrayal is less nowadays. I've found that it was easy to replace it with a little more corruption, what with the silence that the Heavens have presented me with." He leaned forward, elbows on the table.
"So. Raziel." He paused, to give her a chance to correct him with whatever human moniker she was going by now, "Do you have the innie scoop? Why the Heavens are so quiet? Where the Voice has gone?" He arched a brow, smiling that knowing, wicked smile that he was so good at.
Swallowing a sigh at her own sense of predictability, Raziel sat, sinking down into the chair he'd pushed out for her and primly crossing her legs. Prim but not prissy, cool but not cold. She had been granted many lifetimes to come to terms with Asmodeous, and she was almost used to the way that his eyes wandered idly down her human guise.. almost. It was a little different, when there was no divine light filtering into her head from above, when there was no Voice in her ear to remind her that - although she lived among them - no part of her was human. The skin that she wore was just skin; flesh to inhabit, and then to move on from. Like a mask on Halloween, except that Halloween lasted about three quarters of a century at a time.
"I'm so pleased that you've changed your hair," she responded to his compliment. "This suits you better than the last time." Idle niceties, casual banter. They were cordial competitors meeting over coffee, lobbing easy jibes back and forth. He would flirt, she would smile and shut him down. He would try and tempt her, she would roll her eyes. She would fling some casual insult at him, he would deflect it with a smile that would make a human girl weak in the knees. Eventually they would part company and go back to their respective jobs, each doing what they did - saving humanity and picking at its loose threads, respectively.
"Regan," she supplied him blithely, and then paused with her spiced and sweetened tea halfway to her lips. She hadn't expected him to bring up the silence from Heaven. That was talking shop. But it was a momentary pause, and she sipped at her hot drink with a calm smile. "What would you know about the Voice, Asmodeous?" Here she paused, giving him the same opportunity to supply her with his current name. "It's been silent for you for millennia."
Honestly, it impressed Asmodeous that she'd spent so very long amidst humans and remained so very, very incorruptible. She was the only member of the Heavenly Host that he could think of with such resolve, such will.
It will be interesting to see, he thought, if she retains that strength with God out of His Heaven....
"Oh, you like?" The surprise was faked, in this instance - made clear by the exaggerated way his brows went up, the haphazard style in which his hands flew to his head, to check and make sure that every hair was firmly in place in the chaotic style he was currently using. "Yeah, I thought 'some hair' was better than 'no hair.'" He flashed her that disarming smile, though the light in his eyes was a little more attentive than usual...watching, surely, to see if she faltered. At all.
Or maybe she was just too perfect for that. Angels.
"Davian." He offered, when she paused - like he knew she would. "Means 'Beloved'." This time, the grin was a mocking one - laughing at his own private joke (or, more likely, at all of Humanity). Beyond the smile, his expression was one of sweet innocence, a look that he'd had centuries to perfect. "And there's a difference between silent and absent, dear Regan." He leaned back, stretching, before coming back to hunch over the table, in that conspiratorial fashion he was enjoying at the moment.
"You know all the other mysteries. Do you know this one, too?" He wiggled his brows in a way that was either suggestive or curious, it was hard to tell which.
He got nothing for his feigned charm except a brief lift of her eyebrows. I was expecting as much that look said, speaking quite clearly without need of a voice. It's always the same. That time, she didn't falter, didn't give his hair a second look. Asmodeous always took attractive guises, always made himself irresistible - the kind of man that mortal women of any caliber would drop their panties for. She had long since learned to accept it and move beyond it - because to linger over the thought, to harbor any secret lust.. that was too human a thing to do. And she was not human. Not human. Not human. Not even a little bit human.
Raziel reminded herself patiently, because there was no one else to remind her any longer.
If she faltered over anything, it was the name. A brief, amused smile flickered at the corner of her lips, unbidden and genuine. She had to hand it to him - for a demon, at least he had a sense of humor. But the smile faded, the angel sobered. There was the slightest inclination of her head - so subtle that a human would not have noticed it at all - and the sense of listening, of groping blindly for something in the ether. It was not the first time she'd sought the comforting presence of her Creator, and it would not be the last. But again, there was nothing. Only the void left by her Father - their Father - and the silence that still unnerved her. It was a silence she had never known before. "No," she answered finally, honestly. "Not this one."
Asmodeous had long ago given up on the concept of swaying Raziel into any sort of corruption at all. She was the Incorruptible, the Impossible, the eternal challenge. Perhaps if they hadn't spent so long in their roles, he would be trying harder to drag her down to his level...but it had been centuries since they'd ceased their useless struggles, ages and eons since they'd been anything but casual nemeses.
Still, that genuine smile was a score for his side, a point in his favor, and he was truly, truly sorry to see it fade away. The honesty in her tone also unnerved him a bit - he'd expected some playful banter, some solid deflection away from whatever the Truth may be in this case, but not honesty. He was used to Raziel smiling at him as she concealed what she knew, used to her laughing when he plied her with various trinkets and charms in exchange for her knowledge. But he knew - as he had always known - that she guarded her secrets well, almost jealously. "Truly?" It was almost a statement, not a question, and he exhaled as he sat back, shaking his head. "That's some heavy stuff right there, Razzy."
Just like that, the crack in the armor that he'd been waiting for disappeared, dispatched like smoke on the back of a strong wind. It had been a moment of weakness bred only because she'd reached for the Creator and come away with nothing, and it had taken only Asmodeous' - Davian's - casual usage of a name that she hated to remind her that her present company was inappropriate for such a feeling. For any feeling. Not that Raziel had feelings, not in the traditional sense. They were ghosts to her, sensations that she knew about but didn't understand. Feelings were a human thing, something for Man and the Fallen. For Angels, there was only the work of the Divine.
Except that there was no more work, there was no Hand to lead the Host. And in that void, Raziel's first real feelings had begun to grow, tentative shadows of the real things. The whisper of doubt, the first cold nibbling of loneliness. It was an uncomfortable development, these feelings. But it was not a development that she could (or ever would) share with her demonic nemesis. They remained on opposite sides of The Line, no matter how casual their mutual hatred had become. "You know I don't like that," she lowered her brows in his direction, that flash of vulnerability gone from her face and eyes. Her young guise could look so lost - and so annoyed, just with a little glance. "If you must, it's Rae." It was this last glance that she favored him with, leaning back in her chair.
"And forgive me if I don't offer to pass along any messages for you, Davian," she pronounced his name carefully, making sure that she used it properly. This was pointed, as though he might learn not to call her troublesome nicknames if she modeled the proper behavior for him. "But I don't think He was taking your calls before, and I doubt He will want them when He is available again." Not that Asmodeous had reached for the presence of his Father, not since The Fall. If he had, he would already have been punished and then forgiven. And now? Now if he reached for that divine forgiveness, he would find the same thing she found... nothing. Nothing at all. Silence and stillness.
The Throne of God was empty, and Raziel was punished by the very human desire to cry at this thought. She brushed it away with a flicker of annoyed confusion. "What trouble are you causing in London?" It was an abrupt change of subject, but that didn't matter. "And are you staying? I'm not sure how my employees would feel about any upswing in how often we order seafood for lunch."