[ Past a certain point, sitting in your room watching the rising and falling of your voidwife roommate's chest and tensing through her nightmare throes becomes somewhat unhealthy. He's aware of this and that awareness has yet to translate into action, but with plans somewhere on the horizon Stephen finally prizes himself from the edge of his own bed, uses it as an excuse to find something else to do.
It means he's already in the boarding house common area when the time comes, swimming a little transparent goldfish of golden amber light between his fingers, watching its tail fins flip as he sends it twisting in the air. ]
[If Takeshi's actually spent little time in the boarding house, you wouldn't be able to tell from how he enters, walks through the place. Seems to unerringly find his way to Stephen, as if the other man had given him a precise location from the start.]
Free drinks and a light show. [Coat shrugged off and slung over the back of a chair, he slouches down into a seat.] This magic shit's starting to have an appeal.
If I'd known you were this cheap a date I'd have asked you over sooner.
[ It's a joke, made clear in the carefully casual flash of a smirk and the flick of his fingers that sends the goldfish splashing into an empty cocktail glass that's appeared at Kovacs' spot at the table. It swims around and around, caught in its makeshift goldfish bowl. ]
So. What'll it be?
[ There's a veneer to him here. He's - shiny, somehow, in the way people are when they're wearing better versions of themselves like overcoats to cover any one of a multitude of flaws. Reality like the same outfit worn for the fourth day in a row. ]
[Takeshi doesn't need to have experience of magic to know when someone's showing off, or to know when someone's playing at distractions, both for themselves and others. He eyes Stephen for a moment, remembering the alley, the state he'd been in, the attempt to control the uncontrollable. Tips his head slightly.]
[ And then he reaches a hand over the conjured glass, first to fill it with something clear (as the water rises from the bottom of the glass the fish swims up, up, finally jumping out of the glass to disappear against the stretch of Stephen's palm), then with a trip of his fingers to turn that liquid a rich orange-red. One dry Manhattan, made to order.
A flourish has a little curl of orange zest caught between his fingers, which he sets neatly on the edge of the glass and leans back. ]
All yours.
[ His own drink is conjured up with significantly less flare, a stiff two fingers of whisky already in hand and sipped. ]
[There's no need to pretend to be impressed. The only place that Takeshi would've ever seen a similar act would be in a construct, a simulation, so to have it performed in front of him in reality... Well, it's still a little hard to believe, but picking the glass up and taking a sip of the cocktail banishes any remaining doubts.]
Seemed fitting.
[As he sets the glass back down. This magic trick of placing Stephen's accent was hardly as impressive, but Stephen was already aware - in part, at least - of his ability to read people. Takeshi wonders if that knowledge has had any impact on Stephen asking him here, how soon Stephen will tell him what it's really about, or if he'll need to ask.
In the immediate, though, he just gestures at Stephen's own drink.]
[ Oh. It hadn't clicked. The realisation catches in his throat, a laugh that trips out of him on one unvoiced beat. Satisfaction with the skill exchange is clear in the catch of Stephen's mouth, the lopsided pinch of his smirk.
He rewards the nailed accent check with the sudden apparition of a whisky glass beside the Manhattan. Queueing him up. ]
Not bad, Mr. Kovacs. I liked the delivery.
[ Showmanship is showmanship, subtle or not. But he's going to need to be at least two drinks in before he can get to the point - if he can ever really persuade himself there - and that means small talk. ]
Long day?
[ In the context of the last time I visited you at work you had my cock in your hand this feel like a slightly safer question than a more direct how was work?, but it screws him in advance for the turnabout. This'll really teach him to not have a job of his own to carry his side of conversations like this one when what he's actually been doing with his time is overseeing the continued unconsciousness of the woman in his room. ]
[Takeshi tips his head, both in acceptance of the praise and in seeming consideration of the question. Answers,]
Long. Hard. Wet. [A beat.] But that was just my morning at the laundry, I won't bore you with the rest.
[It's joke and challenge of the question in one. No one - especially not a client - really wants to know what a sex worker's day entails, except perhaps other sex workers. He could play along with small talk, but that didn't mean he'd make it easy.]
Take it you still haven't found anything to occupy yourself with?
[ A snort, appreciative. He walked himself into that, he knows it, and the quickness of the parry is satisfying in and of itself. A little tilt of his glass, in fact, in deference to the comment and acknowledgement of the question. ]
I wasn't anticipating another career change quite so soon. It's taking a while to choose how I want to reskill.
[ Read: he hasn't been looking or even considering. ]
[Surgeon clicks into place, draws a line between a collection of other pieces, details singing together into a more coherent shape around Stephen. In Takeshi's expression, though, there's no discernable reaction. His eyes definitely don't linger on Stephen's hands.]
I'm whatever I need to be for wherever I am.
[Which might sound evasive, for all that it's true. But explaining Envoys is complicated. Hazardous. Territory he doesn't really want to step into, only one drink down and whatever Stephen's called him here for waiting in the wings. So he strips it down to the bones.]
Military, originally. Rebel militia, when I found out they'd fucked me over.
[ Some of the play in his attention burns off with that revelation, sharpens into focused interest as he overlays new knowledge onto the small map he has of Takeshi Kovacs. A little smile tucking tight into one corner of his mouth. ]
That explains it.
[ Explains what, exactly, he does not elaborate. Downs the rest of his drink and sets it back on the table where it proceeds to refill itself for him. ]
Enough that they created an unstable virus that made my people all massacre each other in the space of an hour.
[Delivered dry, matter-of-fact, as if that explains it were a gauntlet Stephen had thrown down. He pushes his empty cocktail glass to one side, picks up the whiskey, tips his head slightly.]
But that was over two hundred years ago. Now it's just me and my regrets.
[ Oh shit. The easy veneer drops away instantly, giving way to a notch between his brows and a loose jaw as he takes that in.
Massacre. Two hundred years ago.
He sits with it for a long moment - too long a moment - entirely unequipped to offer any kind of comfort. Finally, a brief lift of two fingers lands a full, unlabeled bottle of the same liquor they're drinking on the table with a thud. ]
Sorry.
[ For asking. For what happened. It can't mean much in the face of that, coming from a near stranger, but it's clear he means it. The word catches in his throat somewhere, emerges roughened somehow. ]
[The silence stretches long enough for Takeshi to add it to his regrets, to realise that it had been too heavy, too destructive for the companionability they were building between them. Stephen had offered him an open hand, and he had knowingly dropped a grenade in it.
It means the bottle that arrives on the table in response feels more than undeserved. Still, he reaches for it, examining it despite the lack of label, the implication there that nothing would identify its origins except his knowledge of the man sitting across from him. Magic.]
Don't be. You'll pay me back, whenever I walk into one of your war wounds.
[ If nothing else, it's done the job of distracting him from his own worries. Stephen watches Takeshi closely as he rides through the receipt of the bottle, the absence of label, the heaviness that's descended in a blanket across the table.
And when he speaks again, he allows himself to huff an almost-laugh in response. Even though it's not funny. Even though he'd rather, acutely in this moment, that neither of them had any tales to tell. ]
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Boarding house common area or should I come to you? I don't think the tavern would appreciate me running my own operation on its turf.
[ And his room is out of bounds. ]
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[ He too would like to be paid to be in his own company sometimes ]
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Boarding house is fine.
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It means he's already in the boarding house common area when the time comes, swimming a little transparent goldfish of golden amber light between his fingers, watching its tail fins flip as he sends it twisting in the air. ]
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Free drinks and a light show. [Coat shrugged off and slung over the back of a chair, he slouches down into a seat.] This magic shit's starting to have an appeal.
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[ It's a joke, made clear in the carefully casual flash of a smirk and the flick of his fingers that sends the goldfish splashing into an empty cocktail glass that's appeared at Kovacs' spot at the table. It swims around and around, caught in its makeshift goldfish bowl. ]
So. What'll it be?
[ There's a veneer to him here. He's - shiny, somehow, in the way people are when they're wearing better versions of themselves like overcoats to cover any one of a multitude of flaws. Reality like the same outfit worn for the fourth day in a row. ]
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Dry Manhattan.
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[ And then he reaches a hand over the conjured glass, first to fill it with something clear (as the water rises from the bottom of the glass the fish swims up, up, finally jumping out of the glass to disappear against the stretch of Stephen's palm), then with a trip of his fingers to turn that liquid a rich orange-red. One dry Manhattan, made to order.
A flourish has a little curl of orange zest caught between his fingers, which he sets neatly on the edge of the glass and leans back. ]
All yours.
[ His own drink is conjured up with significantly less flare, a stiff two fingers of whisky already in hand and sipped. ]
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Seemed fitting.
[As he sets the glass back down. This magic trick of placing Stephen's accent was hardly as impressive, but Stephen was already aware - in part, at least - of his ability to read people. Takeshi wonders if that knowledge has had any impact on Stephen asking him here, how soon Stephen will tell him what it's really about, or if he'll need to ask.
In the immediate, though, he just gestures at Stephen's own drink.]
But I'll take one of those next.
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He rewards the nailed accent check with the sudden apparition of a whisky glass beside the Manhattan. Queueing him up. ]
Not bad, Mr. Kovacs. I liked the delivery.
[ Showmanship is showmanship, subtle or not. But he's going to need to be at least two drinks in before he can get to the point - if he can ever really persuade himself there - and that means small talk. ]
Long day?
[ In the context of the last time I visited you at work you had my cock in your hand this feel like a slightly safer question than a more direct how was work?, but it screws him in advance for the turnabout. This'll really teach him to not have a job of his own to carry his side of conversations like this one when what he's actually been doing with his time is overseeing the continued unconsciousness of the woman in his room. ]
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Long. Hard. Wet. [A beat.] But that was just my morning at the laundry, I won't bore you with the rest.
[It's joke and challenge of the question in one. No one - especially not a client - really wants to know what a sex worker's day entails, except perhaps other sex workers. He could play along with small talk, but that didn't mean he'd make it easy.]
Take it you still haven't found anything to occupy yourself with?
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I wasn't anticipating another career change quite so soon. It's taking a while to choose how I want to reskill.
[ Read: he hasn't been looking or even considering. ]
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You're saying "wizard" was a career choice.
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[ Mirth-bright eye contact over the rim of his glass as he takes a sip. ]
What about you? Or have you always been a launderer?
[ And he tops that one off with a quick, wry little wink. ]
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I'm whatever I need to be for wherever I am.
[Which might sound evasive, for all that it's true. But explaining Envoys is complicated. Hazardous. Territory he doesn't really want to step into, only one drink down and whatever Stephen's called him here for waiting in the wings. So he strips it down to the bones.]
Military, originally. Rebel militia, when I found out they'd fucked me over.
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That explains it.
[ Explains what, exactly, he does not elaborate. Downs the rest of his drink and sets it back on the table where it proceeds to refill itself for him. ]
They regretting that yet?
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[Delivered dry, matter-of-fact, as if that explains it were a gauntlet Stephen had thrown down. He pushes his empty cocktail glass to one side, picks up the whiskey, tips his head slightly.]
But that was over two hundred years ago. Now it's just me and my regrets.
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Massacre. Two hundred years ago.
He sits with it for a long moment - too long a moment - entirely unequipped to offer any kind of comfort. Finally, a brief lift of two fingers lands a full, unlabeled bottle of the same liquor they're drinking on the table with a thud. ]
Sorry.
[ For asking. For what happened. It can't mean much in the face of that, coming from a near stranger, but it's clear he means it. The word catches in his throat somewhere, emerges roughened somehow. ]
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It means the bottle that arrives on the table in response feels more than undeserved. Still, he reaches for it, examining it despite the lack of label, the implication there that nothing would identify its origins except his knowledge of the man sitting across from him. Magic.]
Don't be. You'll pay me back, whenever I walk into one of your war wounds.
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And when he speaks again, he allows himself to huff an almost-laugh in response. Even though it's not funny. Even though he'd rather, acutely in this moment, that neither of them had any tales to tell. ]
Right. I'll start the tab.