( how much of one’s intrinsic nature is inherent or elastic? how much of it belongs to them, or how much of it belongs to their family and their environment? what is more true of a person: the ugliness at their core, or the goodness in their heart that tries to keep that ugliness from inflicting its dark will on the world? all of these have been thoughts to plague makoto in his more quiet, sleepless moments as he continues to slowly come to terms with his new existence and what it means to him. when J had offered to take him into hell as a demon underling underneath his own wing, he had allowed himself to be swept away by a romantic idealization of what that promise could be. he had thought that it could be so easy. but it wasn’t. more and more, he has to wonder… was this just an added torment? he had spent so many years stifling and suppressing wide swathes of himself from everyone around him, terrified that he might become exactly the kind of monster they all assumed he would. but as a demon, either in hell or here at this accursed resort, what other choice does he have…? trying to cling to his now-nonexistent humanity and fully deny himself only made things messier—he thinks there’s only so long he would be able to do something like that before giving in, perhaps in the worst possible way. on the other hand, fully giving in feels like it makes the sacrifice of summoning a demon and selling his soul feel moot. if he was going to end up preying on people here, maybe he should have just kept living and become that monster anyway?
no, this is the answer that he tries to find to this complicated, thorny question, even if it is in and of itself messy and imperfect. he tries to find the blurry, intangible line between. he tries to find what few individuals who can satisfy him without great personal sacrifice and sequester those darker, hungrier desires to them—so long as he keeps them occasionally sated, he feels more free to be more… normal, the rest of the time. he knows that the balance is precarious; he often worries that it’s not a feasible long-term solution, especially for someone who might live for hundred years… potentially forever. what then?
J had once told him that contradiction is only something that lives in the hearts of humans. these thoughts, then, are pathetically “human”—a demon would have no problem living and breathing in their contradiction, fearless of being considered hypocritical, for they pursued their natures freely and earnestly, regardless of their depravity. that’s why continuing to live on as a demon feels like a curse, given his reason for summoning J in the first place. with endless time before him, it feels like an inevitability that he would one day fully embody being a “demon,” rather than foolishly clinging to the trappings of humanity as he did. either that, or he might suffer a fate far worse than the simple cessation of death.
he lets charlie take the first vial. it is his, after all, well and traded for. the attention that remains fixated to the second, which slowly fills with blood, is tugged toward the other man in a venomous, narrowed glare. his lips press into a thin, bloodless line. he wasn’t sure how to interpret the amiable tone—unfortunately, makoto tends to default toward reads in bad faith (he’s suffered sleights far more often than he’s been granted honesty). )
I’m here, aren’t I?
( the golden peacock? here, in this room, his heart working to pump three vials of blood from his body? the answer could be either, really. it didn’t matter. it would be the same, even if he were still in hell. )
Since becoming a demon, I’ve learned two lessons. The first is that no one is just going to give me something that I want—I’m going to have to figure out how to get it myself. The second is that a goal like that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the power to achieve it.
( he breathes out a short, aggrieved sigh. the blood loss isn’t bad enough to affect him too badly, but he can sense a faint shimmer to the edges of his vision. and he’s still got one more after this one is full… )
The rules are different here than they were in Hell. But, I’m trying to adjust. If I just get the strength, then I’ll have the ability to do just that. Get whatever I want.
( ironically, charlie has stumbled across J’s entire reason in bringing makoto into hell to become a demon in the first place. the archduke would become that very villain, inflicting such injuries upon the young man’s heart that there was no other recourse for him but to stoke it as an engine that would churn and burn tirelessly for one, all-encompassing goal: revenge. as the most powerful demon in hell, fettered by his own immortality and the rules that bound all of them, attempting to foster a rival that would grow to eclipse even his own power was J’s only potential option for escape. he had sensed a shard of potential in makoto, when he was still human. one day, he would prove its veracity: he would become an archduke to replace his master.
but, for now, he has not suffered the emotional wounds that would push him past that point of no return. he exists in a soft and nascent state, the sharp glint of his potential embedded deep within vestigial sentimentality. )
[From the earliest days Charlie can remember, there were bad men in the world. No one talked about it around him, a child on the boundary between decency and depravity, but he knew about it anyway. Eavesdropping on a conversation about how a former friend had to be chopped to bits and hidden away had been habit before he even knew what the men had been discussing.
They spoke in vagaries, or in sentences halted with silence taking up the space of an indicting word. He'd been hearing this kind of talk since before he knew what any of it meant.
All the while, those men would pat him on the head. Pinch his cheek. Tell him he looked like hell. Brusque affection with the same hands that dealt in blood and money. People have always been both monsters and family at the same time.
When Charlie stepped into the world of kindred, it felt like crossing the street in a familiar neighborhood. There was nothing for him to cling to, no sense of humanity that a demon like what he'd become couldn't possibly possess. Because there's no sense of evil that a human like he'd been couldn't possibly possess, either.
Facts he reminds himself of when he does feel the odd twinge. He hasn't gone so far as to put a word to that emotion: regret, grief, frustration, or something so simple as hurt. The world he's in now is the same world he's always been in. He's the same damned man he's always been.
Even in this resort.
First vial in hand, Charlie toys with the glass between his fingers. It rolls from tip to palm, thumb brushing over it to flick it up between pointer and middle finger. The way one idly flashes a knife.
Despite, or perhaps enticed by, Makoto's narrowed glare, Charlie is rapt in Makoto's words. He's satisfied with himself that he's kept the boy talking this long.
Charlie's lips purse at the assertion of strength. He tilts his head to one side, then back - he agrees.] Power's a rule anywhere you go.
[So is generosity, Charlie finds. Just because there aren't altruists on every street corner doesn't mean that everything has a price tag attached to it. Sure, he's the first guy to strike a deal, but he knows the joy of simply giving to whoever he likes. It's a show of that same power Makoto is desperate for.
He makes a note to give the kid something for free, sometime.] Like you said, the more you have, the easier it is to take what you want.
But you don't seem the type to pin someone down and force it out of them. You've been eh... nothing but cooperative!
Think that'll change? [Who can say, really? Some people think a moral code is a privilege won by blood. In Charlie's experience, the people who fight for something like that stop wanting it soon after they get it.]
( makoto couldn’t even claim that his upbringing had been “good” in the sort of way that only highlighted in contrast how very “bad” he was. he could perhaps say that his upbringing had been mundane. his parents had been functional in their roles, though he didn’t have any particularly strong memories of them being particularly affectionate or sentimental with him. they had provided opportunities and expectations—the first they cast as a gift, and the second always seemed to be its cost. makoto had struggled to see the point of even trying to please them when his older brother had already cemented himself as a golden, unattainable point of comparison long before he’d even gotten a chance to fight back. charming, sociable, brilliant, and involved, he’d been everything makoto wasn’t. he’d grown up feeling like a shadow, even before his more morbid tendencies started to make themselves known in him. he’d never thought they were a result of anything he’d experienced growing up. how could they be? he hadn’t been coddled, but he also had never been treated harshly; he’d only ever been comfortable and provided-for. how could he ever try to blame the ugliness inside of him on anything else when his brother had grown up under the same roof, from the same parents?
no, he’d known that he was wrong to his very core long, long before anyone else had noticed. it had been a seed present within him at birth, and it had already germinated and taken root enough for him to begin to see the differences between himself and others and how they saw things, how they felt about things, how they reacted to things. makoto is not heartless or without empathy, but he is strange. a lot of the things other kids around him thought of as essential, that every kid should want or have, he didn’t really see the point of. the things he decided to say always seemed the wrong things.
by the time he’d gotten old enough for puberty to intertwine that darkness with his desires, he’d come to realize that he was not only wrong but criminal. he’d read about others. he’d read books and watched programs on cannibals and serial killers, haunted by what he perceived as an inevitable future for himself. he hadn’t wanted it, but how long can one keep an innate, intrinsic darkness within them at bay? he’d tried to satiate it. he’d tried to feed it bits and pieces of what it wanted, bringing home roadkill to cut apart, indulging in personal fantasy, but it had never been enough. it only made it hungrier. if placation or denial weren’t options, then what was left? wait for his father to finally kill him, convinced of the stain he would produce on his reputation? no, when he had drawn that circle in blood on his floor, he had seen it as taking the matter into his own hands.
in hindsight, sometimes it felt foolish. desperate. but he doesn’t think he would change what he’d done, if he went back. his life since becoming a demon was hard, but at least he felt as though he had options. he saw more paths ahead of himself than just those that led to either an early grave or incarceration and execution.
he doesn’t think charlie is wrong, but he feels compelled to add, ) But the definition of “power” changes depending on where you are.
( hell’s rules were drastically different from earth’s, drastically different from those here. that’s what really bothers makoto; to know that something he could suffer to gain somewhere might be worthless wherever he might be brought next.
his shoulders grow tense at the question, but, fortunately, the second vial has slowly filled with blood. it gives him time to mull over his thoughts as he goes through the mechanical process of replacing it with the final vial and handing the second one over to charlie. he blinks, sniffing. he doesn’t think it’ll be enough blood to affect him much, but there is an odd wooziness that goes through the mind at seeing so much of it leave your body.
after a long moment, he replies in a smaller voice, ) I don’t want it to.
(I hope it doesn’t. but he feels he can never be sure. it’s the same thing that had haunted him when he was alive—a worry that he couldn’t deny himself if he was given the chance, the power, the opportunity. he’d been terrified he might one day find himself a murderer, because as much as the thought horrified him, he knew he wanted every thing that led to it just as much, if not more. ) I’ve—had to deal with a lot, because of others forcing me to be what they want me to be, or do what they want me to do. I… don’t want to become someone like that. I’d rather make a deal that we can both be happy with.
[With a shrug, Charlie acquiesces to Makoto's stipulation: power changes forms in different locales, among different beings, under different circumstances. This is a reality Charlie ardently believes in - due to his existence outside of it. He stays in Chicago for a reason.
Affection plays a part. He knows the place better than the raised veins on the back of his hands; its importance to his makeup is more significant even than his twining dead arteries. One doesn't strike up porch-light conversations with generations of everymen without a mote of love for the populace.
But this delight is built atop of the framework of a singular place. He, unlike Makoto, was raised in a tight-knit community. Immigrants finding the solace of home with one another in their yards while those who dipped into crime performed iron-tight loyalty.
He wasn't one of the 'other.'
And he isn't now, either. Tucked comfortably into the largest coalition of vampires, Charlie enjoys the same place, the same undead companions, with only circumstance as a wildcard. Cities are ever changing - that cannot be avoided - so Charlie makes himself a part of their transformations. With only one fault-line, picking up a reverberation that shifts the 'norm' is more easily made into opportunity.
Lingering discomfort, the type that seeps beneath the skin and sickens the body like lead, is so unfamiliar to Charlie that he never even knows what to name it when he does feel it.
He can see it, though.
Frustration piques Charlie's focus the way an experienced hunter reads the sway of underbrush. Or, to put it in terms he'd prefer, the way a retired old lady can tell a one-day sale is coming at her local department store by the placement of the marquee.
Makoto's seems to have tempered into something more akin to worry, but that the agitation is turned inwards is obvious.
Charlie wraps his fingers around the second syringe and tips the pair in thankful acknowledgement towards his donor.]
Being able to make that kind'a deal is a good advantage. [He offers affirmation easily not because it compliments his own approach, but because he truly believes in the strength of bartering. That he also believes skill in brokering agreements can overstep into the very approach Makoto has balked against is a point he keeps to himself.
Sometimes, to make a good deal, you have to force a party to want something they wouldn't otherwise desire - whether through a twist of words or a heavier hand.] And, it's one that stays with you no matter where you are. Or who you're with!
Here, home, under a rock - it doesn't matter. People will always want something. [He speaks like he's imparting some kind of wisdom to encourage the boy, as if Makoto had picked the right answer on some unannounced test.]
( the vast majority of people that makoto has spoken to here in the Golden Peacock seemed to prescribe to the same concept: that the essence of strength and power was that which allowed someone to kill (or threaten to kill) others, or to otherwise defend themself from similar mortal attack. it’s strange to him. having died himself, it’s not as though he doesn’t understand the mortal coil, but things had been so different in hell. high-ranking demons had spoken in haughty and contemptuous tones to him in confidence of how boorish and low-brow others seemed when they flaunted their physical strength or magical prowess—violence was seen as something low-class. only no-name demons, whose reputation was so negligent that they had to wildly shout their names into the crowd to force others to recognize their existence, even for a moment, would act so uncouth and brazen. not to say, of course, that high-ranking demons were gentle… violence simply had a different place in their society. it was a plaything—a coddled and beloved pet. it nestled even more inextricably into their desires and lusts than it did for humans (or perhaps they were just less ashamed about it?), particularly since a demon couldn’t be permanently killed by way of violence. makoto had seen other demons employed by datenshou torn to shreds and consumed in the process of entertaining and satisfying their guests, but they would just be back and walking around the brothel days later, as if nothing had happened.
he is quietly (and hypocritically) grateful that datenshou is far more cautious about his own clientèle.
as strange as they are, hell’s rules appeal more to someone like him. he’s not physically strong and never has been, and unless he opted to exchange this body for a wildly different one, he likely never would be. becoming a demon hasn’t given him power, beguiling influence, or magical affinity. he has nothing, but he does think he could learn to make demons fear him. fear is, in essence, an aversion to what one doesn’t know or understand, and he, as a human-turned-demon, is largely an anomaly. they think they understand him, celebrating him as some sort of exotic bauble, but… in the last few months before being brought here, he had started to see the shape of something. could he use that? could he take into his own hands how others saw him, underestimating and disregarding him as powerless or guileless, and use it to his advantage? it only takes one show of unsettling power to firmly place another demon beneath your thumb—conceptions are not easy to change.
the thing that had frustrated him in being brought here is that the rules had changed again. if every world has its own path to power, with its own answer to what it was, and he kept being tugged between them… how could he ever make any progress and feel as if he were truly moving forward? he might be immortal, but the yoke of wasted effort and spinning one’s wheels is an exhausting one. and ultimately it’s all a goal that’s merely reactive to all that he’s gone through in the last year or so. if unaffected by the machinations of others, is it really what he wanted? hell, has he ever really known that? he just isn’t sure. )
Yeah.
( the third vial fills. he feels… tired. )
But it’s like you said. If they want it enough, they might just try to take it. So as long as I have a way to prevent something like that…
( he trails off, something occurring to him as his particular end of the deal—the realization causes a sudden and violent twist to his gut, one perfectly caught between anxiety and exhilarated anticipation. he… well. as much as it’s been a while and that there will always be a part of him starved to make good on whatever offers he received when he received them, he can’t help but think… )
Um… for your side of the bargain, ( he looks back up to charlie, looking furtive in a vaguely nervous sort of way, ( would you mind if—we did that at a later date?
( he shifts where he sits, trying to sift through the morass of his surface thoughts for something resembling a salient reason. he has plenty, but they aren’t always packaged in ways he thinks seemly for other people to hear. ) I-I just think… I might need a little time to prepare.
( the third syringe filled, he removes it and offers it to charlie, then pressing a cotton ball to the bead of blood at the injection site. he doesn’t bother wrapping it with a bandage or anything—he knows it will disappear in a moment or two. )
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no subject
( how much of one’s intrinsic nature is inherent or elastic? how much of it belongs to them, or how much of it belongs to their family and their environment? what is more true of a person: the ugliness at their core, or the goodness in their heart that tries to keep that ugliness from inflicting its dark will on the world? all of these have been thoughts to plague makoto in his more quiet, sleepless moments as he continues to slowly come to terms with his new existence and what it means to him. when J had offered to take him into hell as a demon underling underneath his own wing, he had allowed himself to be swept away by a romantic idealization of what that promise could be. he had thought that it could be so easy. but it wasn’t. more and more, he has to wonder… was this just an added torment? he had spent so many years stifling and suppressing wide swathes of himself from everyone around him, terrified that he might become exactly the kind of monster they all assumed he would. but as a demon, either in hell or here at this accursed resort, what other choice does he have…? trying to cling to his now-nonexistent humanity and fully deny himself only made things messier—he thinks there’s only so long he would be able to do something like that before giving in, perhaps in the worst possible way. on the other hand, fully giving in feels like it makes the sacrifice of summoning a demon and selling his soul feel moot. if he was going to end up preying on people here, maybe he should have just kept living and become that monster anyway?
no, this is the answer that he tries to find to this complicated, thorny question, even if it is in and of itself messy and imperfect. he tries to find the blurry, intangible line between. he tries to find what few individuals who can satisfy him without great personal sacrifice and sequester those darker, hungrier desires to them—so long as he keeps them occasionally sated, he feels more free to be more… normal, the rest of the time. he knows that the balance is precarious; he often worries that it’s not a feasible long-term solution, especially for someone who might live for hundred years… potentially forever. what then?
J had once told him that contradiction is only something that lives in the hearts of humans. these thoughts, then, are pathetically “human”—a demon would have no problem living and breathing in their contradiction, fearless of being considered hypocritical, for they pursued their natures freely and earnestly, regardless of their depravity. that’s why continuing to live on as a demon feels like a curse, given his reason for summoning J in the first place. with endless time before him, it feels like an inevitability that he would one day fully embody being a “demon,” rather than foolishly clinging to the trappings of humanity as he did. either that, or he might suffer a fate far worse than the simple cessation of death.
he lets charlie take the first vial. it is his, after all, well and traded for. the attention that remains fixated to the second, which slowly fills with blood, is tugged toward the other man in a venomous, narrowed glare. his lips press into a thin, bloodless line. he wasn’t sure how to interpret the amiable tone—unfortunately, makoto tends to default toward reads in bad faith (he’s suffered sleights far more often than he’s been granted honesty). )
I’m here, aren’t I?
( the golden peacock? here, in this room, his heart working to pump three vials of blood from his body? the answer could be either, really. it didn’t matter. it would be the same, even if he were still in hell. )
Since becoming a demon, I’ve learned two lessons. The first is that no one is just going to give me something that I want—I’m going to have to figure out how to get it myself. The second is that a goal like that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the power to achieve it.
( he breathes out a short, aggrieved sigh. the blood loss isn’t bad enough to affect him too badly, but he can sense a faint shimmer to the edges of his vision. and he’s still got one more after this one is full… )
The rules are different here than they were in Hell. But, I’m trying to adjust. If I just get the strength, then I’ll have the ability to do just that. Get whatever I want.
( ironically, charlie has stumbled across J’s entire reason in bringing makoto into hell to become a demon in the first place. the archduke would become that very villain, inflicting such injuries upon the young man’s heart that there was no other recourse for him but to stoke it as an engine that would churn and burn tirelessly for one, all-encompassing goal: revenge. as the most powerful demon in hell, fettered by his own immortality and the rules that bound all of them, attempting to foster a rival that would grow to eclipse even his own power was J’s only potential option for escape. he had sensed a shard of potential in makoto, when he was still human. one day, he would prove its veracity: he would become an archduke to replace his master.
but, for now, he has not suffered the emotional wounds that would push him past that point of no return. he exists in a soft and nascent state, the sharp glint of his potential embedded deep within vestigial sentimentality. )
no subject
[From the earliest days Charlie can remember, there were bad men in the world. No one talked about it around him, a child on the boundary between decency and depravity, but he knew about it anyway. Eavesdropping on a conversation about how a former friend had to be chopped to bits and hidden away had been habit before he even knew what the men had been discussing.
They spoke in vagaries, or in sentences halted with silence taking up the space of an indicting word. He'd been hearing this kind of talk since before he knew what any of it meant.
All the while, those men would pat him on the head. Pinch his cheek. Tell him he looked like hell. Brusque affection with the same hands that dealt in blood and money. People have always been both monsters and family at the same time.
When Charlie stepped into the world of kindred, it felt like crossing the street in a familiar neighborhood. There was nothing for him to cling to, no sense of humanity that a demon like what he'd become couldn't possibly possess. Because there's no sense of evil that a human like he'd been couldn't possibly possess, either.
Facts he reminds himself of when he does feel the odd twinge. He hasn't gone so far as to put a word to that emotion: regret, grief, frustration, or something so simple as hurt. The world he's in now is the same world he's always been in. He's the same damned man he's always been.
Even in this resort.
First vial in hand, Charlie toys with the glass between his fingers. It rolls from tip to palm, thumb brushing over it to flick it up between pointer and middle finger. The way one idly flashes a knife.
Despite, or perhaps enticed by, Makoto's narrowed glare, Charlie is rapt in Makoto's words. He's satisfied with himself that he's kept the boy talking this long.
Charlie's lips purse at the assertion of strength. He tilts his head to one side, then back - he agrees.] Power's a rule anywhere you go.
[So is generosity, Charlie finds. Just because there aren't altruists on every street corner doesn't mean that everything has a price tag attached to it. Sure, he's the first guy to strike a deal, but he knows the joy of simply giving to whoever he likes. It's a show of that same power Makoto is desperate for.
He makes a note to give the kid something for free, sometime.] Like you said, the more you have, the easier it is to take what you want.
But you don't seem the type to pin someone down and force it out of them. You've been eh... nothing but cooperative!
Think that'll change? [Who can say, really? Some people think a moral code is a privilege won by blood. In Charlie's experience, the people who fight for something like that stop wanting it soon after they get it.]
no subject
no, he’d known that he was wrong to his very core long, long before anyone else had noticed. it had been a seed present within him at birth, and it had already germinated and taken root enough for him to begin to see the differences between himself and others and how they saw things, how they felt about things, how they reacted to things. makoto is not heartless or without empathy, but he is strange. a lot of the things other kids around him thought of as essential, that every kid should want or have, he didn’t really see the point of. the things he decided to say always seemed the wrong things.
by the time he’d gotten old enough for puberty to intertwine that darkness with his desires, he’d come to realize that he was not only wrong but criminal. he’d read about others. he’d read books and watched programs on cannibals and serial killers, haunted by what he perceived as an inevitable future for himself. he hadn’t wanted it, but how long can one keep an innate, intrinsic darkness within them at bay? he’d tried to satiate it. he’d tried to feed it bits and pieces of what it wanted, bringing home roadkill to cut apart, indulging in personal fantasy, but it had never been enough. it only made it hungrier. if placation or denial weren’t options, then what was left? wait for his father to finally kill him, convinced of the stain he would produce on his reputation? no, when he had drawn that circle in blood on his floor, he had seen it as taking the matter into his own hands.
in hindsight, sometimes it felt foolish. desperate. but he doesn’t think he would change what he’d done, if he went back. his life since becoming a demon was hard, but at least he felt as though he had options. he saw more paths ahead of himself than just those that led to either an early grave or incarceration and execution.
he doesn’t think charlie is wrong, but he feels compelled to add, ) But the definition of “power” changes depending on where you are.
( hell’s rules were drastically different from earth’s, drastically different from those here. that’s what really bothers makoto; to know that something he could suffer to gain somewhere might be worthless wherever he might be brought next.
his shoulders grow tense at the question, but, fortunately, the second vial has slowly filled with blood. it gives him time to mull over his thoughts as he goes through the mechanical process of replacing it with the final vial and handing the second one over to charlie. he blinks, sniffing. he doesn’t think it’ll be enough blood to affect him much, but there is an odd wooziness that goes through the mind at seeing so much of it leave your body.
after a long moment, he replies in a smaller voice, ) I don’t want it to.
( I hope it doesn’t. but he feels he can never be sure. it’s the same thing that had haunted him when he was alive—a worry that he couldn’t deny himself if he was given the chance, the power, the opportunity. he’d been terrified he might one day find himself a murderer, because as much as the thought horrified him, he knew he wanted every thing that led to it just as much, if not more. ) I’ve—had to deal with a lot, because of others forcing me to be what they want me to be, or do what they want me to do. I… don’t want to become someone like that. I’d rather make a deal that we can both be happy with.
sorry, getting back from mini hiatus!
Affection plays a part. He knows the place better than the raised veins on the back of his hands; its importance to his makeup is more significant even than his twining dead arteries. One doesn't strike up porch-light conversations with generations of everymen without a mote of love for the populace.
But this delight is built atop of the framework of a singular place. He, unlike Makoto, was raised in a tight-knit community. Immigrants finding the solace of home with one another in their yards while those who dipped into crime performed iron-tight loyalty.
He wasn't one of the 'other.'
And he isn't now, either. Tucked comfortably into the largest coalition of vampires, Charlie enjoys the same place, the same undead companions, with only circumstance as a wildcard. Cities are ever changing - that cannot be avoided - so Charlie makes himself a part of their transformations. With only one fault-line, picking up a reverberation that shifts the 'norm' is more easily made into opportunity.
Lingering discomfort, the type that seeps beneath the skin and sickens the body like lead, is so unfamiliar to Charlie that he never even knows what to name it when he does feel it.
He can see it, though.
Frustration piques Charlie's focus the way an experienced hunter reads the sway of underbrush. Or, to put it in terms he'd prefer, the way a retired old lady can tell a one-day sale is coming at her local department store by the placement of the marquee.
Makoto's seems to have tempered into something more akin to worry, but that the agitation is turned inwards is obvious.
Charlie wraps his fingers around the second syringe and tips the pair in thankful acknowledgement towards his donor.]
Being able to make that kind'a deal is a good advantage. [He offers affirmation easily not because it compliments his own approach, but because he truly believes in the strength of bartering. That he also believes skill in brokering agreements can overstep into the very approach Makoto has balked against is a point he keeps to himself.
Sometimes, to make a good deal, you have to force a party to want something they wouldn't otherwise desire - whether through a twist of words or a heavier hand.] And, it's one that stays with you no matter where you are. Or who you're with!
Here, home, under a rock - it doesn't matter. People will always want something. [He speaks like he's imparting some kind of wisdom to encourage the boy, as if Makoto had picked the right answer on some unannounced test.]
👍 all good
he is quietly (and hypocritically) grateful that datenshou is far more cautious about his own clientèle.
as strange as they are, hell’s rules appeal more to someone like him. he’s not physically strong and never has been, and unless he opted to exchange this body for a wildly different one, he likely never would be. becoming a demon hasn’t given him power, beguiling influence, or magical affinity. he has nothing, but he does think he could learn to make demons fear him. fear is, in essence, an aversion to what one doesn’t know or understand, and he, as a human-turned-demon, is largely an anomaly. they think they understand him, celebrating him as some sort of exotic bauble, but… in the last few months before being brought here, he had started to see the shape of something. could he use that? could he take into his own hands how others saw him, underestimating and disregarding him as powerless or guileless, and use it to his advantage? it only takes one show of unsettling power to firmly place another demon beneath your thumb—conceptions are not easy to change.
the thing that had frustrated him in being brought here is that the rules had changed again. if every world has its own path to power, with its own answer to what it was, and he kept being tugged between them… how could he ever make any progress and feel as if he were truly moving forward? he might be immortal, but the yoke of wasted effort and spinning one’s wheels is an exhausting one. and ultimately it’s all a goal that’s merely reactive to all that he’s gone through in the last year or so. if unaffected by the machinations of others, is it really what he wanted? hell, has he ever really known that? he just isn’t sure. )
Yeah.
( the third vial fills. he feels… tired. )
But it’s like you said. If they want it enough, they might just try to take it. So as long as I have a way to prevent something like that…
( he trails off, something occurring to him as his particular end of the deal—the realization causes a sudden and violent twist to his gut, one perfectly caught between anxiety and exhilarated anticipation. he… well. as much as it’s been a while and that there will always be a part of him starved to make good on whatever offers he received when he received them, he can’t help but think… )
Um… for your side of the bargain, ( he looks back up to charlie, looking furtive in a vaguely nervous sort of way, ( would you mind if—we did that at a later date?
( he shifts where he sits, trying to sift through the morass of his surface thoughts for something resembling a salient reason. he has plenty, but they aren’t always packaged in ways he thinks seemly for other people to hear. ) I-I just think… I might need a little time to prepare.
( the third syringe filled, he removes it and offers it to charlie, then pressing a cotton ball to the bead of blood at the injection site. he doesn’t bother wrapping it with a bandage or anything—he knows it will disappear in a moment or two. )