Luck be a lady (ReD)

Omino · Jul 12, 2017

Murphy grumbled as he pulled on his boots. True to form Yoka had called him at one in the god damned morning the night before his comp final for, of all things, a ride. Literally anyone else in the world would have gotten a crude reply and hung up on but past experience showed that doing so to his employer would have been answered by a flurry of repeated calls and emails until he acquiesced.

It wasn't that he actually minded her impromptu calls demanding things at oddball hours. After all she payed well, far better than he deserved if he was being honest, she offered full benefits, and went out of her way to take care of every one of her employees. Didn't hurt that she was hotter than Hell's furnace and had the devil's own luck to boot. That said he was unsure why she'd call him for a lift when there were a ton of cabbies that would kill for the privilege of driving her home.

He tried and failed to stand as fiery pain shot up his right leg, causing him to buckle to a knee. A quick glanced confirmed his newest addition to the plethora of scars that riddled his body. A long, discolored, puckered line ran from his ankle to mid calf, nearly crossing his Achilles tendon. A little surprise from his last excursion with his boss. Technically he was still on mandatory bed rest by order of the Academy's nurse but something as trivial as life saving medical advice had ever stopped him before.

With a grunt of pain he staggered to the door, grabbed his keys and headed out into the blinding...daylight? With mounting dread he checked his phone. There was nearly a minute of contemplative silence before a feral scream of anger and frustration echoed though the forest surrounding his cabin. 1pm... one FUCKING PM. Not only had he managed to miss his finals entirely, but also the hearing to lift his academic probation... the one lifeline that allowed him to stay on the island.

He fought back the urge to cry, the desire to breakdown and just crumpled like the train wreck that was his entire life. Instead he climbed into the ancient beast he called a jeep and gripped the wheel. He had to focus on something else, he couldnt give up now. He'd been through shitty siterations before and always emergedo relatively alright... yeah, focus on his job. He could freak out later after he dropped Yoka off.

Hands still shaky he coaxed the engine to life and took off through the underbrush, swerving to avoid flora and fauna alike. In a few scant minutes he erupted out of the forest and skidded onto the main thoroughfare, swerving to avoid a minivan going the other way. The cluster of buildings that constituted the city strip was visible in the distance and he was once again struck by just how jarring it was how fast the island's landscape changed. The city proper was right next to the forest which I turn bordered the science lab, Academy, beach, and observatory... all within just a few miles. If he'd been in a better mental place he might wondered how it all worked geologically.

As he approached the bars he took a deep breath and put on an unconvincing smile while he scanned the afternoon crowd for his boss.

@ReD

ReD · Jul 12, 2017

Tuesday nights were Hentai nights at the Cross Fox.

Given the flurry of complaint e-mails calling her establishment a den of sin (to which Yoka highly protested, given that there actually was a club called the Den of Sin over in the strip which had actual sins going on), she figured it was best that she was on hand in case any protesters ended up getting wasted and trying to hump her tentacle monster again. Zzzykkk was not a cheap dancer and neither was her costume--tentacles were a lot of appendages to try to get bra straps over.

The night was calm and Yoka had retired to the onsen earlier in the morning to do some more damage assessment, add some spellwork and....

sulk.

Yoka was not used to feeling guilt. Some told her she should feel guilty as though wanting to stay alive and being proud of her body were things she should feel guilty about. Five hundred years had taught Yoka a lot, and in those five hundred years she vowed never to overestimate her own abilities. It's what kept her alive. Knowing her limits and how far she could push were the things she needed to do to plan ahead, and Yoka was always one step ahead of the plan.

She already made her decision before she started drinking.

And then she kept drinking.

Murphy had been her fault.

It wasn't even some kind of twisted guilt. Yoka had manipulated the situation. She put him in a place where danger was plausible and that's what she'd wanted, specifically danger to make sure her interests would survive a disaster.

She just assumed whatever natural oomph tendency she had would be enough to override Murphy's unnatural ouch tendency.

There was a reason she wanted him to have health insurance but that wasn't it. Yoka had already sent a check out covering his bills. If there was issues with the academy, well, she could raise hell. She had a great team of lawyers and if that didn't work, she would just show up in a cheerleading outfit and strip on the football field again. Admittedly that was the 50's but it had been effective then and things really hadn't changed that much. There will still milkshakes and racism, as a facebook post so eloquently pointed out. She did miss drive in movie theaters.

Yoka had been drinking an alcoholic milkshake when Murphy pulled up. She recognized the car, which made sense, because she did ask him to come pick her up. The sun was shining. The light hurt her eyes.

Yoka was fucking wasted.

As with many supernatural creatures, being wasted made her look hot in that she was disheveled and some of her natural unnaturalness was shining through. In her case, her ears had regressed to their fox shape and her tails were starting to come through. The kimono she'd slipped on for the themed night at the work had slid down and her rather ample bussom was spilling out over the top.

"Murphy," she said.

She thought she said. She repeated his name just to be safe. Her eyes were very amber and very orange and she eyed him through the car window.

She slid into the seat. She'd thought briefly about letting him hit her with the car, but figured that would somehow end up in the car being totaled.

She'd never really considered him fragile before but now she was very, very afraid of breaking him.

'Thank you for picking me up," she said.

She probably wreaked of her surname: sake.

"I thought," she said after a moment, frowning at him. "You might still be recovering. Did they spell you?"

She placed a hand on his leg gently, although it was partially to balance herself while she tried to remember how a seat belt worked.

Omino · Jul 12, 2017

An eye brow was quirked as Yoka slid into the passenger seat. Usually her drunk act was reserved for tricking stingy customers into buying more drinks at the Cross Fox. Even more disconcerting was how slow her speech was and how she kept fumbling with the....

Holy hell she's wasted

The realization shook him. It wasn't that he had anything about getting shitfaced, God knew how many times he'd woken up in a filthy alleyway, but in the entire time he'd known her Yoka she'd had a nearly compulsive need to always be in control. Hell, even at the last New Years party he was fairly certain she'd been faking getting sloshed.

Surprise gave way to worry as he noticed the rest of her appearance. She spent a lot of effort maintaining her 'exotic but human' guise, and while she often purposefully wore revealing clothing for work, it was hardly ever as blatant as drunkenly spilling out of her top. Admittedly she made it look amazing but that was beside the point.

"Nurse says complete bed rest for another week but I skipped out on the hospital two days in. You ever try spending a week in a joyless hell hole like that?"

He forced a laugh but was inferrupted when she braced herself on his leg, forcing him to suck in a hiss of air.

Maybe she wouldn't notice.

Watching her fumble with the buckle for a bit he came to a decision.

His boss- no, Yoka was upset. She was upset enough that she'd set aside one of the things that had kept her alive all these yeare in an attempt to drown it out.

He wanted to help... he was GOING to help. He cared about her damn it, even if she did just see him as a pawn in whatever giant chess game she was playing. She had been kind to him and when you were dealt the hand he had... that mattered.

First he reached over and took the buckle, trying to fasten it for her without accidently faceplanting into her significant bust.

"I know a place we can get you something to sober up, just... sit back and take it easy Yoka, please."

He had no idea what he was doing. As long as he could remember he lived his life purely reactionary, never taking initiative.

He'd never had to.

But seeing her like this... Bah he was thinking too much. He'd just get her some coffee and go from there.

@ReD

ReD · Jul 12, 2017

Yoka caught the hiss.

Her expression didn’t change, but her left ear twitched.

She considered his question for a minute. Her expression sobered—even if her body didn’t.

“Not as the patient,” she said.

Virginia. 1909. Tuberculosis.

Murphy leaned forward and she thought for a moment that it was a bold move on his part—was he going right for her breasts? They were great tits. She couldn’t blame him.

She wasn’t thinking straight, or really, she wasn’t seeing straight, because she’d moved the hand from his leg to catch the end of his hair. Her fingers traced against the skin on his jaw as he snapped the seatbelt in place and moved away, her orange nails acting like tracers.

The seatbelt. Right.

She did sit back, but not because he told her to, because she chose to.

“You shouldn’t be driving,” she said, but of course, she couldn’t be driving either. Yoka was reckless in a lot of ways but she wasn’t stupid, and driving drunk was the dumbest thing she could think of next to sticking a keg of heroin and dynamite up her own asshole, and there was no way in hell she’d ever do that.

“I want you in bed,” she said.

Sultry. Practiced. Pure liquid sex.

It was her voice at its most raw and natural.

“You should be resting,” she finished, but she realized now the car was moving. “I shouldn’t have called you. But I did. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things I have. But I did.”

She used the same nails she’d traced against her jawbone to run against her lower lip.

“Can I ask you a question, after I ask this one, Murphy?” she asked.

Even drunk she was wise to the ‘you already asked me a question’ game.
Ever in control.
Ever grasping for control.

Omino · Jul 12, 2017

He hadn't been ready for her touch.

And of all the reactions a man might have had... he flinched.

It wasent an exaggerated movement, nothing planned nor practiced. Just the instinctive twitch of one to whom physical contact equated to violence.

The moment passed as quickly as it came and he felt himself flushing scarlet. His heart was pounding painfully and his hands slowly loosened their death grip on the seat belt.

He took the wheel and stared adamantly at the road, opening his mouth to make so excited sort of snide comment on his driving...

And then she dropped the bomb.

They were practiced words, he knew. Words used upon hundreds of men to get whatever she wanted. Men, immortals, supposed gods even had come to her begging for a night with her... and seen her refuse them with a sly, seductive grin. He knew KNEW in his heart of hearts that he wasn't nor ever would be someone who could live up to what she desired. It was that knowledge alone that kept his from swerving off the road.

But even still those words were powerful. Despite his understanding of his place in the world versus hers he was still a man, and hundreds of years of practiced seduction made for a potent attack. For the first time in a long gone while he had no response. No snarky comment or self depreciating joke to lighten the mood. He just sat there quietly and drove.

Thankfully she brushed past the comment and moved on to her remorse for contacting him and he assumed for what happened at the bathhouse.

"I knew what I was getting into when I started working for you, Yoka." He answered softly. "Just like every other business relationship I've been I, I knew that I'm just a pawn, waiting to be sacrificed, my powers kinda force it to happen. Always have been, always will be."

The words came out far more bitter than he had intended but that didn't make them any less true.

"But just as you shouldn't have called me, I shouldn't have come so I guess we can split the blame on this one."

He managed a weak smile. That was it, keep smiling, keep everyone around you laughing maybe then they wouldn't notice everything burning down around them. Ahhhh... there it was...it had been a while since he'd recognized his own depression kicking in.

There was a coffee shop ahead, one of those crappy drive thru ones but the drinks were strong and came out quick... but where the hell did he go from here. How did you establish control with an entity who had literally 20 times the experience he did?

Thankfully his train of thought was paused by her double question, to which he nodded.

"Ask away."

@ReD

ReD · Jul 12, 2017

He'd flinched and Yoka didn't blame him. She did not pity him, either, though it would be easy to.

Yoka had been in the business of pleasure for a long time. She worked in a club and asked the women--and the men, but she always had more women than men--to reveal themselves and lay their flesh bare in the context of a society that begged women to do this and then condemned them for it.

There was more to being an exotic dancer than dancing. Very few people who come into the line are beautiful or skilled dancers. The ones that made it were the ones that could forge relationships, the ones who could play counselor and listen to the client talk about losing his job and being unable to tell his wife, or the one who was too embarrassed to tell his wife he was afraid he might be gay, or the one who had no idea how to approach a woman he wasn't paying for.

Some of the women who danced for Yoka had only ever been touched by violence. It was their reality. If she could, she could glamour them with some fox fire, give them some protection, help transform them into another person for a night or two, but Murphy wasn't hiding from a horrible parent or an abusive partner.

She knew he should be hiding from her.

She could hear his heart beat.

They drove in silence and she listened to his heart beat. She wondered what it was like to rest her head on his chest.

He was right and he was wrong when he said that he was a pawn. Yoka considered how to elaborate, but the only thing she did was open her mouth once, yawn, and then close it again.

She glanced at him and caught his smile. She tilted her head to the side, her black hair falling like a curtain and causing the sunlight from the passanger side window to backlight her.

"Are you afraid of dying, Murphy?"

Omino · Jul 12, 2017

The answer was quick, almost immediate. After all, it was a question he'd asked himself damn near every day of his life. "No. I'm not afraid of death, nor am I afraid of the pain that will come early with it. I've been waiting to die since I realized the extent of my powers."

Quick, unwavering, and dispassionate.

"What I fear is being forgotten."

As they sat waiting to order a sudden memory stirred in the back of his mind. A head of golden hair stained red by blood. A blue silk top hat crushed by a stage light. A note left in a locker stating that one day he would forget her...

He shook his head and chattered into the speaker, not even really paying attention to what he was ordering. Not that it would matter.

A sideways glance at his passenger. Achingly beautiful with the sunlight striking her features just right. Her finger brushed her lips lightly and for a moment he wondered how those lips might feel.

He didn't need to ask Yoka whether she feared death. From what he'd seen the longer someone lived, the more terrifying death became and she had been alive for a very, very long time.

Instead he poked at a more obtuse question. "Do you fear my death?"

@ReD

ReD · Jul 12, 2017

She was quiet when he spoke, her sharp eyes following his features. Despite being wasted, or perhaps because of it, Yoka was very attentive to this conversation.

He answered quickly which surprised her at first, but then she supposed it shouldn't. She'd seen his body. She'd seen the scars. You don't get one scar without questioning death, let alone a canvas full of them.

"What I think," Yoka told him after a moment. "Is that it is unfair how fast you've had to grow up."

He ordered and it was only then that Yoka realized they were in a drive through menu. While her ears had peaked through and her teeth were sharp and her eyes more fox-like than ever, her tails were still vacant. Otherwise, they'd be wagging.

Now that she knew there was coffee coming she wondered how she didn't smell it before.

She tried to pretend it was for any reason other than because she'd been enjoying his scent.

His question was on point and it brought a smile from her.

"Yes," she said.

Her answer was her gift to him, or at least, it was the wrapping.

"If you asked me before the other day, I would have said no," she said. She was drunk, so she didn't think too much, but it's not like the other day could really mean anything other than the onsen incident. Or maybe it could.

"But I was afraid, Murphy. And I am very afraid still," she said.

This was an admission, a slip up, a confession of the control she didn't have.

"Which is exactly why I want you to drive me back to the cross fox," she said. "Because i'm going to put you on bed rest in a place better than a hell hole. I suppose.."

Yoka stole a page from Murphy's book.

She attempted to speak the language of jokes, of cracking a smile, to maybe, just maybe pretend it wasn't that bad. Unfortunately, Yoka did not have the experience Murphy had. She realized it as the words came out. You couldn't sleep in what she offered. But she made the stab at a pun anyway and didn't even wrinkle her nose in distaste.

"You could say I'm putting you to bed rest in a glory hole."

Omino · Jul 12, 2017

Murphy wasn't sure what kind of response he was expecting from her, but legitimate sympathy was not it. So caught off guard he gave a familiar shrug that meant both much and nothing at all.

Her next word hit him like a truck....Yes

It took him several breaths to process it. He started to laugh, but her smile seemed to radiate genuine care rather than her usual mocking laughter and he felt the guffaw catch in his throat.

What was he feeling?
Why did his chest hurt?
Why was his throat clenching?

...Why were his eyes wet?

He scarcely heard her mention the bathhouse incident, that one word still ringng in his head.

Yes...he mattered
Yes...he was important
Yes... someone...[sub]cared...[/sub]

He numbly accepted their order, passing something with whipped cream and something cinnamon in a bag to her, not daring to meet her gaze.

God's he wanted to believe her. He wanted to accept everything she said and let himself fall into her care... but could he?

He found himself at a crossroads. One way was the holding pattern he'd been in for years, never advancing but never falling too hard. The other way was dark and unknown, but if he squinted he could see flashes of light, hear cries of anguish and screams of joy...

It didn't take him long to decide. In fact, it took him as long as it took to take a sip of coffee, for Yoka to drop her line, and for the coffee to spray across his windshield.

Murphy made a sound he didn't make often.

Murphy laughed.

It wasn't the poisonous, cynical laughter theat he usually barked out when making snide comments, but rather a full, genuine, uncontrolled laugh.

When he finally managed to subside he slowed the car and pulled over. Staring at Yoka at length before in a small, cracked, vulnerable voice he asked...

"Ya mean it?"

@ReD

ReD · Jul 12, 2017

Yoka was certain of a few things.

One: Murphy was a good boy.

Evidence A: he did what she asked, when she asked, regardless of his personal state and well-being. he was her fucking employee. Governments literally needed bootcamp to train people to do that, and here he was, picking her up when he had other things to do, and taking care of her.

Evidence B: this coffee had lots of whipcream in it. She licked some off the edge of the cup.

Murphy's inner crossroads where unbeknowst to her. he took a sip of his coffee and she took a sip of hers and then Murphy was spraying the window. Yoka already had her coffee in the cupholder and was jabbing at the seatbelt release, or at least, at the area she thought it was at.

He just burned himself or he's choking or having a heart attack or--

what was that sound?

oh god it was definitely choking because Yoka had never heard it before but--

Laughter.

She stared at him, and then she was smiling, too, and she wasn't laughing but it was a real smile. Not a sly smile, even though that was a real smile for Yoka, but just the smile of a woman in a car with a man she liked, sharing a really, really shitty joke.

She was already unbuckled. He'd already pulled the car over.

She took the coffee cup out of his hand and set it far in the other cup holder.

Then, she cupped his face with her hand and before he had a chance to flinch, she kissed him.

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Luck be a lady (ReD)

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