[Sunday] [RP] Wake Up in an Unusual Place

[pallor_m0rtis]

[Corbin needs a tag, Mod-types. As apparently I won't just have Kori here. >.> *Peer-pressure!* Haha.
Entirely for the random factor, not his storyline. Or, maybe, I'll decide after.
Blood/Gore warning for the sensitive sorts.]

It might have been a lie to say that Corbin always woke up somewhere he was familiar with; some nights he woke up with

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[lacroix_styles]

Enjoying a quiet evening for once, one without the overbearing shadow of Hector following his steps and complaining over how he should have been studying rather than having his nose stuck in a cookbook or his headphones over his ears; Lacroix just wanted to be lazy.

That never worked though, something was always afoot in the Batcave; and Hector still grumbled insistently that he hated that term for their collective lair. Or, more to Hector's style he 'disliked the childish term used to describe the vast impressive hallways of their estate'.
Yeah, whatever; he thought if Hector spent too much time trying his best not to talk like a normal person.

Urgh; that knock at the wall made Lacroix groan and pull the book his hands up over his head in a weak attempt to hide. Not that it would have worked, that was just wishful thinking; Hector had that tone and he knew better than to mess with him when he spoke that way.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he muttered with a climb to his feet from where he had been sitting on his bed and a short trek over to the doorway, leaning his shoulder against it and lifting his eyebrows in a questioning expression.

[hector_styles]

Not wanting to leave Corbin waiting for too long, Hector jumped right to the point. “I have a chore that I need you to begin while I entertain a guest. Floor-mopping, in particular.” That sounded quite tame in comparison to ‘shoveling three humans-worth of organs off of the floor,’ but he didn’t want Lacroix to refuse the task right here. Even if Lacroix could start to deal with the mess on the floor, that would save Hector a little time later on.

The button that opened the door to the laundry room was right beside the elevator in plain sight; that wasn’t exactly a super-secret room that had to be hidden any more carefully than that. Inside was all matter of cleaning products and tools, including the mop. He left that door open so that Lacroix could go back a moment later to take out whatever he needed.

“I will warn you,” Hector said as he led the way back to the library. “The mess is quite gruesome. But do know that no living persons were harmed in its creation.” The young mage was so much more moral than Hector, and that disclaimer really was necessary.

As soon as Hector entered the ossuary again, he offered Corbin, “I apologize for keeping you waiting.” This wasn’t exactly how he’d planned on having Corbin and Lacroix meet, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that now. Hopefully Lacroix would make significant progress cleaning while Hector talked with Corbin elsewhere. “Corbin, this is my protégé, Lacroix.”

[lacroix_styles]

"Mopping?" There was almost always a trail of questions following him around, it was rare that he took anything at all Hector said at face value because he was living in a madhouse with a borderline crazy person; questions were a necessity. "Mopping what?"

And sometimes the answers should have been left to the imagination; Lacroix's vivid imagination wasn't half as creative as some of the events that carried on inside those walls.

"Gruesome? What's gruesome? Hector...I hate when you tell me things without telling me anyway," Lacroix grumbled as he followed along like the faintly obedient but currently apprehensive lackey he insisted he wasn't. "Why does that not make me feel any better."

And yeah, he didn't know the dead guy Hector liked to hang out with, when Corbin had shown up the evening before he had been ushered off to his room rather than being introduced to the guy.
Some of Hector's affairs he was curious about, but not enough to stick his nose in the middle of it all and find out things still beyond his scope of tolerance.

But right about then that room was really pushing it.

"What the hell?" Startled was an understatement, mildly ill fit just a little better.

Had Freddy Kruger been spending the night playing games in the building and he hadn't been told? Lacroix just stared for a long few minutes; totally ignoring Corbin in favor of watching the ceiling..drip.
And he didn't even want to fathom what that was dripping either; Lacroix had never seen that certain shade of red before in his life, and he had never wanted to either.

Wait.

He shot Hector a look, a very clear 'are you serious?' expression; did Hector expect him to clean up that?
He hadn't even done anything stupid that night to warrant spending the rest of it trying to scrape the remains of whatever Hector had been doing the night before off the walls.

"What were you...no, don't tell me; please just don't tell me." Lacroix lifted a hand to his eyes to block the scene before him, if only for a few moment, but it was still there when he looked again. And it was going to be there until he found a mop, apparently.

"This isn't even remotely fair," he grumbled and then finally realized Corbin was standing there; he figured that had to factor in somehow but he wasn't going to ask. "Yeah, hi."

The temptation to flee back into his bedroom was nearly overwhelming, but then he would have had to deal with some lecture about not being civil mannered or..whatever; he was going to make sure to thank Hector though for the nightmares he was bound to have for a few nights, the jerk.

[pallor_m0rtis]

Corbin's gaze shifted towards the door, broken from his contemplation of the camera when Hector returned, and with some kid that looked about the same pale as death shade as himself but the obvious fact that the newcomer had a pulse and the subtle cues of life convinced Corbin it was more because of the view in the room than a natural tone.

He had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing when Hector's shadow started harking and yelping over all the gore and slime.

"Really?" He wouldn't have expected that, not in a dozen years; not in the form of some wild-eyed, complaining creature that looked ready to bolt. That was Hector's efforts to continue his legacy of death magic and supernatural power?
As humorous as it was, he still a fair amount of respect for Hector and didn't point out any of that amusement, only nodded in greeting to Lacroix and studied him for a lingering moment.

Maybe there was more to the kid than the surface, he wasn't a mage himself so Corbin was no judge of what might lie under the obvious; but the obvious was pretty damn funny.
And he wasn't know for his amazing social skills but at least he had made an effort; Hector knew it took some actual effort to gain anything more than a speculative glance from him at first.

[hector_styles]

“Just the floor, Lacroix,” Hector assured, hoping that would ease his apprentice’s reluctance if but only a little. He knew it was asking a lot to thrust this level of gore onto the young mage, especially when he hadn’t done anything particularly disappointing to deserve a punishment, but he planned on making it up to Lacroix later. Somehow. “I’ll come check on you later.”

It might have seemed a little cold, but Hector had cleaned and polished a great number of his mentor Ghede’s rooms and artifacts when he’d been young; it was simply the way a mentor-apprentice relationship was meant to be. Chores like this would increase Lacroix’s tolerance to gore, which was important, if nothing else.

“Let’s talk in the sitting room,” Hector then told Corbin, and stepped back outside to lead him to the very monochromatic living room. As he led the way, he spoke quietly the vampire, just to defend Lacroix’s behavior a little; Lacroix was still new to this, and it was understandable that he’d be a little skittish. “He’s quite young and has yet to grow accustomed to the darker aspects of our craft. Perhaps this will help him do just that.” But he quieted down after that; after all, Lacroix was going to have to come back this way to get the mop, and he didn’t want to talk about the other mage to Corbin right in front of Lacroix.

Hector took a seat on one of the black coffin couches, and shifted the conversation to the film. It was easier to remain his usual calm out here where he didn’t have to look at the gore covering his years worth of collected bones. “What precisely was your motivation for taking the film to... that level?” It was a curious question; he really wasn’t angry, knew that everything would get cleaned up eventually.

[lacroix_styles]

"Yeah, yanno...just to make sure I haven't slipped and died in a puddle of-" Lacroix grimaced and stepped back to avoid another splash from the ceiling landing on his sneakers, "-whatever the hell that is."

Clean the nasty gore up; where didn't they have a housekeeper for that stuff?
Oh yeah, because everything was secrets and mirrors in the Styles abode and for a moment Lacroix had forgotten that; all the dirty work fell to the poor loser on the lower end of the chain of command.
It really was no fun being the new guy.

"You don't have to leave me alone in here," he mentioned when Hector started for the doorway, "Hector? Really, I won't listen...I promise."

Yeah, for all the good that did him a few seconds later when he was standing there by himself trying not to think too much about the carnage around him.

"You're a real jerk tonight," he grumbled at Hector's retreating form and stalked off to retrieve a mop; going stock still when a crunch sounded under his sneakers.
Gazing downward and lifting his heel only revealed the shattered bits of what looked like a piece of ribcage still half stuck to the floor.

With a distinct shudder and a bolt down the hallway towards the storage closet Lacroix really had to mark that evening as one of the worst he had the displeasure of experiencing so far.

[pallor_m0rtis]

"He doesn't exactly just scream...master of death, no," Corbin mused because unlike Hector he had no real problem talking about Lacroix even if he was in the near area.
But Corbin held that opinion that being undead automatically made him a step up from the human race; superiority and all of that. He didn't consider Hector human, just having a pulse didn't make a person a human; Hector was insightful and powerful in his own right so he was closer to an equal than he was on a lower rung of that evolutionary ladder.

Ultimately it wasn't his business anyway if Hector was teaching some kid to be a useful part of mage society, but it was borderline funny, still.
He actually did believe that Hector knew what he was doing though, he had a strong respect for the man; so sooner or later that kid probably was going to become a mage.

His hands were still wrapped around the camera when he followed Hector into the other room and tucked it into his lap once he had found a spot to sit down, fingers trailing in an idle manner over the buttons.

"It happens," there was nothing obvious in the statement because even Corbin himself wasn't always aware of why things escalated so often when he picked up that unassuming device. "Usually not like that, but I should have mentioned it before anyway."

Violence wasn't the focus of his efforts, no, death was; his fixation with capturing the moment when light faded in a person. But where was that in zombies? Violence was a substitute, perhaps, to his real goals.

[hector_styles]

“It... happens?” Hector didn’t quite understand what the other man meant. Was Corbin admitting that he didn’t have control over it? That would have been a reasonable explanation, otherwise Corbin wouldn’t have dirtied up his ossuary that much, surely. He’d heard that some vampires were impulsive, ran on instinct; he wasn’t sure if Corbin fell into that category or not. “Is it a compulsion? Some impulse you simply cannot resist?”

Hector was curious to view that tape, but demanding to see it certainly wouldn’t have been polite; if nothing else, Hector esteemed himself on his etiquette, even in odd circumstances like this. Besides, he wouldn’t have wanted to offend Corbin anyway; the vampire had an interest in death that he found alluring. Even if Lacroix had yet to embrace death with a passion, Hector took comfort in the fact that he still did have acquaintances whom he could talk to that did.

[pallor_m0rtis]

"Not sure," with a shrug Corbin popped the cap over the lens of the camera, "I get too focused at times, I think." But as for an explanation even he lacked one himself; his bloodline was one that often suffered being abandoned before given any real information regarding themselves or the world they had been brought into with Embrace. "It's different, watching things through the lens; everything else fades into the background and awareness isn't all that important."

But determination was; he was resolutely determined to catch that moment, to trap the collapse of life in a person. Only in doing that did he stand any chance of showing to others the uncomplicated beauty there was in those fleeting moments.
Appreciating life was something people no longer had any grasp of because they had lost respect for death; the need to change that burned deeply in his veins.

Turning the camera over in his hands a few times, he finally held it out to Hector; the device was not complicated to operate and Corbin only had slight interest in the tape himself because he knew he wouldn't find satisfaction with the images since there was no moment of death to capture with the already dead.

[hector_styles]

“Awareness to some degree was a requirement last night, however,” Hector contradicted, taking that camera but tilting it so that he can Corbin would both be able to see the screen. “Just what precisely did you make those corpses do?” Those zombies would have just stood there immobile had Corbin not verbally commanded them to do something; they had absolutely no free will of their own, just empty shells that used to possess souls.

If Corbin had wanted the tear the life completely out of those zombies, if that had been his goal for the film, it really would have taken that level of violence. Or perhaps even that would not have been enough. If there were any large enough chunks of person still on the floor in the room, they likely still would be twitchy, trying to carry out whatever command Corbin had given last.

If he heard any unmanly screams coming from the ossuary, Hector would have to assume Lacroix stumbled upon something big enough to still move -- a hand, perhaps, fingers still tearing in vain at the remnants of the dead flesh of another zombie. But Hector hoped that would not happen; the last thing he wanted was to completely traumatize his apprentice.

[pallor_m0rtis]

"It's usually not a problem," he replied; and Corbin didn't mean the lack of awareness as much as he meant that the sheer violence was usually so shallow and without purpose. Also very rarely so messy, unless that was the purpose initially and he certainly hadn't been trying to make that sort of film for Hector.

The more he considered it the more Corbin sorted out the reasoning, and casting his eyes to the small screen when he heard his recorded voice snap some short command in a tone so much more icy than his usual disinterested accent to words only solidified his assumptions.

"I don't think zombies are really a lot of use for what I try to do," he mused thoughtfully, "Something already dead can't die."
That was no fault of Hector's and he felt bad in that he hadn't been able to show Hector the extent of what his work usually pertained to; so very seldom did anyone understand his motives enough to want to view those efforts.

His lack of interest in the zombies the evening before was apparent on the screen, his voice broke in now and then in the recording to urge some command; all barked orders with a hint of sadistic amusement in those corpses destroying each other and the mockery of real death they were.

[hector_styles]

“Perhaps we can arrange something more appropriate next time.” Clearly the splattering of organs and blood hadn’t made him want to stop seeing Corbin again in the future. He was quite interested in seeing Corbin’s films, though he had yet to view any besides the one he held in his hands now.

But the longer Hector watched, the more he pondered the tape, though not because of the gore; he’d certainly commanded zombies to do the exact same thing in the past for his own curiosity. No, he wondered instead about how Corbin had presented himself on the tape. “You don’t sound familiar here.” It wasn’t meant to be a rude jab; instead it was just an observation about how Corbin sounded in the film: odd. He’d seen Corbin in person several times now, and knew from past experiences what Corbin’s vocal norm was. And this wasn’t it.

[pallor_m0rtis]

The mention of a next time put his mind at ease; not because he felt the dire need to make a mess of Hector's home again, but he did want a chance to return there on less shaky terms the next time. Because he hadn't honestly meant to make such a horrible mess of the place; Corbin knew it was extremely rare people were allowed in Hector's sanctum.
It had taken a long while before he had been offered that chance and the possibility of being banned from returning had been weighing on his mind.

"Yeah, it is a little strange; I've noticed that." Corbin had to agree, but for all he knew it could have been normal to have so much focus in the moment that he was running more on instinct than his normal thought process. "It's always been like that though, since I've been dead anyway, maybe it's normal."
And if it wasn't, still; what did it matter? Nothing was bound to change his flaws and Corbin wasn't going to turn lose of his rabid desire to find that perfect moment to capture.

[hector_styles]

“Would you object if I desired to watch you film next time?” Hector asked, shifting his gaze up from the screen so that he could look at Corbin instead. Last night he’d wanted to give Corbin space to work, but perhaps if he actually watched him, he’d receive more insight on just how different the vampire became while making films. It was a curious thing, this shift in demeanor in Corbin now versus on the tape; Hector couldn’t explain it, but his desire to observe further was strong. Perhaps if he watched Corbin enough, he would come to understand this vampiric quirk, if that was what it turned out to be.

But he certainly wouldn't force the issue if Corbin said ‘no,’ because he enjoyed the vampire’s company far too much to want to pressure him into anything.

[pallor_m0rtis]

"Doesn't matter to me," Corbin replied, agreeable in part because he felt he did owe Hector something for the vastly skewed efforts of the evening before and the aftermath that night.
He had obviously never been able to watch himself filming, his role was to stay firmly behind the camera at all times unless he was doing other films for private clients. And Corbin didn't make a point of watching those movies even if he did keep copies of them for some reason even he was uncertain of.

Not that he considered that filming, stationary camera work and playing up to the whims of people who offered him money to satisfy their vices was hardly the same purposeful endeavor as he chased with his self-directed films.

[hector_styles]

“I would most certainly enjoy that.” Hector reached out his hands to give Corbin his camera back; he’d been very careful with it thus far because he knew just how important filming was to the vampire. “Do call me next time you would like an audience.” Hell, it wasn’t just about anything new Corbin might want to film. Even if Corbin just wanted to show him the films he’d already finished, Hector would be more than happy to watch. From what he’d heard Corbin say about his films in the past, he was, of course, intrigued.

However, he rememberd that his very disgusted (but hopefully not traumatized) apprentice was still in the other room waiting for him. “Perhaps I should see to Lacroix now. But I will certainly walk you out first.” He had to anyway because the elevator was programmed only to work with Hector’s fingerprint on a scanner. But even if he didn’t have to do that, he’d still want to walk Corbin out anyway as a way to show him that his company had been appreciated, despite the mess of gore.