[Puck/Havelock: Vampire AU of melodrama!]

[oneman_onevote]

[OOC: From a few days after this.]Havelock can feel the difference behind the door when he touches it. The rest of the castle is silent, asleep in an uncommonly sunny Uberwald day. He had looked at the empty coffin with disdain, and instead spent the day systematically exploring to offset the massive disorientation, and skirting the occasional

Comments

[puckishly]

This is the problem of falling into habits.

Namely, when one (for specificity's sake, Puck) is used to things progressing in a certain way, it means that even when you've got quite used to peering around in shadows, you're only peering there for certain things.

So when he appears downstairs, he doesn't actually see Havelock so much as sense a vampire. This holds his attention well enough, though at one time it wouldn't have.

He no longer thinks of them as creatures to trifle with.

[oneman_onevote]

Well, that's going to be awkward.

Havelock doesn't see Puck immediately either, although in his case it's because he is scrutinising each and every person as they pass him by - that's something he's always done, but hundreds of little things are beginning to jump out at him that never had before. The noise and the light and the darkness at the edges are all different, and he can't quite achieve his normal mental stillness.

It's distracting.

And then he does recognise Puck, and stops moving entirely, eyes fixed on the back of his head. He wonders, with a dull sort of dread, if he will want to tear his throat out if he gets closer. That is distasteful enough when it's a stranger.

[puckishly]

Puck does not have eyes in the back of his head. (Except sometimes.)

But as it turns out, an increase in paranoia is one of several habits he has picked up from living with Havelock Vetinari, and it's probably not a terrible one for somebody who is so embarrassingly often in trouble.

He turns, canting his head slightly to one side, and pinpoints Havelock's approximate spot in the darkness. He's smiling slightly, thoughtfully, all his wariness in his eyes; Havelock has, in all likelihood, been the recipient of this expression either on very, very rare occasions, or never.

"One does wonder what is so unfashionable about 'hullo.'"

His smile widens but does not noticeably brighten.

"Who goes there?"

[oneman_onevote]

Havelock hesitates briefly.

It's isn't actually the shadows that are behaving unusually; rather, he is letting himself fade to them, and he isn't doing it deliberately.

Not any more deliberately than he ever did.

It takes a moment for things to sort themselves out - it looks a little like the shadows follow him, as he half-wants them to, before he steps forward into the light.

"I do," he says. A little pointlessly.

(Sad to say, Puck probably has seen that lack of expression before. But perhaps not in recent years.)

[nita_callahan]

The chances that Nita would spot Havelock in any circumstances, if he didn't want to be spotted, are practically nil. So it has to be coincidence when her path through the bar wanders towards him. (She's got her nose in her manual, which doesn't help her situational awareness any, either.)

[oneman_onevote]

Havelock doesn't really believe in coincidence any more; but of all the people in the bar from whom he's likely to accept innocence, Nita's probably the most likely.

He pulls back against the wall a little further, then frowns at his own instinct.

Nita isn't exactly helpless.

(The shadows stop clinging to him quite so closely, and he becomes visible, if still in darkness.)

[nita_callahan]

She might have a little wizardly intuition on her side, but that's about. She looks up from her book to step around a passing waitrat and its tray.

--And double-takes.

". . . Havelock?"

[oneman_onevote]

He looks at her, face as blank as ever-- but there's a certain frozen quality to his body language that is extremely unusual.

"Nita," he greets her, voice soft.