run, run, run away : no sense of time
In about the time it takes to register that the door has opened, someone (coiled dark hair, pale smooth skin peppered with ash-grey freckles, dark eyes and a strong nose - tall and lithe, dressed in simple but tailored black) has already come through it. The man stands at the bar, touching it, looking around the room, even flickering a long, forked
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The next time that Enfys turns up in the nexus - without Bruce, second time around - she's looking a little less like a truck backed up over her and started biting, so that's something. Stigmata is somewhere she likes, she's decided, so it's her first port of call (the novelty of a PINpoint hasn't worn off yet, she's planning to play with it); she stops, taken aback, in the doorway.
And then she beams.
"Hey, handsome!" ...well that is a novel recognition, isn't it.
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At least it's a pleasant view.
"Hello, woman wearing yellow knickers. I am going to open this. If it is not actually blood wine, would you like some?" No use letting it go to waste.
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The expression of utter consternation as she realizes - he's right in every way except the scars and the not knowing her - is actually sort of comic, the way a switch appears to flip and her delight turns into pouty disappointment. She sighs and drops her bag down on the bar, boosting herself up with it. "It's Enfys, champ. Stupid bitey flying boat bastard must still be there- I would."
She's not surprised by how much she misses the people she'd got attached to in Taxon; she tends not to let herself get attached in the first place for just this reason.
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He puts two glasses on the table, opens the bottle, does that really annoying zooming-speed thing where one second he's behind the bar and the next he's sitting at it. He pats the bar in front of the stool next to him. "Come here, Enfys. Stupid bitey floating boat bastard would like to hear more."
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"This is some alternate reality horseshit, isn't it?" she inquires rhetorically, sliding down the bar and balancing her feet against the edge of the other stool. "Sorry, love, I'm new in town and his fanciness didn't really have time to explain the finer points." She doesn't mean the other Brucolac, she means 'Tom'. "So I'm still getting used to it! This bloke was very disappointed about not finding a universe where he'd been spontaneously crowned king of the world, which is fair enough, becuase that would be nifty as all get out- oh, you wanted to hear more about yourself, didn't you?"
She's a brat.
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"If you have questions in mind, I will answer them. This actually is blood wine, and highly alcoholic. I expect that it will taste fucking disgusting and get you drunk as a fish in a priest's cup."
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Enfys squints down at the drink, and then considers the Brucolac more thoughtful. "Well, you're kind of moody if you're anything like the usual, so I'm going to stay sober until we know each other a little better. My tolerance is 'piss all'." She feels this is pragmatic of her; even if she's inclined to like him, trusting someone based on who they are in another world is a silly thing to do.
"I don't know if I have any questions," she admits, after a moment. "I thought you were a friend of mine - I don't know if I'm going to see any of them again, it's insane I found just one, when you think about how big the multiverse must be - and you're not exactly. And now I'm just fucked off I never got to go on the stupid floating boat."
She misses him, and the fact that she's disappointed irritates her almost as much as the disappointment itself; Enfys hates this, having emotions about people, it's no good.
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"There is something about you. You do not smell of Bas Lag. The taste of car exhaust clings to you, and the chymicals they put in Earth food run in your blood. But if you knew me, if you thought I was a friend of yours, then I am. Even if I don't bring my ship with me everywhere I go." He'd ended up here without it, at first, and she can imagine how THAT went.
"I wouldn't want the sky whales fucking with it anyway." Or just fucking it. WE WOULDN'T PUT IT PAST YOU, RAMIREZ.
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And she is afforded the opportunity to look closely, isn't she; the bright, dangerous way she smiles and allows this contact suggests that simply by her nature putting hands on her can be like taking one's life (or unlife, as the case may be) into the aforementioned, but she lets him and laughs, nudging his knee with her foot. "You're just the same," she says, affectionately, "you fucking terror."
...Enfys does not respond to monsters appropriately, possibly because she's one of them.
"We got kidnapped," she explains, lifting her chin away from his hand and picking up her glass (implicitly taking him at his word), "by fucking- fucking alien hamsters in I think a pocket dimension, which was very exciting but a load of balls, I have to say, and anyway, I got shunted off home and then suddenly it's all Cthulhu this and Cthulhu that and so now I'm visiting here, and all my boys are turning up older! You're much older, though, if I'm reckoning it right."
'Her boys', Enfys, really.
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"...So that's what's at the other end of the Scar. I'll have to mention it to Doul. 'See, aren't you glad everyone figured out I was right in the end and turned our tender white arses around because otherwise you'd be footman to a rodent instead of guardian to a lady whose smiles cause stars to faint from the sky?' I shall say. And then he will glare at me and I'll say something offensive and probably scatalogical, and everything will be normal again." And with this he takes a sip of the wine and makes some highly expressive faces (punctuated by his writhing tongue). He gives the glass a withering glare. And then he takes another sip.
"Yes, I'm older. It didn't happen, where I'm from. Decades and decades have gone by, I still king of my little kingdom. ...About to be poisoned by this vile sludge."
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"Old and fussy," she says, pleased; he may not be the one who remembers her, but apparently she's deciding that he'll do, as she does. Enfys very delicately tastes the wine herself (by tipping the glass a little and pressing the tip of her tongue to it). Yes, that's definitely blood - despite herself she is briefly entertained by imagining the faces of the kind of people who would be easily amused by the notion of a Slayer drinking blood wine.
After making a face at it, she takes a larger sip. (Yes, there is a reason they're friends.) "Doul was there, as well! I think he was at the Valentine Ball that Judith's friend threw, me and her and Mr Handsome went together, mostly 'cause I think you have a thing for carrying around women who could break you between their knees. Yeah, he was with that tiny lady that Morgana really likes."
She misses Morgana, too, and it crosses her face for a moment the way most everything she feels tends to do.
"It wasn't really that bad. I'm in the minority there, mind."
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"Oh? I am Mr. Handsome? Mr. Does-Not-Break-Easily-At-All-Thank-You Handsome. It's a family name. ...This vile sludge is highly alcoholic."
He looks at it with a mild, amused sort of alarm, and takes another sip. (He needs to measure how alcoholic it is for science.) "Isn't it? Fuck, I'm no good judge anymore."
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"I know you don't," Enfys informs him, jaggedly bright, which presumably tells him a little something about the nature of the silly little thing in her jumpsuit and her ridiculousness. ('Woman of mass destruction' would not be an inappropriate term.) "You are cute under all the scars, though, I thought you would be. If it weren't a really fucked up cliché, you could probably get it."
There is a pause, as she weighs whether or not to use this remark as argument for or against the alcohol content of what they're presently consuming.
"Nah, I would've said that sober." That's her scientific conclusion by the way.
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"What would people think, you bedding a plain, un-dappled old thing like me?" He's not going to clarify how sober or serious he is. Varying degrees of 'not very', at the moment.
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"They would laugh because Slayers and vampires equals starcrossed...things," that was extremely eloquent, Enfys, "and that is just not me at all, that is not how I do. Even if you do have sort of a romance novel cover thing going on with your hair."
Though he's still no Fabio.
"I mean, I'd really be fine with a nice game of scrabble and a cuddle."
...she really would still say this sober, but it must be noted that Enfys is a cheap drunk. Belatedly remembering his other query, she laughs and adds, "His fanciness isn't getting any either." (Which is certainly one way of pointing out that she meant someone else.)
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"Woman, I am deeply offended. If there is anyone who can handle a night sky, it's me. But all those I love inevitably leave me, so the only thing I would be up for is an occasional tup in the name of rebelliousness and sport. What is scrabble?"
It should be noted that it this point he is trying to get it as much to see if he can as anything else.
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