There was, Buffy had to imagine, an incredibly long list of island-specific occurrences that one never actually got used to, nor were they expected to. This, she quickly decided, had to be one of them. Running into new arrivals was as far from a walk in the park as you could get; it was more like a walk across an eternally busy and seemingly endless highway at 6PM, especially when the last one had seen fit to wave a gun in her face.
The good thing: this man was, thus far, unarmed. The bad thing: his cat had teeth, and she seemed prepared to use them. Slowly, Buffy approached, wondering what the protocol for this kind of thing was. There had to be one, and she really needed to start learning it sometime soon.
"Hi," she called out, figuring it was as safe an opening line as any.
To his possible credit, Robin didn't shout when Buffy called out to him, although the muscles in his back did tense before he whirled in the sand to face her. He lifted one of his feet out of sand and took off his black leather shoe, shaking it with one hand while the other went to his lips, letting out a shrill whistle.
"Salome. Don't eat the nice ... desert island woman." The shoe got one last shake, before returning to his foot. Salome, the gray cat, slithered over to Robin and climbed to his shoulder, looping herself there like a nightmarish piece of jewelry. She blinked lazy orange eyes.
Robin's eyes were anything but lazy. They were irritated and stressed and beads of sweat were starting to form on his forehead.
"Did you see a young man here recently? Pale as shit, black hair, on the skinny side, belongs in a Three Days Grace music video? Responds to 'moron' and 'ass'? Please tell me that you have."
It wasn't difficult to feel bad for this man. Finding yourself on Tabula Rasa wasn't exactly anyone's idea of fun in the sun, deceptive scenery aside.
She gazed up at the man, squinting both from the sun and from mixed fear and disgust at the sight of his pet cat. "I've seen a lot of young men here recently," Buffy told him, wincing just as soon as she realized how that might sound. "Not... that way, though, I mean I don't - it's just there a lot of kids here. Guys. Teenagers, really, which I was not so long ago, so it's not that weird. If it was anything, which it's not. I just mean I've seen a lot of people that might fit that description." She took a deep breath. "There."
Salome continued to growl under her breath, a noise accurately described as being like fingernails scratching at the inside of a coffin. Robin, however, changed in demeanor almost completely. A slow smile spread across his face and then camped there, showing far too many teeth.
"Yes, I'll bet you have. I mean, what else is there to do while stranded on an island day on end except, I don't know, grow your own pot?"
The smile twitched for a second.
"You really haven't seen him? I'm worried he may have drown."
Though it was Alcuin's custom to run on the beach daily, he typically did so in the early mornings before the sun stretched too high into the sky and brought the danger of burning his skin which, while not quite so fair as when he had arrived on the island four years ago, remained in large part exceedingly pale and prone to simply turning pink rather than bronzing in the sun.
This day, mayhap he had waited too long, because he felt the skin of his bare shoulders heating. And so, clad only in loose, white linen pants, he began to backtrack and head back to the edge of the beach where he had left his shirt and shoes.
It was there that he noticed the unfamiliar man and the... yes, it did appear to be a cat, despite the strange pallor. He approached because that was where he had left his clothing.
"Well met," he offered politely as he stopped just short of the man to bend and scoop up his neatly folded shirt.
Having had his appearance on the island explained to him a half an hour prior, Robin had, nevertheless, refused so far to leave the beach. He only sat on it, arms folded over his knees, cat folded around his neck, looking dour irritated and feeling bad for himself, staring out over the expensive of blue ocean. He was satisfied that Caliban was not drown - Hades, he was satisfied with the explanation he'd gotten, because it wasn't as if he hadn't seen anything weirder in his incomprehensibly long and full life. He had
( ... )
Phedre had once told him that when she met a patron who spoke to Kushiel's mark in her, she sometimes heard the beating of bronze wings in the back of her mind. Alcuin's intuitions had never had such tangible form, but there had been those on the island who had put him in mind of his patrons in Terre d'Ange - not the bad, or the good, just the same focused desire pouring off of them.
This man gave him such a feeling, and without any particularly ominous undertones (unlike Lucius Malfoy, he was not looking at Alcuin as if he expected him to drop to his knees at his feet), it was not an altogether unpleasant one.
He smiled, just a touch cautiously, and inclined his head. "Hello. Forgive me..." He tilted his head curiously, still holding his shirt in his hands. "I hope it is not impolite to inquire, but are you... new? You rather have that look about you."
Robin had made a promise. The big M-word. He'd made Ishiah swear to keep it, even if Robin died. The rest of his stupid life with his dick in a lock-box. And now here Robin was, in the opposite of circumstances, stranded ... here and uncertain he was willing to do the same until he got back now that temptation had come knocking at his door. Nay, banging. Holding the damn doorbell down. He cleared his throat and dug manicured fingers into the sand beside him.
However, just before responding with some sort of tease or pick-up line, he caught the last few words in earnest. He looked new? He'd never in his life looked new. Used, maybe, in a good way, and that was the way he always liked it.
"What look?" The words fell out before he could stop them, like over-ripe fruit. Eyebrows rocketed up his forehead. "I look what?"
The excited squeal rose high above the sound of waves, belonging to one gleeful looking little girl. Who was running head on toward the cat and his keeper. "Mama, look!"
'Mama' did look...apologetic. Especially when her daughter reached right out to try and pet (terrorize) the poor animal. "Sorry-- Hera, no," Sharon said, sweeping Hera up before she got clawed for her enthusiasm.
As soon as the high-pitched noise reached his ears, Robin's shoulders went ramrod straight. Salome the (former) mummified Great Dane-hating hairless cat, who had since made her way around those shoulders, shoved her claws immediately into his flesh before letting out a Siamese cat's death-rattle croak and leaping to the ground, where she sat staring daggers at the approaching people.
One would have been on the menu any other day of the week. Maybe with sushi on top of her. But the other - she would only have been on an entirely different menu, a handful of thousands of years ago.
Children. Sometimes Goodfellow honestly missed the days when humans used to sacrifice them.
He balled his fists and forced a nauseous smile onto his features.
"She bites," he said through his teeth, before continuing. "The question is, what do you do?"
"Your cat bites?" Sharon deadpanned. She didn't know a whole lot about domestic animals beyond the giant bird the island had chosen to give her daughter, but she thought biting was a dog thing.
Hera seemed unphased, threats of biting and the truly ugly appearance of the cat be damned. She watched the cat with longing in her eyes.
And as for the man's question? Sharon could only hope her gun holster was visible.
"And scratches. And other things. I really ought to keep her on a leash, but she ruins my clothes when I try it. She, ah, was a rescue animal." Only half-way a lie. She had rescued herself from a life with only Wahanket the mummy for company. Mummies as a whole were terminally boring - must be the whole 'immortal priest' thing.
Robin cleared his throat, fern eyes raking up and down Sharon's form - and it was a good one. They turned to Hera when he spotted the gun. Normally the threat of violence was a turn-on, but getting shot sucked.
"Is she yours? I wouldn't have thought there would be any kids here."
Once upon a time, Nyota Uhura had won the Jovian Triathalon. It had been a little piece of Hell, if she were honest, but she'd felt so damn satisfied at the end of it that it was hard for her to give up the challenge, even here where cycling leg was pretty damn near impossible. But she sprinted and she swam, making the most out of the stretches of sand and the clear, warm surf. And it ate up time like nobody's business, a blessing here where there was nothing to do and a good reason why, when she came back to shore, she found a man there that hadn't been in place when she'd left.
"Well hey there," she said, greeting him with a warm but breathless smile. "How're you doing? The day treating you well?"
Robin lingered on the beach, sitting in front of the ocean to stare - a little desperately, forlornly perhaps, but to everyone else, he was determined to give the impression that he simply enjoyed a good few hours of intense sun-worshipping. Which he did, so it was only half-a-lie. He swallowed the start he made at the woman's approach, turning a megawatt smile on her, pulling the expensive sunglasses out of his pocket and dropping them onto the bridge of his nose. He stared up at her, words tumbling out.
"Copacetic, now that you are here, and where have you been all of my life, beautiful, aside from running through my dreams with your sweaty, limber, perfect self?"
She laughed outright, but it wasn't mocking or dismissive, just purely pleased. Though overdone, it was the kind of greeting a girl liked to hear every once in a while, a boost to the ego with a straightforward motive. And what was more, it came from someone new, a pretty young man, shiny like he'd just been brought out of his wrapping. No one dressed like that on this island, not for a sit on the beach, and though the face was passingly familiar, Uhura knew she'd seen that gaze directed elsewhere. Nope, brand new. Had to be.
"Up in the stars, millions of miles away," she answered breezily, pushing her fingers through her damp hair. "Goodfellow, huh? Nice to know."
Moving to stand, he dusted the sand off of his pants before leaning forward slightly. One hand tilted his glasses down, revealing two eyes set in a triangular face, the sort that would have been better-suited to peering out from between thick briars in a forest somewhere. The other hand he held out, waiting for hers.
"Robin. Robin Goodfellow. And who are you, dazzling woman from millions of miles away, somewhere out there in the night sky. If you are an alien of some sort--" He winked, before tilting the glasses back up to cover his eyes from the sun reflecting off of all of that sand. "You are cordially invited to invade me, if you'd like."
I had been taking a walk down the beach when I saw him. Oh please, it's not like I can help myself so don't give me that look. An utterly gorgeous man, just standing there? I was like a moth to flame. Gorgeous people do that to me, you know, and when I say they're gorgeous, they really have to be. As you might have gathered, I'm really quite...picky when it comes to people.
Wearing clothes of a now more reasonable colour, I was more sure of myself than I had been in weeks, since I got onto this island. If the people weren't so picky about it, I'd rather have walked around in the nude than worn flourescent shorts, but as it had been, there was not a lot I could do.
Judging by the fellow's clothes, however, I was lucky I had chosen to go with Lex's more sensible acquisitions today, and decided that it was therefore not so terrible should I be see. "Hello there," I called out. "Are you alright?" Helpful civilian; yes, that was exactly what I was.
Robin blinked blearily at the stranger at first, forcing himself out of the deep blue funk he was allowing himself to wallow in self-pityingly; after all, he did deserve a little self-pity now and again, because, honestly, when again had his life gone to hell? Raising a hand, he ran it through thick chestnut curls before scrubbing at his face. It didn't completely get rid of the evidence, but Goodfellow was giving it his damndest. Because my god, where had this wonderful creature rolled in from.
It paid to live in the present at times, in the puck's very important opinion.
"Hello, yourself," he simpered, throwing a pointed smile into the mix alongside the tone of voice which would much better have suited words like 'hey sailor, in town long?.'
"I would be more all right if I weren't being held captive against my will. But the scenery is nice, isn't it." The smile widened to show even more white teeth; he wasn't talking about the ocean horizon and he wanted it to be made obvious.
Well, I am always, always appreciative of people who aren't shy in expressing their enjoyment of my good looks because, let's face it, I look good. Very, very good.
I smiled slowly in reply to that and simply extended my hand towards the gorgeous man. "The scenery really is something," I agreed pleasantly, matching my tone to his. It was getting nicer by the minute too; there was something about this place and beautiful people. "I'm Lucifer Box. Who are you?"
He took the hand, giving it a shake that was, if possible, a little too aggressive. Not that kind of aggressive, either. The other kind of aggressive. The kind that stalked virgins through tall reeds on the sides of rivers.
"A pleasure, Mr. Box. Robin Goodfellow, at your service. Or are you at mine, under the circumstances? I do like to be serviced."
Comments 175
The good thing: this man was, thus far, unarmed. The bad thing: his cat had teeth, and she seemed prepared to use them. Slowly, Buffy approached, wondering what the protocol for this kind of thing was. There had to be one, and she really needed to start learning it sometime soon.
"Hi," she called out, figuring it was as safe an opening line as any.
Reply
"Salome. Don't eat the nice ... desert island woman." The shoe got one last shake, before returning to his foot. Salome, the gray cat, slithered over to Robin and climbed to his shoulder, looping herself there like a nightmarish piece of jewelry. She blinked lazy orange eyes.
Robin's eyes were anything but lazy. They were irritated and stressed and beads of sweat were starting to form on his forehead.
"Did you see a young man here recently? Pale as shit, black hair, on the skinny side, belongs in a Three Days Grace music video? Responds to 'moron' and 'ass'? Please tell me that you have."
Reply
She gazed up at the man, squinting both from the sun and from mixed fear and disgust at the sight of his pet cat. "I've seen a lot of young men here recently," Buffy told him, wincing just as soon as she realized how that might sound. "Not... that way, though, I mean I don't - it's just there a lot of kids here. Guys. Teenagers, really, which I was not so long ago, so it's not that weird. If it was anything, which it's not. I just mean I've seen a lot of people that might fit that description." She took a deep breath. "There."
Reply
"Yes, I'll bet you have. I mean, what else is there to do while stranded on an island day on end except, I don't know, grow your own pot?"
The smile twitched for a second.
"You really haven't seen him? I'm worried he may have drown."
Reply
This day, mayhap he had waited too long, because he felt the skin of his bare shoulders heating. And so, clad only in loose, white linen pants, he began to backtrack and head back to the edge of the beach where he had left his shirt and shoes.
It was there that he noticed the unfamiliar man and the... yes, it did appear to be a cat, despite the strange pallor. He approached because that was where he had left his clothing.
"Well met," he offered politely as he stopped just short of the man to bend and scoop up his neatly folded shirt.
Reply
Reply
This man gave him such a feeling, and without any particularly ominous undertones (unlike Lucius Malfoy, he was not looking at Alcuin as if he expected him to drop to his knees at his feet), it was not an altogether unpleasant one.
He smiled, just a touch cautiously, and inclined his head. "Hello. Forgive me..." He tilted his head curiously, still holding his shirt in his hands. "I hope it is not impolite to inquire, but are you... new? You rather have that look about you."
Reply
However, just before responding with some sort of tease or pick-up line, he caught the last few words in earnest. He looked new? He'd never in his life looked new. Used, maybe, in a good way, and that was the way he always liked it.
"What look?" The words fell out before he could stop them, like over-ripe fruit. Eyebrows rocketed up his forehead. "I look what?"
Reply
The excited squeal rose high above the sound of waves, belonging to one gleeful looking little girl. Who was running head on toward the cat and his keeper. "Mama, look!"
'Mama' did look...apologetic. Especially when her daughter reached right out to try and pet (terrorize) the poor animal. "Sorry-- Hera, no," Sharon said, sweeping Hera up before she got clawed for her enthusiasm.
Reply
One would have been on the menu any other day of the week. Maybe with sushi on top of her. But the other - she would only have been on an entirely different menu, a handful of thousands of years ago.
Children. Sometimes Goodfellow honestly missed the days when humans used to sacrifice them.
He balled his fists and forced a nauseous smile onto his features.
"She bites," he said through his teeth, before continuing. "The question is, what do you do?"
Reply
Hera seemed unphased, threats of biting and the truly ugly appearance of the cat be damned. She watched the cat with longing in her eyes.
And as for the man's question? Sharon could only hope her gun holster was visible.
Reply
Robin cleared his throat, fern eyes raking up and down Sharon's form - and it was a good one. They turned to Hera when he spotted the gun. Normally the threat of violence was a turn-on, but getting shot sucked.
"Is she yours? I wouldn't have thought there would be any kids here."
Reply
"Well hey there," she said, greeting him with a warm but breathless smile. "How're you doing? The day treating you well?"
Reply
"Copacetic, now that you are here, and where have you been all of my life, beautiful, aside from running through my dreams with your sweaty, limber, perfect self?"
Robin liked women with dark hair; sue him.
"It's Goodfellow, by the way."
Reply
"Up in the stars, millions of miles away," she answered breezily, pushing her fingers through her damp hair. "Goodfellow, huh? Nice to know."
Reply
"Robin. Robin Goodfellow. And who are you, dazzling woman from millions of miles away, somewhere out there in the night sky. If you are an alien of some sort--" He winked, before tilting the glasses back up to cover his eyes from the sun reflecting off of all of that sand. "You are cordially invited to invade me, if you'd like."
Reply
Wearing clothes of a now more reasonable colour, I was more sure of myself than I had been in weeks, since I got onto this island. If the people weren't so picky about it, I'd rather have walked around in the nude than worn flourescent shorts, but as it had been, there was not a lot I could do.
Judging by the fellow's clothes, however, I was lucky I had chosen to go with Lex's more sensible acquisitions today, and decided that it was therefore not so terrible should I be see. "Hello there," I called out. "Are you alright?" Helpful civilian; yes, that was exactly what I was.
Reply
It paid to live in the present at times, in the puck's very important opinion.
"Hello, yourself," he simpered, throwing a pointed smile into the mix alongside the tone of voice which would much better have suited words like 'hey sailor, in town long?.'
"I would be more all right if I weren't being held captive against my will. But the scenery is nice, isn't it." The smile widened to show even more white teeth; he wasn't talking about the ocean horizon and he wanted it to be made obvious.
Reply
I smiled slowly in reply to that and simply extended my hand towards the gorgeous man. "The scenery really is something," I agreed pleasantly, matching my tone to his. It was getting nicer by the minute too; there was something about this place and beautiful people. "I'm Lucifer Box. Who are you?"
Reply
"A pleasure, Mr. Box. Robin Goodfellow, at your service. Or are you at mine, under the circumstances? I do like to be serviced."
Oh, yes. That zing was meant for you, Lucifer.
Reply
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