Cunning Miss With A Deadly Kiss

"Don't be silly, I can stay open a little longer. There's no need to rush,"

"Oh, I'm sure you'd rather run off to your evening plans than leave me around to effectively window shop. Besides, my seethe sister never did tell me what to lift for her, so it can wait till tomorrow."

"Are you implying I'm being deceitful?" She teased.

Rubbing his forehead he sat in silence then. Not commenting on her assessment. "Leave me..." He whispered. "Please...just. Go."

Esme turned on her heel, not waiting to hear his answer. She didn't want to know, didn't want to linger and be hurt any further. And it took nearly everything she had not to tear up before she'd shut the door behind her.

He inhaled sharply at her comment about Andre. He exhaled through his teeth. "What the bloody hell do you know about that? Or even how Emi plays into any of it? I would hope she's nothing like him. She lacks the parts." His words were cold as ice, but his eyes showed a great deal of pain he couldn't mask right now. "Who isn't a burden to her? She has a very cemented view of the world doesn't she? If you don't fit into it...she ends you. Or didn't you know that about our dear, Emilia? She's very righteous. As she is permitted to be. Given what she's been through. Being estranged from her family, launched into this life as she was. Why wouldn't I think that?"

Esmeralda did roll her eyes then, at the whole miserable lot of it. God, he could never accept the good that was in front of him, even when it smacked him in the face--and heaven knew that very action sounded tempting to try to waken him to his reality. "I know enough to know it's different, even beyond the more biological factors of their sexes. You know it too. But I don't blame you for having fear." She did move then, slightly jostling Enzo from his position leaned against her so that she was now looking at him head on and holding his face. "You're a fucking idiot, do you know that? Always halfway right and then rambling so very far off base... Emilia is complex and exacting and set in her ways, yes, but she has never once viewed you that way. Resented the implication of needing to be protected, sure, but what woman wouldn't? And that is far from a burden. If you feel that way it is only because you should view that of yourself. Do try not to be so thick-headed, Enzo. It's tiresome after so many decades." Esme sighed then, relinquishing her grip on him but not moving any futher away. "She loves you. You are her future. Let that be your truth."

"I love the way the sunlight sparkles on the surface on days like this," she said of the clear blue sky and the the sun dancing on the water.

Esme looked up as the other woman spoke, but her attention diverted to the water in question. "Did you mean to say that out loud?" It wasn't that she disagreed, but the comment had come rather out of nowhere, so it had her curious.

Enzo slumped a bit at her words. Because he hadn't wanted to know that. That his sadness had somehow leaked into the rest of the seethe. Where it didn't need it. He settled for petting the remaining bit of the blood bag, a sad sort of smile on his face. "As if anyone could pretend such a thing." He murmured, falling in against her a bit. Needing the support more than he realized until now. With a heavy sigh, he shook his head. "No bother. My feelings have never been a secret. Perhaps maybe they should have been. I've put too much of a burden on Emi, now that she knows. She had no choice in it, in the end."

Esme held steady as Enzo leaned against her, just listening to him as he let the thoughts flow. She couldn’t resist a gentle disagreement on some points though. “She had a choice. If she chose that she never wanted to see you again, you would go—you may be heartbroken, but you would leave at her bidding,” she pointed out. “But she’s chosen to keep you by her side. And she fell in love with you. She chooses you still… she’s not the same as Andre was to you.” Those words were perhaps a touch beyond her giving, but she’d seen it. And she knew well enough that it was partly the cause for this pain in Enzo. “Why now do you think you’re a burden to her? What’s changed?”

He turned to face her, anger sparking in his eyes. "Oh...I wonder why I could possibly be sulking. Why are you sulking? Slumming down here with me." Rolling his eyes he turned his attention back to his task at hand, ripping into the poor blood bag like it owed him money. "Shit...it's all a bunch of bloody, stinking, shit."

“I was being genuine,” Esmeralda replied, watching Enzo carefully now. Her words and expression alike held no judgements, only an openness and a hint of curiosity behind it all. “If you want to talk about whatever’s bothering you, I’ll take it to my grave. You can even pretend I’m not here.”

Damien had wanted to get out for a bit. As much as he loved his seethe and Stefan's, he just needed a change of scenery. But he'd been persuaded to at least go somewhere considered safe. So he found himself sitting on the roof of The Barrel Pub, eating an ice lolly and reading Call Me By Your Name which he'd stolen from Dain. "You know, I will never look at peaches the same way after this," he commented as he heard someone else come out onto the roof.

She moved over to lean against the back of his chair, passing her eyes over the pages open before him until she gathered the meaning of his comment. “Don’t tell me it’s giving you ideas.”

“Bah…” He muttered, tossing another half eaten bag over his shoulder. “Isn’t that what the house elves are for? Surely ol unccie Stefan has a few of them milling around.”

Esme swiped a barstool from beside the little island countertop and brought it over to sit beside Enzo. “Why are you sulking? And you are sulking, before you try to argue with me.”

Esme straightened her torso again but didn’t get up yet, instead holding up the shard of glass in her hand again as if it were one of her knives. “Sage is not bound and chained in his room. So he very well could have already come in here to kill you.” She tightened her grip on the shard, slitting open her palm in doing so. “And how easy that would make it for you, to die the villain in someone’s story. To be hated.” She released the glass which promptly fell to the ground again and shattered all the further, leaving her blood to mingle with the wine pooling on the floor. “You’re not protecting anyone by wallowing, or by casting them off either. You’re only being made into a fool. Don’t you see?”

"However..." He said, cocking his head at her. "Sage didn't want to leave his brother. But I made him. I made both of them forget, Sage and Erebus. Because it was choice I had to make. Save the one Erebus begged me to...or the other. I chose Sage....didn't I?"

Esme turned her head to look at Andre once more, allowing a bit of her sadness to slip into her gaze against her better judgement. “Just because you have done bad things does not mean they will be incapable of loving you, or even forgiving you in time. But you’ll never know what they’ll do until you stop feeling sorry for yourself and speak to them.”

The problem with consuming so much blood in a very limited amount of time meant he ended up feeling pretty loopy. So when someone else entered the kitchen he didn't bother to move. "AB is a little sour." He muttered, tossing the half empty blood bag away from himself.

Esmeralda wasn’t the sort to sit around easily. So somewhere in the wee hours of the morning—or night, really—she’d at least taken to wandering through the Manor House, exploring it more than she’d ever had opportunity to before. But the pervasive smell of blood in the air caught her attention after awhile and brought her to the kitchen, where Enzo was clearly over-indulging himself given the multitude of discarded blood bags on the floor beside him. “You could at least clean up after yourself. Even most toddlers manage that much.”

"Don't be silly, of course you can join me in here," she said making room on the sofa.

Esmeralda nodded her thanks before she sat down. “I’m surprised you all aren’t sick of us already. One night is enough, but nearly a day?” She laughed a bit. “I’d be running for the hills.”

Dante smirked into his beer. “No. I don’t belong to any seethe.”

“I gathered as much.”

“Well in that case I’m sorry I missed it,” she said dryly of the party.

“I think your humor could use a bit of work.”

“I’m waiting for crumpet and tea hour actually. Only ten minutes to go,”

Esmeralda made a mental note to scold Linnea for her taste in meeting spots before turning back to the stranger she’d been curtly responding to thus far. “And I have about 10 minutes before I go back out the front door if my friend continues to make no appearance.”