#gothampire

lots & lots of flirting.

different kinds of kisses.

there are many benefits to having friends in high places, or in places where connections are simply wide & varied enough to count as good as. they offer opportunity enough to occasionally smooth out an appropriately fancy suit of a selection & make nice with some very interesting people who themselves have even more connections. krakoa taught him many things — the importance of networks is well among them.

there is no chance that kurt is going to be able to speak with everyone attending the event, the rooms large & the guests many, but that does not stop him from letting his gaze wander to the farther sides of the hall, raising a slowly rotating roster of champagne in greeting to some who lock eyes with him, giving the sketch of a bow to some others.

& other times a familiar & not entirely expected visage pokes through the sea of faces, & there's a caution to his liquid salute. & a dangerous woman blows a kiss in reply.

his face shutters, his grip tightening on the fork in his hand, poised at the edge of his plate of partially eaten linguine alle vongole, the cracked open clam shells steaming.

a headline that he’d cut out of the morning’s gazette and pasted with painstaking care into the album at the back of his desk drawer: ‘pierce chapman found dead in bathtub from suspected overdose.’ the vicious pleasure that filled him then has now gone small and sour in his belly. the candlelight playing in her dark eyes gives them a feline knowing look that he dislikes immensely.

prompts for touch-starved muses.

he humors the meticulous exploration for a second or two ( shushing the rising dissonance in his mind of " fascination " " sideshow attraction " " furry freak of nature " — all in various languages, all of different voices, all far too loud ) until there's a point reached, somewhere between brow & cheek, where his nose scrunches, as though holding back a sneeze, & the spade of the crawler's tail pokes in to guide those fingers away with no little force, a small but insistent wave of it shooing the hand from the face now turning aside. said face does what can only be called a facial shake - out, & he seems to finally allow himself a quiet huff of a laugh.

the mixture of rain-soaked asphalt and faint sewer scent makes the gotham air difficult to breathe. you're no stranger to the rot that seeps into every corner of this city, just as the rot has attached itself to your bones like a parasite. from her words, it would be easy to assume the queenpin of gotham has seen the world for what it truly is: a cesspool of greed, violence, and copious power. there's a chance she's right —– maybe you can't stop crime. no, in fact, you know you can't stop crime. no matter how many throats you slit, bones you break, or allow the inside you off its leash; there will always be more crime. you were not meant to be a savior nor a hero —– you were born and bred to be a weapon. you're the boogeyman who comes in the middle of the night, prowling through the dark and leaving a trail of bodies in your wake because it's all you know how to do. you were made to destroy lives, not save them.

beneath your skin, you can feel the city's pulse —– a steady stream of the corruption that beats in time with your own shattered heart. the way gotham wraps itself tightly around your neck, whispering into your ears all the same agony the facility did. this is all you'll ever be. a weapon, a killer, a beast dressed in a girl's flesh with a cowl to hide it. but, there's something more beneath the surface than what meets the opposite's words. something that not even the queenpin of gotham, with all her seized power, can grasp. you're also a survivor. a victim, an orphan, and a young woman with enough rage to draw both claws through the bedrock of the earth.

@gothampire

“Who, me?” He asks, tilting his head to the side. Then he makes a show of glancing around, as if there might be someone else she’s talking to. Of course, there isn’t. This isn’t the sort of business where one makes, or keeps, friends. Logan - or rather, ‘Patch’ - smirks and adjusts the sleeves of his suit. It’s a nice one. Custom tailored, too. If you play the part, you gotta look the part.