echo chamber. [ian]

Ian

They hadn't seen each other since the night when Ian had walked out of Pho 95. And when a text finally showed up on Kiara's phone, there was no acknowledgment of the conversation they'd had on the sidewalk. Instead there was simply this:

Feel like dancing tonight?

The text came in the afternoon, just as the short winter hours were beginning to dip towards early evening. If Kiara felt like taking him up on it, he'd send her an address for an underground club in LoDo. Some place that had only recently opened up. The nondescript entrance was located in a long brick building that also housed a book store and a couple of restaurants. No sign was immediately visible to mark the location, but the dark glass door had the words Echo Chamber painted on it.

Ian was already inside when Kiara arrived, waiting at the bar with a glass of bourbon in his hand. The entrance of the club led down a set of stairs and a short hallway (which contained a coat check) before opening up to a single, spacious room. The decor was minimalistic. Black floors. Open ceiling. Brick walls. Most of the place was standing room only, but there were seats at the bar and a couple of dark, velvet sofas in one corner which were presently occupied by a boisterous group of college students who seemed to be playing some kind of drinking game.

It was impossible to avoid the music in this place. (Maybe that was why they'd called it Echo Chamber.) The majority of the club's floorspace was devoted to the dance area, where a fairly sizable crowd was currently moving in time to a rolling electronic beat.

 Kiara

She's late.

Not by any ridiculous degree and certainly not enough to warrant a text asking where she was but - late. Later than they agreed on. When she does slip inside though; sans coat; she sparkles. The weather in Denver warm enough for once to invite lighter layers beneath the heavier precautions for winter. So: pale pink sequins that glitter under the turning club lights. Bare shoulders; dark hair swept up in some deliberately messy affair; long black skirt; heels.

The picture of the club-goer, Kiara. But there's always those tells with the Verbena that she's not quite - that there's more going on beneath the surface. The bold color of her mouth; adorned tonight to match her shirt; the dark liner around darker eyes; the way her shirt hooks around her neck and leaves a swath of bare skin visible on her back; the telltale lines of a tattoo barely peeking from where the material gathers at the small of her back.

She's always noticeable, the brunette, as much for the fact she intends to be as she simply - draws the eye. It's in the way she bears herself across the crowded space of the dance floor when she catches sight of Ian at the bar; the way she moves with a confidence that isn't assured (alone) from grace or prowess but simple awareness of self; of her body in relation to the world. She swans up to her partner for the night with a heavy, glittering black bracelet on one wrist; with bare skin everywhere and the hint of a smile curling at the edge of her mouth.

"Hey." She doesn't apologize for being late, but all said, she may well assume he doesn't mind. That in a place like Echo Chamber, he'll have had sufficient scenery to keep him occupied. "Starting without me?" A nod to his glass as she sets an elbow on the counter and leans into it.

Ian

"If I was starting without you, I'd be dancing." There was enough whiskey in his system to make his eyes glisten when he smiled, all smooth-as-silk and so very at home in this environment. At home, perhaps, in a different way than he had been while sitting atop a snow-capped mountain with Elijah last week. But still. At home. There were different kinds of wild places.

Still, he wasn't tipsy the way that Sera might have been. Just softer. Shinier.

Kiara wasn't the only one of them with skin showing. Ian had on a pair of jeans that were fitted in all the right places for dancing. Dark blue with a subtle, lustrous coating. On top he wore a black suit vest with nothing underneath. It hugged his torso tightly and left bare a section of skin on his lower back when he leaned over the bar. In the light of the club, the exposed skin on his arms and chest seemed as though it was dusted with something shimmery.

"Can I get you something?" He had to lean in to be heard over the pulse of the music, brushing his lips against the edge of Kiara's ear. He smelled like citrus, sandalwood and amber.

Kiara

There's always a lot of unspokens between the two of them. There has been from the moment they met. Things glimpsed in the turn of a head; the side glance; the lingering look but never articulated aloud. Last time she'd seen Ian it had been chasing after the ghost of his footsteps out the door; it had been reaching for his hand to halt him; to turn him back to ask - to glimpse - whatever it was.

And she'd known, was what made it hard. Somewhere housed in Kiara's expression had lain the answer. That she did know, that she was familiar. But it's another unspoken; sunk down beneath the surface and the surface; their dance; the easy banter; is so much easier to deal with. He doesn't mention their last encounter and neither does she. Ian doesn't imbibe alcohol the way Serafine did; Kiara's never spent a moment with the Cultist not in another state; altered; distant; distorted and somehow infinitely more beautiful for it. It's possible Kiara envies Sera it, that easy shedding of perception.

It's possible she'd never be capable of letting go so entirely of what was real. Pain was, to Kiara at least, as important as the rest of life.

(Pleasure, for example).

If he was starting without her he'd be dancing and there's a tilt of her head toward the dancefloor; a contemplative study of the rolling sea of bodies; the press and flex and seduction of it all. That smile curls a little more around her mouth and she lifts one thin, bare shoulder in a careless little shrug. Turns around to face the bar; bracing her weight on both elbows.

He leans in and she bends toward the motion.

"Vodka tonic with lime." She twists a little; a hand brushing the edge of the vest he's wearing; testing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. "Is this the proper dancing uniform?" Her eyes dip over the rest of his outfit; lingering; smiling as she does, flicking them back to meet his gaze. "I approve, if so."

Ian

The fabric of the vest was soft beneath Kiara's fingers. Something with a high thread count. Virgin wool with silk accents. Ian laughed when she used the phrase dancing uniform, as though dressing for nightclubs required a particular expertise. "Yours isn't bad either." His eyes carried over the slope of her skin, tracing a line to the place where her pulse-point beat above the apex of her collar bones. Briefly, he let his hand trace the edge of her top, where the material tied around her neck - following it down past her shoulder as his fingers danced over the sequins.

His eyes lifted. He leaned in again, speaking in a warm breath against her ear. "I like your hair."

He always liked her hair. He'd had a habit of playing with it, in more intimate moments. Winding strands of it between his fingers. Memorizing the way it felt when it dragged across his chest.

"You smell good."

He pulled away to flag down one of the bartenders - a girl in her mid-twenties who looked as though she'd probably been doing this for a while. She had a perky kind of efficiency about her, sliding neatly between customers with sparkling eyes and a flashing smile. When she approached them, Ian repeated Kiara's order and watched while the bartender poured the drink and set it neatly before them. He'd already started a tab, so she darted off a moment later.

"I'm sorry about what happened last time. I shouldn't have let it get to me."

Ah. And there it was.

Kiara

For all that she's a woman of the cities; a cosmopolitan darling by birth and inclination Kiara Woolfe did forever have that touch of the wilderness to her. Whether or not it had always been there in her; in the way her presence invoked the sense of nature's cycling; the destruction and devouring; the regeneration after the fact; it was stronger now. Growing so, the more she adapted; the further she evolved. Opened up, to the person she was now. To what she was, now.

It's reflected even in the way her hair grows; wild and thick; refusing in many ways to be tamed by product or Kiara's own inclination. Ian likes it; the quantity of it; the way it moves when unbound. It's there in her scent; vague impressions of incense, vanilla and spice; the sweetness of whatever lotion it was she rubbed into her skin. Sweet, but not all the way through. Perhaps that accounted for her, too. The Verbena were creatures of the earth, after all.

Capable of great change - and stubborn resistance to it. At once yielding and immovable.

She smells good, though and there's a noise at that; her hand loosening and sliding over his chest; pressing with some brief intent over his stomach before she draws it back; leans into the cradle formed by his torso when he presses closer to whisper against her ear to be heard over the din. "So do you," she offers easily in return with a flashing grin; a wide baring of teeth and her fingers are on his neck for a moment when she says it. A palm sliding over the pulse at the base; dragging down to the v formed by his vest; dropping away as the bartender appears.

Kiara has her fingers around her glass; has the first taste of vodka and lime on her lips when he mentions - she takes a sip with measured contemplation; her brows drawing together briefly. Sets the glass down. It's already beginning to sweat in the club; droplets forming where she'd held it.

"She does that." There's a moment, Kiara doesn't expand but her tongue chases the edge of lime on her lower lip, then: "Arionna. She talks a lot of shit." She turns a little to face him; eyes ghosting over his face with that same searching expression she'd worn then, on the night in question. "I mean we all do at times but she has a world of opinions on a lot of things she doesn't let herself close enough to even experience. She talks about it with the disconnection of someone who hasn't seen - " Kiara hesitates; looks away; her frame constricts with a sharp exhale.

"I don't blame you for it getting to you. I think she's - " A smile surfaces; tugs and persists into shape across the supple shape of her mouth. Humor re-inserting itself into her voice. " - she doesn't approve of me. I don't care that she doesn't but - sometimes it gets under your skin. People talking like it's nothing. To see that. To know it."

There's a beat. The baseline of music thrums around them; Kiara's face lit by the bar beside them; the refraction and gleam of her shirt. Her honesty is a sharp thing; honed but not necessarily, cruel for it.

"I used to get a lot more angry about it."

Ian

It was an odd thing to hear coming from Ian's lips. He didn't seem the type to apologize. Or to regret. Kiara tasted her drink, and Ian lifted his in turn, finishing off most of what remained in the glass.

She spoke about Arionna - whom Ian had only really met once. His impression of the girl was barely more than a sketch, but Kiara's assessment was hardly surprising. Ian made a sound low in his throat. The resonance of it got lost somewhere in the electric pulse of sound that washed over them.

"She's a kid." If the statement felt dismissive, it wasn't intended to be. "Sooner or later the world will get more real for her. Either that, or it'll eat her alive."

And didn't they all know what that felt like.

He didn't ask Kiara why she'd understood how he'd felt that night. On a certain level, he didn't have to. Perhaps later, when they were alone. When they weren't surrounded by the press of bodies and the pounding swell of music. Later, when there wasn't the promise of a dance. (Because Ian did not forget things like that.)

"Anyway, approval is overrated. But if it helps..." He let his lips brush over the edge of her jaw, grazing lightly with his teeth as he slid down to kiss her neck. "I approve of you immensely."

(Though Kiara hardly needed it.)

He let the last measure of his bourbon flow past his tongue, tipping back his head to drain the glass when he pulled away. "I think we should dance."

Kiara

They were both such physical creatures. Touch conveyed a world of things words frequently fell short of - at least, for Kiara. Ian kisses the edge of her jaw; neck and she slides a hand along his shoulder; gripping briefly when he grazes her skin with his teeth. He can feel her pulse beating wildly under her skin; the hint of some encouraging, tiny noise rising in the back of her throat.

It was a noted thing about the Verbena, one thing she rarely held back, her pleasure, the openness of enjoying the moment.

"Oh, believe me," this, a breath of laughter as she slips the tips of her fingers beneath the edge of his vest; idly stroking his skin at the shoulder. "I stopped asking for it a long time ago." Kiara's head tips back; she finds Ian's gaze and her eyes drop to his mouth for a considering moment; tracing the shape of it. "It made my life infinitely more enjoyable. But thank you, regardless." Her fingers slide away from him to reclaim her drink as he does his own.

The pleasant burn of vodka warming her throat as he attests they should dance and she twists; smiling in that vaguely challenging way of hers; stepping back from the bar and beckoning him with her. "I couldn't agree more. Come and show me what you've got, buddy." This as she allows her footsteps to draw her back; to allow herself to be engulfed by the dancing swarm of bodies. It's hot, on the dance-floor; a space heated by too many bodies pressing too close together.

There's something almost erotic about the fact; about the writhe and blend of people, moving together; the capacity for conversation overwritten by the heavy presence of the beat instead. Kiara's no dancer, she doesn't have the training or the background he does but she does possess an understanding of the body; the way it behaves; the shift and play of muscle beneath skin.

She draws Ian into the crowd; lights flashing overhead; picking out the tiny sequined beads of her shirt and lets the rhythm have its way with her. Lets him dictate his own initiation into the music as she finds her own.

Ian[Life 1 / Forces 1 custom rote "Bodies in Motion", diff 4 -1 (practiced, etc)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian[Dex+Performance -2 diff (ability aptitude + that rote)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

IanPerhaps some day they might talk about this. The way that bodies communicated. Ian would call it a language. Perhaps that was why he became a dancer in the first place. What is art if not communication? And what is dance if not the most primordial form of art?

Ian was not an unskilled speaker. He could, when motivated, use them to great effect. But there was not a spoken language on earth that would ever be fully satisfying for him. That would ever feel like anything more than a crude translation of the nuance and honesty he found in the physical. (Perhaps that was part of the reason why everyone seemed to find him so unfathomable.)

His skin was warm where Kiara touched him - the pulse of his blood beating close beneath the surface. A few heady seconds of contact before they broke apart. Before Kiara answered his suggestion by beckoning him to follow her onto the dance floor. Then they were surrounded by the press of bodies and the heavy beat of the music. Life and Sound, all mixed up into one perfect, interwoven pulse.

Ian's senses opened up as he began to move. As he breathed in the heady mix of sweat and pheromones and focused on the way the music drove his heartbeat. Focused on the way his body moved. The interplay of gravity and kinetic motion on his pattern. How the air flowed around them. How the beat flowed through them. Until the people in the club became primal and vivid and alive. All pulsing patterns and elegant motion.

Ian and Kiara - they were also primal and vivid and alive. And the moment Ian got comfortable on the dance floor - the moment they stopped moving through the crowd and carved out a small space for themselves, he started to move like dancing was as much a part of him as breathing. Instinctive, following the flow of the music with his body, and keeping close within Kiara's space. Focused enough to move with her instead of just beside her. The muscles in his arms and torso looked fluid in the deep glow of blue light that painted over them.

Briefly, he pulled her close and settled his hand on the small of her back, pushing up beneath the hem of her sequined shirt to feel the skin beneath. He let their hips meet when he did it. Let their bodies form together the way so many others around them were doing. And he kissed her again - on the shoulder. Then the throat. Then the outer edge of her ear. Because she was beautiful and alive and he wanted to touch her.

Ian[Edit: "use words to great effect."]

KiaraShe'd told him at the Chantry when he'd found her there, alone, attuning herself to the heartbeat of the Node that she'd intended to be a doctor, once. The details had been loose at best, a subtle shaking apart of the layers that made up who Kiara Woolfe was. Who she had been, before she'd Awakened. Who she might have become. There's a great many things they still don't know about the other; secrets buried; truths unknown and while she offered herself freely in many respects to those she met; those she shared a bed; her body with there were a great many more she held in check.

It was easier, in so many ways, to keep those elements caged away from the light.

Still, she cannot always keep her appreciation for the way the human body operated; the shift and play and motion behind it censored from all awareness. There's muscle memory of a sort, there. The desire to feel and deduce - the want to heal, what needed it. Because different she may have been but Kiara was, at her core, a healer. A practitioner of arts to soothe; to repair and hone. Ian was beautiful to watch in motion and she did - watch him - keep her eyes fixed on the fluidity of his body; drop her lashes to half mast to study the way their bodies lined up; to remember and keep the sensation of heat between them when he drew near.

The beads of perspiration on her skin; the burn of his palm where it pushed under the thin fabric of her shirt.

She wrapped her arms around his neck as he pressed his lips to her shoulder; throat; could probably taste the sweat on her skin; the lingering sweetness of perfume. She keeps him close, Kiara, a hand fisting into his hair before she twists in his embrace and they're dancing with his chest to her back; her body snug against the cradle of his hips.

They don't talk but there's a conversation in the way she drags his hands around her body; links their fingers and puts his hands on her hip; on her stomach. There's an unspoken invitation to the way she tilts her head back and gives him leeway to put his lips back against the shining column of her throat.

Bodies communicated and theirs had always had a particular chemistry for it; on the dancefloor; tonight; it's stronger and more blatant than ever.

IanIan's movement slowed when they drew together - when Kiara turned and wrapped his arms around her body. The invitation elicited a low sound from Ian, resonant in a way that was more felt than heard. This too was a dance - a conversation (touch me, yes, I want you.) There was surrender there (though not submission.) Surrender to each other, and to the inexorable force that drew them together.

They barely knew each other. Still. After all these weeks. Funny the way people discover each other (in increments, as friends or lovers or colleagues.)

Ian answered Kiara's invitation without a second thought. His mouth found her neck, open and tasting, tongue pressed to the pulse of an artery. One of his arms wrapped tightly around her torso just beneath her breasts, as though to hold her to him. The other was gentler - exploring and teasing, tracing fingers down the length of her stomach to play at the waistline of her skirt.

How long had they been dancing? Long enough to see beads of sweat on their skin. Long enough for the music to take on a trance-like quality. But not as late as Ian usually stayed out. The night was still (relatively) young.

And yet...

"Let me know when you want to leave."

There was a slow smile at that, and Kiara would feel the way his lips moved against her throat.

KiaraShe likes the build up. Enjoys the chase. She'd probably be the first to admit it. To say she's guilty of throwing herself headlong into experiences without ever really stopping to contemplate if it was the wisest move; the smartest, well considered action. Ever since that first moment - awakening - feeling so much as seeing her mentor at her side there had been that bone deep thrum to move. The drive for momentum.

Change was a necessity, was it not? Kiara had become so very good at eliciting it; pulling and tugging at the strands in her world to rearrange them as she wished. Never looking back - that too, had become a rule for survival. You never, ever looked behind you.

(Her dreams chased her, though, she had never quite been able to outrun those).

Still, in the here and now - there's reason enough to chance a look over her shoulder; to let her mouth bend and curve into a heated little smile and to stroke her fingers over his arm. To tilt her face up so that it presses her nose up; the point of her chin under his jawline; lets her reciprocate the attention he's been paying to her neck all night.

Lets her murmur against it, "You know I think," punctuated by her body moving back against his in a sinuous little motion; a roll of her hips just so, "You should take me home about now." She finds his eyes, then; traces the edge of his jaw with a finger.

"But first you should kiss me." Her hair's become wilder for the physical activity; strands loosening around her face; clinging to her nape of her neck; her mouth is quite as bright as ever though; wide and supple and expressive - it's her eyes, though, with the Verbena, that forever offer the challenge. Playful and competitive.

There's a dare in them somewhere; a push for Ian to meet her on the precipice - or maybe to jump off it alongside her.

IanThis was one of Ian's many contradictions: he looked backwards all the fucking time. You wouldn't expect it, maybe, from someone so driven. So focused on the here and now. But memory was a deep thing for him. It went down and down and on forever. He remembered every single person he'd ever slept with. (Maybe not all at once. Maybe not always easily. But given the right key, the doors would open and there they'd be - taste, touch, sound and smell.) He would remember Kiara long after they'd gone their separate ways.

Sometimes to survive, one needed to forget. But to evolve, you have to remember.

Right now though? Ian wasn't looking anywhere but here.

But first you should kiss me.

The pressure of his arms pulled Kiara into a half-turn, loosening his hold on her so that he could catch her mouth in a hard kiss. A little bit claiming and insistent. More than a little hungry. And for a few moments he actually stopped dancing.

Then he grabbed her hand and led them both off the dance floor and out of the club.