[Jarod Nightingale] There were a lot of bars on the magnificent mile. Some of them were nicer than others. This particular one happened to be a fairly hip and swanky little cocktail bar. On the weekend, it was usually so packed that the people inside could hardly move without bumping into someone, but tonight, when most people had to work in the morning, the crowds were a little more moderate. Music played over the speakers, spilling the sound of a silky female vocalist into the air. A number of people were seated in booths, chatting with friends and acquaintances over their expensive drinks. Others spread out along the bar. Jarod was one of those.
It was December. December was a rough month even without the added benefit of being angry with friends (or former friends, as the case may now be.) So it was probably safe to say that Mr. Jarod Nightingale, model, business owner, Verbena Disciple and father to a frequently difficult but also generally amazing eleven year old... was not really here to socialize. He was here because he'd wanted a drink, or two, or three (or four, or five.) And this was precisely the task with which he'd employed himself. There was a series of tequila shots (silver Patron) lined up in front of him, and two of them were empty. To his credit though, he was taking his time, because he'd done this before you see. It was something of a yearly routine.
And he didn't seem particularly drunk yet. He was alert, if disinterested. And he looked all kinds of perfect and beautiful, because that was how he always looked. Tonight he was wearing a pair of tailored black pants and a dark blue satin button-down.
[Jacques-Marcel] It's cold out. Not as cold as some of the other nights, but the frost is already setting across window panes and making sidewalks slippery. It's a miserable time for many; the poor that can't share in the commercial Christmas, the rich isolated from family's, beaten wives of festive drunks and the list goes on. But inside the swank cocktail bar, people have thrown off their jackets and all the weight that comes with it, ignoring the cold, the ice and snow that blankets the city, and thrown themselves at the warmth of alcohol that settles deep into the belly.
Jacques hadn't been in the place long. The chill is still being chased out of the strands of his hair and the red on the tip of his nose is still fading away. He's dressed in a pair of charcoal black slacks, and a deep metal gray shirt, short sleeved and with some minor detail on the pocket. The collar cut is high but the first few buttons undone, leaving a long line of neck. Leather loafers aren't that practical for the weather, but they are stylish, and what mans shoes, aside from boots, are suitable for the weather anyway.
He finds himself two seats down from Jarod, with a man ordering drinks between. Already with a coke, which is probably half scotch, in hand, he's looking over the handsome man looking for answers in his shot glasses. His eyes are blue-gray, sometimes gray-blue, and, as the other already knows, is a lighter shade. Watching Jarod, he debates his options and drinks from his glass.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Alertness +1 (kindof lost in my own universe here)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 7)
[Jarod Nightingale] People looked at him. He was used to that. (He got paid for that.) Ever since he'd arrived at the bar, Jarod had felt as if eyes were on him. Sometimes those eyes landed only briefly, then flitted away once more. Sometimes they fixed on him and stayed there. Tonight he didn't pay the people around him much mind. If they wanted to watch him drink, they could watch him drink. A couple of women had approached him about ten minutes ago, and he'd smiled charmingly and humored the attention, but there wasn't much real interest behind it, so they'd ultimately left to head home without his company.
There was a familiar face a couple of seats down. Not familiar in the way that Emily or Ashley or Nick might be, but familiar enough that he would have recognized and remembered the other model if he'd actually bothered to turn his head and look at him. He did not, though, so for the moment Jacques would have the rare occasion to watch him without Jarod's awareness of the fact. There weren't really any obvious signs of what he was thinking or feeling painted on his face. Jarod was not the sort of person who advertised these things, most of the time. However he did seem rather more intent on the drinks in front of him than he was on the people around him, which may have been an indicator in and of itself.
His shirt shimmered like dark water underneath the soft glow of the lights. Outside it was cold, but inside he could do without his coat, and like Jacques, the first couple of buttons had been left open at his neck. One of the cuffs was also unbuttoned and rolled midway up his arm - the right one, which apparently had a tattoo of some kind of elegant design. Jarod stared for a moment at his next full shot-glass, then he licked the side of his hand, dusted it with salt, and licked it again. The tequila came next, and it left a warm trail down his throat. Finally he picked up a lime wedge and sucked on it before dropping it back with the other used rinds. Very ritualistic. There was residue left on his lips, and he ran his tongue over them absently.
[Jacques-Marcel] As the man walked away with his drink, Jacques stepped over and took up residence on the stool next to Jarods. He set his drink down on the bar gently and checked the surface of the wood for spills before resting his forearm lightly into the edge.
"What are we drinking to?" He asks, looking forward instead of at the man drinking tequila next to him. Long fingers play around the top of his stout glass, lightly touching the area beneath the top rim. Looking at the bartender move around, he slowly slides his gaze across the bottles lined neatly on the shelves before looking to Jarod.
Brows raised, he openly studied the man; who man be older but really doesn't look it. Jacques has never been the best judge of character anyway. Or rather, if he was, he often ignored the inner workings of his own mind's advice. But what he can tell is what he called out; that Jarod is drinking to something, by his lonesome, and Jacques had invaded his universe.
[Jarod Nightingale] Someone next to him got up to leave. Someone else sat down. Someone who smelled good. And then that someone asked, in a voice he'd heard before, what it was they might be drinking to. Jarod turned his head so that his eyes finally fell upon Jacques, and for a few seconds it may have seemed as if he might not answer, but then a slow smile crept onto his face. "Oh, I don't know. I think Patron is reason enough to drink all on its own."
There was a reason behind this particular choice. Emily knew why Jarod drank tequila when he was in a certain kind of mood, but very few other people did. He didn't wear his birthplace on his lips the way that Jacques did. There was no noticeable accent to speak of. Jarod spoke like someone who could have been from everywhere and nowhere all at once. But ridding himself of the Texan twang was a great deal easier than purging the place from his blood. So in this, he was still a Dallas boy. He liked tequila.
"Fair warning, though. I am liable to flirt when drunk."
[Jacques-Marcel] "Excellent." Raising his own glass, he saluted the other man with it, seeming perfectly content to be drinking for the sake of drinking and to the idea of flirting. It was a lot better having someone nice to look at, then some drunken dog pawing at him, or so Jacques thinks. This is usually the case most of the time but there are exceptions and particularly in the circles the two of them roam.
Without needing to fill the silence between them, he turned away from the bar, twisting on the stool to look back and over the crowd, hand lingering by his glass, with his fingers now flat against the surface. His hands are long and, surprisingly wider at the palm then one might expect. It reminds everyone that he's actually a male, no matter how pretty he might be, just like the way his shoulders are broader on his lean frame. Jacques is not a large man, but he is tall, and has enough solidness to him to not appear to be a bean pole.
That brief moment allows Jarod to talk, open up and offer conversation or begin the warned flirting, or to be silent and shut the other man down. This is a politeness from the southern man, that won't last for too long, as his attention drifts back around and finds him leaning on the bar again, but this time facing towards his new drinking companion.
[Jarod Nightingale] Jacques didn't pry, and he didn't put forth any resistance to Jarod's prediction of events. This earned him a couple of points in his favor, and meant that his company was probably more welcome than most would be at this particular time. The Consor (is that what he was?) left the floor open for Jarod to talk, but the Verbena did not attempt to unburden himself (if indeed there were things on his mind.) He wasn't here because he wanted to open up to someone. Tonight was a distraction. And Jacques was pretty enough to fit that bill nicely.
"You say that now..." the smile returned, and it had a wry edge to it. He left the conclusion purposefully ambiguous, though (perhaps so that Jacques could imagine for himself whatever outcome best suited his imagination.) And then there was another shot taken, in the same slow, ritualistic fashion as the other. (This was number four, for those who are counting.) He held his alcohol well, but this was hardly a surprise if one knew that he was a Life Disciple. If he'd wanted to, he could have staved off the effects entirely, but that didn't suit his purposes tonight. So after this drink, one might notice that his eyes seemed a little more glassy - less focused and darker in color (his pupils dilated farther than most.) He was not drunk, but he wasn't sober either.
"Where's your friend tonight? Nico."
[Jacques-Marcel] His chuckle is low and the side of his mouth curls. "Indicating that there could be a later," he quips to the first remark. It's not how the other had meant it, but that's how Jacques throws it back, easy and without much filtered thought. This, too, was also a flirtation without being over the top about it. A casual sort of thing that can be easily overlooked, particularly in a place like this.
But the mention of Nico throws him, if only for a second. Shaking his head, his mouth turned wry. "Probably getting hit by another car." He says it while raising up his glass to his mouth and takes a slow drink from it. It's a slow pour of drink into his mouth rather then some sip, swallowed down in a single, smooth motion just as he watches where he puts his glass back down.
"Don't worry," not that he think the other might, this is just a figure of speech, "I'm fully available for drunk propositions." Another way of saying that he and Nico were not what they may have seemed to be. Hugs aside, body language too, they weren't an item. The more he thinks about it, too, the more ridiculous the idea seems.
[Jarod Nightingale] Jacques suggested that Nico might be getting hit by another car, and somehow this came off as funny rather than disturbing. Jarod laughed, briefly - in part because Jacques had said it so off-hand, and in part because Jarod didn't know Nico well enough to understand whether this was meant to be a joke or if he really did end up in the hospital more than the average person (and in either case, it was hard to feel any noticeable concern for someone that one had met for all of three minutes.)
The next bit got his attention though, and his amusement shifted back to something more overtly sexual. "You're giving me too much credit. I'd have hit on you in either case." (He had a reputation, you see. And potential or actual significant others did not usually get in the way of him doing the things that he wanted to do.) His right hand (the one with the tattoo) slid away from the bar and came to rest on the other man's knee. It was a light touch, but prolonged, long fingers tracing against cotton.
After awhile, he leaned in until his breath could be felt against the sensitive ridges of Jacques' ear. Soft lips grazed the cartilage as he spoke. "I want to see what your skin tastes like. I want to find out what you sound like when you cum. I want to fuck you. All. Night."
He could be rather... forward, at times. One had to imagine that he was used to getting the things that he wanted - at least in this respect. When he leaned back, he smiled a little, knowingly. "Is that a good enough proposition for you?"
[Jacques-Marcel] It was meant to be laughed at, but maybe Jarod wouldn't have if he had known the truth of the matter. Truth almost always changes things and unless he's callous, which he may very well be, and cold, which he is, laughing at someone's very real misfortune might have been disturbing. Neither of the two men sitting at the bar seemed to have limited concern for what was right or wrong on the moral compass.
He's looking at Jarod side ways as he expresses that he'd flirt no matter what, and the expression found on his face is only of mild curiousity. He doesn't seem all that surprised or disgusted by the admission. Rarely does he get shocked, not by a hand crawling on his knee, or with the way breath flows across his ear and lips tease. Harsh, frank words don't get a rise out of him either.
Granted the mouth by his ear had stirred him a little, made him become aware of any particular cologne the other is wearing, and the lack of inflictions in the tone. And the words themselves made his brows shoot up temporarily, already lowered by the time he's turned his chin to look at where Jarod is leaning back, almost smug about it.
He chuckles, then. Just quiet in the back of his throat, but looks thoroughly amused in the gleam of his eyes. "No, it's not," he manages to sound rather serious about that. But there's a long pause after it, while he drinks again, down towards the bottom of his glass now. "I don't believe you can see what something tastes like. Other then that small correction, I'd say it sounds like a good way to spend my night."
"Even if I am just another thing for you to play with to pass the time." Oh, he hadn't missed out on these little things. After all, it takes one to recognize another. Casual fucks, one night stands, flings that last a weekend, seems to be the specialty of his. He tells himself he's still okay with this. He tells himself it's better that way; anything he gets close to ends up dying and making him feel superstitious.
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod normally spoke well. It was rather important to him, in fact, to sound educated. Both because he was educated, and because his particular brand of education had been the study of languages. So there might have been a faint flicker of annoyance when Jacques corrected him, but it was a fleeting, unimportant thing. This was what happened with alcohol, after all. One tended to get a little less refined.
"I'm sure I can think of some way to make it up to you," he offered dryly. But then Jacques made that off-hand comment about the casual manner in which Jarod probably considered him (and for all the very short time they'd spent together, how could the two of them be anything but a distraction to each other?) and the dark-haired man looked at him for a moment before responding honestly. "If you choose to define yourself that way, then that's what you'll be. Or, if you prefer, you could just enjoy it and not bother with labels. Either way, I promise I play well with others. At least... as far as this is concerned."
This was who Jarod was, for better or worse. Even his very resonance suggested as much. He took the last shot and finished it off in the same manner he had the others, then he rolled his sleeve back down and grabbed his coat off the back of his seat. Even after five shots of tequila, he still moved with an almost feral kind of grace, though this was in part because he'd gotten very good at knowing just exactly how much he needed to enhance his body's stamina in order to drink without embarrassing himself. When his feet touched the floor, he beckoned playfully for Jacques to follow. "Let's go back to your place, so I can see how the competition lives. That is... if you're still up for it."
[Jacques-Marcel] Competition. He liked that. The rest, however, he could forget or chose to ignore. Both are much the same, really, and while he could do without the playful beckoning, he decides tonight he was going to go with it. Leaving his glass on the bar, he rose up and began to follow. One hand slides into his slack pocket as he wanders at a very casual pace, and much more ordinary in the way he moved.
They had to pause by the cloak area, where Jacques fetched his own jacket; he'd been planning on spending quite a bit of time at the bar that night, but those have gone out the door. His jacket is wool, and once its on him, hits at the back of his calf. Darker then the rest of his clothes it makes his features seem brighter and more defined, as black tends to do. Buttoning up, he steps out the door and into the cold.
For all that Jacques slouches and jokes, there's a way he does compose himself that sets him apart. It's not grace and it's not some sort of resonance, nor even a loud demeanor. But for all that comes out his mouth his demeanor comes across as reserved and almost proper. This is in the way he walks, strolls with his back and neck straight. His posture, even relaxed, is a little more rigid; no hunched shoulders. And it has less to do with the profession they are both in and more to do with how he was raised with wealth and prestige. He may have been in the gutter once, but some things are too far ingrained to be rid of.
"I'm driving." Since the other had drank, and Jacques is blissfully unaware of the fact of Jarod's special tricks. He knows that Jarod is with Ashley, that he's a Mage, but nothing else, and he's not about to ask either. The car they head to is parked somewhere nearby, a Z4 in a midnight blue.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Don't mind me, I'm just some dice that may or may not be doing something]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 3)
[Jarod Nightingale] [extending]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 5, 7 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Annnd a different one]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 6 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Jarod Nightingale] If Jarod had known that Jacques thought he was with Ashley in any capacity, he probably would have laughed or made some sort of snide comment. It was probably for the best, really, that this was not brought into the conversation. There was a time when he might have conceded to call Ashley a friend. Tonight, that was not the case.
He didn't object to Jacques driving. He'd taken a cab out here tonight for precisely that reason, which meant that his M3 was stored away safely in the underground parking lot of his building in Wicker Park. When his eyes landed on the Z4, there was a faint bit of a smirk that touched his lips, but whatever it was, he didn't say it out loud. It was cold out, and snowing lightly. The landscape was comfortable and familiar to him, and for a moment he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, so that a few snowflakes landed and melted into his skin. The coldness woke him up a little, and as he pulled in slow, deep breaths, he focused his Will on his pattern. Clarity sharpened. His reflexes tonight would not be as dull as expected. (In fact, they would not be dull at all.)
In the car, on the drive over, he didn't say much. But he did keep his focus on the man next to him, both because he was curious and because this was a welcome distraction. He didn't make any more attempts to initiate physical contact (that is, unless Jacques did this himself.) That came later, when they arrived and went inside. After hanging up his coat and removing wet shoes, he found a hold on the other man's belt and pulled him closer. Their eyes were close, and he memorized the details of the other model's face as he ran hands through his hair.
"You're beautiful," he offered, quietly, and it was not so much in awe as it was a casual compliment, but that didn't mean that he wasn't being sincere. And then he kissed him, and there was a kind of experienced sensuality to the way that he did it, but the action was not without hunger.
Whenever they found the bedroom, Jacques would find himself pushed back and pinned against the mattress, and he might wonder, at some point, at the fact that his partner no longer seemed to be suffering the effects of excessive drinking. Jarod was also a little stronger than he looked. While his muscles were carefully toned (like most people in his field), he had a lean, graceful physique that did not necessarily imply raw physical power. He was not overly rough, but he was... primal. One really couldn't expect much else from a Verbena. He wasn't interested in talking. He wanted to fuck, and so he did precisely as he'd promised, but not before taking a suitably thorough detour to explore and taste and memorize his partner's body.
And just like he'd promised, they didn't finish until just before the sun came up.
