The ball is rolling.

[Laszlo]

Fall 45th, 511 Eleventh bell. Whether this whole tavern concept was a good idea or a very, very bad one seemed to be beside the point. It had become very clear that the old, decrepit building had chosen Laszlo, and it didn't appear as though it was about to let him forget it was there. Wise or not, the decision had already been made for him, and now there was no turning back. Seven was turned on to the idea, and even suggested splitting costs with him. Though Laszlo still had time to back out, and was a little leery of throwing his money at something he hadn't fully thought through, he was set on going through with this. The risks involved, however little understood, did not frighten him. The Ethaefal came to realize that running into that abandoned building nearly every day had established a sort of familiarity, much like a neighbor waving hello along a daily route (in cities that allowed one to even have routes [although that was probably every other city in Mizahar, it often became very hard to remember that a normal and less nonsensical world still existed outside of Alvadas]). It wouldn't be a very large leap for that familiarity to begin feeling like home. A thick shaft of light snaked in from his inn room's only window, painting the pattern of the window panes across the floor in a bold, golden glow. Reflecting the light well were Laszlo's own amber colored eyes, presently focused on several stacks of gilded-rimmed miza coins laid out across his bed. It was the theme of the late morning, the entire room seemingly incandescent with yellow. It was the color of money, Laszlo noted inwardly, and he took at as a sign from Xyna, rather than Syna, that this potential investment was a good idea. Now the only thing left to do was to play the same hypnotic tricks he had done on Seven and convince the halfblood's friend Victor Lark that he wanted to be a part of this deal. Laszlo would only be able to afford the tavern if at least the three of them pool their finances. Laszlo leaned back against his bed's headboard, his crossed legs still draped in a thin, moth-eaten blanket. It was usually difficult for him to sleep once the sun had come up, so he'd been awake roughly since dawn. Having no other plans today, his only real option was to sit here in his bed and wait for voices to come from the wall nearby, which was connected to the pair's adjacent room. The Ethaefal had no intention of waking them just to discuss money and trade. To pass the time, he'd emptied his sacks of miza coins and counted them all, reassuring himself of what he had to offer monetarily. He probably could have spent that time getting dressed or using the public bath, but he was rather comfortable in his warm bed, soaking up the sun. Quiet noises of conversation had started in Seven and Victor's room nearly an hour ago, but Laszlo had taken his time in getting moving. It would be better if they didn't think he was over-eager to get the plans for their new tavern underway. If Victor agreed, that is. Eventually, Laszlo stepped out of his bed and into a pair of trousers, which had been discarded onto the floor from the previous day. Fetching his black button down, he paused only to tie his hair and lightly feather the remnants before stepping out of his room, locking the door, and walking two steps down the hall. A bite of breakfast might have made him better prepared to make use of his djed, but he failed to think of that before tapping his knuckles upon the door. After a moment's hesitation, a muffled invitation was sent as a response, and Laszlo opened the door. "Good morning," he offered levelly, stepping inside and nudging the door shut behind him. Folding his arms, Laszlo leaned back against the wall and kept his distance for now. "Pardon me if I'm intruding. I had a few things to do today and wasn't sure when a good time would be." He had nothing to do today. "Has Seven mentioned anything about that old tavern we visited?"

[Victor Lark]

“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably completely—ow!”

Victor’s head lurched away from the probing white fingers that had woven through his drying hair, fussing at the invisible wound that had long since healed on the back of his scalp. He paused a moment longer, bringing his hand up to the area in mock reflex. Then he let it fall, laughing, and glanced back to see whether he had successfully startled his fool. “It’s fine,” he asserted, as he turned around and took hold of the hands that had nursed his hurts to comfortable nothings. “Stop worrying.”

He had said the words countless times on countless occasions, and yet his tongue never tired of them. Since the beginning, Seven had been saving Victor from his recklessness; the noble-born Ravokian had never learned much about taking care of himself. He pulled Seven’s hands to his chest, wrapping them in the warmth of his own, and stole a kiss from their proximity. He did not manage a drop of venom that time, but nonetheless tried to make it taste like gratitude—or, at least, a teasing apology for pretending false pains.

“I think my back hurts again, though,” he added with a smirk, but was not given time to act on the inferred request. His chin jerked towards the door when he heard a knock. “What is it?” he called through the thin wood, preparing his face for the appropriate level of confusion.

The ethaefal entered, a beautiful stranger whose hesitant eyes seemed the color of the sun. Victor did not bother to part from the man he held to him; he did not care that the door to the bath was ajar and that the sheets on their single mattress had yet to be made. A hint of a smile darted towards Seven before he scrutinized their visitor again, pouring practiced bitterness into the saccharine courtesy on his tone.

“No, sorry. Who are you?”

[Seven Xu]

“It’s only Laszlo,” Seven released a lungful of stale air, eyelids fluttering as twin reds traced a sardonic crescent in their confines of blond lashes. Familiar warmth stained alabaster skin where a smile had tipped the corners of his mouth. For a moment, neither the bird nor his fool relinquished their spot beneath the tangle of sheets and the hot creeping fingers of a late morning sun. Then, Seven wrenched his fingers out of the snarl of olive-on-white to favor absently combing the floor in an awkward stoop. Persistent cardinal burned its trail up his neck, tickling his ears, teasing the prudish limits of his comfort.

“The Ethaefal I told you about,” the halfblood’s words emerged in a hearted grunt in his efforts; he sighed an unspoken victory when lithe fingertips met the rumpled linen of an unbuttoned shirt. When he sat up, a rustle of ivory caught the sun’s gilded light like a halo; Seven jerked his chin towards the door, and spoke, as if the man were not standing before them, “A Widow at night, and—well, that, during the day.

“He is nicer than her,” Seven went on, snaking an arm through one cold sleeve, then another, before fidgeting for too long with a ruined collar, “He showed me a building, some … perverse little hole in the city, painted all black, with a skeleton living in it.”

One button after another was captured and caged. When Seven turned to Laszlo again, he addressed him as more than a fixture in the room, something to be explained and analyzed between two men that seemed to too easily slip into their own world. “The soon-to-be tavern; no, I hadn’t mentioned it to Victor.” A grin blossomed on Seven’s face and was immediately warped when a lip slid beneath a row of teeth; he’d promised to tell Victor, but excitement had quickly turned to apathy when he found his way back to the ‘Inn, and admittedly, he had all but forgotten the proposal.

“Should I do it now?”

[Laszlo]

Laszlo winced at Widow. He didn't honestly mind the term so much—at least when he or another Symenestra were using it—but he wasn't entirely certain Seven could properly respect the scorn intended by the word. No, that didn't make any sense; Seven grew up in a human city, didn't he? He must have heard his share of it. And honestly, Laszlo was less of a Symenestra than he was. He inwardly chided himself for being so sensitive, then glanced up when he was finally addressed personally. "It would be a start." Laszlo spoke through a patient smile, playfully cocking his head to the side. If he had any doubt before that these two were lovers, it was completely vanquished now. After assessing the tangle of sheets and limbs that was Victor and Seven, he politely sent his golden hued eyes elsewhere. The sunlight seemed to fill them as he pretended the nearby rolls of vellum and pots of ink on a nearby nightstand were just as interesting. "Besides it was your idea. You deserve to tell him yourself. Unless you're having second thoughts? It would be a good time to discuss this at length." A manipulative end to the question. Most people would respond to that with a reflexive "no, no" and et cetera. Laszlo wasn't usually so calculated in his conversations, but he was poised to use Hypnotism, which was often all about direction dialog. This entire plan was much an experiment, of his skill and ambition. Laszlo had no real thing to call his own, no home or roots or origins. Might as well start somewhere. That had been his reasoning and justification for all this. "And Victor—we've actually met before." By now the human was probably already guessing, but a pinprick of guilt tickled the pit of Laszlo's stomach. He'd lied about his name and had been misleading about his identity. There had been no real reason why, other than a childlike desire to be something of more substance. "Down in the lobby, my first night here. I introduced myself as Vethis. It's as much my name as 'Laszlo' is, I suppose, but the name I gave you belongs to a dead man. I wasn't really very honest, but pretending to be a Symenestra was easier at the time than explaining that I wasn't what I appeared to be." His golden eyes flickered back to Seven, who had by now dressed himself. "Most people aren't aware of what an Ethaefal is."

[Victor Lark]

“Vethis Orthilia! Who would have thought!” He replied, only bothering to sit up once their visitor had addressed him specifically. He moved the sheets around himself in a brief recollection of modesty, and forgot them as soon as he reached over Seven for what remained of the bedside’s clothes pile. As he dressed, he pieced the lie together inwardly; as much as he hated being deceived, he would be civil. He knew better ways than an angry display to repay a person who had offended him, and none of them involved revealing the offense.

But Seven seemed to like him, and both Laszlo and Vethis were proving interesting as strangers, mysteries to be solved. Victor decided he could be won, that he could respect the charade if Vethis turned out to be intelligent. There was a bitter taste on his tongue, but not on his tone; it politely refuted Seven’s aversion to the poor man’s race and dared to voice what he would not. “We know what you are, Vethis. Perhaps better than most.” He winked and dropped the subject.

His feet slid to the cold floor as he fastened the final button at his waist, meeting the yellow eyes that had avoided his nudity as his cotton-bound thigh pressed against Seven’s. Victor decided to ignore the apology, to let Vethis guess his opinion of it. He stared as he spoke, trying to match the gold to the amethysts he had seen so many nights ago.

“It’s not that same place we found, the one with the window?” He laughed, because it was the only way to abate the embarrassment associated with such a window. He looked out the one that lighted their room, as if he would see the black face of the abandoned building looking back at him, as if it would elucidate what these men had not. When he found no answers, his eyes settled on Seven, who had apparently seen the place, too. He wrapped a hand around the Lhavitian’s bony knee.

“A soon-to-be tavern,” he mused sarcastically. “I don’t see it. But tell me about this idea of yours. I never took you for a businessman!”

[Seven Xu]

“I’m trying new things,” a laughing retort pealed between them as head of white nudged a mess of silken black. Four bony fingers were added to the collection on his knee, dipping between and scrutinizing the weight of the knuckles that perched there. Apprehension had faded, as the warmth from two spent lovers had faded between linen sheets; Seven’s head tipped to a shoulder, his eyes reached out to grasp at the carefully carved features of Laszlo’s face. “Like trusting an Ethaefal long enough to make some money with him.”

A shoulder rocketed towards the rafters, Laszlo’s face became a blur of age-old wood, Seven’s back met feather mattress in an audible thump and he drew his feet from the chilly floorboards to favor a shaky grip between the folds of a sheet. The prostrate halfblood exhaled his next thought in an unintelligible mutter-sigh, rolled his head sideways, and examined a line of exposed skin where shirt and pant dared to drift along Victor’s back. “It’s simple, really,” two fingers probed the stretch of an olive-hued back, while bent knees knocked together, “we need a place to live. I mean, you don’t plan on going anywhere, do you?

“We could have a place of our own,” he went on, knitting his fingers together at his stomach and donning that heavy-lidded dreamer’s smile he was so adept at, eyes never leaving the small of his bird’s back, “better yet, we could make something of ourselves here. I’m tired of being some nameless foreigner, it’s what I’ve been all my life.”

Laszlo was gone from the room now, a thousand leagues away for all he cared. The cloying late-morning sun still flooded gold and warmth through the dingy window above their rented single bed. Seven’s fingers climbed against flesh, grabbed for the wrap of well-worn cotton. Several moments passed in silence: a chorus of gulls paid their tribute to incoming ships, pregnant with fall’s harvest; Victor’s breathing slowed in unspoken contentment, and despite the fidgeting of his fool’s legs, kept his hand firm on one knee; Seven chewed at a fleshy bottom lip.

“It could be fun.”

[Laszlo]

They weren't shy, were they? Laszlo kept himself safely on the other side of the room, tightening the knot of his arms across his chest as grew gradually more uncomfortable. Although he made his facial expression carefully neutral, Laszlo's apprehensiveness was given away by the slow, mild tilt of his head. The molten amber of Laszlo's eyes never left the two of them however; there was just the slightest, childish curiosity about what was going on between them. Laszlo had only had one other lover. He cleared his throat. "I think there's opportunity in it. I haven't stumbled across many other bars in this city, at least none worth mentioning. The Withering Rose is an attractive place, but it's a bit too…" Symenestra-like in its elegance. "…refined, for me. I don't care for wine, as it is. I had a more relaxed establishment in mind. I intend to do it, regardless, but Seven suggested a sort of… partnering." Drawing from his inward reserves of djed, Laszlo's tongue tingled with a piquant cinnamon flavor as he pushed out his next few words, made almost irrefutable by the seductive flourish of Hypnotism. "It's a very good idea. It could work in our best interests."

[Victor Lark]

Victor gave Seven a soft chuckle, tracing a hard finger over the hilly knuckles at his waist. The morning’s grogginess had not escaped him entirely, but he was interested enough in the proposition to keep from escaping entirely into his lover’s drifting embrace. Thoughts of wealth trickled between the cracks of his subconscious, its only excuse for filling the hole carved by Laszlo’s suggestion. Money was something he was lucky enough to have earned with birth, and the luxury that came with it had not been entirely lost on his travels. It was something he had always thought he could do without, if he ever wanted, but neither did he want to attempt a life of poverty, yet.

That, and it would be fun. It was something he had never done before, and so it had to be more fun than what he was doing now. Still, the idea of working was not exactly a top priority oh his. Distracted olive fingers slipped from knees and knuckles to lace together before him, hanging pensively from arms set to his thighs. If only to be argumentative, to give himself time to consider and room to renege, the fool’s bird found himself thinking of responsibility and logistics.

“It’s a lovely idea, Vethis. Really.” He breathed a flitting sigh, too light to be heavy and too loud to be real. “But none of us know anything about running a business. We could buy a building and some beer, but how much does it cost to keep it running? Where would we buy more supplies? How would we get people to come?”

Victor eyed the ethaefal carefully. He secretly hoped he would not give up so easily, but any reaction would do. The look turned into a sideways glance before he finally turned back to Seven, tracing the cold outline of his white ear. The denial was a dare to both of them. “If we really want to stay, we can just buy a house, can’t we?”

[Seven Xu]

“We could.”

The halfblood tipped his head into cloying fingertips, and unruly white strands leaked out from behind his ear. Apprehensions of a sheltered life been stripped away with autumn’s browning leaves. Even Laszlo, the near-stranger, was not afforded the courtesy of modesty, because his bird had weaned it out of him. “Or, we could buy a house that’s also a tavern. We would meet people—Alvads—we would fit in, be a part of something bigger.”

Seven had thought that Victor would be contented by his want for inclusion in a city he had only half-wanted to travel to. When he balked, his fool frowned. “And stop calling him Vethis; his name is Laszlo.” The mattress groaned, and Seven was upright again, chest pressed to his knees, hands busying themselves between his toes, warming where rumpled sheets had failed. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be afraid of these things,” he laughed an unsmiling laugh, but murky crimson added, not you, you’re fearless, “At least look upon the place again, before you say no.”

The body-warm comforts of the bed were left behind, with its sea-salt and musk smells and sun-lit perfection. Seven stood to approach a nearby chair, where a heap of grey wool was tossed carelessly over its back. “We should go there,” he began, wrapping the coat around his thin frame, where it did little to add bulk. Two sets of white fingers busied between wooden buttons and their holes; his head swiveled to eye Laszlo, “Unless you have something to do today. I know Victor doesn’t.”

[Laszlo]

Finally, Laszlo could no longer cope with the pair's flagrant lack of modesty. His eyes were dutifully cast aside, in a gesture that communicated both exasperation and a wordless apology for his intrusion. Fingers drummed nervously against his upper arm, quietly waiting while they briefly talked between themselves. When Seven addressed Laszlo again, the Ethaefal turned his head, then slightly brightened. The Dra had put on a coat. He shook his head. "Nothing I can't postpone. With any luck, we won't have to spend all day looking for it." The smirk that followed was involuntary. Despite the devious shuffling of Alvadas' streets destroying any concept of a daily commute, there was a certain novelty in wandering the city and allowing it to decide where it was you wanted to go. In addition to the quirks of the city (the occasional rivers of lava or sideways trees), it gave the place a sort of newness to Alvads. It was easier to enjoy the mystery than resent it. A nod was given to the human, still in bed. "I had the fortune of running into the Sanity Center yesterday." Literally. "I talked to a woman there and asked a few questions. The cumulative costs of running a business didn't seem as steep as I first thought. I agree with Seven, though. We should take a look before we talk coin." Laszlo took a step backward, beginning to pull himself out of the room. "I'll leave you to make ready. I need to grab my jacket. My door will be open, when you're done." With a shallow bow, Laszlo turned and left, closing the door behind him. He exhaled then, feeling the beat of his heart all the way up in his neck. There was a certain exhilaration about this. Laszlo was absolutely unsure of himself, but nothing had gone horribly wrong yet.