one night of magic rush

[blyat]

WHO: Cain, Prompto, Hideki Maeda, and you!
WHERE: The popular Asylum club.
WHEN: Night of October 26.
WHAT: Cain and Prompto's joint birthdays!
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Beyond drinking/smoking, general wild party behavior, and fake friendship, there shouldn't be much. Will update as needed.


[Set deep in the downtown of New Amsterdam's entertainment district is Asylum, arguably the most popular club in the city. The exterior is cool steel beams and tasteful futuristic architecture with a long line down the corridor, suited bouncers posed at the entrance all armed with a virtual guest list. Its interior is fashioned with bright, colorful lighting dynamic to the music of the infamous DJ Semicolon, high ceilings and acoustic sounds to lend that feeling of a constant full-body hum. Any partygoers on the guest list for this event will be funneled toward the VIP section. They will have received an invitation a few days prior via their Cooltalk profiles. Jason is specifically blacklisted, sorry buddy.

DANCE YOUR HEART OUT. Nearly impossible to book without deep pockets or wide-reaching connections, Semicolon is at the top of their game mixing popular contemporary hits with Whitney Houston's classics. From song to song, Semicolon provides a unique and talented contrast of the slow to the energetic, so no matter your dancing style, you'll find something to move you on the dance floor.

DROWN YOUR... LIVER. Courtesy of the party's host, Hideki Maeda, the VIP section's private bar will provide an ever-flowing river of your favorite expensive high-proof alcohol. Pick your poison.

CHILL OUT. Tired on your feet from too much dancing, or just need a break from the packed atmosphere? There are plenty of comfortable areas where you can relax and take it easy until you're ready to get back out there. The lights around this area cycle through different colors in reflection of Semicolon's performance set, so a slower song might lend toward romantic shades of red while a faster-paced song is brighter blue.

SMOKE, EAT & MINGLE. Asylum will be serving real, fresh meat at this party, so enjoy that luxury while it lasts. There is also an outdoor area with a beautiful view over the city itself if you want to take your vape pen out there for a smoke, just get some air, or see who's around for a chat.]

Comments

[laozu]

[ what he fishes for is not cain's shame, nor his ire, but confirmation enough that he acknowledges whatever is between him and abel. wei wuxian likes the navigator enough, he's an emotional tenderling, but only because his heart is in all the right places; he'd seen him cry over cain, "his fighter", so more than anything - he just wants to see. not a why, not a how - he just wants to see it between them, because maybe it will answer the own questions brewing in his belly. the ones he doesn't even know how to voice. ]

It sounds like it's difficult on you.

[ gut instinct, as always. one can't be an effective detective, or a senior cultivator, without being able to cold read someone. he imagines that it can't be easy to play pretend all the time, event though he is a man who does nearly the same thing on behalf of his own loved ones. ]

Honestly, I didn't know that was... how someone could take this. At least, someone who's not a woman. We don't overtly -- flirt, not between men. It's not wrong, mind you. It's just a quiet affair. And yes, that's my name. My real name, not the name of... [ quietly, he touches his fingers together - guides them to his body's forearms in thought, reflective and grieving - for "himself", yet not himself ] The person I'm trying to do right by.

[ he can give cain that, there's no harm in it ]

Pass that here. I'll pay you back, I promise.

[ and he holds a hand out, for the item that the other man has been huffing on outside ]

[blyat]

Not difficult to fuck someone.

[While that was clearly not what Wei Wuxian meant, it's another deliberate deflection, one shoulder rolled in a slight shrug.]

So, it's just a problem of it being other guys? [Cain's memory flashes back to that dock, the lotuses afloat on the still water, the stiff air of serenity around them. Not a place for wildness. Something in those mannerisms comes across old, traditional, stuffy. Not like where they had traveled from in the dreams, within the landscape of Cain's own mind he's not eager to discuss or relive.] Welcome to the future, nobody gives a shit here.

[Surfacing the device from his pocket, he holds it out as offering.]

Press the button till it glows red, then inhale from the tip.

[laozu]

Difficult to play with someone, I mean.

[ cain might try to dodge it, but wei wuxian fires back without hesitation.

their entire conversation is really, really feeling like a constant attempt to set the other one off-guard, and then to maintain that advantage over them. he does consider the question at length, trying to encompass all of the things he knows about society into the simplest of terms - who actually likes hearing about cultural relations and social stratification, after all? - without missing the nuances that make it important. ]

It's not a problem, [ he emphasizes, ] as long as it's not loud. No relationships are meant to be loud, even between a man and a woman. "Restraint" is so important, and so very stupid. While I've never had a relationship - I wouldn't want to be subtle about it. I've been lucky to live three lives now, and each one does nothing to temper my desire to live it well.

[ he thinks of mo xuanyu, the young man who's reputation had been absolutely annihilated, simply because he had been a little too earnest, a little too naive. the rumors had lead him to absolute unhappiness, to ruin, to his death. ]

-- I think the future would have been far kinder to that person.

[ the words are rueful, and he takes the device when it is offered, following the instructions until he's exhaling into the air. it tastes good, like an old itch being scratched. ]

[blyat]

[Three separate lives. Is it a figure of speech? Dark eyes follow him through the motions, that exhalation an opaque cloud of vapor over the air. The wind soon scatters it.

Which person is it he means, Xuanyu Mo? Spoken as if someone entirely separate from Wei Wuxian, not the same flesh, not the same bones, not the same identity. He doesn't understand it, but that must be as intended. Nothing's been given to him straight out except the names, the little insinuations of something more.]

You know, I like you better like this. [A gesture toward all of him, one sweep of a hand.] When you're not fucking around with me.

[Maybe he hasn't, this whole time. Still feels like it. The teasing, the flighty energy, all of it working to get under his skin. This wears more honesty.]

Three lives, and you've never been in a relationship?

[laozu]

[ he turns the electronic item over in his hands ( it's been ages, a decade and three, since he's smoked - he prefers to perform such a task at the desk, etching his studies and notes into a stack of papers the thickness of his wrist by the time of his first death -- yiling's manifesto, yiling's studies of demonic cultivation -- ), while cain remarks on his manner. it's less obtuse, like this.

his brows are softer, his expression a little more suitable for a man in his mid-thirties than the flush of youth that mo xuanyu had been in. it makes him look like he's trying hard, as he draws one last time on cain's strange little smoking stick and then hands it back. ]

It's all me, [ he offers, as if the knowledge that his high-octane joviality and the coiled spring of severity that overcomes him being one-in-the-same is a thing that eludes most: ] But, if it makes you happier, how can I resist? I'm surprised you find this "me" more soothing than the other, most people I knew found me threatening.

[ three lives, he counts them as. his first, the second that "ended" at koi tower, and this one, in new amsterdam: the third. ]

I didn't really have time for such things. Like you and Abel, I was also fighting a war before my first life's end. My second was - oh, barely a year long, I was so clumsy with it. This one doesn't seem to have room for love or sex either, I'm a nobody here, yet beholden to a great many. I can't let you outshine me, after all.

[blyat]

[He retrieves the device from that hand, tucked between his own lips to inhale a peel of vapor and exhale it back out into the void of the sky. It scratches an itch, a heady veil of nicotine that doesn't last. Overlaid with all the alcohol he's had since the night began, Cain feels relaxed, even in the face of this man before him. Even as Wei Wuxian seems to change, chameleon like a flipped switch.]

Dunno, should I find you threatening? [It reminds him of the posturing of fighters, of men afraid of war, too many frustrated and homesick soldiers trapped in one space, kept separate by regulation. It's familiar. He knows how to navigate someone like this, or so he thinks, whoever this is. A man wearing more than one face.] So what you're saying is you've lived three different lives? Whole different people? [His eyes narrow on Wei Wuxian as he inhales another white cloud of vapor.] Don't get it, but it's not the weirdest shit I've heard yet.

[Superpowers, alternate timelines, literal gods. The list of unbelievable claims is endless.]

And you're not a nobody. We're all fuckin' special, in case you hadn't noticed. But if you're trying to find sex it's really not that hard. [Cain rolls one shoulder in a shrug.] Can't give you advice on love.

[laozu]

No.

[ actually, he's glad that cain treats him like this. as someone to navigate but not take seriously; cain doesn't know a thing about his old life, his old reputation - that violent and ugly thing that creeps along at his heels like a faithful, sickly hound. all red eyes, carrion birds, gravedirt and haunting elegies played on the dark flute he keeps bound at his waist no matter where he goes. ]

I was born Wei Wuxian. In that life, my reputation took on a power of its own -- and then I died. I wasn't lying to you, in that dream, about knowing how much death hurts. I was reborn into this body, "Mo Xuanyu" gave his life up for me. For some reason that I don't understand, but I'm not going to mistreat him --

[ we're all fuckin' special, cain says. it's not something he really wants to hear, when he's so content living a life that's as carefree and unattended by watchful, prying eyes as possible. he could be happy, busking the streets forever; he tells himself that. ]

I want to be nobody, mister Cain. I can sing and usurp the mind, I could easily fade away and make everyone forget about me. One by one. I just want to get my countrymen home, and then I want to be a nobody for the rest of this beautiful new life. I love it. Are you sure you don't know what love is? Sometimes it's as simple as that. Just a beautiful, fresh opportunity to do something differently.

[blyat]

[Love is a minefield. Love is a territory he doesn't want to venture, not in this conversation, not with this person, not when he's still chewing on the knowledge that Wei Wuxian is more than one man who's died and been reborn into different identities, different lives. It's not a simple thing. Cain understands having more than a single name, but he's never died -- the hole in his gut is the closest he's come. Maybe he will die from it, if he ever gets back. Maybe the Alliance will find them. Maybe they'll escape, run to some other place on the lam.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But he's here right now, and this is the only life he knows.

Cain turns away and drapes both arms over the railing, casually smoking, inhaling and exhaling another white cloud of vapor.]

Go be a nobody, then. Hell if I'm gonna stop you.

[Why would he? It's not his business, he's not going to question what it means to make people forget, to have their minds taken over. He lets the silence lapse for a few empty heartbeats before he breaches it again.]

... How'd you die?

[laozu]

You're too sweet.

[ has anybody ever said that about him? have such words been said before one as eclectic and brazen as wei wuxian opened his mouth and laughed over cain's easy dismissal of his desires. the freedom, in that, is addictive. in this one person, he finds someone who won't bother to stop him - and it's enough to content him, leading him to lean over the same railing and look out at the city.

for someone who never shuts up, he's able to maintain a peaceable silence as well - until he's engaged once more. ]

I was torn to pieces by corpses and by the dark power of the Burial Mounds. Nothing was left of me, is what I've heard! I don't believe that though, surely there must have been scraps of cloth and meat at the least! My corpses were never that delicate, except for Wen Ning. I wish you could have met him! I really miss him, he's back home in China - in my era - and I hope he's taking good care of himself, his hair is a magnet for twigs and ruffage, ugh...

[ you asked........ ]

[blyat]

[A far more gruesome fate than the one Cain suffered on the hull of that ship, in the dream, built on a real life example of memory. Wei Wuxian weaves the brutal description into a fond reflection of a friend. He finds himself openly staring as though this other man has grown a second head, so thoughtless is the transition, but those barriers are down between them. There's less shock at the violence itself than its delivery.]

Thought you would've been eaten by dogs or something, sounded like they really freaked you out.

[Torn to pieces by corpses, instead. Cain's never seen one that wasn't dead on the ground, never to walk again, never to bear any resemblance to the living. That one might reanimate itself... it gives him a crawling sense of discomfort. Dead things should stay dead. But then, what did it mean for this person, who had lived three lives.]

What is it, some kind of magic bullshit? Whatever lets you come back after you die. Can't be technology like they got here.

[laozu]

Er, no. I just - I don't like dogs on principle. The dogs, on the street were, um. They bit a lot.

[ an orphan just shy of six does not competition make, for a wily street hound. he could still count the bites on his ankles and wrists, when he had his old body, even when he was well into his adult years. he'd always been a bit more mangy than the other cultivators, a little rougher, a little less pristine. the dog-fear follows him, he doesn't know how to give it voice other than yelling and crying over it. it's not a topic cain needs to have to use against him, either.

the corpses, he does not and has never really feared. ]

It was a spell, you're correct. One of my own, actually. The young man who used it, Mo Xuanyu, he got hold of my cultivation notes somehow. [ he has an idea how, actually ] And he used them to sacrifice himself, willingly - to give his body to me in the name of vengeance. He -- he's dead now, irrevocably. And I'm here instead.

[blyat]

[That explanation earns a lasting look, although it doesn't linger long. Cain's attention tilts back out toward the skyline. He brings the pen again to his own lips, inhales, exhales the white transparent cloud.]

You're really telling me a lot.

[An observation, mildly stated. He wonders if this is adjacent to Wei Wuxian's attempt to befriend him, this simple honesty, or if this is how he is to everyone.]

Why hand out valuable information about yourself to a complete stranger?

[Never mind the dream, and Cain's stark vulnerability in that moment. It feels like a lifetime ago; like it happened to someone else.]

[laozu]

You asked.

[ he folds his hands together, steepling his fingers as he looks out to the world and ignores the festivities inside. a joint birthday, how old is cain? old enough to know to be quiet about himself, to resist friendliness, it appears. he doesn't want to live his old life, he wants to kick that idiot in the head sometimes, but hiding it from people is not giving them an opportunity to turn him away properly. in his mind, they'd always be waiting on him to drop the other shoe. ]

And you looked like you could use some honesty. It can't be easy, working with that boy in there.

[ not prompto, his tone implies. the rich one. ]

You resist my advances quite well, but somehow you're his best friend? I didn't want to lie to you.

[blyat]

[Prompto isn't the difficult associate, he understands that pointed reference. Hideki is another beast. Nothing he feels he can't handle, but there's some weariness in how it's pulled him into a familiar dynamic: distance and concealment. Maybe he isn't wearing the same guise, maybe it doesn't bear the closeness of before, but those barriers are still there.]

Best friend is one thing to call it. Not really accurate.

[Dark eyes travel back toward the door, an exit off the balcony. A touch of paranoia reaches Cain. He'll keep the details under a wrap.]

Hideki doesn't know what we are, obviously. What we can do. He's separate from all that. But his parents are pretty powerful and well-known, you've heard of 'em, right? [Everyone knows the Maedas, even the extent of their influence may be shades more nebulous.] Beats me why he likes me and Prompto so much. Maybe we're just that cool.

[laozu]

[ in the moment where cain's eyes slide off of him, towards the door, he shifts his weight in the other man's direction - into his space, under his peripheral vision and hovers there. smug, satisfied by the answer he's given. it confirms a few things: cain isn't entirely happy, he's playing a role. whatever he and prompto are up to, in hideki maeda's circle, they have it handled. ]

Well, if you ever need an out -- I could offer my services.

[ but he doesn't intend to weasel in on the work that the pair are doing.

he's already mentioned his ability to cain, a little gift laid at his feet for his use - however he might like it. ]

Are you kidding me? You two are the perfect party companions. Fashionable, handsome, popular. Toto is a sweetheart and a charmer and you're a wild child, who in their right mind wouldn't gravitate to you? I have no idea who he is. Just that he's not one of us, and we're all playing somesort of game in this world. Some more dangerous than others.