Anything But Ordinary (Aubin)

[Vae]

She didn't remember Aubin's studio being so tall and imposing the last time she had visited. She looked up at it the way some people look up at the jury house on conviction day. Though she paused at the bottom of the stairs she knew he probably already realized she was there, and it would do little good to dawdle. Except perhaps for her nerves.

"Want me to go in with you?" Andrew offered. She has asked him to walk her there but hadn't said why. She was just a little freaked out to wander the city on her own now that she knew Valir's dark secret, whatever Aubin said about being all the safer for knowing him. She smiled in gratitude to her friend.

"No thanks, you can see me naked when it goes up in shop windows." Andrew blushed lightly at her teasing but kidded about waiting with bated breath, before leaving her with more than one backwards glance. He wasn't sure why his friend was involved in that stuff at all, it was much more up Mannie's alley, but he had a spine like a wet noodle so he left her be. Besides, the person who talked Vae out of her mind deserved an award.

She hesitated only a moment more before she ascended the stairs. If he hadn't forgotten her entirely Aubin might be expecting her; it was an appointment they had set up prior for a painting session, which after consideration she had decided to go through with. By avoiding her obligation she could go back to her mundane but comfortable track towards a very usual death. Except since she met Aubin and saw his sketch of her there had been an element of her life that was at the very least unusual, and at most might even be magical. Whether it would be the heart warming magic of Disney films or the horrifying kind told around campfires, she didn't know, but she was willing to give one more of her numbered nights exploring it. She owed that to someone who had brought her comfort without even trying, even if he had also brought her a dose of realism she had been avoiding.

So she knocked and she waited.

[Aubin]

Aubin had not, as it happened, felt the girl approach. This was unusual for him, but could be explained, at least in part, by both his distraction and his assumption that Vae would not arrive for their appointment. At the moment of her knocking he had been standing barefoot amid a sea of paint splatters and discarded canvases, each of which was in a partial state of completion. Whatever he was trying to paint (a self portrait it seemed) was clearly escaping him. The individual works were each beautiful (or would have been, were they not slashed and x-ed out with broad strokes in fits of temperamental irritation) but something in them clearly displeased their maker. They varied in style and tone, demonstrating not only a wealth of talent but also one of the side effects of living through so many artistic movements. Each painted Aubin represented a different movement; 600 hundred years of artistic development all centred around the same figure lay spread on the floor.

Aubin stalked to the door and flung it open, presenting a rather more rumpled and wild version of himself than usual. He wore his usual shirt and trousers but the former was unbuttoned and his exposed chest was lashed with paint, just as his hands and feet were. His hair stood in peaks and horns and was in places stuck that way thanks to streaks of paint he had apparently accidentally contaminated it with when running his hands through his hair. His wound was not covered and still healing. It looked better than before, much better in fact, but still had that strange, shiny-pink look of new skin.

"What?!" he demanded without looking at who stood before his door. He paused, looked, and focused on Vae. "You're here. I didn't think you'd come."

He blinked at her in surprise, then stepped aside so she could enter. "Come in."

[Vae]

Quite without meaning to Vae flinched as the door was flung open, and it took several seconds for her to slow her heartbeat back down to its normal pace. She chastised herself for being rude but then decided that if Aubin was going to have her around for any length of time he would have to get used to not moving in ways which could be classified as any of the following: quick, sudden, unexpected, angry, annoyed, intense, scary, hungry, and/or murderous. He should also not look completely mad and unkempt as he did just then, if he could possibly avoid it, but since she had not yet given him his list of do-nots he must be forgiven this time.

“Thanks,” she replied to his invitation, not yet able to look him in the eyes enough to apologize for her disappearance the last time they spoke, and because it wasn't the first thing she got out when she saw him it settled back into the position of 'that thing I should do before I leave.' Her eyes focused on the many unfinished paintings around the room and her mouth created a soft 'o' that she didn't vocalized. Whatever flaws he found her untrained eyes couldn't see and she only saw the obvious talent in the works around her.

“Wow,” she said simply. She shook her head, but for the first time realized that it might be easy for a person to be an incredible painter if they have several lifetimes to perfect it. “Just how long have you been doing this?”

[Aubin]

"Six hundred and twenty-seven years," grunted Aubin, his frustration still lingering and evident. "My parents apprenticed me at four. A bit young, but they were convinced I had talent. My master agreed, fortunately, and didn't keep me restricted to making brushes and mixing paints."

He wound his way through the paintings to the centre of the room and stared, frowning, at the painting currently on the easel. It was another self portrait, this one in a style similar to the one he was using for Vae's portrait. Symbols and colours, swirling, served at the background, as did a handful of humanoid figures. One was recognizable as Illiam, despite being heavily shaded, but the others were increasingly obscure as they faded into the background. Aubin glared at it then quite sudden painted a wide, severe 'X" across the centre and tossed the canvas into the pile of discarded work.

"I hate self-portraits."

He turned, exasperated, and studied the girl. "I wasn't sure if I'd be seeing you again, Vae. If you've come out of a sense of commitment because of the money, you needn't have done so. Admitting to being a vampyr rather changes the contract, after all."

[Vae]

She stared at him a good long while, saved from the force of throwing yet another beautiful painting away because she was too busy being awed by the sheer ancientness of the man next to her. It was like being in the old ruins of long gone civilizations, only one didn't have to wonder what it was like. All it took to know was asking. It at once made her feel curious and small, and she wondered what kind of God would grant the ability to live forever to only a select group of people, and what importance lied in the distinction.

His next words chided her more than he knew or intended, and she winced lightly. “I'm not here for the money,” she corrected him lamely, disappointed to have given him that impression at all. “I'm sorry I walked away from you the other night. It was a lot to take in and I guess I just got overwhelmed.” She shrugged. “I'm still game if you are, if you promise not to kill me,” she told hm. “Unless I ask,” she added as afterthought.

[Aubin]

He smiled wryly and lifted a hand, mimicking the boy scout salute. "I solemnly swear," he intoned, "that I will not kill you. Neither will Illiam. Neither of us choose to feed that way. Illiam maintains a number of willing hosts throughout the city and I primary feed through blood bags."

He gestured to a side table where just such a bag, now empty and half crushed, was visible among stacked pant canister caps and sheafs of sketches. It had been drained almost to the last drop. A bright yellow sticky note was affixed to it. Illiam's neat, precise hand writing was visible and if Vae cared to read the message she would see it said simply: 'Don't forget to eat. You're starting to look peaky again. XOXO I'

"It's not as good cold, but I've never been the type to fuss over food. I eat and move on. Illiam's the one you want to talk about if you're into food. He and his friends are the ones who are always claiming certain dishes are 'sensual' or 'moody' or 'a hybridity of interesting inspirations'"

He rolled his eyes then retrained them on the girl. "I'm willing to continue. I'd prefer to, to be honest."

[Vae]

Vae nodded her head. "Good. I'm glad." She smiled, a warm expression that showed she was more than capable of moving past the initial fear his revelation inspired. In fact maybe that was what this was all about, in the end, and had been from the very start. She wasn't an exhibitionist, to go posing nude, nor did she have a death wish, to be spending time with a vampyr. But she was afraid, and if she could learn to look fear in the face and stand fast by doing something a little daring then she was willing to try. After all, what did she have to lose?

"So," she started then, glancing around the room. "Where do we start?" Her inexperience with this kind of thing was well known to Aubin, but like the first day of interning at the hospital she was determined that her newness wouldn't translate into insecurity. She had a capable teacher and if she needed direction she could ask. There was not much more one could ask for in a new experience than that.

[Aubin]

"Generally with you disrobing," replied Aubin mildly. He set about moving canvases so that there was a space for the girl to sit and space for him to paint as well. "You can put your clothes anywhere. There's a robe you can slip on for the moment in the closet. Just grab any that takes your fancy. You will have to be fully exposed today but in the future we can probably go bit by bit. I need to get the unclothed general shape at the very least. And the shading. It won't look like much at the end of today's sitting - try not to take it personally."

He set a new canvas on his easel and produced a set of pencils from under the debris of a half read newspaper. "I can put the heat on if you're cold. I have portable heaters as well. Did you want anything before we begin? Water or wine or something?"

[Vae]

She tried desperately to and succeeded at not blushing, though the effort may have been obvious. Of course the first step was 'disrobing' as he so eloquently put it. She was embarrassed at having it said but was surprised to find that she was numb to any awkward feeling towards actually getting undressed, perhaps because she had already had so many unfamiliar pairs of eyes and even hands on her in the last month or so that it made no difference now who saw her. Modesty was a thing of the past for her, and had been ever since her routine had started to include regular probing visits to doctors offices around town. Getting undressed for Aubin really posed nothing new, except that this time there would be no thin pretense of paper clothing or charade of not feeling exposed. In a way, to be beyond that lie would be an intense relief.

At his offer of refreshment, she hesitated only a brief moment before nodding. "Alcohol would be great." She wasn't supposed to, but she had often found in her young adult life that alcohol greatly relieved any awkwardness when getting naked with strange men. Why should it be any different because the ends were different this time? "Whatever you have, wine is fine," she nodded honestly. She was never fussy, but even less so in this particular instance. She just wanted something to take off the edge and warm the blood.

In his absence, she set about starting as he had directed, by getting undressed. She did so in the space he had cleared, opening the offered closet first and, for lack of a more tactful way of describing it, took to snooping curiously as she removed her clothing. She had been careful to take off her bra about an hour before making the walk to his studio, because she had seen this movie once, Calendar Girls she thought it was called, and they had done the same thing to avoid bra lines. It was silly, but she had done it. The feeling of being out and about without a bra was somewhat liberating (until a few hours into it when she felt gravity working) but it was ironic how that feeling of independence seemed to deflate as she pulled her powder pink top over her head and was left completely uncovered. She slipped out of her skirt, which she wore almost exclusively in a belated bid to please her mother, and tugged down one of the lighter robes to stave off any chill. She abandoned her clothes, folded neatly in a pile, and moved back into the room proper.

[Aubin]

Aubin returned with a long stemmed glass of white wine. He preferred red himself and as such kept a greater quantity of it in his flat but given his recent revelation white seemed the better choice. He couldn't have Vae running off naked into the streets should she make a mental comparison between the wine in her glass and the fluid he, Aubin, more commonly consumed. She might forgive him for being a vampyr but she probably wouldn't forgive him for humiliating her in the middle of always heavily populated South Quadrant.

He passed her the glass and then held out one of the sketches from their last session. "I like this pose best," he explained "with some modifications. "For the initial painting. Your personal one, of course, can be anything you'd like. We should discuss that one further at some point. You said you wanted it for your parents? I'm assuming a nude is out, but I'll need an idea of your vision."

He was moving about now, shifting the various tools of his trade left and right and left again until everything was precisely where he wanted it. It was evident that while his studio seemed to be only casually, even chaotically, organized, the seemingly haphazard arrangement of items was intentional. Everything was (and indeed had to be) exactly where Aubin needed it.