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I am sincere, even when I lie
Jean-Claude found the whole request terribly amusing. And more than a little gratifying to his ego, less so to have his power acknowledged and more in terms of how representative it is of his success in ingratiating himself to the human world. Vampires have not been legal ten years yet, and already Jean-Claude is considered approachable enough, dangerous yet safe enough, to receive requests like these.
There was a considerable amount of work behind that, and more than being a Master of the City or even a sourdre de sang, it is not something another vampire could do, or has done.
So it puts him in a good enough mood to accept. He has many questions of his own, but he prefers to ask them in person and on his own territory. Although he knows phones and computers, Jean-Claude has never gotten comfortable with them, as they remain a peculiarly human insistence. Important vampire functions are always carried out in person, no matter the distance to travel. The time involved feels immaterial when you are immortal until killed.
Of course, he puts on a show for his visitor, awaiting him in an old-fashioned receiving room beneath the Circus of the Damned. The Circus itself might've been an experience just to walk through on the way down - there are a couple truly singular acts, such as the world's last living lamia, a fierce and inhuman woman with the lower body of a snake. On entering the restricted area, the Circus's dark gothic decor meant for tourists gives way to a more sincere and lavish set of living quarters. Bronze sconces and both fine and modern art line the stone walls, far enough underground to be devoid of windows, and tufted area rugs scatter between clean white and black furniture. Staff and residents mill about, casting the visitor curious and sometimes covetous looks, but leave him alone given his escort, who he sheds at the door to the receiving room.
Jean-Claude himself is arranged on a wing-backed armchair, an over-the-top vision in lace and leather, as always, one leg slung over the other. He has an empty wine glass in his hand as a prop, and water and wine set out on a coffee table between the chairs and couches.
"Monsieur Sims, welcome," he says in his smooth, tactile voice, without standing. "Have a seat. Help yourself. It is a pleasure to receive such a distinguished guest so unattached from my normal circles." He smiles a politician's smile, polite and sincere while giving away nothing of substance.
There was a considerable amount of work behind that, and more than being a Master of the City or even a sourdre de sang, it is not something another vampire could do, or has done.
So it puts him in a good enough mood to accept. He has many questions of his own, but he prefers to ask them in person and on his own territory. Although he knows phones and computers, Jean-Claude has never gotten comfortable with them, as they remain a peculiarly human insistence. Important vampire functions are always carried out in person, no matter the distance to travel. The time involved feels immaterial when you are immortal until killed.
Of course, he puts on a show for his visitor, awaiting him in an old-fashioned receiving room beneath the Circus of the Damned. The Circus itself might've been an experience just to walk through on the way down - there are a couple truly singular acts, such as the world's last living lamia, a fierce and inhuman woman with the lower body of a snake. On entering the restricted area, the Circus's dark gothic decor meant for tourists gives way to a more sincere and lavish set of living quarters. Bronze sconces and both fine and modern art line the stone walls, far enough underground to be devoid of windows, and tufted area rugs scatter between clean white and black furniture. Staff and residents mill about, casting the visitor curious and sometimes covetous looks, but leave him alone given his escort, who he sheds at the door to the receiving room.
Jean-Claude himself is arranged on a wing-backed armchair, an over-the-top vision in lace and leather, as always, one leg slung over the other. He has an empty wine glass in his hand as a prop, and water and wine set out on a coffee table between the chairs and couches.
"Monsieur Sims, welcome," he says in his smooth, tactile voice, without standing. "Have a seat. Help yourself. It is a pleasure to receive such a distinguished guest so unattached from my normal circles." He smiles a politician's smile, polite and sincere while giving away nothing of substance.
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In truth Jon had avoided thinking too deeply on his humanity, once he knew it was gone. There hadn't been much point. The other avatars had made it abundantly clear there was no going back. None of them had wanted to.
Jon didn't know whether he was afraid of the day he would no longer want to be human, or afraid he had already passed that mark, too.
"Do you ever think it's... better, being a vampire?" The question might sound like it is hunting the information that Jean-Claude deliberately left out but the hesitant way Jon asks, voice quiet, gaze still averted, makes it clear that it is an indirect (and unintended) answer to Jean-Claude's implied question. Jon's never shy about asking other people personal questions.
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Less religious questions about the way monsters cope with having once been human ... Jon's overt demonstration of being willing to act on his behalf has won him a lot more honesty.
"Sometimes I think I have a different opinion every century," he answers with a smile that intentionally shows his fangs. They look almost delicate. "This is a good century, a good decade, even. As Master of the City, things are much better, for me and for all those I have authority over in St. Louis. I can ensure that. It was not the same under Nikolaos." By now, Jon has certainly heard the name of the last Master of St. Louis.
"If I am comparing to where and when I was born, it is no comparison. If you mean better to be a vampire now than to be a human - truthfully, I do not wonder such things anymore. If you do not like what you are, mon égaré, change your environment so you may act like what you are a little less. That is what I did. I have not had an unwilling donor in decades."
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That had been Jon's 'plan' ever since he came to grips with his new existence. But at the moment it felt like a long, endless stretch of grey.
"I see," Jon says quietly. "Sensible advice."
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"Yet you do not seem satisfied with it," he notes, inviting explanation.
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He sighs, frowning at his plate. "Evening if I stay in the archives for the next... however many years, eating nothing but old written statements, there is no way to predict the course of my - my transformation. Eventually, the parts of me that care about not harming others will just - be gone."
He rubs a hand over his face, a gesture Jean-Claude has seen many times before when Jon has wrestled with his thoughts. "I suspect so, anyway. There's hardly a manual, but that seems to be the way the other avatars have gone. I don't know what the Institute will do with me at that point; lock me in a basement somewhere until I starve, most likely. If they can do anything at all."
He ends on a sardonic note but a shudder passes through him. It's not an idle thought.
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"It is difficult to have control or to care about others when you are malnourished or starving. And the more powerful you are, the more difficult it is to care in the abstract, about those you don't know or care for. Those things have created many monsters, of every species. If even you do not know whether it is an inescapable part of your condition, it seems reasonable enough to try."
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"Oh," he says eloquently, taken aback by how... purely sensible that sounds. He had seen first hand how the other avatars had fallen into obsession and pushed aside anyone in their life who would hold them back. Intellectually, Jon knew that his lack of close relationships put him at greater risk to losing himself - that was simply a fact, with the entities - but he had never conceived of getting some friends as so integral and logical a solution. Hearing Jean-Claude line as it if were a simple equation, however, was difficult to argue with.
His mind flashes to his own earlier thoughts, how much more comfortable he had felt these last few weeks, how much better his mood was. Compared to back in the archives where he was constantly snapping at everyone, going days without conversation. Jon told himself it was better to keep his distance.
"I-it's not that simple," he protests, more weakly than he might have. "I'm - I'm dangerous to be around. And... annoying. And unpleasant."
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"For some, danger is an attraction. You are disagreeable, oui, but that does not make you unknowable. I agree it will not be all that simple, but it is much better than locking you in a basement and offering you scraps, and affecting surprise that this creates an amoral predator. What you describe is similar to how I would punish one of my vampires."
In vampires, the meaningful connections they make tend to be human servants, or lycanthropes that they can call, or other vampires of their line. Jean-Claude has been close to all of those, and still is to some. He will never be able to stop loving Asher, and it is beyond a miracle that he has returned to him. If he'd let himself become a monster in truth, he'd never have regained Asher's affections; he'd never have Anita in his life at all; and certainly, his wolves would not show him the sincere loyalty they do. Not to say that Jean-Claude doesn't do monstrous things on a regular basis, but they are all perfectly controlled, and deliberate.
For humans, getting some friends might well be good enough.
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"You - you make it sound like I've already decided," Jon mutters.
Jean-Claude had eerie ability to read Jon's mind: Jon had accused him of concealing psychic abilities before. Perhaps it was simply life experience, having to navigate the social politics of the supernatural world for hundreds of years. And lack of it on Jon's part must be why Jean-Claude remained so damnably opaque to him. Some shades of experience were too subtle for even the Ceaseless Watcher's relentless gaze to delineate.
To all of the people in Jon's life, he had been just as opaque as Jean-Claude was to him. No-one knew the full story, save perhaps his god.
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Much of it really is life experience, but partly, it's just that Jon reminds him in a certain way of himself when he was very young. Oh, Jean-Claude had been a wanton, reckless thing when he was alive, and the dual tragedies of his wife's death in labor with their stillborn child had plunged him headlong into seeking a different life. Immortality and power seemed as different as could possibly be, he'd naively thought at the time.
It was those years after his turning, where he'd been reduced to nothing more than an animal until Belle Morte took him in hand, that he is afraid would happen to Jonathan without his interference. Right now, Jonathan wonders how long he will remain as human as he is. Jean-Claude, as a new vampire, experienced so much degradation and violence he could not retain even the illusion of his humanity. What he has now, he has clawed his way to regaining.
And, more simply, he doesn't often find someone interesting that he can both afford to be compassionate toward, and might deserve that compassion.
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"If- if- if I did decide to, um, p, pursue that option," Jon's words trip over the unfamiliar terrain of trust. This could simply be the culmination of Jean-Claude's efforts to obtain a powerful tool. Jean-Claude himself might have set in motion the incident that provoked Jon's show of loyalty. These objections are loud enough to set Jon's heart pounding.
But in the end, Jon has very little to lose. Manipulated by the Insitute, manipulated by Jean-Claude - it amounted to the same thing, and at least Jean-Claude fed him better. And Jean-Claude had been so... Well. There was no point in getting attached to Jean-Claude's attention; he would very likely re-allocate it once Jon was secured.
Jon swallows, his strident voices comes out barely over a murmur. "... Would I be able to stay here?"
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Because his personal attention doesn't fade with time. It is a long game. Seduction and skillful sex are all about patience, and Jean-Claude is a master. For example: leading Jonathan to ask this himself, to lay it out there in the open as a participant, rather than a recipient.
"Of course," he replies, not too fast, not too eager. A shade of warmth to his tone. Jean-Claude can hear his heartbeat, and he is enough of a predator to find it enticing, a promise of something delicious. "Whether in this city or here in the Circus. You may have my protection if you follow my rules - the same as every other preternatural who reside in my territory."
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"And - and we'll need to go over the risks of having me here," he manages a bit more firmly.
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"Certainement, I would expect nothing different," Jean-Claude murmurs. It's a good sign, trying to negotiate; it means it's an offer considered seriously. He smiles slightly. "There is no written list, per se, but perhaps I will let you write it down. If it is not for academics, but for your particular interest in how to keep monsters from acting too monstrous, I will indulge it."
Some of these rules don't make them look good to the public, which is why they tend to be unspoken. But true to form, Jean-Claude always finds personal motivations more compelling.
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Jean-Claude's normal seductive recline is suddenly replaced with him sitting upright, the pull of the ardeur clinging to his senses and fogging everything.
He closes his eyes to eliminate at least the visual temptation.
"Ma petite is calling on our power," he says in a tight, clipped tone. "If you do not wish to be drawn in to the ardeur, Jonathan, you must leave now. It will compel us to participate in sexual acts no matter our feelings for one another. You have very little time to decide."
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He's halfway through getting up when it occurs to him that Jean-Claude asked Jon to make a choice rather than ordered Jon to leave. This might well be his only chance to experience it. He could interrogate Jean-Claude's taste, but the many was centuries old. If historical portraits were anything to go by, Jean-Claude had dealt with people far worse off in looks than Jon. And Jon was an expedient choice at the moment.
"It's unlikely to have a conventional effect on me, anyway," Jon says, sitting back down.
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He opens his eyes again, feeling the insistent push of lust crawl up his throat and resisting the urge to ensnare him already. "Do not mistake me: I have never encountered a being that was immune to its effects. It does not respect age, sexual orientation, or consent, and it will not release us until we both climax." There is an interesting lack of innuendo to Jean-Claude when he talks business, and for him, sex is frequently business.
There's about thirty seconds until it's all a moot point - he is an expert by now at knowing how to ride the ardeur, and how far he can push it - but Jean-Claude insists on making as much of an attempt at informed consent as he can.
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Besides, Jon was considering rearranging his entire life around Jean-Claude not five minutes ago. It made a certain kind of sense to see what Jean-Claude would do with Jon fully in his thrall.
"If - if you're not telling me to leave, then I am staying." Jon makes sure to look Jean-Claude in the eyes when he says it.
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Especially as it seems Jonathan is rather more interested than he'd given credit for. That quashes his reservations. Jean-Claude offers out a hand from across the table, the lace of his wide cuffs spilling around his fingers, eyes gleaming a dark night blue. "Very well, mon égaré, I will not insult you by questioning you further. Take my hand, and you will feel it."
There is a piece of information Jean-Claude is extremely careful with, and no one outside his close circle knows: that Jean-Claude ends up as much in the thrall of the ardeur as anyone he's with. It's a powerful urge when it's unaddressed, but once it identifies a partner through physical contact, it's overwhelming, a hot surge that makes anything and everything absolutely irresistible. And it is power. Jean-Claude does feed this way, so it is more than pure lust; as they indulge it, it will raise power, echoing through them in a positive feedback loop with the sexual desire.
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He presses a kiss to the back of his hand, then turns it over and keeps going directly on the scarred tissue on his palm without pause, slow deliberate presses of his lips. Jean-Claude doesn't do things by halves; if they're going to sexually satisfy each other, he will make it as pleasurable as possible.
"Did you know, I have a particular attraction to survivors," he murmurs against his skin, propping his hip against the dining table to steady himself. "You make these comments as if you think it would be a hardship for me, but there is nothing further from the truth."
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"I'm not - experienced," Jon says faintly. "I-I don't normally, I won't be... any good at it." Jon's words sound unconvincing even to himself; none of that seems to matter when just the touch of Jean-Claude's mouth through the thick, insensitive scar tissue makes him want to writhe with sensation.
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Jean-Claude lowers his hand and places it on his chest between the deep opening of his shirt, where that perfect cross-shaped scar stands out. His skin is notably cool to the touch, but there is a faint, sluggish pulse beneath it as he'd fed soon before dinner.
He wants it to be clear that this needn't be one-sided. Jean-Claude doesn't mind directing things, but he doesn't insist that that is the arrangement. With them cooperating and slowly indulging the ardeur, it is more of a steady thrum of insistence than a mind-numbing flood of lust.
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The first tug is too gentle to pull the shirt free from Jean-Claude's trousers and Jon mutters about how they'll need scissors for the trousers, tugging again to pull the shirt tails loose. But he does quite have the nerve to stand up and pull the thing off of Jean-Claude
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