house call

[Hunter]

It wasn't too difficult to locate her house.  The task took more self-restraint than Elijah was used to, which he could tolerate only because it'd be a while before he wanted to show his face to her again, and he hung back and kept his head low during the tracking process, promising himself that in the end this would be worth it.  And it was.

Anastasia kept her doors locked; that came as no surprise.  However, he was pleased to discover that the same was not the case with her windows.  And such big windows they were, too -- of the grand, stately sort associated with old plantation homes like these.  More than easy enough to fit through.  He didn't even have to break any glass.... unfortunately.  Elijah was sure she would have appreciated having to replace it.

Still, because he was a gentleman, he left the window intact even after he'd pushed it open and climbed inside.  This was several minutes after he'd made sure to watch her leaving -- he did want her to find him, but not yet.

First, he wandered around the spacious first floor until he found the kitchen and then started going through the cabinets, whistling to himself as he looked for a wineglass.  A classy gal like her was sure to have at least one wineglass, right?  The vampire found one soon enough and filled it up with water.  If she kept any stashes of blood around, he didn't know where to look for them; he figured this would do.

From there, he escorted himself to some sort of room he figured was like a den or a living room near the entrance, hard to miss from the front door.  Without hesitation, he plopped himself down in a comfy chair and propped his feet up on the coffee table, graveyard dust falling from his old Oxford shoes.  Now it was just a matter of a waiting game, and wait he did, sipping from the glass as he glanced around.

Hopefully she wasn't going to spend all night in town.  He didn't particularly want to spend the day here -- and the woman surely wouldn't allow that while she was still alive... relatively speaking.  She wasn't as easily intimidated as that Anna Marie had been, which led him to believe she was older, more experienced, and thus not as easily beaten or killed.  But messed with?  Hell yeah.

[avery]

Fortunately for him, Anastasia hadn't intended to stay out long at all. She was home soon -- maybe a little more than an hour after she'd left -- entering and turning to lock and bolt and chain the door shut with a small little smile. There was just a tad of a flush to her skin, one that suggested an extremely recent and very filling feeding, and her hair was just a little bit messed up. She was still smiling as she turned around, and that was where she paused because something... something didn't feel right.

That "didn't feel right" turned out to be an insufferable man in her living room. Still, the smile didn't drop from her lips, even if she did tilt her head at him. "I shouldn't be surprised you found my house," she finally concluded, finally moving to take off her coat and put it and her purse in a small hallway closet that she used for such purposes.

She turned to study him, noting his wine glass and wanting to question why he didn't put wine in it but not questioning it because she really didn't want him in her wine stores, and then actually raising her eyebrow when she saw his feet on her table. There was just a little bit of hardness in her voice this time. "Do you really have your disgusting shoes on my table?"

[Hunter]

No, she really shouldn't be. The man merely smiled and winked at her, in the manner of good to see you too. Fucking bitch, acting all nonchalant about finding him in her house. Couldn't she at least let out a scream, or a gasp, or something? What was it going to take him, a wooden stake?

Elijah pulled the glass away from his lips, swallowed, and glanced down at his feet as if to confirm what she'd asked. "Well I'll be damned, it appears I do." Then he sat back in the chair and continued looking at her. "Fun little romp this evening?" he asked, gesturing to his own hair as a means of indicating her own, at the same time uncrossing his ankles and setting both his heels on the table. She had a little bit of a bedhead going on. Although there were a couple of things that could be attributed do, he had his guess as to which.

[avery]

As long as he didn't do permanent damage to that table, she wasn't going to comment. He wasn't threatening physical harm to her table, yet, and pushing the issue would not be smart. A table could be cleaned. It could be replaced too, but that was just a little bit harder, especially if he planned on making a habit of these break-ins. She really, really hoped he wouldn't be; the last thing she needed was a bored vampire going through her drawers and learning where she kept her belongings.

His question puzzled her, for a moment, but she entered the living room and checked a wall mirror and confirmed what she'd thought he was talking about. Her smile grew into something closer to a grin, and Anastasia took a seat and relaxed into it before deciding to give him an answer. "Perhaps." She figured her evening was more enjoyable in general compared to his, but decided not to comment on that. Even if it was tempting. "So why, exactly, are you in my house?"

[Hunter]

"Why Miss Ana, ma'am, why wouldn't I be? You're in my town, ain't you?" he asked, tipping his glass toward her and swirled what was left of his backwash in the glass as he made the equivalency. "Didn't you bring me nothing to eat, or am I going to have to pack my own lunch from now on?" He already knew the answer to that, which was why he went on speaking, looking away and giving a shake of his head as though he were disappointed in her. "Riflin' through a man's stores without so much as offering him a taste of his own... What is the world coming to?" He wasn't interested in a direct answer to that, either; he didn't care what the world was coming to as long as it continued catering to him.

Elijah cleared his throat and looked at her dead-on. "I'm here, Madame Anastasia, because we have yet to come to an understanding." He inclined his head forward as he looked at her. With all the other vampires he'd run across in Mossy Hollow, this had all been settled relatively easy -- with Anna Marie, for example, and that little foppish kid with the boyfriend.

[avery]

Good, this wasn't a social call. Anastasia listened, ignoring the butchering of her name for the time being, not responding once during his tirade, except to let the grin relax into something just a little bit more natural. And something that probably should have been a sign that she wasn't as intimidated as he probably hoped she was. When he finished she waited a moment, and then stood and made her way around his seat, slowly and in a way that very much screamed predator.

He was a predator though, too, and if he was scared then there was obviously nothing for them to settle, as he seemed to think.

Once behind him, she leaned down, putting her mouth near his ear. She thought about touching him further, but she didn't want to test him too much at the moment -- she knew how he reacted to threatening approaches, but she wasn't sure how he would respond to this.

"What understanding do we need that we don't already have?" she asked, breathing the words into his ear, the smile finally dropping from her lips. "We are predators, you and I, and neither of us will back down for the other to lord, unless I have a horribly inaccurate idea of you." She lingered a moment, accidentally (or was it) touching a fang to his ear, before the grin was back. "Besides, Monsieur Elijah, I am not the one wanted by the authorities at the moment. How much do you want to test me?"

[Hunter]

If he'd been thinking about the way she'd put her hands around his throat the first and most recent time they'd encountered each other, this would have been more alarming. After blithely watching her circle him, he tipped his head just slightly away from her mouth, as an instinctive reaction, but the man soon eased up again as she spoke into his ear, straightening his spine, leaning into her with a muted groan, and fluttering his eyelids as she touched him with her fang.

The threat was a significant one, but it was ignored in favor of crooning back, "Oh baby, I'd like to test you all night long."

[avery]

Was that seriously what he paid attention to? Ugh. Men.

Either way, she didn't want to stay near his face in case he got any horrible and foolish ideas. She straightened, glaring at the back of his head because honestly that was just inappropriate -- especially when he came here to threaten her! -- and took a moment to remind herself that he had more use to her undead than dead. But she had a thought that she'd put an idea in his head, one that probably wouldn't be vanishing for some time, and decided that she didn't want to deal with it sober.

He'd already found her wineglasses, after all. Might as well.

"If you're going to try to get into my pants," Anastasia said, dryly, "I don't want to remember your attempts tomorrow." She had a sinking feeling he wasn't going to stop, not since he'd started, and in a probably stupid move she leaned over him in order to pluck the wineglass from his hand. "If you keep your hands to yourself, I might share some of my wine."

[Hunter]

That offer elicited a chuckle, not least of which because an offer of blood would have meant more to him than an offer of wine. "Now don't get your knickers in a twist, gal, I ain't even done anything yet," he answered with a wink. He didn't try and take a swipe at her then, despite her leaning over him, but at the same time, he held onto the stem of her glass, not letting her take it. She could pull with more force and try to yank it out of his hand, of course, sure -- but glass was a fragile thing, it was. And she sure didn't seem to like it when things of hers got broke.

[avery]

"Really? 'Knickers'?" She was fairly sure that that wasn't a common term among the wonderful people of the American South and she was fairly sure it didn't belong in the same sentence as "ain't" or "gal". 

But she wasn't going to fight for the glass, especially when there was a very large target for him to go for, so she stood again, shrugged, and turned to go to her kitchen. Anastasia figured that he wouldn't take too kindly to an order of stay there and so she didn't bother; as much as Elijah was intolerable, she'd rather have this Elijah than the one that had seemingly been there to threaten her.

It only took her a minute or two to get herself a glass and fill it, since by now it was a routine long perfected, and when she got back into her living room, she settled in the chair she had previously been occupying. She took a sip, suddenly wishing she had something stronger (and whether or not vampires could actually get drunk), before looking at him once again. "Don't tell me -- you're not actually the drunk I thought you were when we first met."

[Hunter]

"You gonna get your knickers in a twist over a word, too?" he asked, laughing at her. After watching her leave the room, he stood up but didn't follow her, feeling restless even though it was still early in the night for him. He just couldn't sit still for long. While she was gone from the room, he went about looking for pictures, photographs, the sort of memorabilia of family connections that most people kept around the house. He didn't find any.

When she returned, the man was still standing, holding the empty wine glass. She was awfully good at making herself comfortable, wasn't she? He knew he'd sarcastically joked as though they were on civil, good terms with one another, but he didn't expect her to actually act as though she were enjoying the company of an old friend, kicking back with some booze.

"Well now that depends on how you define 'drinking'," he answered, stepping forward with a shrug. He did, technically, have a drink of choice that he'd become dependent on for his functioning -- he was a regular addict, you might say. Not that he didn't kill time with alcohol now and then, too. Elijah continued to saunter toward to her and leaned over, pushing the side of her wine glass to pour its contents into his. At the same time, he was trying to angle the side of his head into her face, or more specifically, her mouth. "You gonna do that nibbling on my ear shit again, or you gonna make me say please?"

[avery]

She was surprisingly complaint to his attempt at transferring wine from her glass to his -- after all, she had filled her own glass a little more than she usually did in case he tried it -- but when she'd deemed that he'd taken his share, she moved her glass away, trying to spill as little as possible in the process. This was good stuff, and she would admit that she sometimes had to convince herself that spending a little more on the wine was worth it. Just because she was willing to share a little didn't mean she'd be sharing a lot.

"Like you would actually say please," Anastasia replied, some humor in her tone, and she leaned forward slightly to give the edge of his ear a quick lick before leaning back into her seat. As much as humoring him would have amused her -- big bad vampire having a weakness for ear nibbles, how adorable -- humoring him would give him incentive to come back. Which she was pretty sure she didn't want.

[Hunter]

Unfortunately for her, he already had his incentive for that. He liked to keep tabs on all the vampires in town -- and she wasn't just included in that, she was exceptional as someone who refused to back down even when pressed. That stood out to him in a bad way. Most lone vampires didn't want any trouble; they already had two enemies in the form of the sun and the police, plus whatever slayers came through, and they didn't want more. In contrast to all reason, her cool, collected apathy made it seem to him as though she was simply young and arrogant, uneducated in the underworld's dangers, and it gave him a mind to get rid of her, or at least shake up her complacency somehow. The wheels of his mind were already turning as to how.

But he didn't want that to happen just yet. Not while she was being some modicum of pleasant. Elijah grinned as he felt her tongue against his ear, not quite what he'd asked for but more than what he'd expected. He straightened only momentarily, taking a swig of her fine wine, set the glass on a nearby table, and then bent back down again. "Naw, probably not. But you might." Without any clarification on that, the man leaned in close, a hand on her shoulder, and brought his mouth to her own ear, cradling it in his teeth before giving it the helix a small, sharp pinch.

[avery]

She was (pleasantly) surprised he hadn't tried to kill her, even if this was not the direction she had imagined things going when she found him in her house. The complete opposite direction than she expected, if she were going to be honest, and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about it.

On one hand, he was tolerable when he wasn't being a dick. On the other, apparently for him to be somewhat tolerable, he had to be thinking with his dick.

Anastasia didn't stop him from biting her, and decided that this was not the time to gift him with a response for his advances, because she was very interested in kicking him out. Which she'd try to say wasn't mean if she, well, meant it as something that wasn't mean. "Don't you have other places to be before the sun rises?"

[Hunter]

"Not at all," he assured her, still breathing in her ear. He smirked slightly and drew back to look at her -- she hadn't yanked away or pushed him off, but he could detect her stiffness and lack of reciprocity. Which, in turn, just made him feel more confident and at home with the situation, as though this were just another helpless blood victim of his, and the chair creaked under the additional weight as he set his knee on the cushion with her and leaned forward, taking the back of her head into his hand as though he were going to kiss her, as he asked, "What's the matter, girl?"