undergrounds | There's a place I know I can always go (Open)

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There's a place I know I can always go (Open)

It's been a while since Cesare was last in London. He had...other issues to attend to in other countries. But now that he's back, he wants to immerse himself in his surroundings. Cesare is not exactly the type of man to spend any extended period of time with strangers so voluntarily, but he wants to pick up the pulse of London again, see how it's moving nowadays. And where better to do that than on his home turf?

Cesare is lurking in a corner of a lounge at The Angelo, sitting in an armchair and sipping an Old Fashioned (the irony isn't lost on him). He doesn't look particularly remarkable, at least when compared to the hotel's typical clientèle of businessmen in suits and high flyers with a little too much time on their hands. In fact, Cesare has gone out of his way to blend in. He holds a paper as if he actually cares about standard current affairs and looks at his phone every so often as if he finds it useful and not newfangled and pointless. You would probably have to know who Cesare was to spot him. Constantly, though, he's watching.

A. Can I buy you a drink?
Eventually someone catches his eye at the bar. Are they familiar? Does Cesare know them? Perhaps. Do they just seem interesting? Just as possible.

Cesare leaves his paper on the lounge chair and sits himself down next to them. He smirks, his manner calm and collected. You're in his home. He's comfortable.

"What do you drink?"

B. What are you doing here?
Someone is here who shouldn't be. They could be an old foe who has grown over confident with Cesare's absence. They could be the wrong type of person for this type of hotel. They could simply not have paid.

Either way, they shouldn't be here. Cesare quietly makes his way up to them. When he speaks, his tone is polite and cordial but there's something slightly too piercing about his gaze and he's standing a little too close to them for comfort.

"Something tells me you might be lost."

C. Can I speak to a manager?
Someone isn't happy. In fact, they are really quite frustrated. One of the hotel staff has messed up royally and someone is demanding that they speak to a higher up about it. This needs to be fixed. Something has to be done and Cesare is happy enough to oblige. With his façade of a casual hotel guest ruined he smiles as the waiter anxiously frets.

"I'm certain that we can sort this out."

D. Pick your own adventure! Choose something else!

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"Pity, then." She's joking, and settles a bit further into her seat.

She knows they aren't close enough that he'd tell her any of his plans. She's amazed Eames tells her any of his, but those are only the ones he is directly involving her in.

"Of course," she promises him, unsure if she'll take advantage of the offer. Depends on how much she wants to drink, or if she does pick anyone up. "Your rooms are always amazing. I really do adore this hotel."

Natasha's logic is entirely lost on him. Morals are an excuse that Cesare can understand. They're foolish and wrong but somewhat coherent. The idea that Natasha has some other sort of reason confuses him. In his eyes, he has already crossed off the one main option for her to resist. He squints slightly and leans in towards her.

"Then what is it?" Please, enlighten him. Because quite frankly, Cesare can't think of any other possible reason for Natasha to decline his offer.

"What is your name? Do you know who I am?" He would like to know who this foolish young woman is and whether she knows who she's talking to. Cesare expects she doesn't: he has been gone for a while after all, and her behaviour suggests she doesn't know quite who he is. Few people would knowingly decline his offers so consistently.

Cesare smiles, ignoring Jean-Claude's comment and instead focusing on getting him a drink. Cesare flags down a bartender and orders a constantia. He's not exactly the most familiar with dessert wine, preferring something dryer himself. Hopefully this will suffice. He looks down to read the card.

"I can't decide if am surprised or entirely expected something like that."

His expression is amiable but he leaves the card untouched on the bartop, instead sipping at his drink. A polite reminder of where they stand. He has not missed Jean-Claude's eyes on him, playful though they may be.

"And thank you, though I fear it may not quite cater to my tastes." His tastes now at least.

"Natasha Romanoff," she says, answering the easiest question first. She doesn't shrink away from him and she doesn't let herself tense or flinch. She does go very still under his scrutiny, though, the way an animal might go limp to avoid a fight. When she continues, though, her attitude is perhaps less passive than he posture would imply.

The next words are in Italian, salted with a Russian accent and just as fluent as her English. "And I have a pretty good idea who you are. I didn't know you'd be here, though."

Which means that her refusals, as gentle as they are, aren't ignorant. She's more stubborn than she seems. It also means that when she doesn't follow that by explaining why it is she turns him down, that's knowing too. The silence drags on. At first she's honestly unsure what she can say that he'd understand, and the longer she goes without telling him, the more Natasha wonders if she has to explain it at all.

"But of course," Thomas agreed with a smile, "But you have to admit, I'm also right."

He had enough experience to know that it was remarkably easy to lead people off from the crowd with a pretty face and a friendly smile, after all. As for the offer...Thomas is grateful, though he honestly hopes he won't have to take advantage of the offer. He hates killing people, but at the same time is glad to avoid being hunted down and killed for his mistakes. He'd rather someone stop him before he make such a mistake, but he didn't think that would be an issue here.

"Thank you, but I'm hoping that won't be necessary. I do work on my self control...and I'm sorry, you've been helpful, and I've forgotten to ask your name."

Jean-Claude offers the other man something of a shrug that could say anything, everything, or nothing all at once. He does not understand the other man's insistence on maintaining this distance between them. It is possible to have a history and not sleep together now and still flirt -- he's doing so right now, after all. Maybe it has something to do with the other vampire's past. Jean-Claude never was much for religion, although he always did enjoy a good preacher.

"Ah," he says, leaving the card where it is himself. He will not take it back. He will make the bartender clean it up after him if Cesare refuses to take it, but he will not put it away now that it is out. "Then you should come on Ladies' Night." He offers the other man a somewhat more careful smile. Like the title implies, it is the night when Jean-Claude brings in his female dancers, to cater to a wider audience.

Cesare isn't going to push the point. He thinks he has made it fairly clear already: fae can be as belligerent or puff up their chests as much as they want. At the end the day, they are a mere meal to vampires. The chance that those meals might fight back and cause him a considerable problem (and perhaps death) does not quite dawn on him. He is too comfortable in his own building for that to happen.

He runs his hand across the back of Eames' chair calmly, almost absent mindedly.

"This is a peaceful place. Come here again and that will change."

"You think she would tell us anything anyway? Something had a mighty hold over her if it made her do something like that. I suspect it might be strong enough to keep her lips sealed too."

Cesare is a man with considerable experience at coercing information out of people. In his eyes, he knows that few things other than torture will get a person to speak, and by then the words that come out of their mouth are untrustworthy. A person will say anything or anyone to make enough pain stop. Whether those words are accurate or not is another story completely.

"If there is a mystery to be solved here, I fear we may need to use other sources instead."

It's lucky that Cesare doesn't know that Nancy is so friendly with the higher ups in various factions. He knows that she fraternises with them on some level (that is her job, after all) but if he knew how much she spoke with people such as Eames, he would be interested in using her as a spy at least. That is too much of an opportunity to be wasted. For now, though, he respects the concept of client confidentiality.

"You have always been good at making me like you. Almost militaristic in your skill and efficiency. You must teach me someday. I'm sure I could use that."

He's joking of course, but underneath it all, he holds no qualms about admitting himself to be less than charming on occasion. He always left the particularly sophisticated social graces to his peers.

Oh....oh. The tables have shifted and Cesare is all too aware of it. Cesare knows very little about Natasha, even less than he thought he did, and now it seems she knows a considerable amount about him. At this point, at least in regard to information, she has the advantage. He tries to level the playing field a little and so, when he speaks, it is in Spanish. He spent most of his young life in Italy, yes, but his blood is Spanish. The Borgias are Catalan. Natasha may know a lot about him, yes, but she doesn't yet know everything. He would remind her of that.

"I am everywhere, dear."

The use of dear is deliberate, yet another reminder of her status and age versus his.

"And you still have not yet answered my question."

Why would he know about her? In vampire ranks, she was a nobody. A valuable nobody—well trained and talented, but still a nobody. Natasha, on the other hand, had made it a point to know who was powerful in London, and she'd deepened her inquiries after Cooper managed to surprise her. Cesare was old enough, powerful enough, important enough—it couldn't be all that surprising that he'd have a reputation?

Her jaw tightens at his response. She doesn't have a problem understanding it, but answering it would be more difficult. Her teachers hadn't prioritized Spanish the way they had English or German, hadn't esteemed it as highly as French or Italian. No, her Spanish wasn't going to impress anyone.

But that didn't mean she didn't have another ace up her sleeve, and one she didn't mind burning.

Latin was a dead language anyway.

"No, I haven't. You've seen through me on that," she says evenly. Her Latin is good. Her teachers would have been proud. It's clearly academic, the kind that they taught in school, but it's much better than her Spanish and has the added points of being both more obscure and more specific.

"Isn't it normally considered rude for a man to ignore a woman's hints? Especially when he has her cornered.""

Cesare shrugs as he swirls about the liquor in his glass.

"We have a new leader. Rules have changed. It seems you don't even need to bother with self-control nowadays."

He looks to Thomas. "Any regulations here, I'm afraid, are merely mine in a desperate attempt to keep things clean." He gives a slightly apologetic look, as if to say sorry for spoiling Thomas' fun, before smirking and holding out a hand.

"Cesare Borgia, Earl of Angel and prodigal son." He grins. "I left London to fend for itself for a while. Tell me: how has it been doing?"

And now it's the threats. Eames rolls his eyes and sighs, apparently not at all feeling the danger he's supposed to. Of course he's aware he's in a lion's den here, but he's not about to run home and hide.

"I go where I please, Borgia." And he'll not let that change. Eames has no intention of coming back here anyway, but he's hardly about to let Cesare think he feels threatened. "Let's not ruin your beautiful establishment because you can't help marking your territory."

He could ask, but she wouldn't do it. Eames had saved her from being under Fagin's protection, had done nothing but take care of her and ask very little, all things considered, in return. He even made her Mediterranean one night. That had been wonderful.

"Militaristic?" She raises an eyebrow. "I've just always been told I'm friendly and easy to talk to. You get along fine on your own, I'm sure." She never had a problem talking to Cesare, at least.

Thomas took a drink of his beer. "I know. I prefer to have control. And I admit, I prefer a more relaxed, friendly environment when I go out to eat. It's a little harder to do that if everyone's used to messes being left behind."

And so as far as he was concerned, Cesare wasn't ruining Thomas's fun at all. If anyone was, it was this new leader.

Thomas shook Cesare's offered hand. "Thomas Raith. And it's been...doing things. I haven't been here that long, either, but considering the sudden and abrupt change of leadership, I'd say not well."

Well, that, and the fact that the new leader seemed to be completely insane, as far as he could tell. If it wasn't for that part, he wouldn't have even cared.

In truth, Cesare's distance is more caused by technicalities than any ill will or deliberately imposed stoicism. He is simply not that much of a flirt. He will charm strangers when it suits him politically and happily josh with others, but when it comes to something of a more romantic nature, Cesare is not exactly a subtle, playful type of man. He's more of the "kiss someone and find out if they're into you later" type.

So when he's not returning Jean-Claude's advances, no matter how harmless they are, it's not through hard feelings. Cesare just isn't super interested right now, like he was forty years ago. On the upside, though, at least if Cesare's interests change, Jean-Claude will find out very quickly indeed.

Cesare smiles, looking at Jean-Claude rather than the card. "Is there booze?" A man needs to have his priorities.

"Perhaps not." He had a very good point there.

"We don't even know if she acted alone, or on the orders of another." Evie didn't know, either. And she didn't want to find out. There were no witnesses that could place her at the scene, she'd been sure of that.

Even then, what had she done? She'd killed a guard. She could say she had been keeping watch independently when she noticed the commotion, went in to see what was going on, and got confused in the smoke. Didn't come forward because she knew how it looked. There we go. An alibi if need be.

She didn't think she'd need it.

"Only time will tell, and we have a considerably larger amount than any of the wolves."

"Well. Thank heaven for small miracles." He sounds quite bored, but he always sounds quite bored. It's an affectation that, after centuries of practice, he no longer has to affect.

"Your fondness for train wrecks will be your undoing, my friend. There are those of us who cannot help but be caught up in the explosion because we do not have the privilege of viewing it as an outsider." And Cesare is an outsider, to an extent. He hasn't been in London for decades, hasn't seen Millicent's mismanagement of the Nest in the last half century. He's gotten away from all of it and has been gallivanting around the Americas instead. Joscelin resents him for that, a little bit. Not like he'd ever mention it, of course.

"I hated Millicent. It's no secret that I wished her dead, and I wish I had been the one to do it. And yet, I find this change of regime troubling. At least under Millicent, we had stability. I have no love for the wolves, but we cannot afford to be openly at war with them, nor can we risk our relationship with Sylvia Redbright and Circle Daybreak. This beautiful, bright explosion of yours may be our undoing."

Edited 2016-06-16 04:12 (UTC)

"You got it. Right on the money." He's likewise heard of Borgia, but had never met the older vampire. He wasn't one to let reputations proceed the actual person. He'd make his own judgments about Cesare, though judging by what he's already seen, they're already opposites in some things.

Cooper gives his hand a firm shake. "I'd say the pleasure is all mine, but frankly, I've been having a bad month." Never let it be said that the vampire was ever one for keeping things to himself. He gestures for the bartender to bring over another bottle of beer. Alcohol is one of the pleasures Cooper allows himself to indulge in as much as he wants. Better than letting himself indulge in the local populace. They may have had free reign now, but Cooper kept to his own code of conduct.

The look that Cesare gives Natasha is one of surprise, appreciation and almost pride. By this point he is too impressed to be combative. He had not expected that from her. He expels the air from his lungs in astonishment, a half-laugh, half-growl, grins and bites his lip.

He hasn't spoken Latin in a long time, but it flows naturally from his lips, the same way that someone would sing an old nursery rhyme that they had learned as a child. There's some joy in it. He speaks with the round vowels and soft consonants of Ecclesiastical Latin.

"Undoubtedly. But I am foul and unprincipled, so I'll ask again: what the fuck is stopping you?" He smirks as he swears, wondering if Natasha was taught that in school, or whether or not she might have learned such language the same way he had: by reading scribbled notes passed around by giggling classmates.

He's not angry or belligerent anymore. By this point he is curious, playful, throwing in some colourful language for good fun.

Her lips twitch a little at his expression, but it's brief. She's put him off his temper at least, and briefly she almost feels like herself. She's talented. She's good at putting people more powerful than herself off balance, avoiding their temper. The feeling is fleeting though; there were too many things about herself that she doesn't like for the reminder not to turn sour quickly.

She does follow his words though, even the foul language. She learned it what must have been the second most common way—whispering with her older classmates, sneaking some of the more risqué reading material from the library when their teachers weren't looking.

"Stubborn, too," she murmurs. Then Natasha sighs. She knows that she can't keep putting him off. Even if she managed to sidestep his anger once, he's not letting her escape giving him a meaningful answer. There's a moment of hesitation as she considers how much to say.

At least if they're overheard, the chances of eavesdroppers speaking Latin is fairly low. She says slowly, feeling out the words as she goes, "Before I was turned, I was KGB; before that, a war orphan. At some point I realized I didn't even recognize who I was when I didn't have blood on my hands, and I didn't much like who I was. This is a way to try to find out. Get a little control of my life."

Jean-Claude tilts his head at the other man and offers him something of a smile at that. Is there booze?

"My dear friend," he says, "what do you take me for? What kind of a club would I be running, to have exotic dancers but no alcohol to loosen the wallets of my patrons? Of course there is 'booze', as you say. In fact," he adds, leaning against the bar, propping his chin on his hand as he does, "if you have any requests, I will be sure to have such things in stock. Should you decide to grace us with your presence." Again the flicker of a smile, to show that he is only just teasing.

Unlike Cesare, Jean-Claude is all flirt, all the time, after all. There was a time when he was a romantic, but his heart has been broken, and his master has taught him in the most brutal way she could that a true connection like that is a weakness. But why not enjoy each other in the now? Who knows what the next day might bring, after all.

"I do not doubt that. I am certain you can flutter wherever your glittering fae heart desires. But I am very poor at bluffing and I do not make false threats."

Cesare is a man who can be adamant and brash to a fault. If he threatens a man, he intends to carry it out if he needs to, even if that means doing it by hand himself. In his eyes a man's words are only powerful if he keeps to them. Cesare intends to do exactly that.

But Cesare has made his stance clear. They both know where they stand. Perhaps Cesare should leave Eames alone at this point and let him finish his drink and leave as soon as possible, but where is the fun in that? This is an opportunity. Eames is in his realm and he's going to make the most of it.

Cesare gestures for a waiter to get him a drink before sitting down to get comfortable opposite Eames. "So tell me: why here of all places?"

Cesare shrugs, smiles and nods. "In its precision, yes. Some people have a talent in pinpointing exactly what a person needs to hear. It's a talent, for certain, and a rare one." He had met very few people that he genuinely thought had that skill. His sister had been one of them, though he tries not to dwell on that. She is in his past, he reminds himself. He needs to focus on his future.

"And getting along fine is one thing. Excelling is another." He grins to show that he's teasing before growing serious again, just for a moment.

"But I would ask a favour of you otherwise, if you don't mind." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cheque book, writing out ten night's worth of fees and signing it, before flipping the paper over and writing a phone number on the back.

"Call this number if you come across any particularly...fresh clients and send them my way. Only of the sanguinary kind. I feel we may be approaching a boom. And stay safe; the rules are changing here."

"A favor," she repeats carefully, watching him closely. Her bottom lip purses slightly. So he wants her to help him with his business. She can do that.

"I believe that's two favors." She doesn't reach for the cheque yet. "But I'll do what I can on both ends." The new rules... They were both good for her and terrible. She was local, so she'd been safe from most random attacks, but newborns had always been a different story. And now, she didn't have the protection of the law. No one would say anything if they drained her too far, if she was a victim of a random attack.

If anything, they'd claim it was deserved. Asking for it. It was all rhetoric she'd heard before. But that didn't mean she didn't take precautions.

There's a small pause. "By fresh do you mean new to me, new new, or difficult?"

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There's a place I know I can always go (Open)

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