Mr. Sandman

[outstandingbalance]

6 Feb.

It's February, still cold but Valentine's Day just around the corner and people starting to think of spring, it might not be surprising that romance seems to be in the air. Hard to pin down just what the difference is—but romance seems to be nagging at a lot of minds.

It might be because last night, you had a dream. Nothing clear, but bits and pieces stick with you. Maybe it was just stolen glances and light kisses, or maybe it was flashes and surprising jolts of something more physical, more raw. Either way, the dream doesn't quite fade away when daylight comes.

The strangest part? It's about someone you normally try not to think of that way.

Dreams are like that though, sometimes. It's probably nothing.

10 Feb.

A few days later, and the dreams keep on keeping on. For at least one person, it's every night. For others, it may be more intermittent. It may be just happening for the first time, after a visit to the Redbright Institute or passing through the surrounding neighbor, or after chatting with a particular vampire. It might happen spontaneously. Either way the dreams keep coming, and they continue to be about someone in particular, someone who you've been denying or ignoring your attraction to, but it's getting hard to pretend you don't feel a little warmer when you think about them.

It's starting to seem like there's something a little weird going on here. Even weirder? There's a chance that the person you're dreaming about is having the same dreams. Not just romantic dreams—the exact same shared dreams.

At least, they are if they're dreaming of you too.

14 Feb.

It's been a week now, and the dreams keep escalating. Not only do they become more frequent, they're more vivid. What started with disjointed images and feelings, more impressions than anything else, have evolved into full narratives—ranging from chastely romantic nonsense, imagining that the object of your desire is a knight coming to rescue you from a dragon, or arrived to offer comfort and support in a bleak moment, to intensely erotic. Some of them may be down right silly.

But the common thread is there. They are all about the same person, and they all expose the fact that you care about them in a way that's not as platonic as you've pretended.

And maybe it's about time you confronted that?

On the other hand, maybe you're just riding this out.

Either way, this is getting sorted out tonight. There's not going to be a better time for it

Comments

[longterm]

They're not on a ship, but instead in a large, grand living room with lofty ceilings. They're in a stately home that Cesare used to spend his time in during the 30s, while he schmoozed with aristocracy in argyle sweaters and plus fours. There's champagne on a side table and he sips it in between charcoal strokes.

"You need to stay still," he warns, looking up at her with the slightest of smirks.

[stauncherhearted]

The champagne looks cool and crisp, everything Nancy wants right now. But she's got to stay still.

"I'm trying- it's cold," she complains, shifting ever-so slightly.

Her nose twitches just slightly. "You're so serious."

[longterm]

"I can tell," Cesare says with a smile as his eyes flicker to her chest, teasing her about the temperature.

"Do you want a good drawing or not? I intend to do this properly. Or, if this is too difficult for you, we can scrap it entirely. It's up to you."

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy glances down and scowls at him.

"I'll stay still. I'll stay still!" she tries to settle down, but the couch seems particularly tickle-y. "Your couch is awful."

[longterm]

"You're the first person to complain over the course of three hundred years. I'm sure it's not that bad," he teases.

"But good. The more still you stay, the less chance I have of fucking this up. And lord knows I need help to do this properly." He's being deliberately modest. He's had hundreds of years to practice his drawing. By now he's pretty good. Not spectacular but good. Enough that Nancy should be pleased with it.

"Is this drawing for anyone special?"

[stauncherhearted]

"It itches," she tells him plainly, trying to ignore the fact that she was now on a three hundred year-old couch. It was almost gross if you thought about it too much. So she won't.

"I've seen your drawings, Cesare," she says, letting herself smile a little. "They're stunning." She looks at his hands and the way they trace across the page.

"Yes," she says, because dream logic insists on it. "But maybe I'll let you keep it."

[longterm]

Cesare smiles slightly as he continues to draw her.

"As a memento? I confess: I've already got most of you memorized at this point. I hardly need a reminder." Cesare has been paying very close attention to Nancy.

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy purrs a little, clenching her toes just briefly.

"I'd like to see you draw me from memory, next, then. See if you get all my scars and moles right."

[longterm]

Cesare notices the curl of her toes and smirks before picking up a new sketchpad and opening it on to a blank page.

"I already can," he says as he turns his back to her for a moment, beginning to sketch her again, capturing each tiny mark on her body in charcoal.

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy takes the moment to stand, rising from the lounge seamlessly. hse picks up her translucent robe and drapes it around herself, before coming to stand behind Cesare. She watches his fingers again, the light strokes he makes on the paper.

She leans over his shoulder, crossing her arms at the wrist in front of him, touching him, and when she speaks, her lips brush against his ear: "She's beautiful." a grin. "Who is she?"

[longterm]

Cesare smiles and rolls his eyes before turning in his chair to look at her. Eyes moving over her face.

"Who do you think?"

He's not used to Nancy being so forward. So often he's the one doing the leading, deciding what happens and who touches whom when. But this Dream Nancy makes an interesting change. Cesare certainly isn't against it.

[stauncherhearted]

She blushes.

"I'm not quite sure-," she teases, trailing her fingers across his chest. "Goodness, look how pale she is- how soft she looks." Tell her she's pretty, Cesare. C'mon. It's rare that she sees it in herself.

[longterm]

"You have no idea," he responds with a smirk before his words trip into his old Victorian days, back when poetry and romanticism was considered a virtue. "Soft skin, wicked touch, she makes the heart rush and the hand tremble."

If this were real life, Cesare wouldn't say that. Instead he would let that mellow in his mind, thinking it stupid. But this is his mind and so he voices his verbal whim.

[stauncherhearted]

If he said that in real life, she'd be all over him. It's the silly sort of romantic words that she'd read and never dreamed would have be whispered about her.

Well. She was dreaming it's being whispered about her. To her.

Her lips touch the shell of his ear with each word: "She must be some sort of angel."

[longterm]

"I fear she might be. That would explain it: I so rarely get to touch her nowadays." He brushes his hand over the skin of her arm to accent his words, light fingertips tracing over freckles.

"It's truly a great shame," he says with a bit too much of a smirk.

[stauncherhearted]

"A pity." Nancy shivers into his touch, keeping her eyes trained on him.

"Why don't you touch her more? I'm sure she'd love it."

[longterm]

At that, Cesare is quick to stand. He abandons his drawing immediately and wraps an arm around her, leaning in against her ear to whisper into it with a grin.

"I think she might be seeing someone."

[stauncherhearted]

The back of the couch is still between them, but Nancy doesn't care. She's about ready to let Cesare pull her over on top of him.

"A pity. What's he got that you don't?"

[longterm]

Cesare does, placing a hand on her thigh and hoisting her up and over the couch so that she falls on to him with a bit of a stumble.

"I have no idea, truly. Though don't worry: I have a plan to steal her from him. Lure her in with flowers, romantic poetry and hand drawn portraits."

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy doesn't even care, she's just happy to be on his lap.

"Good- those sorts of things work wonders on all sorts of women." She pauses, before continuing. "What do you love about her? Other than her pale, soft curves."

[longterm]

"Well, she's smart, for one thing, frighteningly so. She knows how to cope with any situation with grace and ease. She's charming and no matter what she does, she has an alluring innocence to her, which is surprising, because she can do all sorts of filthy things and take a drink better than anyone I know."

In real life he wouldn't be so honest and explain that part of her allure was her naivety. But in his dream, he's a little more loose lipped.

He's already moving his lips over to her neck to kiss her, wasting little time.

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy leans against him, humming appreciatively as he rains down these complements. Maybe if he'd said something like this before, she'd be with him instead of Cooper. But here in a dream, it was different.

"She sounds wonderful," Nancy coos, tilting her head so he can kiss at her neck. In the dream, she doesn't have scars, her neck is pale and bare of imperfections. And each kiss from Cesare, each caress, leaves dark trails of charcoal across her body.

Her hands move to his hips, holding herself against him, as her emerald eyes slide closed.

[longterm]

The rest of the dream is a combination of charcoal smudged hands and short gasps. It's...enjoyable to say the least.

When Cesare wakes up that morning, though, he thinks little of it. He is not a stranger to sex dreams and one about Nancy does not seem out of place. He does, though, feel fairly compelled to meet up with her. He picks up his phone and sends her a casual text.

Lunch?

[stauncherhearted]

The text, waiting for her when she wakes up and pulls herself out of Cooper's embrace, is wholly unexpected. That dream had been... intense to say the least, and she was still feeling the tightness in her loins that it had left, a yearning that she wasn't wholly comfortable assigning to Cesare.

But he wanted lunch. And who was she to deny him that?

Though, truthfully, she'd started letting him pay again- after their lunch at Le Gavroche, she knows pretty much any place he chooses is way above her pay-grade. Especially now that she had a normal sort of job.

Brill!
Say when and where ;)

[longterm]

He asks her to join her at a sushi spot in Mayfair. It's to Cesare's taste, which means it's basically a dark, moodily lit bar with a plenitude of booze. Cesare isn't shy about ordering the two of them multiple shots to get the ball rolling this early in the day. For Cesare, it's pretty late anyway.

"So I've heard you've been trying to leave your current profession..." he asks once their first course arrives. "How's that going?"