aterat | Imagine a fancy title here, you will

"I think I can at least claim 'consolation prize'." Maybe, at least on a good day. "Are you telling me you're only here because you've got nothing better to do?"

He imagines if Ivy hadn't wanted to come, she would have come up with a reasonable excuse to stay home.

"Oh, do you?" she chuckled and ran a finger along the top of the bottle. "What if that was the reason?" There was a playful quality to her tone though, as if she were teasing him about his question. The last thing she wanted to do was to think about why she'd actually come here with him.

He gave her an awkward smirk at her question, leaning in conspiratorially. "Then I'd say that makes me the best option, and I'm calling that a win."

This was a terrible idea. All the red flags were blatant, in his face, but at the moment, he just didn't care. This was the second world they'd been trapped in together and it just seemed almost pointless to be worried about what could happen between them when there was so much outside of them trying to kill them.

"Mmm, the best option with the others being cataloguing my notes on this place and doing my hair," she said with a little tilt of her head. She moved her finger from the bottle slowly and then took a long drink from it. Was it a bad idea to be purposely trying to be seductive right now? Definitely. Could she help it? Not particularly. At least not right now.

"What was your reason for asking me?"

"Hey, I rate above doing your hair. Definitely a win." He couldn't actually remember the last time he'd bantered this way with a woman, at least in a way that actually meant something, not the playful chatter between himself and Murphy. Sure, Murph was cute, strong, and if things were different, he'd definitely go for it, but she was Murph, and she most certainly did not think of him that way.

"What, a guy can't ask a friend he's been to two worlds with out to lunch without there being some kind of ulterior motive?"

"I didn't say how high above my hair though. It could always change," she said with a little smirk.

"A guy can, but it's not typical," she gave a shrug of one shoulder then took another sip from her drink. "How often do you ask Watts out to lunch?"

"Well, see, I don't want to make his husband jealous." He chuckled, though, because she had him, there. "But I see your point." He breathed a sigh, running a hand back through his hair, a nervous habit and one she might note he does often, as evidenced by the state of his hair in the first place.

"Honestly, there are a lot of red flags, but I don't know if it's my paranoia or what."

"I haven't seen you as the type to think things out that well," she said with a flash of a smirk. There was no way he actually thought through things enough to think about the ramifications of making someone else jealous. She tilted her head and then finished off the last of her beer before rolling her shoulders in a slow shrug.

"I should be a red flag all by myself," she said with a laugh that didn't obscure it's bitterness. After a slight breath she moved her hand up to her cross and started threading her long fingers through the chain.

"In my defense, I think things through a lot when it involves outsmarting something way bigger and more powerful than I am. It doesn't leave much room for thinking through anything else." In retrospect, that didn't make him sound all that great and he offered her a lopsided grin to say he knew that.

And there was that habit of hers again. She always played with her cross when she was nervous or talking about herself, but touching the symbol didn't do anything to her, at least not physically. A cross as an object of faith wouldn't do anything in his hands, but maybe it meant something to her. He couldn't quite figure out how to breech the subject, though, curious as he was.

"What you are isn't who you are, Ivy."

"So, it was a spur of the moment decision you made without any thought or intention?" A hint of disappointment slipped into her voice that she tried to hide by taking another drink. What had she expected him to say anyway? Better question: what had she expected from this anyway? That was a question she had no answer to and part of that was because she did everything possible to avoid thinking about it. Occasionally the things Watts had told her came to her mind but she usually just pushed that away. He'd probably be disappointed if he knew that. Honestly, she wondered if he'd just sigh at this entire...date? Interaction? Whatever this actually was.

Her fingers continued to thread themselves through the chain and around the cross.

"It'd be nice if that were true." But it wasn't. Maybe it wasn't all she was, but it played a large part. At least she felt like it did and she felt like there was no hiding or denying it. Despite her best attempts to right now. The urge to see how easy it would be to influence him kept pulling at her instincts. He wanted it, at least a part of him did. She could smell his interest and it just caused her to wonder if that's what this was all about. He did things without thinking, he'd just admitted that, maybe that's what this was all about. Him seeking out danger just because he liked the thrill. He was similar to Rachel after all and she constantly toed that line.

Edited 2021-11-04 01:28 (UTC)

"Not...exactly." Ivy had successfully talked him into a corner here, though. He'd honestly been looking at finding an excuse to ask her out for a while now, but some part of him had always thought better of it. He'd seen what she was capable of, or at least a taste of it, but he'd also resisted it, though. That had to count for something, didn't it?

"Okay, okay, you've got a point." He knew she wasn't talking about him, but he also knew she was beating herself up over things that were beyond her control and that there was no call for it. She might have been born a vampire, and that might end up winning out in the end, but she had right now, she had herself, and maybe with some effort he could prove that to her. "I know, I'm a wizard who does magic in his off-time. You got me."

"Not exactly, hm?" she arched an eyebrow and a small smirk tugged at her lips. "It feels like that's a yes then. Disappointing, here I was thinking you were interested in something a little more exciting," her tone was both teasing and bordering on the edge of filtration. "That maybe you had a plan. But I guess it was just a spur of the moment lunch invitation since Watts wasn't available."

She brushed a strand of hair out of her face and leaned against the table towards him. "At least you smell better than some witches I've run into," with that she leaned closer. "A bit better at least. It makes me wonder how you'd taste."

"Yeah, we can look at it the completely pessimistic way, or," and he shrugged to accentuate his comment, "we can go with taking an opportunity when it presented itself. I fully admit I'm terrible at dating. I get busy, distracted by big, nasty monsters and have to cancel plans. Sometimes they crash them. I'm a horrible date."

And he grinned, hazarding a glance toward her eyes for just a second before focusing on the bridge of her cute, little nose. "But you said yes."

"I prefer realistic," she said with a nonchalant shrug. Pessimistic was probably much more accurate but there was no reason to really debate semantics. She looked around the place they were at and then gave a coy smile. "You? A horrible date? I can't imagine it."

Ah but she had said yes. He had a point. Though, she kept wondering why she'd really said yes. The back of her mind screamed at her about how terrible of an idea this was. At the same time another part of her kept whispering about how much she wanted something more from him. He was so strangely enticing.

"Maybe I didn't want to be rude."

"Oh, sure, I could be worse, but that's not hard." A wave from the bar told him their food was up and he smiled. "Hold that thought." And off he moved through the pub like he was used to such things, bringing back both their plates with more grace than a gangly man well over six feet had any business being.

"Your lunch, my lady." Which he had paid for, because that's just what he did. He took a seat across from her, smiling. "Something tells me you're not above being rude if you don't want to do something."

"You give yourself a ringing endorsement," she said with a shake of her head as the food got placed down. At least the food didn't look bad, in fact she didn't seem to really hesitate before reaching for a bottle of ketchup and pouring it into a puddle near the fries. After she'd put enough down for her liking she delicately picked up a single fry, dipped it down, and then slowly brought it up for a small bite. This would probably be the point that Rachel would make some sort of snarky commentary about how Ivy was the only person she knew of that could make eating fries in ketchup look sexy. Luckily for her Rachel wasn't here to see this.

"I know when not to be rude, but it's something someone has to earn." To Ivy, politeness was all about hierarchy. If someone seemed like they had a stronger personality then she knew to at least pretend to be polite.

Harry certainly noticed exactly how suggestive her eating of a french fry was, so much so that it took him a moment to get around to eating, himself. He did smile, a little quirk of his lip, as she responded, though. Focusing on the words gave him something other than his libido to think about.

"Does that mean I earned it?"

"Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't," she said with a slow smile before she returned to picking up a fry. "Guess it's up to personal interpretation," she ran the fry through the ketchup and looked over at him. "It's all about hierarchy in my world."

"Yeah?" He could follow along with that one, at least. His world, the old world anyway, was much the same. "So," he said, taking up his own steak sandwich without taking a bite yet. "Where does a human wizard fit into the hierarchy?" And then he took his bite.

"Mmmm," she took another bite while she thought about that question. "In my world wizards are humans that practice magic, they're separate from witches. Witches can be both genders and are a completely different species than humans." Therefore they're automatically a tiny bit better, though she lives that little thought to herself. "We don't usually look at wizards too fondly. My partner dated one recently, slimy little scum."

He choked a bit on his sip of beer, doing his best to mask his cough as a laugh. His best was terrible.

"Well, I promise we're not all bad." He'd never heard of witches being a different species, though. That was interesting.

"Steep promise to make," she said with a smirk she didn't even try to hide. "His main problem was trying to do magic when he shouldn't be. That and making a deal with a demon," she shrugged. Maybe it was mostly that last bit. "What can I say. Rachel has worse taste than me."

"Would it be better if I said we usually only have the best of intentions?" Probably not, but that didn't make the sentiment any less true. Sure, there were hedge mages, people who either didn't know of or didn't agree with the tenets of the Council. Those...were typically shut down, and the implications that had on the Council weren't lost on him. He'd been on the receiving end of their assumptions before, after all.

He nodded, knowingly. "You should never make deals with demons, at least unless you know you have the winning hand." He'd made some dumb choices in life, though. She didn't need to know about that time he decided to summon the Erlking so others couldn't though, or...yeah. They weren't talking about him.

He chuckled, though, shaking his head. "I don't know. She seems to choose partners pretty well."

"Best of intentions usually only result in the worst outcomes," she said with way more bitterness than she'd actually intended. At least she actually realized how she sounded and tried to give him a weird little smile as she ran another fry through ketchup. Focusing on ketchup seemed like the better thing to do rather than risk having to acknowledge why she'd taken a sudden turn towards the bitter.

"You never really have the winning hand with a demon," she said with a shake of her head. "Anyone that thinks they can outsmart something so much more ancient than they are just reeks of arrogance. I bet they taste like it too." Not that she wanted to even consider what Nick tasted like. That was not a path she wanted to go down at all and her nose scrunched in disgust at the thought.

"Oh, she didn't choose me," she said with a little chuckle. "She lucked out by getting to be my punishment."

"Hey, that's not always true. Sometimes they can work out." More than sometimes, if Harry was honest. He'd been in some pretty dicey situations and had worked his way out of all of them. Okay, that wasn't fair to the people who'd helped him out, his team...his family. "And you need other people for that."

He nodded in agreement, though. "I don't summon demons lightly, and only if I'm willing to make a deal with them before I summon them. I'm not slouch in the power department, but overconfidence gets you killed." And those around you. So does arrogance, and it had. More than once.

He grinned, raising his beer to accent. "I'll second that. She'd damned lucky."

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