ain't but one kinda blues

[madamemoiselle]

She exhales in ecstasy, her toes curling with the release of the tension she'd built up. This man was lucky, not because he'd bedded her (to be honest, that part was easy), but because she'd been in the mood to submit that night. Her arched back falls flat against the bed again, and as soon as he's finished, he flops down on the bed next to her. They both lay there, catching their breath after the impersonal, but satisfying encounter. But as he falls asleep, tired from what she demanded of him, Diva stays awake.

Diva sets her hand on her forehead, wiping away the sweat that had collected at her brow. She thinks, as she usually does, about how this one was nothing special either. She didn't know his name, and he didn't know hers. They'd just met at that awful bar in the Loki district, and she'd ended up back at his modest apartment, just like always when she gets that feeling.

Another exhale. At least it's gone, for now.

She sits up, looking around for her clothes, since they're scattered pretty much all over the room, but gives up on the effort, just standing and walking over to his dresser. It's predictable that on top sits his cigarettes and lighter, and she feels like indulging in another habit, though it was one she'd broken when she woke up in the 70's.

The smoke drifts lazily into the air as she leans halfway out his window, and she doesn't really care if anyone happens to see her state of undress now. It's probably four or five in the morning anyways, so it's unlikely, at least. Her mind drifts, and she thinks about how she actually misses the feeling of taking in a puff of cigarette smoke and feeling the cells of her lungs immediately regenerate from the damage. That light, tickling sensation was why she'd picked it up at all, and now it just left a bad taste in her mouth, in more ways than one.

Everyone smoked in the 40's, after all. It was the fashionable thing to do, so of course, she picked it up too. The image of the smoky parties she and her Chevalier attended was a romantic, nostalgic memory. She and Solomon would smoke, laughing about some trivial joke that a human whose face she could barely recall told.

There was a whisper in her ear about how he was important, needed to be impressed, and Diva knew what she had to do. It hadn't taken long for her to lead him away from the party, to a room in the hotel, and it'd ended up the same way as now. She'd never been told why impressing him was important, and she couldn't remember ever seeing him again.

A deep drag on the cigarette.

This was different though, so it wasn't even worth dwelling on what that memory meant, in her opinion. This person with only just enough of a face to be worth anything to her in bed was just satisfying something that was missing.

What was it that was missing?

She thinks about the question, and the first thing that comes to mind was why she'd gone out at all. She was tired, but laying in the bed, sleep wouldn't come to her. It happened sometimes, even when she had been a full Chiropteran. It was hard to quiet her mind sometimes, and for no real reason that she'd ever found. Tonight, she'd been stuck in the loop of remembering the experiments where she'd been infected with human diseases to see their effects. It really depended on the disease, and she wouldn't be able to tell any of them now, but sometimes they were fine. Those weren't really the ones she remembered, though. She remembered the ones that made her lungs fill with blood until she drowned, or the ones that made her so feverish that she would hallucinate and be stricken with terror until she died, either from her heart or her brain giving out.

As a Chiropteran, Amshel or one of her Chevalier were there to comfort her. There was always someone beside her that she could latch onto, to forget the pain of those memories in the dream of being loved. But there wasn't really any possibility of that here, since the rules of the Halls made it so that she couldn't stay long enough to have that comfort if she wanted it from someone.

There was really only one person that she would allow that honor to. The thought makes her stomach feel like it's twisting up, but she's burned through the cigarette, so she snubs it out on the windowsill before flicking it into the night.

She couldn't really imagine him caring one way or another about these weekly outings even if she told him. She might have cared more about his apathy if she weren't apathetic to it herself. Diva couldn't imagine him understanding it, since that was something they seemed to completely differ on. While she had an intense desire to be physical with someone, to touch them as if to affirm that they were really there beside her, he shied away from that contact. It was easy to imagine his expression as she told him, a cool and unchanging smile. He couldn't understand it, and she didn't feel any need to correct that.

Still, she can't help but imagine what it would feel like for him to hold her. Laying beside a human was always more enjoyable than any of her Chevalier just because of how warm they were. The warmth of their bodies would envelop her, and maybe, for a few moments, she could fool herself into a feeling of safety. Of being wanted and loved.

Imagining that feeling in his arms makes her stomach twist again, because she that feeling is welling up all over again. She considers lightning up another cigarette to try and make it go away, but she has a different idea.

It would have been nice to fall asleep in someone's arms, but she found, as always, that she wasn't feeling all that tired after seeking out a person that would let her.

Diva returns to the bed, turning the man roughly onto his back as she kneels over him. He rouses, looking surprised briefly by the sight, but a ghost of a smile comes to his lips.

"Again," she demands coldly.

But this time, he'll be the one submitting.