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strangetrip2017-05-30 04:38 pm
st_upidgravity) wrote in strangetrip2017-05-30 04:38 pm
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Steph and Vax hang out in her room shortly after the Worst Birthday Ever. It's time to eat cake and compare armor. And have rather dark conversations about the possible nature of the hotel, but only a little of that.
After the Worst Birthday Ever, Steph left Vax alone for a couple days to deal with the hangover and whatever other lingering nonsense he had going on. But that was boring and though she was certain he didn't remember their conversation, she still wanted to hang out and swap armor stories. So she tacked a message to his door one day after her evening run. "Fashion show, my room. Bring cake. - Steph"
It sounded a little more like a proposition than she really wanted it to, but discretion sometimes did that to you. It wasn't like she could write "come see my vigilante uniform because I am a secret vigilante" where anyone could walk by and read it. Besides, he'd know what she meant. She hoped.
Up in her room, she showered then switched to her usual under-armor tank and shorts, which was basically workout gear in a somewhat more close-fitting fabric. Bunching under the uniform was why the answer to literally every male superheroes underwear question was "briefs." Since she had time to kill, she began going through her gear meticulously to ensure that it was in working order.
Funny thing, Sorry About Being a Drunken Ass but Thanks for Getting Me to My Room wouldn't quite fit atop the pretty little cake on the lidded silver serving tray that Vax'ildan carried through the halls with him. Not that he would have known how to pipe icing if his life depended on it. He'd had Dot's blessed help in the dessert department, or he probably would have ended up bringing Steph some of those pre-packaged cakes from out of the glass snack cabinet. And she definitely deserved better than that after the trouble he'd been. What he could remember of it.
He took a long moment, standing outside her door, to re-read the note in his mind. He was relatively sure he knew what she meant, and that it was going to be her showing off her contemporary style of armor, a perfectly professional joy that the secrecy made difficult. ...Did it matter, if it wasn't about the armored suit she'd mentioned before?
Vax finally gave up on being stupid about it all and knocked.
Steph checked the spyhole first then tugged the door open. "Hey, come in! Is that my cake?" She grinned and stepped backward with a flourish. Her room, while pretty, was much smaller than a lot of the others in the Inn. More like a regular hotel room than the elaborate themes found elsewhere. But she liked it, the soft lavender-blue walls glowed prettily in the light of the overhead chandelier and her view from her balcony was awesome.
"Take a seat, if you want," she offered as she went back to the bed where she'd left her equipment. "I decided to hold off on actually getting suited up in case someone came by to visit who wasn't in the know."
"It is your cake," he agreed, hastily bringing up his trailing gaze when it became clear she was in her small clothes. He put his attention to the room instead, which was some sort of sparkly-blue all over, not nearly so big as his... But then, she probably didn't have to share hers with a ghost and the crushing absence of a twin, either. She'd got the better end of it in his mind. Besides, the room suited Steph's personality - bright, but with a few hard edges.
He hadn't actually moved from the doorway, he realized, but put himself forward now in the direction of the little blue-and-silver chair facing the bed. "It suits you," was all he could seem to come up with, feeling about thirteen years old all of a sudden. He knew by now how little 'modern' women could wear even in mixed company, and Steph's attitude was breezy enough, so he told himself to just relax and play it cool already. "The room. Not the cake. But maybe that too."
"I like it. Could be worse. Have you seen that one room with the multicolored ceiling? I'd lose my mind." The door swung shut under its own weight with a muffled bang. "I'm going to be good and not demand the cake first. Because I want the suit to fit, mostly." With that, she sat on the bed and picked up the main bodysuit. "Gimme two minutes," she added as she started to shimmy into the base layer. It was, in a lot of ways, like putting on a wet-suit and entailed about the same amount of wriggling. Which was...a lot more wriggling in front of the hot guy that she was trying not to be too into than she'd considered when she had decided to hold off getting dressed.
"Uh...so, how are you?"
Vax went awkwardly silent for a few long moments, as he went from thinking about crazed interior decor to cake to - absolutely nothing at all.
But then he felt creepy about sitting there mutely watching her shimmy and stretch on the bed for a different reason than the first, and he found his words again. "You know, I'm glad we're such close friends, and not that you shouldn't be proud of your body, but do you think next time you could just... I thought you'd go into the bathroom, or something," he tried lamely. ...Is how he was, thanks for asking.
"You have a very good point and I am a terrible person." Steph flipped to her feet and yanked the top of the suit over her shoulders. Her face was beet-red. "I will be right back."
She grabbed the rest of her gear and darted into the bathroom. It was aggressively small - part of why she'd changed in her room - but at least she wasn't performing some kind of reverse strip-tease. True to her estimation, it only took a couple minutes to finish dressing - cape, boots, gauntlets and cowl included - and she only banged her elbow on the sink twice. It wasn't quite enough time to forget looking like an idiot but maybe it was enough time for a 'let's pretend that never happened?' She crossed her fingers and hoped for short term amnesia as she went back into the room.
"Sorry about that, I didn't really think... I'm used to doing that alone or with people who are used to... um. Anyway. This is the whole look." She hesitated in the doorway, not really sure how to proceed.
It was the perfect length of time for Vax to go about smacking his forehead with the heel of his palm and groaning internally, as it happened, without being entirely obvious about it.
"Yeah. No," Vax smiled back at her in a way he hoped was more reassuring than dumb, hands settled back on the service tray innocently by the time the bathroom door opened. "I mean, I'm not usually a prude or anything," was the best he could do. He had no problems baring ass and all in the men's bath, for example. It truthfully wouldn't even matter to him if Steph wasn't - or he wasn't - but they were, so it just was. Now. Apparently.
He took in a deep breath, and stood up again, resting the tray with the cake on the seat of his chair before turning for a fresh look at her all in dark purple. His eyes started low this time, very low, considering her boots, the way the armor of her legs was secured into them snugly, the belt with compartments the way a rogue had pockets sewn into their clothes. The thick protective breastplate, the gloves... His curiosity getting to him, he reached for one of her wrists, but stopped himself to glance up at her eyes through the cut-outs of her mask. "May I?"
"Go for it. It's some kind of fancy Nomex-Kevlar blend that's dense but flexible. It holds up pretty well against a bullet or a knife but it's not quite as thick as your average police vest so we still have to be careful in a firefight. The gloves are armored," she flexed her hands to show him what she meant before extending her hand for his inspection. "So are the boots. And the cowl has a built in earbud and nightvision lenses."
"I don't even want to know how you'd cross-breed for a Gnome-K'Varn blend," Vax admitted his ignorance in jest, substituting the words as closely as he could while taking the glove in both hands. He looked with his eyes, as well as his trained thief's fingers, tracing the seams and ridges on the glove without prying at them. He thumbed the texture of the palm and fingers, testing the joints in what ended up amounting to a hand massage. "But those last sound a bit like the magic earrings and darkvision I use." He gave her fingers a soft squeeze before letting them go again. "How's your mobility and the weight? Unbalance you at all?"
"It's some kind of tech-heavy fabric. I just wear the armor, I don't make it." The armoring in the gauntlets was dense enough that she hardly felt the touch. "The cape takes some getting used to but the base uniform is pretty comfortable. It weighs less than you might think. As for mobility..."
Steph took a step back, gave Vax a half-grin, then flipped backward, springing off her hands and kicking out at two imaginary assailants before landing again. "No restrictions there."
"Less feathers, more leathers," Vax considered as he eyed the cape not so different from his cloak. It probably hadn't cost her a life-debt to a deity.
He'd expected Steph to be quick and slippery, at her size. And she had told him he was a gymnast. But it still surprised him, when she flipped and sprang and struck so deftly, and it brought a startled laugh out of Vax. "You look like a professional tumbler," he marveled. She'd even managed it in this tight little room rather than a training hall. "If they learned how to kick some ass along the way. You've got good form."
"Strictly amateur," Steph assured Vax with a grin. "I don't get paid. The gymnastics helped but honestly, it was my best friend who really taught me to fight. This was her suit before it was mine." Then she wiggled her hand, "Technically speaking, that is. Her actual uniform wasn't purple. You want to see someone who can really kick your ass, she's your girl. She literally learned to fight before she could speak."
"If ever I find a bat-shaped person kicking my ass, I'll be sure to ask if they're a friend of yours." It sounded ridiculous, but this place was strange enough to begin with that he wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility. "So you've just left your armor and mask hanging in the closet this whole time you've been here? Have you taken them out at all?"
"Not here in the Inn, but I did in Songrun." She sat cross-legged on the bed and leaned back on her hands. "Freelance item retrieval, that sort of thing. There's not much reason to get suited up here. No crime and an overabundance of law and order types. Way more civilized than where I come from. If you do come across a Bat-shaped person, the name to check is Batgirl, not Steph. You can specify the blonde one to narrow us down."
It still struck him as funny that she didn't get paid anything for her troubles. Not because he thought making gold was very important in life, but because things like weapons and equipment and healing potions cost money. He supposed her Batfriends had helped to keep her in boots and capes and the rest, the same as his party did for each other. Speaking of friends with memorable fashion choices reminded him of something else, as he picked up the still-lidded serving tray and brought it over to the bed, sitting down next to her. - "You know, Batgirl, I went back to that merchant in Songrun to see about that dress you liked. He said he sold it already, though he'd probably just decided not to sell to funny-looking off-worlders is my guess."
"Probably. We were totally Pretty Womaning him. Or he was Pretty Womaning us? Not sure which way that metaphor goes." Steph reached up and pulled her cowl off, dropping it beside her. "But it was nice of you to go back. You didn't have to. Just getting out and shopping was a good change from here. Did I ever say thank you for humoring me on that?"
"I have no idea what your metaphor even means, so you can tell me it goes whichever way you want it to," he assured her, not really very concerned about the reference. It'd be awkward if she stopped every five minutes into a conversation to ask if he knew what was this or that. Besides, she was clearly making her own fun, which he could appreciate. "And I'm pretty sure you're telling me 'thank you' right now. That's good enough for me."
He drummed his fingertips on the dome of the tray lightly. "And it gives me the chance to say 'thank you for dragging me all through the halls and up to my room instead of leaving me to die in the bar the other day.'" Vax made a slight smile for her, but it looked more melancholy than amused. "I think... I needed to let myself be that messed up, just for the one day. But I would rather not have been such a mess all over you," he admitted, looking up for her eyes.
Steph smiled and shrugged off that particular thank you. "That's what friends are for, right? You had a good reason to be upset. I'm pretty sure we all are going to need to fall apart at some point. Yours just has an actual date attached to it." There was, if she let herself think about it, more to it than that. But since there couldn't be more to it than that - given the whole princess girlfriend thing - and Steph had some vague level of self-respect, she would just focus on the being friends part. "You really weren't that bad. Most people are far less attractive drunks."
"No, I think you just have excellent timing," he suggested instead, smile warming a bit more. "You got in and out before the far less attractive parts, which I assure you were prolonged and messy. And lucky for you, I'm a wiry motherfucker, or we never would have made it." He finally extended the tray in her direction, giving a nod that said she was allowed to peek now. "On the upside - cake."
There were times to argue and times to let things go. If Vax wanted to stick to his personal story about being a wreck, Steph certainly wasn't going to take that from him. Everyone was entitled to self-pity at times. "Cake is definitely an upside," Steph agreed as she reached for the lid on the tray.
It was a rather small cake, clearly made with two people in mind instead of a whole dinner party. But it was beautifully baked and decorated. He hadn't bothered with plates, but there were two forks. He thought she might share, if he asked very nicely.
"It's so pretty!" She set the lid aside then took off her gloves and tucked them into her belt before snagging the forks and handing him one. "Happy definitely not a birthday, Vax."
"And to you, too," Vax accepted the fork, stabbing his way in on his side of the cake to bring up a bite.
"...I've just now decided Dot from the cafe is a treasure," he announced after his taste, thumbing pink frosting and red strawberry filling from his lips. "I've never been so jealous of those with more domestic, practical skills as I am here. I mean, how often does a lock need broken in this place? How often do you check for traps when you know there are none? What a waste."
Steph raised an eyebrow and tried a bit of cake. She couldn't help the noise that she made. It was that good, okay? "Holy mother of god. Can we elect her queen forever? That is amazing." It wasn't that Steph couldn't cook but broke food always tasted like broke food, no matter how good you were at cooking. Most of the time, Steph just concentrated on getting enough calories without turning her arteries into solid rock. "I wonder if she knows how lucky she is? Having something she's good at that she can do? Because I'm right there with you on the whole 'no marketable skills' angle. Alcuin is, like, a million times better at massage. Plus, pretty."
While he had distant memories of standing around the hearth while his mother baked some rustic loaf of bread, Vax knew exactly enough about cooking to spit-roast some game or stir up a passable stew when his sister came back from hunting. But given how Vox Machina hardly had time for a breath between one crisis and the next, they scarcely even needed to do that much for themselves anymore. They ate mostly in taverns or magical mansions or some stuffy castle or other. If they were very lucky and things were very quiet, it might even be a meal prepared by the cook in their own stuffy keep.
"Alcuin is ridiculously pretty," Vax agreed to her last. That, coming from someone who had seen elves enough in their day, was no small remark. "And just as gentle, which is rarer still. I'd wager that his technique is different from yours."
Steph ate more cake, because it was there and delicious and she believe in enjoying food. "In that he has technique, yes. I mean, I learned how to do massage from Alfred. It's more...oh, physical therapy than it is relaxation. When I broke my leg, I regularly screamed through the post-healing massages. I try to stop short of bruises."
"That's no small thing," Vax suggested as he went back for another forkful. "Even clerics can only heal so much. And to be able to help someone through their pain - not everyone can do that either." Nor would most people get right back up and put on their animal costume to throw themselves in the face of danger again.
"Nah, it's something anyone can learn to do with a six week course and enough willing victims." Being an actual physical therapist, that would have been cool. "I don't know that I'd like your whole superfast healing thing. How does that even work with PTSD?"
Vax gave her a quizzical look as he savored another bite of cake. "Pee-tee-estie? ...What's that?"
"Post-traumatic stress disorder. You know, like...after a trauma, when you're shaken and jumping at every little noise? It's common after attacks, accidents, assaults...other words that start with A." She'd dealt with shitty PTSD while in Africa. Getting back into a uniform had been the second hardest thing in her life. "They used to call it shell-shock in the olden days, because guys in war would have a shell explode near them and just...wig out."
Now that, Vax could understand. "I've never been especially afraid of fire. But after the piggy that went right in the lava," He lifted his boot and waggled it a moment. "Not so long after, something happened where we all had to dive through a portal of fire. There was a moment, where I wasn't sure I could even force myself to do it, this thing I knew I had to do, we had to do together. Where there was like a flash of phantom pain through my body. Part of me wanted to run and that part so much stronger than I ever could have guessed until I faced those flames. That was... One fucking tiny toe," he emphasized, shaking his head at the cake. "And it was Pike who fixed that toe up for me. She did it with all the love and patience and devotion in the world. But it didn't fix what happened, or how I reacted. What I mean is, you can't always catch up the heart and mind with the healing of the body. And that's why no six weeks by itself makes you the kind of person who can help somebody really heal."
The cake was disappearing at an alarm-rate and probably deserved better than this kind of dark conversation. "Power drills give me panic attacks. Just the sound of them," Steph confessed. She was pretty sure that Vax wouldn't know what a drill was, but it didn't really matter. "PTSD is way more than just healing the body. There's a whole field of actual therapy devoted to it. But letting your body heal at its own rate helps. Because you're forced to confront it over and over again."
"You should talk to Kashaw," Vax suggested, plucking up a strawberry left whole on top of the disappearing cake. "If you're wondering about the healing of the spirit, I mean. I know he's a cranky bastard, but he's a man of faith nonetheless."
Technically, so was Vax'ildan. Of a sort. But he had less to do with life, and more to do with what came after.
"I don't mind cranky. Dealing with cranky is part of my old job." Steph grinned and swiped another strawberry. "See, my old boss was cranky as fuck. His first partner was the balance, the light. The rest of us kept that part up. The ex has this whole theory about what it means, being a Robin, but it comes down to this -- you need brightness in the dark. To remember why you're down there fighting. But I may just poke your buddy and see what he thinks."
Vax chewed on his strawberry more slowly than necessary, thoughts straying inevitably to Keyleth. She'd been the balance to his mopey ass, his light to show the way when everything stopped making sense, and he knew it. He had known he'd loved her, before, but he hadn't had to feel the weight of his melancholy and loneliness since she'd come along. Hadn't had to face what he'd do without the powerful women in his life that had seen him through it all.
But it was hard to brood, with Steph sitting there, grinning and optimistic as anything even with her own life turned inside-out. He couldn't help but smile, a little. "So bats and birds are a regular thing on your world?"
"I assume you mean in a vigilante sense, not an animal sense. But, nah. Vigilantes are, superheroes too, but most of them have a different gimmick. In Metropolis, everyone's Super. Star City's got the Arrow clan, Central has the Flashes. It's just Gotham where we go heavy on the creatures of the night and their brighter feathered friends." Steph licked frosting off her thumb. "Vigilante politics is a whole field of study in some universities. I did not take any of those classes though."
"So each city has its own unofficial themed guard," Vax took from that, and it made sense to him. They were hardly the only band of adventurers roaming Tal'Dorei, though maybe the most infamous. If they could keep their focus to a single city, that would make things much simpler. Less exciting, maybe - but far simpler.
Steph considered that, then nodded. It was a little more extralegal than that but it got the job done. "More or less. The biggest names all band together for the really tough stuff - alien invasions and the like. But most of us just deal with our own city. So, you know how I got into this gig. What about you? How does a person decide to fight dragons for a living?"
"If that person is myself or my sister," Vax gave the fork a twirl in his fingers before setting it back down on the tray. "You don't start with dragons, that's for sure." He considered for a beat, decided that 'a dragon killed our mother' wasn't cake talk, and took a different tack. "You rather do some traveling, take odd jobs as you find them, and eventually get interested in a job that requires a few more pairs of hands than you have. Then you decide you work well enough with those other pairs of hands and the persons they're attached to to follow a lead from that first job to the next, some more hands still are brought on, and a couple of years later a whole group of power-mad dragons destroy the city you've come to think of as home while you and your friends are still in it." ...Maybe this wasn't the best cake talk, either.
Steph was nodding before he'd finished, finding the sequence generally familiar even if the details were a little off. She'd bet that he hadn't invited the dragons to wreck the city, though. "That sounds... really awful. I'm sorry. And you've been trying to get rid of them since then?"
"We were very nearly finished," Vax explained quietly. She'd seen him with what was left of Thordak all over him. That, even more than the others, had been... Cathartic. But there would still have been Raishan, and she was probably even more dangerous than Thordak, in her way. Where was Larkin?
"But to be honest, we'd got so tired with it all. If you'd asked me then, I would've told you we needed a vacation desperately." He glanced around her room. "This... Really wasn't what I was imagining."
"The cake or the girl dressed like a bat?" Steph smiled a little at the lame joke. "What would a perfect vacation look like? If you could have gone anywhere or done anything for a year, what would it be?"
"I wanted-" He stopped, for a breath. Vax didn't want to be that person who couldn't stop going on and on about the people that weren't here. But Steph had asked, and he made up his mind to tell her. "I wanted to go home with Keyleth, to the village of the Air Ashari. To have a chance to meet her tribe, to get to know her father. To take the time out to see everything that made her into the person she is. A whole year of 'Zephra and chill,' that would have been amazing."
A year to spend only with the person you loved who loved you. Yeah, that would be a great vacation. In theory at least. Steph had never even come close to it. "Zephra's her village? What's it like? What is anything in your world like? I imagine it's, I don't know, Lord of the Rings or something. Or ....like Songrun?"
Vax grinned at her open curiosity. "Tal'Dorei is... More like Songrun than here, but that's not a great comparison either. I don't know about your rings of whatever. Zephra, though - Keyleth's people guard the elemental plane of air, where it sort of touches down with our own material plane. It's at the top of a mountain range, surrounded by sheer cliffs and protected by strong air currents. The very air around them, it's like... The heart of the tribe. They're so connected to it, to each other, like people in the cities have forgotten how to be." At least, that's what he'd got from listening to Keyleth talk about it.
"Hey, you're talking to a card-carrying city girl," Steph mock-protested. But it was hard to be upset. The year in Africa had shown her how powerful the open sky could be, when there was nothing but you and the stars for miles and miles. She'd never seen so many stars. Light pollution in Gotham blocked out all but the brightest. "This place is more like where I'm from but it's...I don't know. Kind of old? Like, twenty years ago, old."
"I've spent most of my life going from one city to the next," Vax admitted. Mostly skulking in alleyways and sewers, slipping like a shadow between mansions and hovels. "But there are times when I look at all the noise and activity and wonder what all of that's even for. The Inn is boring, but it's not bad either. A lot more idyllic than a city. I'm hoping we'll get more rooms opening to other places."
Steph swiped a bit of leftover frosting up with her finger, as she nodded. "Definitely. That was the best thing that's happened since we got here. Somewhere to go, stuff to do. It's not as good as going home but at least it wasn't boring. Did you notice that it kind of fit the theme of the room? Makes me wonder if I'm going to wake up in outer space or something." Her room was called Starlight after all.
"I hadn't even thought of that." He wasn't quite sure what 'waking up in outer space' might look like. "There are so many rooms, though, and all of them different. I don't think there's any way to know what's coming."
"Or if it's coming." Which was part of what made this place so unsettling. It never changed, but you couldn't rely on it. Steph sighed and rested her chin in her hands. "The problem is that if something doesn't happen soon, people are going to start making their own trouble. That's just human nature."
"I don't know if you've noticed..." His expression clouded over a bit. It was something his mind had been worrying at, but he wasn't sure what to do with it just yet. Someone else must have seen it, too. "Some of the guests have gone since we've been here. Not died, or remained behind in Songrun, or even said they'd found a way out. They're just gone. Darryl says there is 'no guest by that name,' as if the staff have forgot all about them." So much as the spirit staff thought or felt on anything. "I wonder if it has anything to do with that."
"With the making trouble? Or with the fact that this place is weirdly creepy and probably feeding on our souls or something?" Because everything had a price, that was something that you learned when you were broke. Nothing--nothing--came without strings and living in a plush hotel was not cheap. She'd read Eloise at the Plaza, after all.
"Both. Neither. I don't know." Vax had never claimed to be the brains of Vox Machina. "But it must mean something that there have been several disappearances now, and it's maddening not to have the first clue why or how in a place no one can seem to find their own way out of."
Steph rubbed her face. "This is so above my pay grade. Just give me something to punch already."
"We're really bad at cake talk," Vax suggested with a rueful smile. "But I liked the fashion show."
Steph laughed and struck a pose. "Next time we find a skyscraper, I'll show you the grappling hook too."
After the Worst Birthday Ever, Steph left Vax alone for a couple days to deal with the hangover and whatever other lingering nonsense he had going on. But that was boring and though she was certain he didn't remember their conversation, she still wanted to hang out and swap armor stories. So she tacked a message to his door one day after her evening run. "Fashion show, my room. Bring cake. - Steph"
It sounded a little more like a proposition than she really wanted it to, but discretion sometimes did that to you. It wasn't like she could write "come see my vigilante uniform because I am a secret vigilante" where anyone could walk by and read it. Besides, he'd know what she meant. She hoped.
Up in her room, she showered then switched to her usual under-armor tank and shorts, which was basically workout gear in a somewhat more close-fitting fabric. Bunching under the uniform was why the answer to literally every male superheroes underwear question was "briefs." Since she had time to kill, she began going through her gear meticulously to ensure that it was in working order.
Funny thing, Sorry About Being a Drunken Ass but Thanks for Getting Me to My Room wouldn't quite fit atop the pretty little cake on the lidded silver serving tray that Vax'ildan carried through the halls with him. Not that he would have known how to pipe icing if his life depended on it. He'd had Dot's blessed help in the dessert department, or he probably would have ended up bringing Steph some of those pre-packaged cakes from out of the glass snack cabinet. And she definitely deserved better than that after the trouble he'd been. What he could remember of it.
He took a long moment, standing outside her door, to re-read the note in his mind. He was relatively sure he knew what she meant, and that it was going to be her showing off her contemporary style of armor, a perfectly professional joy that the secrecy made difficult. ...Did it matter, if it wasn't about the armored suit she'd mentioned before?
Vax finally gave up on being stupid about it all and knocked.
Steph checked the spyhole first then tugged the door open. "Hey, come in! Is that my cake?" She grinned and stepped backward with a flourish. Her room, while pretty, was much smaller than a lot of the others in the Inn. More like a regular hotel room than the elaborate themes found elsewhere. But she liked it, the soft lavender-blue walls glowed prettily in the light of the overhead chandelier and her view from her balcony was awesome.
"Take a seat, if you want," she offered as she went back to the bed where she'd left her equipment. "I decided to hold off on actually getting suited up in case someone came by to visit who wasn't in the know."
"It is your cake," he agreed, hastily bringing up his trailing gaze when it became clear she was in her small clothes. He put his attention to the room instead, which was some sort of sparkly-blue all over, not nearly so big as his... But then, she probably didn't have to share hers with a ghost and the crushing absence of a twin, either. She'd got the better end of it in his mind. Besides, the room suited Steph's personality - bright, but with a few hard edges.
He hadn't actually moved from the doorway, he realized, but put himself forward now in the direction of the little blue-and-silver chair facing the bed. "It suits you," was all he could seem to come up with, feeling about thirteen years old all of a sudden. He knew by now how little 'modern' women could wear even in mixed company, and Steph's attitude was breezy enough, so he told himself to just relax and play it cool already. "The room. Not the cake. But maybe that too."
"I like it. Could be worse. Have you seen that one room with the multicolored ceiling? I'd lose my mind." The door swung shut under its own weight with a muffled bang. "I'm going to be good and not demand the cake first. Because I want the suit to fit, mostly." With that, she sat on the bed and picked up the main bodysuit. "Gimme two minutes," she added as she started to shimmy into the base layer. It was, in a lot of ways, like putting on a wet-suit and entailed about the same amount of wriggling. Which was...a lot more wriggling in front of the hot guy that she was trying not to be too into than she'd considered when she had decided to hold off getting dressed.
"Uh...so, how are you?"
Vax went awkwardly silent for a few long moments, as he went from thinking about crazed interior decor to cake to - absolutely nothing at all.
But then he felt creepy about sitting there mutely watching her shimmy and stretch on the bed for a different reason than the first, and he found his words again. "You know, I'm glad we're such close friends, and not that you shouldn't be proud of your body, but do you think next time you could just... I thought you'd go into the bathroom, or something," he tried lamely. ...Is how he was, thanks for asking.
"You have a very good point and I am a terrible person." Steph flipped to her feet and yanked the top of the suit over her shoulders. Her face was beet-red. "I will be right back."
She grabbed the rest of her gear and darted into the bathroom. It was aggressively small - part of why she'd changed in her room - but at least she wasn't performing some kind of reverse strip-tease. True to her estimation, it only took a couple minutes to finish dressing - cape, boots, gauntlets and cowl included - and she only banged her elbow on the sink twice. It wasn't quite enough time to forget looking like an idiot but maybe it was enough time for a 'let's pretend that never happened?' She crossed her fingers and hoped for short term amnesia as she went back into the room.
"Sorry about that, I didn't really think... I'm used to doing that alone or with people who are used to... um. Anyway. This is the whole look." She hesitated in the doorway, not really sure how to proceed.
It was the perfect length of time for Vax to go about smacking his forehead with the heel of his palm and groaning internally, as it happened, without being entirely obvious about it.
"Yeah. No," Vax smiled back at her in a way he hoped was more reassuring than dumb, hands settled back on the service tray innocently by the time the bathroom door opened. "I mean, I'm not usually a prude or anything," was the best he could do. He had no problems baring ass and all in the men's bath, for example. It truthfully wouldn't even matter to him if Steph wasn't - or he wasn't - but they were, so it just was. Now. Apparently.
He took in a deep breath, and stood up again, resting the tray with the cake on the seat of his chair before turning for a fresh look at her all in dark purple. His eyes started low this time, very low, considering her boots, the way the armor of her legs was secured into them snugly, the belt with compartments the way a rogue had pockets sewn into their clothes. The thick protective breastplate, the gloves... His curiosity getting to him, he reached for one of her wrists, but stopped himself to glance up at her eyes through the cut-outs of her mask. "May I?"
"Go for it. It's some kind of fancy Nomex-Kevlar blend that's dense but flexible. It holds up pretty well against a bullet or a knife but it's not quite as thick as your average police vest so we still have to be careful in a firefight. The gloves are armored," she flexed her hands to show him what she meant before extending her hand for his inspection. "So are the boots. And the cowl has a built in earbud and nightvision lenses."
"I don't even want to know how you'd cross-breed for a Gnome-K'Varn blend," Vax admitted his ignorance in jest, substituting the words as closely as he could while taking the glove in both hands. He looked with his eyes, as well as his trained thief's fingers, tracing the seams and ridges on the glove without prying at them. He thumbed the texture of the palm and fingers, testing the joints in what ended up amounting to a hand massage. "But those last sound a bit like the magic earrings and darkvision I use." He gave her fingers a soft squeeze before letting them go again. "How's your mobility and the weight? Unbalance you at all?"
"It's some kind of tech-heavy fabric. I just wear the armor, I don't make it." The armoring in the gauntlets was dense enough that she hardly felt the touch. "The cape takes some getting used to but the base uniform is pretty comfortable. It weighs less than you might think. As for mobility..."
Steph took a step back, gave Vax a half-grin, then flipped backward, springing off her hands and kicking out at two imaginary assailants before landing again. "No restrictions there."
"Less feathers, more leathers," Vax considered as he eyed the cape not so different from his cloak. It probably hadn't cost her a life-debt to a deity.
He'd expected Steph to be quick and slippery, at her size. And she had told him he was a gymnast. But it still surprised him, when she flipped and sprang and struck so deftly, and it brought a startled laugh out of Vax. "You look like a professional tumbler," he marveled. She'd even managed it in this tight little room rather than a training hall. "If they learned how to kick some ass along the way. You've got good form."
"Strictly amateur," Steph assured Vax with a grin. "I don't get paid. The gymnastics helped but honestly, it was my best friend who really taught me to fight. This was her suit before it was mine." Then she wiggled her hand, "Technically speaking, that is. Her actual uniform wasn't purple. You want to see someone who can really kick your ass, she's your girl. She literally learned to fight before she could speak."
"If ever I find a bat-shaped person kicking my ass, I'll be sure to ask if they're a friend of yours." It sounded ridiculous, but this place was strange enough to begin with that he wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility. "So you've just left your armor and mask hanging in the closet this whole time you've been here? Have you taken them out at all?"
"Not here in the Inn, but I did in Songrun." She sat cross-legged on the bed and leaned back on her hands. "Freelance item retrieval, that sort of thing. There's not much reason to get suited up here. No crime and an overabundance of law and order types. Way more civilized than where I come from. If you do come across a Bat-shaped person, the name to check is Batgirl, not Steph. You can specify the blonde one to narrow us down."
It still struck him as funny that she didn't get paid anything for her troubles. Not because he thought making gold was very important in life, but because things like weapons and equipment and healing potions cost money. He supposed her Batfriends had helped to keep her in boots and capes and the rest, the same as his party did for each other. Speaking of friends with memorable fashion choices reminded him of something else, as he picked up the still-lidded serving tray and brought it over to the bed, sitting down next to her. - "You know, Batgirl, I went back to that merchant in Songrun to see about that dress you liked. He said he sold it already, though he'd probably just decided not to sell to funny-looking off-worlders is my guess."
"Probably. We were totally Pretty Womaning him. Or he was Pretty Womaning us? Not sure which way that metaphor goes." Steph reached up and pulled her cowl off, dropping it beside her. "But it was nice of you to go back. You didn't have to. Just getting out and shopping was a good change from here. Did I ever say thank you for humoring me on that?"
"I have no idea what your metaphor even means, so you can tell me it goes whichever way you want it to," he assured her, not really very concerned about the reference. It'd be awkward if she stopped every five minutes into a conversation to ask if he knew what was this or that. Besides, she was clearly making her own fun, which he could appreciate. "And I'm pretty sure you're telling me 'thank you' right now. That's good enough for me."
He drummed his fingertips on the dome of the tray lightly. "And it gives me the chance to say 'thank you for dragging me all through the halls and up to my room instead of leaving me to die in the bar the other day.'" Vax made a slight smile for her, but it looked more melancholy than amused. "I think... I needed to let myself be that messed up, just for the one day. But I would rather not have been such a mess all over you," he admitted, looking up for her eyes.
Steph smiled and shrugged off that particular thank you. "That's what friends are for, right? You had a good reason to be upset. I'm pretty sure we all are going to need to fall apart at some point. Yours just has an actual date attached to it." There was, if she let herself think about it, more to it than that. But since there couldn't be more to it than that - given the whole princess girlfriend thing - and Steph had some vague level of self-respect, she would just focus on the being friends part. "You really weren't that bad. Most people are far less attractive drunks."
"No, I think you just have excellent timing," he suggested instead, smile warming a bit more. "You got in and out before the far less attractive parts, which I assure you were prolonged and messy. And lucky for you, I'm a wiry motherfucker, or we never would have made it." He finally extended the tray in her direction, giving a nod that said she was allowed to peek now. "On the upside - cake."
There were times to argue and times to let things go. If Vax wanted to stick to his personal story about being a wreck, Steph certainly wasn't going to take that from him. Everyone was entitled to self-pity at times. "Cake is definitely an upside," Steph agreed as she reached for the lid on the tray.
It was a rather small cake, clearly made with two people in mind instead of a whole dinner party. But it was beautifully baked and decorated. He hadn't bothered with plates, but there were two forks. He thought she might share, if he asked very nicely.
"It's so pretty!" She set the lid aside then took off her gloves and tucked them into her belt before snagging the forks and handing him one. "Happy definitely not a birthday, Vax."
"And to you, too," Vax accepted the fork, stabbing his way in on his side of the cake to bring up a bite.
"...I've just now decided Dot from the cafe is a treasure," he announced after his taste, thumbing pink frosting and red strawberry filling from his lips. "I've never been so jealous of those with more domestic, practical skills as I am here. I mean, how often does a lock need broken in this place? How often do you check for traps when you know there are none? What a waste."
Steph raised an eyebrow and tried a bit of cake. She couldn't help the noise that she made. It was that good, okay? "Holy mother of god. Can we elect her queen forever? That is amazing." It wasn't that Steph couldn't cook but broke food always tasted like broke food, no matter how good you were at cooking. Most of the time, Steph just concentrated on getting enough calories without turning her arteries into solid rock. "I wonder if she knows how lucky she is? Having something she's good at that she can do? Because I'm right there with you on the whole 'no marketable skills' angle. Alcuin is, like, a million times better at massage. Plus, pretty."
While he had distant memories of standing around the hearth while his mother baked some rustic loaf of bread, Vax knew exactly enough about cooking to spit-roast some game or stir up a passable stew when his sister came back from hunting. But given how Vox Machina hardly had time for a breath between one crisis and the next, they scarcely even needed to do that much for themselves anymore. They ate mostly in taverns or magical mansions or some stuffy castle or other. If they were very lucky and things were very quiet, it might even be a meal prepared by the cook in their own stuffy keep.
"Alcuin is ridiculously pretty," Vax agreed to her last. That, coming from someone who had seen elves enough in their day, was no small remark. "And just as gentle, which is rarer still. I'd wager that his technique is different from yours."
Steph ate more cake, because it was there and delicious and she believe in enjoying food. "In that he has technique, yes. I mean, I learned how to do massage from Alfred. It's more...oh, physical therapy than it is relaxation. When I broke my leg, I regularly screamed through the post-healing massages. I try to stop short of bruises."
"That's no small thing," Vax suggested as he went back for another forkful. "Even clerics can only heal so much. And to be able to help someone through their pain - not everyone can do that either." Nor would most people get right back up and put on their animal costume to throw themselves in the face of danger again.
"Nah, it's something anyone can learn to do with a six week course and enough willing victims." Being an actual physical therapist, that would have been cool. "I don't know that I'd like your whole superfast healing thing. How does that even work with PTSD?"
Vax gave her a quizzical look as he savored another bite of cake. "Pee-tee-estie? ...What's that?"
"Post-traumatic stress disorder. You know, like...after a trauma, when you're shaken and jumping at every little noise? It's common after attacks, accidents, assaults...other words that start with A." She'd dealt with shitty PTSD while in Africa. Getting back into a uniform had been the second hardest thing in her life. "They used to call it shell-shock in the olden days, because guys in war would have a shell explode near them and just...wig out."
Now that, Vax could understand. "I've never been especially afraid of fire. But after the piggy that went right in the lava," He lifted his boot and waggled it a moment. "Not so long after, something happened where we all had to dive through a portal of fire. There was a moment, where I wasn't sure I could even force myself to do it, this thing I knew I had to do, we had to do together. Where there was like a flash of phantom pain through my body. Part of me wanted to run and that part so much stronger than I ever could have guessed until I faced those flames. That was... One fucking tiny toe," he emphasized, shaking his head at the cake. "And it was Pike who fixed that toe up for me. She did it with all the love and patience and devotion in the world. But it didn't fix what happened, or how I reacted. What I mean is, you can't always catch up the heart and mind with the healing of the body. And that's why no six weeks by itself makes you the kind of person who can help somebody really heal."
The cake was disappearing at an alarm-rate and probably deserved better than this kind of dark conversation. "Power drills give me panic attacks. Just the sound of them," Steph confessed. She was pretty sure that Vax wouldn't know what a drill was, but it didn't really matter. "PTSD is way more than just healing the body. There's a whole field of actual therapy devoted to it. But letting your body heal at its own rate helps. Because you're forced to confront it over and over again."
"You should talk to Kashaw," Vax suggested, plucking up a strawberry left whole on top of the disappearing cake. "If you're wondering about the healing of the spirit, I mean. I know he's a cranky bastard, but he's a man of faith nonetheless."
Technically, so was Vax'ildan. Of a sort. But he had less to do with life, and more to do with what came after.
"I don't mind cranky. Dealing with cranky is part of my old job." Steph grinned and swiped another strawberry. "See, my old boss was cranky as fuck. His first partner was the balance, the light. The rest of us kept that part up. The ex has this whole theory about what it means, being a Robin, but it comes down to this -- you need brightness in the dark. To remember why you're down there fighting. But I may just poke your buddy and see what he thinks."
Vax chewed on his strawberry more slowly than necessary, thoughts straying inevitably to Keyleth. She'd been the balance to his mopey ass, his light to show the way when everything stopped making sense, and he knew it. He had known he'd loved her, before, but he hadn't had to feel the weight of his melancholy and loneliness since she'd come along. Hadn't had to face what he'd do without the powerful women in his life that had seen him through it all.
But it was hard to brood, with Steph sitting there, grinning and optimistic as anything even with her own life turned inside-out. He couldn't help but smile, a little. "So bats and birds are a regular thing on your world?"
"I assume you mean in a vigilante sense, not an animal sense. But, nah. Vigilantes are, superheroes too, but most of them have a different gimmick. In Metropolis, everyone's Super. Star City's got the Arrow clan, Central has the Flashes. It's just Gotham where we go heavy on the creatures of the night and their brighter feathered friends." Steph licked frosting off her thumb. "Vigilante politics is a whole field of study in some universities. I did not take any of those classes though."
"So each city has its own unofficial themed guard," Vax took from that, and it made sense to him. They were hardly the only band of adventurers roaming Tal'Dorei, though maybe the most infamous. If they could keep their focus to a single city, that would make things much simpler. Less exciting, maybe - but far simpler.
Steph considered that, then nodded. It was a little more extralegal than that but it got the job done. "More or less. The biggest names all band together for the really tough stuff - alien invasions and the like. But most of us just deal with our own city. So, you know how I got into this gig. What about you? How does a person decide to fight dragons for a living?"
"If that person is myself or my sister," Vax gave the fork a twirl in his fingers before setting it back down on the tray. "You don't start with dragons, that's for sure." He considered for a beat, decided that 'a dragon killed our mother' wasn't cake talk, and took a different tack. "You rather do some traveling, take odd jobs as you find them, and eventually get interested in a job that requires a few more pairs of hands than you have. Then you decide you work well enough with those other pairs of hands and the persons they're attached to to follow a lead from that first job to the next, some more hands still are brought on, and a couple of years later a whole group of power-mad dragons destroy the city you've come to think of as home while you and your friends are still in it." ...Maybe this wasn't the best cake talk, either.
Steph was nodding before he'd finished, finding the sequence generally familiar even if the details were a little off. She'd bet that he hadn't invited the dragons to wreck the city, though. "That sounds... really awful. I'm sorry. And you've been trying to get rid of them since then?"
"We were very nearly finished," Vax explained quietly. She'd seen him with what was left of Thordak all over him. That, even more than the others, had been... Cathartic. But there would still have been Raishan, and she was probably even more dangerous than Thordak, in her way. Where was Larkin?
"But to be honest, we'd got so tired with it all. If you'd asked me then, I would've told you we needed a vacation desperately." He glanced around her room. "This... Really wasn't what I was imagining."
"The cake or the girl dressed like a bat?" Steph smiled a little at the lame joke. "What would a perfect vacation look like? If you could have gone anywhere or done anything for a year, what would it be?"
"I wanted-" He stopped, for a breath. Vax didn't want to be that person who couldn't stop going on and on about the people that weren't here. But Steph had asked, and he made up his mind to tell her. "I wanted to go home with Keyleth, to the village of the Air Ashari. To have a chance to meet her tribe, to get to know her father. To take the time out to see everything that made her into the person she is. A whole year of 'Zephra and chill,' that would have been amazing."
A year to spend only with the person you loved who loved you. Yeah, that would be a great vacation. In theory at least. Steph had never even come close to it. "Zephra's her village? What's it like? What is anything in your world like? I imagine it's, I don't know, Lord of the Rings or something. Or ....like Songrun?"
Vax grinned at her open curiosity. "Tal'Dorei is... More like Songrun than here, but that's not a great comparison either. I don't know about your rings of whatever. Zephra, though - Keyleth's people guard the elemental plane of air, where it sort of touches down with our own material plane. It's at the top of a mountain range, surrounded by sheer cliffs and protected by strong air currents. The very air around them, it's like... The heart of the tribe. They're so connected to it, to each other, like people in the cities have forgotten how to be." At least, that's what he'd got from listening to Keyleth talk about it.
"Hey, you're talking to a card-carrying city girl," Steph mock-protested. But it was hard to be upset. The year in Africa had shown her how powerful the open sky could be, when there was nothing but you and the stars for miles and miles. She'd never seen so many stars. Light pollution in Gotham blocked out all but the brightest. "This place is more like where I'm from but it's...I don't know. Kind of old? Like, twenty years ago, old."
"I've spent most of my life going from one city to the next," Vax admitted. Mostly skulking in alleyways and sewers, slipping like a shadow between mansions and hovels. "But there are times when I look at all the noise and activity and wonder what all of that's even for. The Inn is boring, but it's not bad either. A lot more idyllic than a city. I'm hoping we'll get more rooms opening to other places."
Steph swiped a bit of leftover frosting up with her finger, as she nodded. "Definitely. That was the best thing that's happened since we got here. Somewhere to go, stuff to do. It's not as good as going home but at least it wasn't boring. Did you notice that it kind of fit the theme of the room? Makes me wonder if I'm going to wake up in outer space or something." Her room was called Starlight after all.
"I hadn't even thought of that." He wasn't quite sure what 'waking up in outer space' might look like. "There are so many rooms, though, and all of them different. I don't think there's any way to know what's coming."
"Or if it's coming." Which was part of what made this place so unsettling. It never changed, but you couldn't rely on it. Steph sighed and rested her chin in her hands. "The problem is that if something doesn't happen soon, people are going to start making their own trouble. That's just human nature."
"I don't know if you've noticed..." His expression clouded over a bit. It was something his mind had been worrying at, but he wasn't sure what to do with it just yet. Someone else must have seen it, too. "Some of the guests have gone since we've been here. Not died, or remained behind in Songrun, or even said they'd found a way out. They're just gone. Darryl says there is 'no guest by that name,' as if the staff have forgot all about them." So much as the spirit staff thought or felt on anything. "I wonder if it has anything to do with that."
"With the making trouble? Or with the fact that this place is weirdly creepy and probably feeding on our souls or something?" Because everything had a price, that was something that you learned when you were broke. Nothing--nothing--came without strings and living in a plush hotel was not cheap. She'd read Eloise at the Plaza, after all.
"Both. Neither. I don't know." Vax had never claimed to be the brains of Vox Machina. "But it must mean something that there have been several disappearances now, and it's maddening not to have the first clue why or how in a place no one can seem to find their own way out of."
Steph rubbed her face. "This is so above my pay grade. Just give me something to punch already."
"We're really bad at cake talk," Vax suggested with a rueful smile. "But I liked the fashion show."
Steph laughed and struck a pose. "Next time we find a skyscraper, I'll show you the grappling hook too."