come out come out wherever you are

[bitterchill]

Ari patrols most nights. He frequently whistles as he does so. He's on friendly terms with many of the people of the town, though some of them think he's a dangerous weirdo. (They're not wrong, but it's not very polite to say it outright like that.)

Vampires still come to Sunnydale. Because it's Sunnydale, and because vampires are idiots. The ones who live here already, though, have picked up a habit of either visiting the kosher butcher's or the bite shop, or moving to LA. Or having their heads ripped off by an excessively cheerful blonde half-Kal'shekk witch.

Speaking of the kosher butcher's, he pops his head into that alleyway. Maybe he'll see Mr. Ray, that nice vampire chap who comes by for some fresh cow's blood every Thursday. (Ari acts cheerfully oblivious to the fact that every vampire he knows is blind terrified of him. Some of them are alright when he keeps them from eating people; being unrepentantly amoral doesn't have to mean you're not a nice person.)

Comments

[bitterchill]

Ari laughs sleepily. "Sorry for poking you. It was nice."

[unmarred]

"I don't mind." Snuggle.

[bitterchill]

Ari's thoughts coalesce steadily until he seems to have most of a brain to work with. Most of that quantity of brain is devoted to snuggleloving Mark, but some amount is glaring at this damn gloomy crypt. Eventually, that amount wins out.

"Mark, can I please fix your misery hole? Crypts should be cheerful, homey places. This looks like somewhere you'd put dead people."

[unmarred]

"It is somewhere you'd put dead people. There are in fact dead people in it, even if you don't count me." He gestures to the coffins in their alcoves. "What exactly do you want to do to my misery hole?"

[bitterchill]

"Make it pretty and less miserable, and possibly give you a spacious basement in which to put depressing corpses. Corpses are a secondary function of crypts at best."

[unmarred]

"Suit yourself. I'm not attached to the current architecture. I might rather put me in the basement and leave the corpses where they are, though. They've been here longer than I have."

[bitterchill]

"However you like, it's just- ech. This thing is almost as bad as my first apartment."

He touches the wall and hums, drawing power from the earth. This is going to be pretty big; making the bird was a fiddly little job, but this is going to be broad strokes and heavy lifting. Earth power's cooperative, though. Probably won't be any trouble.

The wall shivers as the cramped ceiling of the crypt warps and begins to glow. After a few minutes, it's gone from gloomy, claustrophobic eaves to a nice spacious dome that sends a gentle natural light through the (still mostly horrible, but now a bit cheerier) crypt.

Ari looks contemplatively at the corners of the room. "Can I just do the vacuum tornado trick, or do you object to spider-killing? Should I relocate them to the woods instead?"

[unmarred]

He shrugs. "Well, spiders are useful for getting rid of other bugs, but I'm not moved to defend them for their own sake."

[bitterchill]

"It's just that it's easiest not to worry about them when dusting." Ari spins his fingers around until a tiny whirlwind springs up, then whirls about collecting dust and webs from the room's surfaces. It moves quick, and once it's done it swirls itself out the door and dumps a sizable pile of presumably nutrient-rich dust on a fern.

Ari then peeks under the lid of a suspiciously generic coffin. It turns out to be empty. "Do you want the entrance inside this coffin? Hides it a bit. Plus it's cool."

[unmarred]

Mark laughs. "Sure."

[bitterchill]

Ari grins, puts his hands on the coffin, and pushes with his stoneshaping. There will be stairs, leading down, the earth will compress into stone and the stone will compress into itself because he is of earth and stone, he is strength and solid form and stability. Slowly, but speeding up as he goes, the rock and dirt cooperate.

It'll take him something like fifteen minutes to get the basement dug out.

[unmarred]

Mark watches him in fascination the whole time.

[bitterchill]

The shaping itself is more interesting, but since Ari hasn't put his clothes back on and the exertion causes his muscles to ripple under his skin and sweat to bead on his body, it's certainly a worthwhile sight.

Eventually, though, he wipes his brow and straightens up, cracking his neck thoroughly. "That's that done, then," he pants. "Do you want to see?"

[unmarred]

"Yeah."

But first he wants to kiss Ari. That definitely takes precedence.

[bitterchill]

Mark's initiative is somewhat unexpected and very pleasant! Ari is delighted.

Precedence only goes so far, though. He did a thing! He wants to show Mark the thing he did for him! He breaks off and grins and makes a sweeping gesture towards the coffin-stairs.

[unmarred]

Oh, absolutely. Mark cheerfully descends the stairs to see what Ari has made of his miserable little crypt.

[bitterchill]

The basement is evenly constructed of an odd, glossy stone that forms when you order silty loam and a few feet of old marble to compress itself into a layer of uniform material. Originally, it was a sort of muddy brown; now, however, it's raincloud-grey, coincidentally* very close to the color of Mark's eyes. The ceiling has a soft white glow like moonlight, and there are, inexplicably, transparent windows along the walls looking out into the dirt.

*Not coincidentally.

Ari shuffles his feet slightly. "How d'you like it?"

[unmarred]

Mark contemplates the room for a few long, thoughtful seconds, and then turns and kisses Ari again. Emphatically.

[bitterchill]

Well, that's good. Ari's happy about that. Ari's so happy about that. He's really, really glad Mark likes the room, and that Mark's kissing him. He's glad of Mark in general.

[unmarred]

"I like it a lot," he says, when he is done kissing Ari. "In case you couldn't tell. I admit I'm mystified as to why you gave me windows, though. Please tell me it wasn't for the view."

[bitterchill]

"It wasn't for the view," laughs Ari. "I'm going to see if Sally can teach me to make those windows that show you the view from a different window. And then visit somewhere I know with a really nice view."

[unmarred]

"In that case..."

The seventeen-inch height difference makes kissing Ari a little inconvenient. Mark decides that this time he will solve the problem by climbing Ari. There. Now their faces are properly on a level. Kisses!

[bitterchill]

Ari cooperates gallantly with the climbing and the kissing, and less gallantly supports Mark by a convenient grip once he's up there. He checks a few times that the convenient grip remains firm. It's important to be careful about such things.

[unmarred]

Mark giggles.

"You are precious and delightful," he asserts.

[bitterchill]

"I like to think so," Ari grins. Lacking any pretext at all, he just gooses him again. It's satisfying!