all_inclusive | Gathering: Halloween Gala

Gathering: Halloween Gala

A large, decorative sign situated prominantly in the lobby reads:

The Nexus Hotel
proudly presents its
ANNUAL HALLOWEEN GALA

Formal Reception
Nexus Dining Hall
6 PM - Midnight

Monster Mixer
Nexus Basement
8 PM - 2 AM

Masquerade attire recommended for all guests

Most of the chairs have been removed from the Dining Hall to allow for ballroom-style dancing to the orchestra set up on the far end of the room. A polished cherry wood open bar is aligned along one wall. The adjacent Bistro is open for the duration of the formal reception, serving gourmet hors d'oeuvres.

Downstairs, the basement's largest storeroom has been converted into a spooky nightclub, complete with DJ, dance floor and cocktails.

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Rising to the bow, Nick tucked his free arm behind his back and answered with a deep bow of his own. "The pleasure's mine, fair doctor."

With his hand in hers, he lead her onto the dancefloor and did, he thought, a fairly decent job of not embarrassing herself or breaking her toes with his heavy boots. When the song ended to something slower, he started to slip his hand around her waist and paused, meeting her eyes. His asked the question of whether she wanted to continue.

Maybe it was that she felt...adventurous for the first time in a while (and true, she was interested in Nick, and there was just the edge of danger), but Martha nodded in response to his unspoken question, not making any move to pull away.

He didn't think about his reaction to her nod of agreement, he could do that later. For now, he just slid his hand down to her waist and pulled her closer, his other hand twining their fingers together. As he swayed their bodies with the music, he leaned down to breathe her in, inhaling at the spot just below her ear. "This is very nice," he said in a low whisper, all truth, no innuendo.

Martha's smile was no longer the cheeky, sly sort. She was enjoying herself--hell, more than just the flirty kind of enjoying herself--and it had been bloody years since she had done the whole dancing with a new guy who knew a little about her and liked her thing. (Which some people would call 'dating'. Martha preferred not to at this stage of the game.)

"Yeah," she agreed, and smiled at Nick, softly as she continued, "it is."

Nick wasn't sure at first if he was mishearing lyrics or if someone had started a new song before the current one finished. That confusion ended when he heard the voice more clearly. Ended because he immediately recognized it as his own even if the language it spoke was unfamiliar to any human. It started in whispers, prodding him to act, to grip tighter, to change. To hurt the woman in his arms and take that soft look and turn it into something horrible, to feed off her pain and fear.

It took him a full minute to realize he was actually speaking the ancient demon-language to her, the words seductive in tone but profane in meaning. And he saw the red tinge to his field of vision which meant his eyes had gone straight past silver to the blazing yellow of flame.

Martha blinked a little, was startled by Nick speaking to her, low and soft and dark in a way that was entrancing yet made her hackles go up. She didn't recognise the language (which would mean the TARDIS didn't recognise it, actually, as she'd be caught in her translation field considering the Doctor was about), but there was always context.

And the whole bright yellow eyes bit. There was that.

Well, Dr Jones, she thought to herself--a quick flash of insight in the course of the moment You did come in knowing the dangerous bit, didn't you. Oddly, the question paramount for her was less 'how do I get out of here' and more 'how to do I do this without hurting Nick'.

Martha twisted her wrist, nails flicking into his skin, to extricate her hand, even as she shifted her weight, changed her centre of gravity so she could wrench away, create a few feet between them. Giving him space to breathe should help, or at least she guessed it might.

The malachai in him hissed at the scrape of nail on its skin. It didn't hurt, not at all, but it created a response within him: an immediate need to act, to unsheath claws and scratch back until flesh was laid bare to bone and...

...and then she stepped away and the loss of her warm body against his acted like a bucket of ice dumped over the blaze of rage. Nick's eyelids blinked once, twice, until the bright yellow faded to swirling silver. He took another step backward and jammed his, thankfully, still human hands into his pockets.

He managed two words. He spoke them in the demon's language first, then in English, and he ran like hell, right out of the ball room.

"Forgive me."

This left Martha still standing there, confused, with her cape still swirling around her shoulders from her movement. She blinked a few times (no one appeared to really have noticed, fortunately), and wasn't sure what the best thing to do was. Clearly, she could just leave Nick alone to figure things out or--

No. Not if she was going to even just be his friend, she decided, and tossed back the rest of her drink before heading in the direction he had left.

Nick made it as far as the gym. He'd stripped the trappings of his costume down to the black jeans and was beating the ever-loving shit out of the heavy bag there. The chain quivered under the strain of his blows and he moved with the speed and power granted to him when he became a Hunter. As he pounded out the residual rage - at his fate and at himself, he called himself every foul name he could think of, in every language he knew.

It hadn't been too hard to find him, and Martha stood in the doorway, giving Nick some space--and, though she didn't want to admit it, room to leave if he told her to get out.

His movements, no longer restrained, were impressive as hell, if moderately terrifying, and she watched him, quietly, before finally speaking up. "I wouldn't go so far as camel fellating bastard," she said, because the TARDIS translation matrix had kicked in about halfway through. "I didn't even have to slap you."

He didn't pause in his blows. Instead, he started adding roundhouse kicks as well and he deliberately kept from turning to face her. Right now, he wanted to keep the soft look from their dance in his mind for a while longer, before the disgust or fear he was sure to see there replace it.

"What are you doing here?"

Martha sniffed very softly, almost a laugh, though partially a little exasperated. Blame her to do the unobtainable emotionally traumatised man thing again, though it was, at this point, not too hard.

"Because I wanted to talk to you. If you wanted to talk. I'm not..." She tried to find the right words. "I wanted you to know I'm not bloody upset, and I wanted you to know I still wanted to talk with you, if you're okay with that. If not, I can go away."

He landed three more blows to the bag and finished with a kick. He steadied it with his hands and spoke softly, still not turning around.

His voice showing the pain of a life where no one had stuck around when things went to hell. Literally. "Thank you."

Martha shrugged one shoulder, smiling softly, if a little sadly, at Nick. "Someone I know taught me not to give up on things, even if they're complicated or messy. Always keep talking, it's the only way you get somewhere." Unless it was about himself, but that was beside the point in this case.

"Complicated and messy, huh? Can't think of a better phrase to sum me up."

Finally, he turned back around to face her. And decided that straight into it was the only way to go.

"I told you about the demon, and that I'm in control of it for the most part," he sighed, "but I think I left too much open to him. The horns," he said with a wave of his hand. "I taunted the bear...and the bear attacked. Or tried to."

"Sounds likely, but you'd know better than me," Martha said gently, and shifted to sit down on a weight bench, her suit making a slightly squidgy sound against the wipe-clean fabric. "Do you...often have that kind of problem, when you're with women? Because that's got to be a hell of a buzzkill for you."

"To be honest? I don't know." Nick reached for a towel and mopped off his face. "I was somewhere else before I came to the Nexus. An alternate dimension of some kind, I think. It was an island, no way off, teleportation didn't work, no one knew how we were pulled there, but there was one constant. We were all human. I could walk in the sun again, no powers, no demon. Just me as I once was."

He paused, took a drink from his water bottle, shrugged. "Before that, I didn't have the opportunity to find out. People, men and women, tended to avoid me a lot."

"An island?" Martha echoed, though she didn't disbelieve Nick--it just was unlike anything she'd ever heard of. And she'd heard of a lot of things, by now. "That's got to be really damn difficult. Because of the demon thing, or the job thing, or..."

Nick seemed nice enough when he was human, friendly and fairly calm.

"Trust me, I know exactly how fucked up it sounds," he laughed a little, drank more water, "and that's before you even get into what my life was like before I showed up there. Even I have trouble believing this level of crap could happen to one person."

"Less fucked up and more just bizarre," said Martha, honestly. "I've seen fucked up, it's not as weird." She shifted, sat on one of the weight benches a little more solidly, and adjusted her wig, which was itchy as hell. "And would you believe me if I told you I'd seen more weird shit happen to someone else? Not me. But then again, he's got the long lifetime for it so you might still win."

It was strange, Nick thought, the feeling of being accepted for exactly who, and what, he was. "Yeah, I'd believe it. My former boss, and a lot of my former friends are immortal and some of the shit they've been through would bend most people's minds to the point of shutting down entirely. I'm still a baby as far as immortals go," he admitted with a snort. "And I don't even like to think about what might be on my horizon."

"So you're immortal too?" asked Martha, for whom this was only a small surprise. She considered Nick for a moment, listened to the rest of what he had to say. "I think you'll probably end up seeing a lot of weird shit," she said, a faint smile playing across her lips, "to be perfectly frank with you, mister. But then again, we're at a trans-dimensional hotel, so consider things are probably already starting."

Nick couldn't help the laugh, even in spite of what had happened earlier. "I enjoy you calling me 'mister' far more than I probably should," he admitted. Then his eyes widened briefly. "Too? Oh, right. The guy you mentioned earlier, right? For a second, I thought you were a part of the Peter Pan club, as well."

Martha winked at Nick, and shifted, sorta deliberately crossing one leg over the other. "There's nothing wrong with it, in my opinion. Enjoying being called mister, anyway. Being immortal has its own problems, though I'm pretty sure my friend can die...and he's definitely Peter bloody Pan himself."

He decided to think about that wink, the way her body looked shifting around in all that leather, and the reactions he had to both...later. Much later. Now, he just settled on the seat next to her , half turning to face her. "'Peter bloody Pan, is it? Something tells me there's a story in there somewhere. Maybe even several of them."

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