all_inclusive | (no subject)

Enough things in the hotel are free that Chiana doesn't exactly need to steal very much. But old habits die hard, and maybe the cred will come in handy some day, when she gets out of here or when things change. Things always change, and rarely for the better; it's the way of the world. The hotel might be in its own bubble of existence, but she's pretty sure even it can't escape that universal law.

So she's been nicking things here and there, when people aren't looking - and even when they are. She's great at misdirection; she's had to learn to be, over the years.

Sometimes, people make it so frelling easy on her, too. Like right now, in the bar. The man's standing at the counter, his back to her, completely focused on his conversation with another patron. All she has to do is lift the wallet sticking out of the back pocket of his trousers; the toughest part is making sure no one's looking at her when she does, since she tends to draw a lot of attention in these mostly Earthen crowds. But she manages, she's pretty sure, and she even has the luxury of palming the cred inside and putting the wallet back where she found it, so she does just that, and sticks the notes down the side of her corset. No better place to keep her prize safe.

A carefully neutral gaze travels around the bar, making sure no one's spotted her, and she walks over to the next person leaning on the counter, giving them a sharp smile as she stops by their side. "Buy a girl a drink?"

There's no point wasting hard-earned cred on buying herself a drink when somebody else might do it for her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, does it all - work? Your - whatever you humans call it," Chiana trails off, with another gesture in the direction of his groin. He isn't as human as most, and she likes him better for it, but he's still human enough; he's been raised like one.

"I haven't exactly tried," Kieren is starting to get more than a little flustered, his eyes wide and a strangled sound in his throat. "I don't think I can? No?" Except recently, and only recently, there's been times when he thinks of Simon and there's something like a reaction going on. He can barely notice it, but it's something.

"I think you'd know if it worked, even without trying," Chiana agrees, with a sympathetic pout. "Well, you'll just have to get creative in your definition of sex," she adds, a lot more decisively and optimistically.

She's made sex work with species that were really not that compatible with her. Fortunately, most of them seem to have the same basic parts in common, but far from all of them.

"My heart doesn't exactly beat," is what he says, which is probably why he hasn't exactly been able to feel much in the way of physical interest. Emotions, though, and adoration and crushes? Now those are all too easy to feel along with heartbreak and love, and he knows of those thanks to Rick Macy.

"What sort of other ways are there, if you haven't got blood?"

"I'm sure a fancy scientist could come up with something," Chiana thinks out loud, but that's really not her area of expertise. She's not a thinker, more of a doer. Always had been. Turns out Nerri's the brain of the two of them, for all that the only job he's been able to keep is with the Resistance.

But she shuts all thoughts of her brother down; she doesn't want to get maudlin. It isn't like her. She takes a sip of her drink, then turns fully towards Kieren and takes a step closer to stand in his personal space, breathing softly against his cheek. "You can feel, right?"

That makes Kieren actually laugh so hard that it aches a bit (well, it would ache, but he doesn't feel it). "I'm not sure 'getting Kieren Walker able to have sex' is on any scientist's priority list," he jokes dryly, but he sits patiently as she breathes on him, raising his brows and thinks that this is definitely like Amy.

She's probably proud, wherever she is.

"Nope," he says, shaking his head. "Don't feel a thing."

At that, Chiana leans back - just her upper body, her feet are staying right where they are - so she can look at his face, her head tilted to the side. She's frowning, out of confusion; she doesn't get it, and her black eyes are searching his eyes, his expression, for something. "Nothing? Why do you kiss? And touch?"

"Because I can somehow remember what it was like to touch and kiss before," he manages with a shrug of his shoulders. She's right. It's not like when he kisses or touches Simon that he can feel it, but there's some sense memory involved in all of it. "I know what to expect, so I can kind of tell my brain what it ought to be feeling."

"That's fahzbot," she mutters, still frowning, still in his personal space - but no longer to make a point, just because 'personal space' isn't a concept she's very aware of. "How don't you get hurt all the frelling time?"

"I'm dead?" Kieren reminds her with a shrug. "Getting hurt isn't exactly high on my list of worries, seeing as it can't exactly do much to me," is what he thinks, given that he'd have to get in real trouble in order to honestly get hurt.

"You're not dead, you're moving and talking," Chiana retorts to that. She isn't big on science, but that one seems pretty clearcut to her. He's just not human anymore. "And I'd like to see you walk on a broken leg." It might not hurt him, but it still wouldn't be very practical. Pain was about making sure you kept your body functioning, now that she thought about it.

She took another drink from her cocktail; thinking wasn't what she was best at.

"I'm kind of pretty dead," Kieren admits. "I can talk because of the drugs and the moving bit...well, okay, that one's a bit up in the air because I still don't know how or why I rose," he admits, though he's absolutely aware that Simon, the other disciples, and every other person on Earth has their own stories and versions. "It sort of...just does nothing? I accidentally impaled my best friend and she just blinked and moved on."

And then there's Simon's spine.

No man should be able to walk with a wound like that, and yet Simon doesn't seem to be affected at all.

"That doesn't make you dead, that makes you not human," Chiana replies, really not sure how he can call himself dead. The dead don't talk. The dead don't feel - and she doesn't mean that in the physical way. It's pretty obvious that he feels, in the emotional way. "They're pretty weak," she adds, a very rational assessment, if you ask her, and she hasn't seen much of them in dangerous situations, just a few forays through doors that didn't lead back to her world, but to others.

"My heart doesn't beat, I'm fairly sure that qualifies as dead," he says incredulously, but has the feeling that no matter what argument he pulls out, it isn't exactly going to end in his favour. He shuffles in his stool, laughing as he shakes his head in disbelief. "I don't mind being dead, you know. PDS," he clarifies. "Whatever you want to call it. After all these years, I've adjusted."

Chiana watches him for a few seconds, then takes another drink from her glass. "You're still human enough. Inside."

Only a human would limit the definition of life to whether or not a heart was beating. Plenty of living species out there didn't have a heart! She was pretty sure of that, anyway.

"I suppose so," he admits, because he still feels and aches and hurts. No matter how much he wishes, sometimes, that being undead would stop the emotions, he's grateful for them. "I can still feel love. Loads of guilt," he assures. "So I guess maybe I'm technically dead, but plenty human."

Could humans be any more self-centered? Chiana rolled her eyes, muttered, "Definitely human," under her breath, and downed her drink before gesturing to the bartender for another.