can't leave now, I'm haunted (Open)

Loren not afraid to use every trick in the book They had a deal—which would be easy enough to fulfill, given the circumstances—and Loren felt relief course through him. He didn’t know why that was the case, but there’d been so much outside his control that even having just one thing, one small thing, that he could actually follow through on. Maybe that was pathetic, but the librarian needed to take his victories where he could. He knew there’d be precious few in the days ahead. Nodding to let Rexanna know he was in agreement, he felt his mind wandering over the many beasts he could call upon. Although he had some favorites, maybe it would be best to let the blue-eyed woman decide. Loren blushed when Rexanna informed him (in what was surely an appropriately amused tone) that actually Ascended could do the nasty. Immediately he blushed a vivid crimson. His own experience with sex had been very, very limited. Indeed, he could count his partners, and the number of times, on the fingers of one hand. For a long time, he’d had an aversion to touch of any kind. Given what he’d been through as a child, it wasn’t all that surprising. Only with time, patience, and copious amounts of alcohol had he overcome it. But since coming back he’d been avoiding it again, so it was entirely possible that his phobia was back in full force. He had no intention of finding out anytime soon. “I-I see.” He really hoped they wouldn’t dwell on this particular topic for too long. It would lead to a lot of really awkward conversations that he’d much rather not get in to. Of course, then he immediately regretted wishing for a different subject: Rexanna expressed pleasure in feeding off of people. Of course he knew objectively that it was the case, but as someone who could be fed upon it was hard not to feel like prey. Still, acting like prey usually invited attacks, so he did his best not to show his unease. “I can see how that would be the case.” That was a lame thing to say and he knew it, but it was better than saying nothing. At least his embarrassment from before had been totally wiped away. As Rexanna mentioned her arrival, Loren realized that he knew pretty much nothing about her, and she knew at least a little bit of his past. So he decided to see whether he could remedy that. “Really? How’d that work out for you?” He tried to keep his voice casual, though perhaps a little too so; it hardly matched the tension he carried around in his body all the time these days, but there was nothing he could do about that. He wasn’t sure when he’d become dear Loren, but it was better than pretty much anything else he’d been called since he came back, so he couldn’t complain too much. “I’m more of a truth guy myself,” he admitted, not that he had played often in his life. No, games were for successful children, and Loren had never been one of those. And once he was grown, he had pretty much no one to play with. Rexanna took one side of the closet, so Loren took the other; it was dark in here, but enough filtered in from the main room to be able to see. He idly picked up a few bottles to see what they were. Just because he didn’t drink didn’t mean he didn’t know his liquor. After all, once upon a time he had been a duke, strange as it was to think that. When he picked up one of the bottles of scotch, however, something fell off the shelf, where it had been wedged between the scotch and the way. Bending down, he picked it up, bringing it to where the shaft of light from the outside shone through. It was a leather collar with a leash on it, and he could tell that it had definitely not been designed for an animal. Sighing, he held it up for Rexanna to see. “I’m not sure I want to know.” And he was definitely washing his hands after this.