Sallie was talking as Apollo chatted on with her. "Of course!" She commented concerning his hair. "Do you have a hair attendant here? I imagine you would. And make up? Though I've seen you do it yourself and you rival any of the ladies I know. I don't really wear it. I feel strange, like everyone sees me like a clown or mime or something." She smiled as he walked out in the coat and all she could think of was that it was May in Chicago. "Apollo, you're going to di...." She didn't get to finish her thought as he dropped the coat as stood naked as the day he was born, and possibly the day he died, in front of her. Her eyes, as much as she inwardly tried to will them otherwise, went straight to his middle pieces, the one's ladies ought not to be staring at. "I...um...erm...." It was all the poor girl could get out as she stared.<br/><br/>_____<br/><br/>Lee was locked into his attention, listening carefully as Andrew explained everything to him thoroughly and honestly. He was quiet and well composed and much was coming to light for him in this short but candid conversation. There were specifics that caught him and held his imagination. Andrew wanted him, truly wanted him for all the things the world would despise him for. Andrew didn't care about his romantic preferences. Lee thought it was a shame he couldn't share them, but that had always been something that was rarely available to him anyway and he was used to not getting that. In the wider scope of things, it was insignificant he thought. The fact that Andrew chose<i>him</i>meant something to him. It meant a<i>lot</i>to him. It was the temptation of having someone who he could look up to and make proud. He couldn't do that with his own father or family; too much had been broken there. The rebellion had taken so much. By the time Lee was born, the whole region was poor in spirit and resources, left with nothing but their dead and defeat.  His father's career was in shambles along with their estate and everything from there on out was making things work with little to nothing.<br/><br/>"I'd like family holidays, if my family liked me." He paused, always a little contradictory  because Andrew had a matter-of-fact way of making him sound awful. "And pretense really just seems silly now. Lee. I'm Lee, not short for William in any way, just plain Lee like Robert E." He let the accent free finally. "Son of the south, named for the one and only great General. Braxton. Wilde is just a name I saw on an advertisement while having coffee one morning. It was simple, I liked it. I should have been a doctor. My father was a doctor, but the war broke him. The war broke everything. He put on the gray and sawed off legs and arms and stood ankle high in innards. He never finished school because of the war and even though they called him a doctor on the field he was never able to get the paper from the university and after the war there was no money to do it. That's around when I was born, so I didn't see it, I just heard it from my mother as she lamented. He turned his trade to the dead; burying them that is, and laying them out for grievin'. There were a lot of funerals to be had in Dixie after the war. Fathers and sons were gone, mothers and babies couldn't make it. Slaves and soldiers couldn't make it either. I grew up with the dead; the dead in the coffins and graves and the dead that was my father.  And yes, I know I talk a lot, but you should know me; even if I got no choice."<br/><br/>He leaned forward, closing the space between them to something bordering intimate. He felt comfortable with it especially in the private setting. Even though Andrew scarcely returned the same closeness, Lee never felt particularly dissuaded from it. "I never quite set out to do what I do, it just happened. It happened mostly because of how I am and how that could never be known. There was a man I hated because he threatened to bring that out to the light because he could hold it over me and keep me to his whims. I wanted to kill him; I wanted to kill him every time I saw him, every time I smelled his nasty tobacco and whiskey breath, but I never had the balls for that kind of thing. He made me feel that way. But the time came when he died which was followed by me shoveling dirt on his coffin. No one came to visit him or cry for him. No one liked him except my father who knew him from the war. But when I buried him, I thought of all the ways I wished I would have taken my anger to him and how all I wanted was to leave that place, my home, the south, being poor and broken. I knew it was wrong at the time, but in the end I didn't care. I knew there were men who dug up the dead for money, and on that day I dug up Addison and sold his corpse to buy my ticket out. Since then..well, I've turned that hateful passion into a fine career. I respect them now though; I only hated Addison. I'd dig him up again and piss on him if I could. Sell every piece of him over and over." He looked up to catch and hold Andrew's gaze. "But that's just who Lee Braxton is and where he come from."<br/><br/>" But I'm here now and I feel I should probably be scared, or horrified or something, at your proposition; but I just have questions. I kind of understand where I'm at now bein' a ghoul, but bein' a childer like you said, that's different. What happens to me then if I agree. I'm just going with the pretense that I have a choice. It makes it better for me to think about it if ain't I automatically kicked in full gallop resistance. There's the small thing too that I like you for the most part. I mean, you piss me off sometimes, but I keep comin' back for it so there's somethin'. And no, it ain't the feed because if it were, I woulda asked you for it by now, wouldn't I." He moved a bit close and reached to rest a hand on Andrew's gloved one. "How would it happen? What would it feel like? How is it different than I am now? What would it mean to us, whatever we are?"