“I’m fine,” he insisted. Like an ogre or bear, he had that look in his eye and a stubborn set in his jaw that wasn’t about to budge any time soon. The sudden flare in his dulled stare reiterated the words, which meant he was preparing himself to act like none of this had happened. Or that it was no big deal after all. Except Lane wasn’t stupid; she had felt his heart shudder almost to a stop and had witnessed the blood stain his skin. While his face was now dewed with the water from the sink, the residual glow from the over consumption of power was fading around the edges, leaving behind a ghastly pallor besides. He was like a computer that had been overclocked too much: burnt out where his intention was supposed to be to move faster.<br/><br/>He shook his head as if that might clear his head of the residual ringing, like tendinitis for magic users, and even though he allowed her to guide him back over to the chair, he forced his steps, though heavy, to not wobble underneath him before he could sink back down into the chair. His gaze was soft around the edges, making her image blur when he looked up at her with a self-implicating grin slapped fast on his face. His indicator that he was going to pretend that his magical prowess in summoning up her own powers had not resulted in…<i>this</i>.<br/><br/>“Sorry about that little flub. A slight malfunction,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood once his vision refocused. The wings were gone, but Lane still had an otherworldly aura around her, invisible to any who lacked the Sight. But at least that much was his own natural abilities. At a glance, he could typically read an aura without opening his own eyes to its purple-hazed magnificence lain unseen by the mundane world. By tapping into her powers, it gave the young woman a softer presence, though nonetheless stronger than the night before. James found himself grinning despite himself. No, Lane was not turning back to a more normal life now that he had helped her unlock<i>this</i>. No doubt she could already feel the undercurrents of it all.<br/><br/>The what still hung in the air unanswered. He had already deduced it was something of what humans called<i>heavenly</i>. But even if she did have Valkyrie blood in her veins, he hadn’t heard of one of those kind venturing back into this world for anything since humans really took off in the world. That he had a twenty three year old potential half-blood on his hands intrigued him. The grin on his face became a little bit more real as the musings circled in his mind. With his heart running its frantic race in his face and the dull ache of pain escaping the confines of the drug that still left his sense numbed and tingling, James tilted his head back against his chair and closed his eyes to let her take charge of the situation.<br/><br/>“I know that this wasn’t your idea of an ideal second date,” he put his thoughts to words, his voice soft. His eyes didn’t open once she had returned to the table with their food, but the smile was still there playing at the corners of his lips. Then his lids cracked open. “You mean you weren’t staying the night already?”<br/><br/>But her tone of voice was serious, so his smile soon faded and he forced himself to sit up straight in the chair and focus, the bowl she set in front of him ignored for the time being. “Yes, ma’am,” he affirmed lightly, clearing his throat before he began his list. His eyes stayed on her as he spoke now, oddly somber.<br/><br/>“People glamorize the thought of<i>immortality</i>, Lane. Humans especially, because they feel that their life is too short to get everything accomplished in a very short amount of time. Honestly, I agree. You don’t really get to live until you’re at least eighteen, and then with civilization, only a small fraction of the time you spend awake is really all that you have. So between eighteen and, oh, seventy five is about the allotted amount of times that humans get to<i>live</i>, because the before and after is intermittent between life and death. Most people are fine with their mortality. They don’t mind growing old and dying, as long as they have a loving family by their side: they feel accomplished that way, and that existentialist crisis never occurs. Then there are fuckers like me—“ He laughed shortly, picked up his fork, and began twining it around a long, sauce-covered noodle. He made no move to eat, though, but instead continued. “Who just aren’t satisfied with that kind of life. I’ve always had a scientist’s brain, and it’s sad when a great mind is lost to the decay of mortality like so many in history before their research is done. So I stopped time’s flow…” He sucked in a breath, eyeing her reaction to his short explanation of humanity thus far.<br/><br/>“That’s where the glamour of it all ends and where geneticists and biologists fall short in reversing humanity’s genetic make up to slow down the inevitable process of aging. See, evolution has won over anything science can do thus far. What I do is manipulate what has remained unknown to most of humanity – the otherworldly, those supernatural forces such as yourself, along with my own overly diluted otherworldly blood – so that there is hardly anything natural<i>about </i>my genetic make up anymore.” There was a gleam in his eye now as he spoke. That mad scientist's glint like something Dr. Frankenstein himself might have gotten while creating his monster. Only in this case, James was the monster.<br/><br/>“But it's a tug of war between what my body biologically wants to do and what I'm forcing it to do. The leg doesn't help,” he commented, as he traced the smoldered outline in his jeans where the salamander lay dormant now, pulsing in his thigh. “So I started with pills. Take enough pills, your body develops an immunity to them. Inject yourself with the same magic juice, it no longer works because everything else at work is mutating. So then I started in with the morphine, because that does the trick. It doesn't even knock me out anymore. And that means heavier cocktails to keep myself alive and ticking as well.”<br/><br/>Let that sink in for a while. His dark green gaze turned away from her and down to the food. Finally, he had twisted a noodle around his dork enough that he stabbed it in his mouth, though what was supposed to be a zesty taste from the sauce had turned bland in his mouth. He still forced himself to chew and swallow just the same.