<strong><br/>Victoria Barrowe's "Perch"<br/>Club Mercy, NYC<br/></strong><br/><br/>Her hand had seemed to tense momentarily as the young man had taken the EMT bag from her hand... she had seemed, perhaps, a little put-off, but it was more likely that she was simply unused to being around others as solitary as her self.  Regardless, that tension has faded, and as Dinah speaks, Victoria watches and listens.  She begins the cursory easing of her visible guard as she works the last of the fastenings free from her forearms and glides her hands out of the gauntlets, blinking slowly like a studious cat as she regards Dinah's explanation.<br/><br/>"Crossing the line into enemy territory for a friend?"  She smiles faintly, the cold light of her subdued mirth like a gem's luster in her eyes.  "Must be quite a friend..." she eases closer, settling onto the overstuffed arm of a comfortable-looking couch and leaving the gauntlets on the floor.  "How did you say it, exactly... visceral, perhaps?"<br/><br/>The shower hissing to life draws her attention momentarily.  "The Comedian again. Quite a trove of government secrets spilled on the concrete that night."  She tilts her face, counter-analyzing now, without the deft touch of hypnosis to misdirect the eye.  She seems to tune out the bogglingly deft motions with which Dinah manipulates the glass orb, looks through it to the woman, rips away the layers of satin and velvet and discipline and talent, looking for a human in there somewhere.  "But you only care about something that might embarrass, or disgrace, someone uninvolved?"  She stands and circles the room.  "The Comedian wore atrocity like a plume in his hat, Medea--<i>Dinah</i>. Isn't anything, whatever died with him, most likely best left dead?"<br/><br/>She fishes a navy-blue tracksuit, white pinstripes down the arms and legs, 'Puma' on the breast', from a heavy drawer, then closes it softly.  "I hope you'll forgive me, Dinah, but since I don't have your ability to turn minds around my finger, I have to ask the baser questions."<br/><br/>Her lips seem to slip from a natural, subtle pout to a serpentine smile as she glances back over her shoulder-- the steamy whisper of the shower, the trickling of water from limbs onto tile, grows louder as she opens the door-- the shift of air pressures rustles the curtain softly.  She glides her foot over the coral-colored tiles to scoop Aesir's clothes into a small pile, and she lays the track suit on the closed lid of the toilet.  She opens the mirrored cabinet after studying his form through the modest clouding of the semitransparent plastic  She sets a plastic toothbrush, still in its small cardboard sleeve, and a travel-sized toothpaste on top of the suit.<br/><br/>She calls to him over the noise of water, a tone of humor in the edges of her voice.  "Don't get the wrong idea... I don't do this for all the young men I bring home."  Her fingers trail at the droplet streaked plastic as if impulsively trying to tug it wide, but she reels them back in.  She balls up his old clothes, tucks them into a spare wastebasket liner, and is tying it off as she makes her way back out to the open-sided room toward where Medea has, hopefully, begun to make herself comfortable.<br/><br/>"Look... you seem like a woman who loves her secrets."  The bag falls from her hand as she moves closer to the exquisite young woman. She keeps her hands folded behind her until she grows close enough to Medea to speak at a whisper.  "So I'll back off with the questions.  I do want to know more... about you, about your interest in the Comedian."  With her head dipped in a coy gesture of modesty, she steps closer, her thick-soled shoes silent as cats' paws on the carpet.  "I may be able to help you, after all."<br/><br/>Her hands then encircle the tapered waist of the crystalline-eyed woman, fingers entwining behind her waist-- .  Not as tall in her flat soles, she, finds it easy to nudge her soft-raven, lavender-smelling head along Dinah's cheek, to breathe against her skin as she steps into the embrace as casually as one might open a door, or tie a shoe.  "But I'm not going to dance some kind of ceremonial ritual to put on some affectation. I go after what I want, what I need.  I do what needs to be done regardless of whether it's right or wrong... propriety doesn't even hold a candle for me."  Her fingers spread along Dinah's supple lower back, fingers tracing the spine and delving along to her hip, slipping lower to cup the side of her ass.  "So... I hope it doesn't upset you," she says into the woman's eyes, "because I don't mean any disrespect."  She tips her face aside and places her bee-stung lips at the crevice of Dinah's jaw.  "Quite the contrary," she says as her teeth graze, then tug at, the woman's earlobe.  "Wanting to fuck you is my most earnest compliment."