Ivo stepped into the crowd dazedly, pulled after Davi who seemed determined to disappear in the middle of it. Somehow his change of mood was connected to the sudden appearance of the man with the nightsky eyes.
In the thick of the crowd the music seemed to swell. Ivo felt it pounding through the floor and into his body. All the people surrounding them felt it too and lost themselves to it.
"I don't know how to dance," Ivo admitted, raising his voice to be heard over the noise.
But of course Davi already knew that. His eyes kept drifting through the crowd, searching for the person he was trying to avoid.
Davi wrapped one hand around Ivo's waist and pulled him towards his body. "Here, just move close to me." He looked over Ivo's shoulder while he spoke, distracted.
The sudden proximity made Ivo uncomfortable. Even more so than when they trained. He tried to tell himself it was no different, they were even wearing the same athletic shorts and cropped t-shirts they always wore during training, but the mood was different.
Ivo couldn't ignore the suggestive music, with its seductive rhythm and lurid lyrics, or the way people's bodies fit when they danced together.
Neither he nor Davi were moving, just pressed in tight, and jostled even closer by the dancing crowd. "Who is that guy?" Ivo asked, and then to make himself clear, "The one with the black eyes."
A muscle jumped on Davi's jaw, the way it always did when he was annoyed with something. "No one, don't worry about hi..."
A deep, sultry voice interrupted him, "Yeah don't worry about me. Davi was so quick to replace me, I don't think you have anything to fear."
Davi tensed as soon as he heard that voice. He was slow to meet the speaker's blackout eyes. "Vicente, what are you doing here? I'm sure there are better parties for you to crash."
Vicente smiled and turned to Ivo. "Call me Vice, everyone does. Including Davi, well...at least he used to."
There was an entire silent conversation happening between the two of them that Ivo had no hope of understanding. Vice smirked, Davi glared.
"My name is Ivo," he said, hoping Vice would leave and take the unbearable tension he had created with him.
Vice gave him a curious look, as if just now remembering he was there. His dark eyes speckled with stars were disquieting to look into, somehow it made it worse than if they had been pitch black.
"Right. Whiskey eyes," Vice said, turning to Davi with a smirk. "I saw you on the holos."
That muscle jumped again on Davi's jaw.
"Do you want to know why I knew you had something to do with him?" he asked Davi, who didn't answer. Vice wasn't discouraged, he leaned closer to him, almost intimately, and whispered, loud enough for Ivo to hear:
"He was wearing one of your shirts as a skirt. The one I always said looked good on you."
"What do you want?" Davi hissed through closed teeth, fist closed in a prelude to violence.
Just what had happened between them to make Davi look like that? Ivo had the impression he wanted nothing more than to lay a punch square on Vice's mouth. He was taller than Vice, and stronger too; Vice had a willowy frame. Unless he pulled iron, Ivo thought Davi's chances of laying him out were pretty decent.
But he was holding himself back. That more than anything, told Ivo he should keep a close eye on Vice. If Davi was threading carefully around him then he should too.
"I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about," Vice said, his tone pleasant. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Ivo. "I can't say this cleared anything up for me."
Davi reeled Ivo in by the waist towards him, who caught himself with a hand against his chest. "Nothing to see, he needed help. I helped."
Vice's dark gaze drifted between the two of them. The stars in his eyes started glowing. Ivo knew he was trying to scan him. He met his gaze head on.
"You have always been generous," Vice said, when the glow of his eyes died down. "I'm sure I'll see the two of you around."
And then he was gone, vanishing into the crowd as seamlessly as he had appeared.
Ivo tried to pull away from Davi, thinking there was no need for it now that Vice was gone, but Davi held him tight. "Wait, he'll be watching."
Davi's free hand cupped Ivo's hip and slotted his legs on each side of his thigh. Ivo sucked on a startled breath, his eyes going wide.
"Dance," Davi hissed.
Ivo just did whatever Davi did, following the rhythm he set.
"You're too stiff," Davi whispered into his ear. "Don't move your shoulders. Why would you move your shoulders?"
His hands trailed up to Ivo's waist and held on tightly. "Don't worry about anything above your waist." He shifted his grip trying to relax the stiffness in Ivo's muscles. "Loosen your waist and hips."
This was an entirely different kind of lesson, and Ivo was finding it hard to focus. "Why does it matter? Why does he have to see us dancing?" he asked, trying to find a reason to put some distance between the two of them.
Davi seemed so unaffected by their proximity, Ivo didn't want to let on that he wasn't so indifferent.
"He needs to be under the same impression as Vital, otherwise we'll never get rid of him." His tone was filled with contempt.
"Are they working together?"
Davi snorted. "No. But Vice is a fucking bloodhound, if he thinks there's money to be made out of you he won't quit."
That gave Ivo pause. He stilled their tentative dance, looking up at Davi's pale eyes. "And is there?"
"I don't move people. But plenty of other nightrunners do." Davi gave him a long look. Ivo understood he was being warned.
"You have no memories, no family to speak for you, no crew to take blood in your name. For many, that means you're fair game. Scum like us get implants when something goes wrong, but the lux get organ transplants. You look like you were born in some lab yesterday, not a scar on you. By the looks of it you smoked your first cigarette today...you tell me what you're worth."