Liv caught the tapering tail of Frazier's attention. At first he was offended. Artificial as his self-obsession might've been, he didn't particularly like getting blown off. He took Frazier's indiscretion as permission for a little psychic snooping. Of course, it was wrong to fuck about with those less (or more) fortunate than his fellow Pilots.
Frazier, however, had his own brand of fakery. Liv toasted his backward glance and, with a groan, put his smarting leg up on Frazier's abandoned stool, cushioned by the furry jacket. He covered his knee with the now-dripping icepack and leaned against the bar, tracking Frazier with his eyes and his mind.
Careful, now. He let thin tendrils of mental attention slide carefully into the fairy's thoughts. They made hardly a ripple. It was so much easier with non-psychics. The echoes Liv caught rippled back along their one-sided connection, moving with the finesse of a symphony.
Liv watched from the bar, kicking aside the icepack as things started to become interesting. And before it dripped through the towel onto his pants. Some probing and he caught the vestiges of backstory: Frazier, Altec, a squabble grounded in jealousy and (hm) some sort of desire, and this kid, who didn't really matter. He liked the flavor of it, it was like the sort of bad movies he'd watch when no one else was around. About, um, what was it? Entangled desires in the underworld. Very atmospheric. Shame to admit it, but Frazier seemed to be a down-at-the-heels version of those seductive antiheroes Liv liked to emulate. Usually they were called Roberto or Felix. They were always suave and... tall.
Well, you had to admire the style, and, anyway, he found the mindset appealing. The faerie liked to manipulate, and he had just enough of that really misanthropic edge to make it all something a little more than typical idiocy. Atypical idiocy. Still idiocy, but... Frazier was pissed.
Liv enjoyed that.
He conducted the movements of Frazier's overture, silently, still lounging with his elbows on the bar. Approach. He cued the violins, fingers metronoming slowly back and forth. And the back-and-forth of distrust and seduction... piccolo trill... Liv didn't actually know all that much about music, so he made the rest up. A drumbeat came in later on, building. Liv caught the edge of the boy's jagged spike of pleasure and raised his eyebrows, surprised. Well then. The success of Frazier's ploy crashed the whole thing into an angry cacophony of cymbals and such.
He'd gotten what he wanted, which was enough for some people. Liv smiled, but didn't try to get his attention. He knew how this one would react to attention...
Instead, he reached out mentally as the faerie returned, and didn't remove his leg from Frazier's seat. "Well-played," he said inside Frazier's head. The intrusion was quite purposeful and a little aggressive, but just a little playful. The drug dealer's wrangling could hardly be called serious business.
