He is entirely too pleased with himself. There is night, and there is darkness; but he is a creature of shadows, and presently, he is craving something. Craving it, to the point that there is someone standing in the shadows outside your home, at the base of the fire escape, peering up at the soft warmth of the lights shining from your windows.
     Just another alleycat, that's me... scratching around ashcans and smirking over a bit of rotting fish. But tonight I am wanting something different. I am craving both torture and reward; punishment and pampering. It is strange, to want it so much. Strange, to have this curious hope of finding it. It makes me grin my catfish grin and slink through shadows faster.
     Until I find myself here, under your aegis, almost - tempting myself, torturing myself by wanting in but not going in just yet. Not - just - yet. A few minutes more, out here in the cold and the dark and the damp, to make sure I really want in...
     Gwilym smiles to himself at the notion, swinging himself from one corner to another, burying himself in shadow and rolling around in it until they cling to him; like a dog, burying itself in mud and filth. He pulls at them, paws them open until he can step through from here to there - there to your living room, his shadows evaporating from on and around him to a tailored linen suit; fine, thin linen, summer-weight, really, and snug enough to where he can be comfortable thinking himself the cynosure of all eyes - whether or not he is. "Where is Jupiter?" he calls out. In one hand, he clutches a bottle of wine. "I am here, Iovis, come in from the cold and dark..."

     A sudden voice -- after the night he has had. You are wise not to have appeared right behind him! But the sound of running water stops at the first sound of your voice. By the time he recognizes you, he is appearing in the hall -- his expression a mixture of I might have to kill someone and Oh, amice! It is YOU!
     Your Jupiter is dressed in next to nothing. There is nothing on his upper body, and then there is the leather. His feet are bare as well. But he is not getting ready to go out. No, the first thing an observant eye will notice is that he, alleycat that he is, has been in a scrap. There is little evidence on his upper body -- just the remnant red marks that were once slashes, and the wet cloth that he is using to numb his swollen lip. His hair is dark as Medusa's heart, his eyes black as Pluto's. But his smile -- his smile is bright as the moon. "Amice!"
     Iovis looks you up and down without artifice or subtlety, and he grins a crooked grin, waving you to follow him. "Let me go spit some blood, then I will greet you better. Come, come," he waves as he moves swiftly.
     His limp from the Shadow battle is gone and any marks he received there. But there are new ones. "Jupiter! I am a god now!" Iovis cackles coarsely at that, liking it very much. "It is my name, si? Jupiter, king of the gods." He tosses the rag on the bathroom counter and turns on the water, spitting the last of the blood out and then rinsing his face and mouth.
     "I feel like Jove," he says, his gaze going up and down and over you again. "I am the boss, yes? Tonight, Jupiter was challenged. So I had to fight. Sometimes, amice, we have to fight like the dogs we are, to see who is the boss. And you know who that is? Me, that is who!" He grins at you. He nearly lost a tooth but it has reset. Still he was socked in the mouth.
     Ha. It is a big enough target.
     "...There is not so much to do in this area. It is calm, not like my Genoa. Here, there is an old one... very old... he lives not far away. Between here and Poitiers. He has been there, who knows, maybe a thousand years. No one messes with him. Those who do, they end up deader than they are already, wishing they could be even more dead not to have to feel the pain he makes! There is another one, him I know. He is even worse! So, the whole area, Orleans to south past Poitiers, even to Toulouse," he whistles, "... nothing. So we fight ourselves because there is nothing left to do."

     He likes the view; you can see it in your eyes. He likes the view, and he likes the way you look at him. Though there is the quick concern that flashes - like his brother, he has a tendency to be - ah, overprotective, especially of what he regards in any sense as 'his'. And that is a matter for later scrutiny as well; does he consider you his? He puts the thought away.
     "You barely get over being half killed on my account and you go getting into fights? Anything I should know about?" Gwilym moves to follow you without any dispute whatsoever. He moves behind you now (even if not before), and he settles his hands on your hips, leaning in to graze his teeth lightly against the back of your shoulder. "I know how it is with thieves. Every few months or so, the guilds send someone to try and kill me."
     He waves it off as if it is of as little concern to him as your scrapping with dogs. One hand rubs at your hip, and then he lets you go. "Nothing to do," he murmurs. "Well, my brother's coronation is giving the thieves something to do; it is why they haven't tried lately. That, and I have been around a bit less; it is harder for them to find me."
     The bottle of wine has been set on the edge of the sink; now he reaches for it again. "I'm thirsty," Gwilym declares, "so I'm going to go ahead and open this up, oes? You want any? Or will you be drinking it after it's in me?" And, over your shoulder, there is that smile...

     It is not possible for his eyes to be darker, but their gaze, the feeling behind them, certainly the power behind them, deepens when you graze his skin with your teeth. It is like a vampire's mating call. Iovis turns his head. "Open it, I need a drink," he murmurs. His long lashes are like veils to an ancient secret. "I will do both," his full lips twist and curve in the slant of a smile. "I am a glutton. If it would not kill you, I'd bathe in you."
     It would be a waste of good blood. But to be so rich!
     "Ha, it is because I have been limping, yes? They do not care. Motorcycle wreck or battle with god and the devil themselves. Animals," he smirks. "My ... kind...well those most like me... who share a common path, our path is blood and battle and freedom. Revolution. So... that means that those on top must always look at those behind or under us... the revolutionary has become the establishment," he rolls his eyes. "But it is nothing you can do anything about. It is my life, the way it goes, si?" His hand comes to pat you on the shoulder and with a nod of his head, he beckons you to follow him.
     The bedroom is windowless. It is a sanctuary none may enter except with his permission. It is an island, and he takes you there to be marooned with him a while. At the doorway, even before you and he can get in properly, before bottle may be opened, wine smelled or poured, you are pressed against the doorjamb. You taste the blood that was on his lips -- it singes and sings with impure power as his mouth covers yours. Wild hedonism, unrestrained, unguarded, is what you experience. The bloodbath of a bacchanal.
     "The wine is not going to be the only thing that's going to be in you," Iovis mutters darkly. "You and me... we...hunted men," he grins, "... tonight we are thief kings with our victories and our wine." His hand touches the side of your face, the nape of your neck and he squeezes there. "We are going to celebrate. It is good to see you," he notes. "I missed my amice this week, eh?"
     Oh, you are set in my blood. It is pumping now, quite beside itself. It darkens my eyes, my skin, it fills my flesh. If I had a heart, it would be leaping. It is flaccid, my heart. But the rest of me, amice, is not! "A week my bed has not had you in it. It begins to miss you. My flesh begins to crawl. Maybe I picked those fights," he grins, "...because I needed to spill somebody's blood if not yours. Ha!" He grins, winking at you like some conniving cherub, gleeful at another angel's fall from grace. Iovis tugs on your lower lip, sucking at the flesh and pricking at it with pointed teeth -- not drawing blood, but feeling...quite viscerally...the beating of your heart.

     Gwilym follows you, willingly, even knowing that it could damn him; he is willing, yes, too willing by half. It borders on an eagerness which is most unlike him; and that makes him nervous, even if the prospect of being alone with you does not. "Your life and mine, they ... have parallels," he murmurs, the bottle being opened even as he walks. He has been drinking wine for too many years. "They are not the same, though."
     Not the same and yet so similar. He follows you, hands falling from the task of bottle-opening as you suddenly fall on him. And he is lucky not to drop the bottle outright; he clutches at you clumsily, mouth sliding against yours, one hand clutching at your hip, the bottle pressing against the small of your back.
     As you pull back, he inhales deeply, cheeks flushed with colour, with blood as he looks at you, your dark eyes, listens to your dark tone. You say that you missed him, and it twists in him; like a knife. Like something more sexual but just as forbidden.
     I have so much trouble voicing what it is I think, what it is I feel. I look at you from so close, and I can't find the words. Why is it so difficult to say that I missed you, too? Why is it so difficult even to mouth crude words for what I feel, what I want, what I need? You are right here, and so am I. Am I putting distance between us by not speaking? Am I overanalyzing this...
     "Maybe I should ensorcel your bed," Gwilym murmurs, voice low and teasing, and he leans forward to let his tongue glide against your ear. "Shadows to come and torment you in my shape each night before the dawn, oes? You would want to kill me." He laughs, closing his eyes until there is only the faintest flash of emerald. "But I want your bed now. The things I want - I don't speak of them. I want them, all the same."