It didn't show. The stress bleeding Nadal's energy away, making his soul coil in his body, it settled around him like an invisible layer of drying lacquer over his heart, constricting and protecting deceptively. A thin, crackled lacquer bridge from problems that must be solved to some other place was hardly strong enough to hold for long.
David watched him enter the rooms they shared. Really, they were Nadal's rooms, and everyone on board the Koneko seemed much happier to have the vampire in the most secure rooms. For a moment their eyes meet, violet and green, and the weight of thin lacquer defenses grew heavier on Nadal's shoulders.
A smile lazed it's way over David's lips, as he leaned his back against the wall. He wore the cream-colored leather pants he'd worn when they'd escaped St.
