"Very forward." Zane toes the line because he can, but other than a wink tossed casually behind him he doesn't push it further. He's got what he wants: a chance for someone else to reach the same heights he has, a chance to see the calm and smooth talking man with the potential to become incandescent do just that. Or maybe he'll surprise him--that's what's the most exciting about things like this.

Tom doesn't skip because it's difficult to in snow, but there is certainly a bounce in his step as he makes his way towards the proper direction.

"Permanent residency doesn't suit me here," he confesses, "not like back home. I like to go between a few folks. Dr. Darling and Alan and Mr. Scratch. Lovely fellows---you should really meet them."

Oh.

Zane's demeanor shifts for a fraction of a second, eyes narrowing. The passage of time is something he's only just recently begun to adjust to again, but what Louis says sticks out immediately. Raylan had mentioned something like that as well, hadn't he? Shooting a Mr. Wake?

"Really?" He keeps his voice as light as he can, as casual as possible. It has to be Scratch, then--that's the only explanation.

"I do hope he was writing." Another purposefully casual statement as he moves to a porch and then up the stairs. Louis' scowl is an afterthought now, a brief note to remember while interacting with him. Most of his attention is on his Wake comment.

Zane immediately moves to the fire--it might be bad form to leave a house with one still running, but he doesn't seem to particularly care. He also doesn't seem to particularly care about whatever Louis does here, though his own winter jacket gets shoved unceremoniously onto the floor in comparison to the other's neat movements he makes for the hearth.

"Homestead pursuits and Alan, huh? Can't say he's ever seemed the type." That is laughable, and Tom laughs a log onto the fire, twirling his wrist in a circular motion towards Louis.

"Make yourself comfortable, get a little nest going before we start."

Louis drapes himself handsomely, casual in an elegant way that Zane finds himself admiring when he spares a glance back from his current task. Louis wants to play games, he thinks at first, and that's fine--games can be fun.

But it's the fangs remark that have him still once more, stiff with curiousity like he'd been when Alan's name had been mentioned. This one he doesn't bother to try to hide at all: he twists his head to the side, and by the time Louis' sentence has finished his whole body has turned to match.

"Really? More for me, less for you, and I get a show? How on earth to you expect me to refuse?" His smile is entirely too wide and shows entirely too many teeth. It's a done deal.

Louis says slow down and Zane chuckles lightly, a half-titter that only emphasizes how eager he is. Of course there's a catch--there always is, especially here with the cold wind and deep, unnerving sense of nothingness. This is not the Oceanview Hotel. This is not the Dark Place.

Tom tries to clear his mind from wandering, a difficult task on the best of days, and focuses only on Louis and Louis' words. It helps that they're promising, honey sweet and silvery. He decides, in his own way, to give the other a bit of honesty in return. He pulls the heels of his feet towards himself, sitting in a near-perfect cobbler's pose.

"I like freedom," he doesn't correct the other's assumption so much as guide him a little closer to his truth, smiling softly. Unscrewing the thermos, he continues as he pours the tea into the cup. "I used to have it--pure. Beautiful. I don't have it anymore."

Lips press into a thin line, and he drains the entire cup. When he pours a second time, it's half of what he had.

"I'm trying to search for it again. If I can get even half of that sensation from you--well. Either it's diminished for me like the others, or there's a chance I can salvage a bit, and that's fine, too." The cup is slid Louis' way. Zane chuckles, perfectly lucid.

"I also do enjoy getting bit, so I'm still failing to see a downside, handsome. Do you know what creativity tastes like?"

Oh. There's something there. The rebuff is interesting and lines up with what little he knows about Louis, but it's the way he trails off that really piques his interest. He's something. dot dot dot. Complicated.

Tom loves complicated. Not for him--he's got enough of that on his own--but love, well, it's a fractured thing, isn't it? And all consuming in all the right and wrong ways. He wants to know what it's done to Louis.

He makes two internal decisions immediately, and seals it with one simple, angular up-and-down nod. One, that asides from the occasional darling or handsome comment that Louis is very much off limits. Two, that he desperately must meet this 'other.'

"I'm an artist, Louis. It's in my veins regardless of what you think." He makes himself comfortable, waiting a few minutes for it to kick in fully and mingle with the still-lingering high from his alarmingly long bender.

By the time it kicks in for Louis, the wood paneling has softened and turned to tree bark for Tom, colours and feelings shifting and interchangable at this point. It's a good high, a pleasant one, a familiar one that sends him floating up so high it nearly grounds him.

Tom is his best like this, deep into the recesses of his mind, of nothing but the present moment. He thinks he'd like his camera right now, or some paper--and he groggily moves up, the wind wooshing around his ears as he does so a little too quickly, he laughs. Free and easy, he tilts his head at Louis and his words.

"You're here and there," he says with utmost certainty, answering both his own question and what he thinks Louis is saying, temporarily distracted by wonder and creativity and that beautiful feeling of being on the verge of inspiration. He's propped himself on his elbows as he watches Louis bare his fangs, blue eyes far more alert than they should be given his state. Louis has revealed a lot already, things Tom's not entirely sure is on purpose. His love of drink weighs on him in some form. A crisis--although he doesn't need mushrooms to tell him that.

His smile widens slightly. Louis wants him to come closer, and his teeth look positively large in the firelight and under the influence. He doesn't think he can stand right now, so he crawls instead, laughing.

"What big teeth you have," he teases, and bites at his own lip. A hand reaches out towards them tentatively, though he has the sense to stop before he gets too close.

"Can I...?"

Louis almost laughs but the moment the very tip of Tom's index finger touches the other's left fang he does laugh, giddy and pleased and pleasantly shocked, surprise giving way to a quick spike of joy. The joy doesn't dissipate.

"Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau," he whispers, drawing his finger back out of what is polite courtesy. He's very well aware of the fact that he's in danger--he's seen it, seen those fangs, seen a certain look on this man's face that he only ever really sees in Mr. Scratch, but he's not entirely frightened.

It's the drugs, maybe. Or the fact that he's overwhelmed by the sheer feeling of it all, the secrets being told without words, the implications. He sighs, happy. Fascinated.

"Oh, my friend. I'd like to tell you where I am right now." That same hand is carefully going for the other fang to touch, wanting to compare.

Tom's momentarily distracted, index finger gently pressing against that second fang with a startled 'oh!' as he seems to reach some sort of unknown conclusion. The air is thick in that beautiful way it usually is when he's tripping, and there's a brief moment where he moves to try to cradle Louis' face in wonder.

He catches himself--even in his state he's very much not about not getting killed because he pushed his luck--and he presses his lips into a thin line.

"It's almost like I'm floating in the lake again," he confesses, "I'm in the Dark Place, man. Nothing but endless night--and Louis, it's so peaceful. I thought it was a bad thing being alone, but it really isn't. You just have to carve a little part of you away, give it to someone else, y'know? That part lives on."

A laugh.

"Or maybe I'm lying. I can't keep track of myself here, not since arriving."