Afterparty: Tonight's looks pretty different from the sort that follow high school and college parties, which are frequently more or less an extension of the party. Tonight's will be quieter, and presumably more reflective, and may involve more alcohol than the actual party did.
Nick was quiet on the drive home and back to his apartment; at least for a short period of time, he is still parsing through being overwhelmed by having been around all of the Hermetics, all of them new and so many of them more powerful than he is. He's recharging. So: he listens to music, and tries to tempt Pen into giving him some story or poem, and he listens longer.
An hour or so later will find them in Nick's apartment. Nick is on the top floor of this old house that has been chopped up into flats: the ceilings are high, vaulted, and the back wall that overlooks the yard is mostly window. This main room is cavernous, almost too large for a single apartment. Old windows, which are slatted with wood and have the filmy foggy sort of look typical to glass that was made by hand. His apartment is slightly larger than Pen's; Nick's salary is not a large amount of money but it is enough for him to subsist on and have some extra.
She has been here before; his furniture is older, pieced together from what he was able to find in thrift stores when he moved here for graduate school. It's a strange little accumulation of items that are mostly castoffs from something else: an end table which was actually once a sewing table in a factory, the bottom heavy dark dark cast iron, a bookshelf that was once a canoe, and a scattering of photos on the walls, some framed but most stuck there with tack or tape. He took most of them.
His desk, a chipped and pitted solid wood affair that was salvaged from someone who probably didn't realize what it would've been worth with a sanding and new stain, is edged back against a wall and scattered with books, papers, coffee cups and his laptop. The scent of coffee and hot peppers and onions still lingers somewhat from this morning and gives it a warm, lived in sort of feel.
Nick has checked his phone; Anna isn't back yet and isn't sure when she's going to be back. It's all just as well; his spare room might be little more than a glorified and particularly spacious walk in closet, but she won't disturb them when she gets back. And once they're settled comes the somewhat cautious question: "So, how do you think that went?"
crow
[Gonna pre-empt your question with my own! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
mars
Ack, no, no. Social Combat Inits! +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
mars
Pen is content with quiet on the drive back to Nick's apartment. By the time they leave she is tired and turns down Lysander's offer of a room. The mild buzz she had evaporated like fog rising up from blades of grass in the morning, after somebody (Fausto?) noticed, so she is sober but content to be quiet. Content to keep an eye on the dark road, the woods which press around and might at any moment disgorge a deer, the graceful curves of empty highway, the passage past ruined industrial areas and quaint steeples, and when Nick tries to tempt her into giving him some story or a poem she teases him into making the temptation a game and then gives in, reciting him some poems she loves. There is a moment or two of uncertainty outside his apartment, unvoiced and easily resolved -- is she coming up? That moment one realizes one shouldn't presume, in full arrogance. Then there is a moment or two of high caution -- is this when she meets his sister?
And once they've settled all those questions, Nick opens his mouth to cautious say / Pen says, quick as a needle punching through cloth, "Did you enjoy yourself, or," and her question is longer, so though they spoke almost at the same time, hers continues on with: "have you now had a surfeit of Hermetic company?"
This quick smile and a hand first to her brow, smoothing up and into her hair. The fatale curl is still holding strong.
crow
Pen's question surprises him enough to cause one of his eyebrows to flick, just a touch, up toward his hairline. Nick has collapsed onto his couch, which is large and looks like it belongs in the house of a giant or else Nick is a hobbit in a world of humans: who knows how he managed to get it up the stairs when he first acquired it.
"I had fun," he says, and there's this little smile he gives her, though perhaps he too is wondering whether she wants to stick around. It was a long day, and full of people. "There's at least one Hermetic I'm not tired of yet, though."
Nick could say more, and he will: the way he glances over at her says as much. He reaches up and tugs at the top button of his shirt to loosen it, which turns into tugging the tails out of his pants. They are still too new and he is still too full of decorum to cast it all aside just after walking in the door. Nick's brow furrows just a little. "I...can't tell what Lysander thought of me, to be honest. But I enjoyed talking to everyone. There was a lot of knowledge in that room."
mars
Pen places her palm against her breastbone, casts a woeful glance upward (it is feigned woefulness, of course; yet still, she could be an artist's model), teasing - see - glinting around her expression like light will glint on foil, "Yes, Robin Anton; he is so popular," as he is loosening his shirt and so on, and so forth. She has curled up beside Nicholas; her legs are tucked neatly beneath her, the silver of her dress wet and slinkstery with shining.
Then her attention goes: bounce, settle, connect. "What did you think of Lysander?"
crow
There is this long sigh that Nick breathes as she mentions Robin Anton's name, and his eyes, too, drift skyward: this look of pure longing. "If only you hadn't shown me that video." Hand over his heart.
Then his attention, too, settles and connects. He draws a leg up and under him on the couch, shoving a few knitted blankets and quilts out of the way. His brows tug together, not necessarily because he is trying to conceal any response to this question, but because he is trying to think it through. "He...made me a little sad, honestly," Nick says, and there is this side-glance at Pen as he says this, because he knows she admires her mentor. "Like he would've been very different if I'd known him when he was younger. Very nothing gold can stay."
Pen, she's lyrical: Nicholas adopts this with surprising ease, at times.
mars
Aw, man, no fair. Pen can't keep a straight face through that and she sinks deeper into the couch, resting her weight mostly on her spine. Her dress rides up her thighs and she reaches for one of those refugee knitted blankets, tossing it awkwardly up and it doesn't get any height so it only hits Nick's shins tossing it awkwardly up up up again so it settles over them both more properly but still not very good slides away. Pen is leaning against the back of the couch, rests her cheek there-upon, pensive and steady in her regard.
"Mm."
More? Expectant. No; hopeful.
crow
She pulls the blanket over them both, and so Nick discards his socks: they are generally the first thing to go. He spent most of his youth in bare feet.
The look she is giving him is - not expectant, and Nick has to consider carefully here, to weigh his words. "I liked that he showed me as much of the house as he did. And that he told us about the room with the lights. He's obviously very clever, and..." A beat. "I got the sense that he wanted something from me, but I'm not sure what it was."
mars
"I know what it was," Pen says, and then she stops; or maybe pauses. Maybe she wants him to ask, or guess. Maybe she is considering what to say. Her eyebrows loft; her shoes are already off and her toes sneakily find the side of Nick's thigh, then burrow under for warmth.
crow
Pen says that, and then she stops, and Nick's sidelong glance becomes a full one. He has pulled his legs back under the blanket, and is in the process of wrapping the material around his toes. That's when he leans back into Pen, flops to the side so that his head is resting against her arm, or her flank, or her hip: whatever it happens to fall on. It won't be comfortable for long but he isn't really thinking that far ahead.
"What was it? I thought...I mean, I didn't think at first that he was happy about my being with you, but I guess that wasn't it."
mars
"Only your happiness matters, and mine," Pen says, with some heat. Look, a flopped Nicholas! Pen shifts to better enable all the possible Nicholas contact, though her dress protests by being particularly dazzlingly silver beneath the covers. Woe, how couldst thou care naught for our fabric, woe.
She swallows, before she says (and her fingers have found Nick's earlobe, and are playing with it), "He wanted perfection; and a challenge. It's what he always wants."
crow
Pen shifts, and Nick finally makes the move to horizontal. This results with his head in her lap, one of his arms almost thoughtlessly thrown back; after a moment it wraps back and around Pen. The other comes to rest against his chest, just beneath his breastbone.
His head angles up only briefly as he meets her eyes. "Perfection makes sense. But I don't get what a 'challenge' means in this sense."
mars
"In this sense... it means something stimulating, something that rouses you, the way the light will burnish up and polish bright an until just this moment overlooked curlicue if it falls just so, something that -- " a pause. Pen closes her eyes. "I don't know. He kept having plans; they were not kind ones, but I don't want you to dislike him because he isn't always kind." Beat. "The Green Door... you felt its hook in your lip?"
crow
"I didn't dislike him," Nick says, and this is honest, and Pen says: because he isn't always kind, and perhaps he is thinking of himself this once, and his knives and how he'd used them on Martin. He might have asked Pen more, but when she mentions the Green Door he says, "Yes. I...didn't end up walking through, but I asked him what was past the door, so he showed me."
mars
"I am glad," Pen says, fervent.
crow
There is fervor in Pen's voice, and this causes Nick's head to angle up again, his eyes to quest for hers another time. "Did you end up going through the door?"
mars
"Yes! I despise that door; it is the color of vegemite, and a fungus of the soul." Melodramatic, yes.
crow
Melodramatic, perhaps: Nick saw exactly what sorts of traps were beyond that door, and he can well imagine how they might cause someone to view it as some sort of fungus of the soul. Still, he laughs, though this is a quiet thing tonight. Then, "So you're saying he wanted to polish me, so to speak?"
mars
"Yes." Are Nick's eyes still questing for Pen's? Pen opens her eyes again so she can look down at Nick; her fingers leave his earlobe in favor of the ridge of his throat down to his collar; the dip there. "Or to be polished; challenged, brightened. I think he liked you all right. You were very eloquent, Nicholas."
crow
Pen says he was eloquent, and though his eyes had been seeking hers moments before, now they drift away, and it's clear perhaps in the private little smile he has there that perhaps this sort of compliment in particular is one he hasn't really heard very often. "That makes me feel a little better. I..." He hesitates. "I felt like I was disappointing him the entire time." Beat. "And you, by extension."
This is not a place Nick likes lingering in, and so he is quick to move on: instead, to, "He seemed to think highly of you, when I asked him about you."
mars
"He did? Merry Christmas to me." Pen sounds surprised; not shocked, but: surprised. "Wait, you asked him about me?"
crow
"Well," Nick says, and there's another look back up to her here, "I asked him what made him decide to take you on as a student. I was curious." It was an easy way to make conversation, though: by the slight furrow of his brow perhaps he is concerned about how she feels about this.
mars
Nicholas's hair: time to untame it. Pen's fingers bury themselves in the black, and she is looking up at the ceiling when he glances back at her; her own expression is distant, pensive gone more intent (intense).
"Ah hah." Soft.
crow
Pen buries her fingers into Nick's hair, which tends toward chaos unless it is being firmly held down, which it was until this very moment. Once she's shuffled a lock or two out of place, the rest springs forward as well. Nick has closed his eyes for the time being, any concern satisfied by the fact that she doesn't seem to be upset.
For a moment he is quiet, and then his eyes open again and his head shifts back so that he can look up at her once more. "Pen," and he pauses, because he knows what he saw and he knows what he's asking, "what did you see, when Lysander showed you the Green Door?"
mars
"My brother." Pen answers simply, and without any sign of trouble. Honesty is its own shield, its own bastion of strength; it is easy to be honest and true and say no more. That questing light in Nicholas's eye; Pen shifts, dislodging him from her lap, but only because she wants to languish too, with him between her legs. Once they've settled again on some mutually desired position, "What did you see?"
crow
"My father." He has turned over so he can face her more easily, half-raised, leaned against the back of the couch. Trouble is not the word for what he has when he articulates this: surprise, perhaps, is closer to the truth. Sometimes we aren't aware of our secret longings until they're just in front of us. "I'm glad I went with you."
mars
"Even though you captured Diana's interest so thoroughly?" Pen says, with an air of sly knowing, covered by a thin transparent shell of sweetly wondering questioning. She bites the inside of her lip to keep from breaking character. Pen thinks her mask is flawless.
[Maybe it is.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )
crow
[No it's not.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
To Pen's credit, it takes Nick a moment, and in the split second before he catches on his eyes just lock with hers and he blinks. "Diana was..." A beat, and then he laughs. "I think there was a very complicated social dance in place to save me from her, actually."
mars
"Some of the guests are kind people," Pen says, and her mouth isn't smiling but something in her eyes is a promissory note; she wants to smile; there is a smile there if he cashes in the cheque. This: a deep gloaming gray clarity, which is readying to spark into brightness. How fond she is; his laughter is what polishes that light up in her eyes and makes them promise things.
She covers his eyes with her hands. Blind.
crow
Some of the guests, Pen says, and Nick does smile: no promissory note here. "A lot of them seemed kind enough to me," he says, though he spent much of his time with Pen and Zelda and Alexandra, so perhaps his perception of this is somewhat skewed.
Then Pen covers his eyes with her hands, and he laughs again, low and quiet. "Are we playing a game?"
mars
"Mm. I just wanted you to see me with your eyes closed while we were talking about tonight," because Pen is that kind of weary, so many people and such a long day, "But yes, I like the idea of a game. Let's make this into a game. Hmm. A game, a game -- what kind of game should we play?"
crow
The portion of Nick's face that she can see is wearing a musing sort of look, his mouth quirked a little at the corner. He lets the rest of his weight drop from his elbow onto Pen, and rests his chin on her shoulder, forecasting the movement enough that she could keep her hands where they are if she so desired. "I like question games," he says, because of course he does.
mars
"If you were an angry god, what would you first devour?"
crow
Her question makes Nick laugh again. This sound is easier; he is gradually beginning to relax now after the long evening, and perhaps it even helps, as though the sound unmade had been resting too heavily on his chest. "SUV drivers who tailgate during snowstorms with their brights on," he says. "Or Robin, depending on the day. I think I would be a capricious angry god." A beat. "If Paradox struck you so that a song played every time you made a room entrance, what would it be?"
mars
Her hands had left his eyes, but strayed and stayed to his hair. He can feel her collar move when she laughs, the sound resonant, vibrant, kept in the chest. She turns her head to look at him more directly than sidelong, squirming again until she's found the most comfortable spot to be, and his question seems to strike her. Hands go over his eyes again, or one hand does -- (darkness [blindness]) the other has wrapped around his shoulders, is feeling out his shoulder-blade.
"I ... hmmmmm."
A long silence.
"I don't know," and she sounds so surprised, as if she has just forgotten the word for 'chocolate,' and it is mildly distressing to her and yet also very interesting. "I think, perhaps..."
Shorter silence. She laughs again; this time it is quieter. "Only one song? Maybe..." Shoulder blade to spine, explore the entire continent of Nicholas's back. "An instrumental version of Jay Z's Run This Town." The laughter has soaked into her voice; gives it a gleaming. "Or the theme from The Rocketeer. Or Under Pressure. No!"
"Wait, shh, wait. I have it. The theme for the Riders of Rohan."
"Or ... perhaps something else. Now give me a moment to come up with an equally difficult question for you, thou rogue."
crow
One hand covers his eyes, as well as the rather conspiratorial gleam they've taken on; he is rather pleased with himself for the difficulty of the question, Nick, and for the surprise it seems to have drawn out of her. "I'll find it and play it for you the next time you come in so you can feel like you're in your own epic," he says, and yes - still very pleased. It shows in the way his cheeks have reddened from the pull of his muscles.
There is a contented sigh as her hand drifts; he doesn't move.
mars
Pen's laughter is a presence again, albeit still a quiet one: a vibrant lick of movement in her chest, resonant the bones of her but not given further expression. "We are in our own epics, you and I and everybody."
"What is the most wondrous thing you have seen since you Awakened?"
crow
Nick's hand has moved up to thread through her hair, and there is this way he goes still and silent as he considers her question. His Awakening and his Awakened life have been such a mixture of Wonder and Expectation, of Awe and Terror: there are many things he could choose from, but Pen asked for the most.
"When I crossed over, like I told you last night," he says, and last night seems somehow like a long time ago, "I was in the shadowlands for a long time. And there was this...I passed through this copse of trees, through some mist, and into this Old Road where the trees rose higher than skyscrapers and I heard, and smelled, and felt like it was...somehow more than real. More vibrant. So I followed it and found a glade, and a waterfall.
"I can't even fully describe it, Pen. Just that it was ancient, it had been there since before the world was young, and I had this sense of...being alone in the world and at the same time the most connected I have ever been. Like it had always been there, and I was always meant to find it, the way thousands of people found it before me." His voice is quiet, though they are very close together at the moment; he's speaking just loudly enough to be heard.
And when he stops speaking, it's almost abrupt, and his fingers stir through her hair. And there's this faint smile before he says, "I'll need a minute to think of another question."
mars
Still and silent; she echoes him for a time. Silent and mostly still; drawing circles on his back and then an Enochian sigil, which will do nothing but is good to practice and he shan't know what it means anyway, which is a very good secret.
Her hand leaves off covering his eyes because instead she traces Nicholas's cheekbones and his eyebrows and the slope of his nose. Such gestures will one day become very familiar, how she likes to note the lines of him the hard frame on which this life has hung Nicholas's flesh and blood and the vehicle of his liveliness. The Order of Hermes is not known for the joy it takes in flesh and blood or living, are they? But Pen compasses Nicholas's face as if it is a poem under her fingertips, which has stricken her. And she inhales, too, as one does after one has heard some piece of music which is deeply, deeply satisfying, but which causes a pang - a want - a need. Feels the stiff fabric of his collar with full attention for the warp and weft of the fabric, with devotion to the moment's echo (this world).
"And so at the end of a minute, the young man asked his lover..."
crow
Nicholas has no idea that she is drawing an Enochian sigil there between his shoulderblades. They say Enochian is the language of angels, the first language, and the language of magick, and Nicholas is not learned in the way Pen is learned.
These gestures she makes are not familiar yet, and there is this way Nick holds himself as her fingertips trace his profile: very still, trying not to move. There is this way in which it makes him feel very exposed, and there is this: he is not used to it, to allowing himself to be known. He stays because he wants to, and as her fingers find his collar he runs his thumb over her cheekbone.
Then, musing, "If you had the knowledge of magick to travel to anywhere, right this minute, where would you go?"
mars
"I would go to one minute ago, so I could have it one more time," Pen says, and the tempo of her heartbeat has picked up, although her voice is a steady thing, clear and low and thoughtful, but burnished perhaps by coquetry.
"Or if I could take you with me, I'd go to Iceland. If you could do one thing about tonight over again and do it different, what would you do?"
crow
One minute ago, she says, and he laughs, though this one is soundless and his eyes drift off to the side: this somewhat embarrassed thing, similar to what she missed much earlier that night in the car on the drive up to Lysander's. "You always know what to say," he says, and this is half admiring and half rueful: he does not.
Then his eyes meet hers again as she mentions Iceland, asks him this next question. He is thoughtful, then, replaying the evening's events in his mind's eye. "I wish I had relaxed more," he says, "and hadn't...expected the worst, I suppose. Robin and Vivienne both had me nervous. But Lysander treated me well and I like the way the evening there ended."
mars
"What did -- " ack, no! Pen claps her hand over her mouth, an audial sound-bump when she does, because it is not her turn.
crow
Pen begins her question, and the corners of his eyes wrinkle with amusement as she clasps her hand over her mouth. Perhaps he might have said: go ahead, go out of turn, but that's not how these things work. "So what happened with Martin? I got the impression he'd been vanquished, and terribly."
mars
[>.> Manip + Subt. Which will not botch, okay?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5) ( fail )
mars
[Fine.]
mars
[Fine.]
mars
"I --
Don't --
Know why --
you --
would get --
that -- "
This is halting; this is an attempt at being indirect, at presenting an air of nonchalance. But instead of nonchalance, that casual gallantry which Penelope can be mistress of, this. This halting disconnect, she who is usually so eloquent. He just said she always knows what to say.
"Impression. He only," and she takes a deep breath; splays her hand over his back and brushes the half-finished sigil away, intangible as it is. She cants her chin the better to look at Nicholas. Enough of nonchalance; she knows she failed at it, so discards it all at once. Says:
"We dueled to first blood; I got him handily, neatly through the arm and side. He relies too much on his size, which admittedly is quite frightening when it is bearing down on you like some mad polar bear king turned mountain. And then he admitted that he was wrong to call names and presumptuous, and we came back."
crow
[Manip + Subterfuge.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
mars
[O__O;;;;; I SHALL SPEND WP ON THIS. The reason being she is uncertain/worried/concerned about how Nick might react to her fighting a duel over him. *grin*]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
crow
The quiet intimacy that had been the moment is gone, and perhaps one of the things Nick regrets tonight is having asked that particular question. Still, he listens to Pen as she explains, notes with amusement the manner in which she attempts to talk around the incident while giving up in the end. His thumb brushes over her cheekbone again; it is a thing he finds endearing, her inability to be dishonest.
"He did apologize," Nick says, and after his eyes have fixed on her for a moment, the cant of her chin, he leans down and places a kiss on the line of her jaw. "Were you going to ask me something?"
The gesture was genuine: Nick is really into Pen just now, a lot. But she may get the sense that his feelings about the incident remain a little mixed, and that there is something he isn't saying.
mars
Pen's eyes flutter closed. Inhales deep; exhales, soundless. When her eyes open again (and when the hand that had been at his back finds his side, instead; from there, the edge of his hip; and when her other hand settles on his arm, fingers curving loosely there-upon), for a moment distant and then focused (concentrated mercury, quicksilver; transfiguring, figuring-out, shadow-lake eyes), quite focused indeed. "You have taken two questions," and there is the suggestion (more promissory notes) of a smile as she says this, "So I will as well take two, by right of the game."
She pauses; her heart is still racing: she is an architect, try to frame the question proper. "I feel as if there is something, some thought on the subject of Martin and all that happened there, which you are not saying; wha - " pause. This change is seamless: " - won't you tell me what it is?"
crow
He makes this amused scoffing sort of noise as she says she might as well take two questions; it is her right, and perhaps he is only a little annoyed with himself for not noticing his mistake.
Nick's chin is still on her shoulder, his weight still on her though he tries to keep himself evenly balanced: he isn't much larger than she is at all, and he's quite comfortable, but he doesn't want to wear out his welcome. Still, where he is he can feel the way the beat of her heart has quickened, notices that it's grown rapid. There is a beat before he answers her, in which his eyes meet hers and his are dark at the moment, because shadows have drawn in around them; it's difficult for light to fill up this very large room. He is not upset that he has been caught out; if anything, there is this tender sort of look there, however momentarily.
"I was...well, Martin did apologize, but I probably didn't accept his apology as gracefully as I could have," he admits then. What Pen will feel about this, he is not sure. Then, "I was worried you'd risked offending Lysander on my behalf, Pen, is all. You didn't need to do that. Worse things have been said and will be said to me."
mars
"I will duel them all," Pen says lightly, and with measured dignity, a quicksilver air which becomes the more hot-tempered part of her personality (you are rash, Penelope, learn to mete out patience) well. It is probably a joke.
"You aren't a penny mystic; it was discourteous and dishonest. I hope you didn't feel obliged to accept his apology; you need not have." Apprehensive: "I didn't wish to force you to. I only wanted him not to get away with it." Beat. "With his fat tongued eyeballs and dog scat voice."
Nick and his weight have yet to wear out their welcome. Pen buries her fingers in his hair again - no. Doesn't bury yet, but plays with the curls at his nape. "I was going to ask: What did Vivienne say to make you nervous?"
crow
Perhaps Pen needs to learn to mete out patience, and yet when she says she will duel them all there is another kiss along her jawline. Nick draws back just enough to hear what she has to say next, to meet her eyes. "I didn't feel obliged to accept his apology. I let him know it."
He lowers his head again as her fingers find the hair at the nape of his neck, and when she asks about Vivienne there is this little sigh. Pen has not yet met either of his sisters, and it will be some time before she meets the sharper tongued of the two, who loves him and hates him in equal parts. "I think her exact words were to tell me that I'd get eaten alive." A beat. "Pen, maybe I am a penny mystic. I haven't studied magick the way you all have. And I don't care. I don't want you to have to care, or feel like you have to defend me for that."
mars
"You are not a - " Her teeth click shut; her fingers curled, compulsive, on his hair and she forces them to untighten, apologetically rubbing his scalp back of his neck then scalp again. Little circles. No enochian sigils this time, though he wouldn't know the difference. Pen listens; listens. Is silent after he has said his piece.
crow
Pen is silent, and in this silence a lot of things could be read, and in this way that she rubs the back of his scalp, which stung only briefly. Nick, too, is quiet for a moment because he is not sure how to respond to this vehemence. Then, finally, "Did I upset you?"
mars
"It's only that names matter. For instance when I call his voice dog scat I mean it is dog scat and his eyes fat tongued I mean they are like fat tongues that don't fit his mouth and slobber around and say too much unintelligibly and instead of looking at things he slobbers on them instead. I'm happy you don't care and were not stung by him, but they matter, and you are not a penny mystic; a penny mystic is a black face stereotype of non-Order magi; a penny mystic is cheap entertainment, naught else, is flimsy and bright but worthless in the grand scheme I know pennies actually have monetary value it is the metaphor of a thing and just because you and others do not study magick the way we have does not mean your workings are cheap or flimsy or practically worthless. You simply follow another tradition; it is not cheaper. And you are not a penny mystic, shilling for the crowd like a monkey in a hat, and and I don't have to care, but I do. You were my invited guest and I lllike you and," deep breath.
crow
Nicholas listens, all the way up until the deep breath, and the look he is giving Pen now is a somber thing. There is this moment - cheap entertainment - where the skin tightens around the corner of one of his eyes, because perhaps that strikes a chord with what Martin said to him earlier that night. His insecurities and demons are fresher now than they will be in several years, so recently slain, and right now they still rise again to ride him at times.
"Thank you for not letting him get away with calling me that, then," he says, judicious, after this moment of consideration. There is some gentle humor as he adds, "I don't think in all my lives I can remember someone fighting a duel for me."
mars
"I'm certain you were worth dueling over in any of them," Pen says, with the spark of a rakish grin, a meaningful look; let her fury subside, then. Behind the teasing gallantry, she is reflective. "Should I ever discover a means to travel backwards in time, and through multiple lives, I will endeavor to..."
Pen sighs softly and doesn't finish the promise.
crow
This rakish grin, and Nick's smile sparks somewhat more playful this time. Her promise, though, as it trails off, draws something curious and expectant from him, brings it forward. "Endeavor to what?" he prompts, quietly.
mars
"...go back and rectify the situation, challenging all manner of people and creatures to all manner of duels for you, for all the yous you have been and all the mes I was." There's something not quite rueful about the curve of her mouth now; something that tastes like the end of a battery, like pennies, ozone in the air. "That's another question; I'm two up on you again. Let's see. I would like to ask you for the answer to a question you don't believe I'll think to ask, but you wouldn't give me in the course of a normal conversation. Can you think of such an answer? And then, did you believe in magic when you were little?"
mars
ooc: er, not 'and all the mes I was' but 'as all the mes.'
crow
Her mouth is not quite rueful, and perhaps he thinks of kissing her then. He does not, because sometimes in conversation one has to be quick, and then the moment's gone; and she's up to questions on him, and Nick laughs again. "You keep getting me."
And: the questions she asks him, they knit his brows together as he thinks. "I..." Because he is not quite sure, just yet, how to answer either. He chooses her spoken question first. "I believed, when I was little. I think I..." And here he perhaps becomes somewhat shy, in the way of someone speaking of something that has always gone unspoken of, though not for any particular reason. "I saw magic everywhere, more like. I was the kind of kid who thought inanimate objects felt things." A corner of his mouth lifts as his eyes drift off, and though his head is still resting against Pen's shoulder and she can't see it, perhaps she is starting to be able to tell from the distant, questant tones his voice begins to take when he ruminates.
He is quiet for a moment before offering the answer to her unspoken question. "My uncle taught me to shoot a gun, not one of the Chakravanti I know here. He has a bunker set up out in the desert and Mom made me go out to visit a couple of times."
mars
"Made you? Did you not enjoy your visits to the desert bunker?"
crow
Nick's mouth quirks, at this; she can feel perhaps the pull of the muscle against her shoulder, into something tinged with wryness. "To the desert bunker, sure. My uncle just took his role as stand in paternal figure very seriously, and spent most of the time ranting about liberal Washington and the decline of civilization. Learning to shoot has become useful, though, I suppose."
mars
Pen has left off playing with Nicholas's hair, though that hand had settled on his head, locks wound 'round her fingers but care taken not to pull. Her other hand is more (dreamily, almost absently) exploratory: smoothing over his ribs and side to follow the line of his arm, find the wrist, and stay there a while, pray at the bottom of his palm, work her fingers so they are curved within his, fitting neatly.
"He sounds quite fervent."
crow
As her hand explores his ribs to eventually make its way into the curve of his palm, Nick wiggles and adjusts his weight a little, if only to find a more comfortable spot and maximize Pen contact. "He is," Nick says, and he could say more about his uncle perhaps, but the less time he has to spend thinking about his uncle on Christmas the better.
He smiles then, against her collar, and says, "I know it's cheating to reuse your question, but I like your question. What answer would you give me to a question you think I'd never ask in conversation?"
mars
[>.> Enochian roll.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
mars
Dismay (good humoured) when Nicholas uses her own cunning question against her, which he can hear and feel in the catch of her breath inside the trap of her chest and the tempo of her heart has slowed though not quite to resting, because the spirit (body) is roused by what it is roused by, quickened by what it is quickened by. Certainly Nicholas's smile against her collar is reason enough for there to yet be intimations of euphoria, for the heart to be rushing a little more quickly toward Death because it silly thing doesn't know how to prolong a moment. Pen brushes Nick's hair back from his forehead and then drums her fingertips on his head.
"Clearly we should have defined the games' rules before we began. We're in too deep now! Let me see. Hmm." By which she means: let her wriggle down as her forefinger curls around Nick's chin and lifts his head so she can kiss the corner of his mouth and bump him with her nose, bat lashes (coquetry, again), and she is rather guileless in this dreamy intent. Eye to eye she says something in another language, and if there is mischief a line of it silver-bright like the surfacing edge of some fantastical underwater thing, then there is mischief.
There is mischief.
The language is a good language for saying something ardently meant, spoken as it was by angels when they were setting the stars into the heavens and debating the courses of justice and mercy, wrath and love, in the High Courts Before All Things, setting in motion the fates of all worlds: and if she is not quite advanced enough to really catch the nuance, well, Enochian is difficult. And not really meant to be a language in which one Flirts, but one must give Enochian its due, and Pen has always found it Highly Romantic.
Her mouth twists. Her eyes shift down and to the side, then find his again. "The biggest hole I ever dug was around nine feet deep. I dug it because I had this idea - " Her voice goes a little silky with embarrassment. " - about my first ever book of poetry, I was mind you I think fourteen, and about how I'd dig a grave, preferably one which was deep enough to be in spitting distance of Chiron and Styx, then I'd very dramatically throw my first ever book in -- the only copy of it, of course, which was handbound thanks to some ribbon and staples. I'd fill the hole up and return some years later, you know, when I was famous and everybody desperately wanted just one more 'E. S.' poem. I found a dead owl and a boot and I almost buried myself alive, but it was pretty cathartic. It was a good hole. I convinced Aidan I was digging to China and I'd bring him back some authentic Chinese food once I finished the tunnel."
crow
Nick has to shift and adjust, pull one of his arms out from beneath him, at which point it curves around and over both of their heads. His eyes throw back that glint of mischief, made all the sharper because he has no idea what she just said, because she spoke a secret. Perhaps he, too, finds something Highly Romantic in it, in whatever Word it was that manages to have layers upon layers of nuance and beneath it, Truth.
"What did you - " and he stops, his jaw clamping shut, because this would be a double question and he's already done that too many times tonight. Pen won't catch him again.
Except that what she says makes him want to ask even more questions, to the extent that she can see his jaw almost working with the will it takes him to keep from blurting them. Something affectionate has crept into him too, there, as she tells him this story about burying her first ever book of poetry, something so fond that even if he were going to let himself ask a question he might not even know which question to ask. "It sounds like you were doing a lot of magick when you were younger." He stops, and then gives up. "Did you ever find the Styx?"
mars
Pen, who as Nick has noticed is quite the keeper of scores when it comes to question games (it is an alertness which comes in handy for geasa structured by numbers), is serene about this question. She had asked him two in a row before.
"It was pretty damp down there, and cold. It smelled like I imagined the underworld probably smelled, minus the incense, so I think I got close enough. I did bring Aidan some Chinese food too."
Which she did not have the money for; would never have had the money for. Trickery was required. "If you were a rockstar from the 70s or 80s, what would your persona - look, solo or band, sound, etcetera - be?"
crow
Nick smiles again here, and he has leaned forward a few inches to catch her mouth with his own before she asks her next question, in a way that was not planned ahead and can't especially be helped. They're talking closely, and his heartbeat has cycled between rapid and not-quite-resting itself throughout much of their conversation, and there is a natural way these things go.
Her question has amused him, and has him a little stuck, and she can see it in the way his eyebrows furrow as he laughs once. "Hm. I want to say one of those ones that shunned the spotlight, though maybe L - "
There comes a sound against one of his very large back windows. It is not quite a knock, but this hard click: perhaps a bird hit it, and Nicholas starts. Then it comes again, and it is accompanied by the sound of a woman's voice outside, high and almost singsong: "Nichoooooolaaaaaaas! Nicholaaaaaaaas!"
And Nick sighs and his eyes slide shut.
mars
Pen lifts and turns her head in the direction of the sound, too. Considers that direction for a moment -- let us say the couch back or couch arm conceals it, unless she chooses to sit up, which she does not. Not yet. This is perhaps not the first time some intimate moment has been disturbed by a sibling, or just somebody else, but she finds Nicholas's sigh so endearing she feels as though she can hardly bear it, and she'd kiss him fiercely if she were to kiss him -- if she were not in control of herself.
She is in control of herself, somehow, wearying as the last two days have been, and instead laughs and says low and conspiratorial, "I never realized your name could be chanted like in those Ricola commercials."
Beat; she wants him to open his eyes and look at her, but wanting won't make that happen. She touches his shoulder, or his face, and if he does look at her he'll see Pen's eyes at their most (beseeching) quizzical. "Do you want me to leave?" Totally nonchalant: good job, Penelope. "It's cold outside. You should let her in."
crow
Pen touches his shoulder, or his face, and Nicholas opens his eyes and looks at her, still smiling given that she has commented on Anna's particular way of getting his attention. Outside, the calls continue. He ignores them, if only long enough to answer her.
"I want you to stay," he says, and he too wants to seem nonchalant. "Do you want to stay?"
mars
[>.> Nonchalance. Totally rolling it.
This time we're going to move up from botch and failure to success, yes dice?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
crow
[Also super super nonchalant.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
mars
[BUT ARE YOU REALLY? or are we being ridiculous!?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
mars
[god damn it, dice.]
crow
[Contesting!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
crow
[Are YOU really?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
mars
[god damn it, nicholas. the ONE successful lie! grumble tie-breaking grumble.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
mars
[omg, dice.]
crow
[diiiiiiiiiice]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
mars
[6 suxx totally beat the 5 dice pool. >.>]
mars
Pen holds Nicholas's gaze, and tarnished silver can be Byronic in that it is dark and bright. While holding his gaze with her own, her nose wrinkles and her mouth pulls into a smile and she nods before she says, "Yes I do." And she means that yes, means to sound as cool as he does, as nonchalant as oh why not, as devil may care (but with warmth), composed of rational thought and something more than longing. Pen doesn't mean him to see how strongly she wants to stay with him tonight because what if he needs some private time or what if he didn't want Pen and his sister to meet yet or like this what if he doesn't like her as much as she likes him what if he finds the impetuous (which is to say not at all in check) desire she has to be with him to be too much or overwhelming what if he can't meet it what if they aren't equal what if she is infatuated what if she just could sound cool right now instead. And she does maintain her composure, though it is burnished with a touch of warmth. But Nick has sharp eyes, and sharper intuition: tonight he's been reading people (too) well.
crow
Nicholas has been reading people (too) well tonight, and this nonchalance: maybe a little bit of it slips in the face of that. Just because Nick is perceptive doesn't always mean he knows what to do with what he sees. That doesn't mean that what he sees just now doesn't terrify him, perhaps almost paradoxically, because here: there's this realization.
"I'm glad," he says, and as he kisses her forehead and pushes himself up on one hand he tries tries tries to be cool. He was cool before; he can be cool now.
Anna is still calling for him outside and Nick is sure that very shortly the people who live below him are about to be upset with the weird-looking kid upstairs. Nick very carefully climbs over Pen, who can certainly follow him if she wants, and now he is glad he kept his clothes on after entering the apartment. He (also, with nonchalance) tries to reorganize his hair and tucks his shirttails back into his pants, even as he starts down the stairwell to let Anna inside.
mars
A forehead kiss? You played it too cool, Penelope, the Flambeau thinks to herself, something rueful to the cant of her mouth now. Pen props herself up on her elbows to look after him when he goes. There's something fond in the way her eyes rake over Nicholas-getting-himself-put-together-again. It could've been way worse in another five minutes or so.
And no. No, she does not want to follow him. Once he is out of her direct line of sight, Pen flops back and covers her face with her hand, drags her hands down her face and over her throat, and then she sits up. Does not bother to try and put the femme fatale waves, somewhat mussed now, back into order, though she does fix the collar of her dress, and settles herself curled up by the couch arm instead, legs tucked beneath her, elbow on the arm, and in her coat is her phone, and if there's much time between Nick opening the door and the siblings reappearing, the phone will be in her hand. There are messages to check.
mars
...And alert nonchalance to embody.
crow
There are messages to check: Pen probably gets through one or two of them before Nick can make his way back up to the apartment with Anna.
The first thing she will observe about Nicholas's sister is that Nicholas's sister does not have anything approaching or resembling an inside voice. As they move up the stairwell back up to Nick's apartment (he left the door hanging open), the Chakravanti's voice does not carry even though his sister's does. "You didn't stay with Thane?" she can hear Nick ask, and then the woman's voice:
"Well, no. I came here to spend Christmas with you, right? How was the party, Nicky? You don't seem to have been cursed and you're sober, so does that mean it went well?"
"Let's - " A little urgency to Nick's tone, there.
And then the crowns of their heads, or more appropriately their hair, appear at the top of the steps, and soon they are back in the apartment. Anna is wearing some sort of flowy deep green dress, seasonally appropriate in color if not in the type of fabric or warmth, and her hair is only a little longer than Nick's, and they both look quite alike: light brown skin and eyes and nose and mouth all the same.
"You didn't tell me your girlfriend was here! Hello! I love your dress!"
mars
"Hello. Yours is quite lovely too; like a forest all transformed and you dryad-ish in it," Pen says, with the spark of a smile. She puts the phone aside; she was just texting with Robin and Arianna anyway. Pang of conscience. "Call me Pen. Anna, right?"
crow
Anna (aristocratic A, of course, all the stress on the first syllable - she is rather sensitive to what sounds like the drawn out twanging sound that is part of the more popular pronunciation of the same name) flits through the room and plops down next to Pen on the couch, much like a friendly cat beelining for a rare guest in its home. It's not Anna's home, but she treats it as though it is. "Yeah," she says, and arranges the dress around her knees, clearly pleased with the compliment.
"Nicky's said a lot about you!" And Nick, who is shutting the door and still trying to maintain his desperate coolness, shoots her this look, see, that is shadowed over his shoulder, so Pen probably misses it.
"So," and this glint in Anna's eyes is familiar because Pen knows Nick, she'll recognize it, "just so you know, I believe in freedom of information, which in this case means I will tell you whatever embarrassing stories you want to know." A beat. Capricious thing, Anna. "You should tell me how the party went first, though. Nick said you both went to visit your mentor?"
Nick has been edging closer to the two of them, cautiously.
mars
Pen is not yet (?) dismayed by Anna's exuberance or directness, but then she tends to be direct herself, if more reserved (when she is not being rash, or impetuous, or brash; all words which are variations on a theme). Her eyes find Nicholas after Anna has asked her question, linger (gaze) for a moment, contemplative. When Anna sat beside her, she shifted so she was less languorous Rossetti model over the couch arm, more attentive and readied, her arm against the couch's back.
"Oh yes. Drinks and presents at Lysander's, in the presence of assorted cabal members - his, not mine until Nicholas agreed most chivalrously to come with - and other associates. By the end of the night they all liked Nick, especially Apollonius, who is inclined to like anybody who can keep up with his tales. And tell which ones are Tall."
"As for embarrassing stories, what is your most embarrassing story?"
crow
The look that Nick gives Pen as she asks after embarrassing stories, it is worth of its own tragic epic: et tu, Penelope? This is where he disappears into the kitchen to go find something to keep his hands busy, perhaps food for all of them or some of the alcohol he has stored away for occasions where his girlfriend and his sister bond over the only topic they know they have in common.
"You charmed a room full of people? Who would have thought?" is Anna's parting taunt to her brother. Then, to Pen, "Would it have made you nervous to go on your own? Nick said there were a lot of Adepts there. That would have made me nervous."
Then again, Nick has mentioned that his sister is a Disparate. She continues on, "Well, for stories...hm," and this pause, though it's not immediately evident, is because she has to think of a story that is not also mean: she has some sensitivity, at least. "I don't know if we can say that this is the most embarrassing, but we're just meeting, right? Well, so I don't know if he has told you this, but Nick was kind of a little casanova when he was a kid. Anyway, there was this girl - what was her name, Nicky?"
"I am not helping you," and muttered though it is, it somehow carries from the kitchen.
"Eva! That was it. So Nick was this little freshman - "
mars
The look that Nick gives Pen gets a returned blank look and eyebrow quirk, and then all of Pen's attention is for Anna. Would it have made her nervous? The curve of her mouth is wistful, but untroubled; she hand-waves it, with languid élan (Daring), and she winds up resting her elbows on her thighs and cupping her chin in the palm of one hand. Eyebrows go up at Nick as a little Casanova and Pen bites the inside of her lip, and I'm not helping you, and Eva! That was it, So Nick was this little -
"No no no," Pen cuts in. "Wait wait wait. I am sure I want to hear this story," because she really does, "but I meant your most embarrassing story. I see Nick often, and hope to see him oftener; but you will be winging back home so I won't have a hope of learning yours. Here, I will start you off with one of mine!"
"I was very good at word play when I was younger, a teenager, and I was also very Catholic. The neighborhood was one of those neighborhoods where everybody knows everybody else, you must understand, and the Church was home to all manner of shenanigans. My friend and I had snuck in on a Thursday during fifth period, some time we were supposed to be in school, and she offered to pay me one dollar for a really filthy poem about Father Bryan. Many innuendo were made, the Pope Hat was not spared, and I thought liturgy a splendid slant rhyme for little orgy."
It's in the pronunciation. Pause. "It was just really bad, and I wanted to show off, so I threw myself into the recitation just it were a musical. Of course when I was done turns out Father Bryan and, much much much much much worse, Madeline who was one of my mother's bosses, had come in from the side and heard ... Judging from Father Bryan's face, quite a lot."
"Then once when I was waitressing a coworker made me laugh so hard I sneezed a noodle from my dinner out onto a customer. It hit the customer in the eye. Now you, please! Story about Nick or story about yourself or both."
crow
He'd disappeared into the kitchen, but here's where Nick pokes his head back out; he'd been half listening as Anna shared those details about a period in his life he doesn't particularly like to revisit.
Anna, for her part, seems delighted that Pen offers a story first, laughs and claps her hands together on the topic of splendid slant rhymes, and - yes, there's the bonus story of a noodle out the nose as well. "That was very gracious of you to offer up your own first," she says, and then the tip of her finger finds its way to her lower lip, makes an indent in the skin there.
"Well, there was this golf course near my friend's house, and sometimes when we would have sleepovers we used to sneak out and walk on the course at night. One of my friends got this brilliant idea that since it was past midnight, we should go streaking. So that happened. But you know, it was really dark, and nobody I guess lights up golf courses at night because no one is fucking golfing at night."
Beat. "So anyway, I was feeling really energetic that night and ran off away from everyone else, and fell in one of the sand traps. And I broke my toe. I don't know if you've ever broken a toe, but it hurts like a motherfucker, and my friends had to pull me out of the sand trap - and I was in tears of course - and help me get back. We told no one and I've kept our vow of silence until tonight."
Anna smiles, in this way that indicates that she is absolutely sincere. Maybe. "More recently I gave...more or less kind of a presentation, I suppose on exercising magick through artwork to this group of Disparates I know in New York, and someone kept falling asleep with his mouth open, and I laughed really hard when I noticed him the first time and maybe kind of snorted a little? Which just made me laugh harder, and finally just couldn't continue." This, a little rueful: it's fresher, but since Pen gave two she feels she also ought to give two.
"As for Nick!" - and this is where Nick disappears again, back into the kitchen -
"So Nick was this little freshman and Eva was...like seventeen, I think? And had a boyfriend. Nick was always pretty cagey with me on how this actually went down, but my understanding is that he showed up at the high school, and the boyfriend's not thrilled about it, right? So long story short, he gets shoved in a locker sometime around fourth period."
From the kitchen, there are splashing sounds. Perhaps they are meant to drown out the sounds from the other room.
"The school day comes and goes, and when we all get home in the afternoon no one has a clue where he is, and as the day gets on Mom starts to freak out and actually calls the police. It ended up being this big neighborhood event, with everyone searching for him everywhere, and at one point one of the cops finally gets the idea to go check the school. So they found him pounding on the locker and yelling for help, with most of his clothes in another locker. And for some reason the story he tells us all at first is that he was tired and wanted to have a nap. In the locker. And that's the story of how Nick narrowly avoided becoming a statewide Amber Alert."
Anna looks over the back of the couch toward the kitchen. "You can come back out now, Nicky!"
mars
Pen smiles at the sand trap story, an engaged listener whose expressions change over the course of a story, and of course the smile is a cinder-spark of a thing, smoulder away; of course the sparks settle in her eyes, make them glint. She rests her chin in the palm of her hands again and the smile fades during the second story. Instead, she winces, good natured sympathy. The Nick story is met with wide eyes, because Pen has a soft heart.
...And she doesn't say anything at all yet! Pricks her head up a bit at the prospect of Nick returning from the kitchen.
crow
Anna: does not appear to have an especially soft heart. Witty and engaging, certainly, and possessed of an effusive warmth and an easy sort of affection, but there are many ways in which she is dissimilar from her brother. She has crossed her legs and leaned into the corner of the couch, and she peers over the back of the sofa again.
Nick finally emerges, trying not to look too hangdog here, and he has three tumblers neatly triangled in hand. There are two glasses of whiskey, and what looks like rum and Coke in a third glass, which he hands to his sister. "Oh, you remembered," Anna says, with evident pleasure as she takes the glass from Nick.
Anna is sitting where Nick himself would've sat had she let him sit first, and so after assessing placement, Nick goes the house cat route and finds a way to wedge himself in behind Pen, even as he hands over the glass. "Let's make high school off limits for the rest of the night, okay?" And here, he looks sidelong at Pen, and the look is a little questioning but still: he's trying to maintain his equilibrium.
mars
[C'mon dice, three successes on this Manip + Subt. Gimme a chance, brah!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
mars
[TY dice! I see you respond to bro-talk.]
crow
[Nick: what is going on :( ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
[Anna: Oh?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
[Anna: Rerolling!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
mars
Families can be difficult. Pen knows. The last person she seriously dated (Robin) never met anybody from her family, and if Pen ever met any of his family members there was no physical affection encouraged. She is happy to facilitate Nicholas squeezing in behind her. New England houses are notoriously (expensive) difficult to heat, and her bare back is cold. And she likes him, and wants him, and would rather lean against Nick than a couch any old night. This is exactly what she will do, ideally allowing herself to sink so her head can be on his shoulder or breastbone. Pen rests a hand on Nicholas's knee and glances at his face: who knows what it means? Occluded; occulted. Not even remotely uncertain. Pen has what one expects of a Hermetic of House Flambeau: a dashing sense of self-possession, a clear-sighted sense of the future.
She is grateful for the whiskey, holds the glass from the bottom rather than circling it with her fingers, but doesn't yet take a sip. After that glance at Nicholas's face, Pen put her attention back on Anna.
"So you incorporate Art into your Workings? What kind of art do you do?"
As her hand explores his ribs to eventually make its way into the curve of his palm, Nick wiggles and adjusts his weight a little, if only to find a more comfortable spot and maximize Pen contact. "He is," Nick says, and he could say more about his uncle perhaps, but the less time he has to spend thinking about his uncle on Christmas the better.
He smiles then, against her collar, and says, "I know it's cheating to reuse your question, but I like your question. What answer would you give me to a question you think I'd never ask in conversation?"
mars
[>.> Enochian roll.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
mars
Dismay (good humoured) when Nicholas uses her own cunning question against her, which he can hear and feel in the catch of her breath inside the trap of her chest and the tempo of her heart has slowed though not quite to resting, because the spirit (body) is roused by what it is roused by, quickened by what it is quickened by. Certainly Nicholas's smile against her collar is reason enough for there to yet be intimations of euphoria, for the heart to be rushing a little more quickly toward Death because it silly thing doesn't know how to prolong a moment. Pen brushes Nick's hair back from his forehead and then drums her fingertips on his head.
"Clearly we should have defined the games' rules before we began. We're in too deep now! Let me see. Hmm." By which she means: let her wriggle down as her forefinger curls around Nick's chin and lifts his head so she can kiss the corner of his mouth and bump him with her nose, bat lashes (coquetry, again), and she is rather guileless in this dreamy intent. Eye to eye she says something in another language, and if there is mischief a line of it silver-bright like the surfacing edge of some fantastical underwater thing, then there is mischief.
There is mischief.
The language is a good language for saying something ardently meant, spoken as it was by angels when they were setting the stars into the heavens and debating the courses of justice and mercy, wrath and love, in the High Courts Before All Things, setting in motion the fates of all worlds: and if she is not quite advanced enough to really catch the nuance, well, Enochian is difficult. And not really meant to be a language in which one Flirts, but one must give Enochian its due, and Pen has always found it Highly Romantic.
Her mouth twists. Her eyes shift down and to the side, then find his again. "The biggest hole I ever dug was around nine feet deep. I dug it because I had this idea - " Her voice goes a little silky with embarrassment. " - about my first ever book of poetry, I was mind you I think fourteen, and about how I'd dig a grave, preferably one which was deep enough to be in spitting distance of Chiron and Styx, then I'd very dramatically throw my first ever book in -- the only copy of it, of course, which was handbound thanks to some ribbon and staples. I'd fill the hole up and return some years later, you know, when I was famous and everybody desperately wanted just one more 'E. S.' poem. I found a dead owl and a boot and I almost buried myself alive, but it was pretty cathartic. It was a good hole. I convinced Aidan I was digging to China and I'd bring him back some authentic Chinese food once I finished the tunnel."
crow
Nick has to shift and adjust, pull one of his arms out from beneath him, at which point it curves around and over both of their heads. His eyes throw back that glint of mischief, made all the sharper because he has no idea what she just said, because she spoke a secret. Perhaps he, too, finds something Highly Romantic in it, in whatever Word it was that manages to have layers upon layers of nuance and beneath it, Truth.
"What did you - " and he stops, his jaw clamping shut, because this would be a double question and he's already done that too many times tonight. Pen won't catch him again.
Except that what she says makes him want to ask even more questions, to the extent that she can see his jaw almost working with the will it takes him to keep from blurting them. Something affectionate has crept into him too, there, as she tells him this story about burying her first ever book of poetry, something so fond that even if he were going to let himself ask a question he might not even know which question to ask. "It sounds like you were doing a lot of magick when you were younger." He stops, and then gives up. "Did you ever find the Styx?"
mars
Pen, who as Nick has noticed is quite the keeper of scores when it comes to question games (it is an alertness which comes in handy for geasa structured by numbers), is serene about this question. She had asked him two in a row before.
"It was pretty damp down there, and cold. It smelled like I imagined the underworld probably smelled, minus the incense, so I think I got close enough. I did bring Aidan some Chinese food too."
Which she did not have the money for; would never have had the money for. Trickery was required. "If you were a rockstar from the 70s or 80s, what would your persona - look, solo or band, sound, etcetera - be?"
crow
Nick smiles again here, and he has leaned forward a few inches to catch her mouth with his own before she asks her next question, in a way that was not planned ahead and can't especially be helped. They're talking closely, and his heartbeat has cycled between rapid and not-quite-resting itself throughout much of their conversation, and there is a natural way these things go.
Her question has amused him, and has him a little stuck, and she can see it in the way his eyebrows furrow as he laughs once. "Hm. I want to say one of those ones that shunned the spotlight, though maybe L - "
There comes a sound against one of his very large back windows. It is not quite a knock, but this hard click: perhaps a bird hit it, and Nicholas starts. Then it comes again, and it is accompanied by the sound of a woman's voice outside, high and almost singsong: "Nichoooooolaaaaaaas! Nicholaaaaaaaas!"
And Nick sighs and his eyes slide shut.
mars
Pen lifts and turns her head in the direction of the sound, too. Considers that direction for a moment -- let us say the couch back or couch arm conceals it, unless she chooses to sit up, which she does not. Not yet. This is perhaps not the first time some intimate moment has been disturbed by a sibling, or just somebody else, but she finds Nicholas's sigh so endearing she feels as though she can hardly bear it, and she'd kiss him fiercely if she were to kiss him -- if she were not in control of herself.
She is in control of herself, somehow, wearying as the last two days have been, and instead laughs and says low and conspiratorial, "I never realized your name could be chanted like in those Ricola commercials."
Beat; she wants him to open his eyes and look at her, but wanting won't make that happen. She touches his shoulder, or his face, and if he does look at her he'll see Pen's eyes at their most (beseeching) quizzical. "Do you want me to leave?" Totally nonchalant: good job, Penelope. "It's cold outside. You should let her in."
crow
Pen touches his shoulder, or his face, and Nicholas opens his eyes and looks at her, still smiling given that she has commented on Anna's particular way of getting his attention. Outside, the calls continue. He ignores them, if only long enough to answer her.
"I want you to stay," he says, and he too wants to seem nonchalant. "Do you want to stay?"
mars
[>.> Nonchalance. Totally rolling it.
This time we're going to move up from botch and failure to success, yes dice?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
crow
[Also super super nonchalant.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
mars
[BUT ARE YOU REALLY? or are we being ridiculous!?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
mars
[god damn it, dice.]
crow
[Contesting!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
crow
[Are YOU really?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
mars
[god damn it, nicholas. the ONE successful lie! grumble tie-breaking grumble.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
mars
[omg, dice.]
crow
[diiiiiiiiiice]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
mars
[6 suxx totally beat the 5 dice pool. >.>]
mars
Pen holds Nicholas's gaze, and tarnished silver can be Byronic in that it is dark and bright. While holding his gaze with her own, her nose wrinkles and her mouth pulls into a smile and she nods before she says, "Yes I do." And she means that yes, means to sound as cool as he does, as nonchalant as oh why not, as devil may care (but with warmth), composed of rational thought and something more than longing. Pen doesn't mean him to see how strongly she wants to stay with him tonight because what if he needs some private time or what if he didn't want Pen and his sister to meet yet or like this what if he doesn't like her as much as she likes him what if he finds the impetuous (which is to say not at all in check) desire she has to be with him to be too much or overwhelming what if he can't meet it what if they aren't equal what if she is infatuated what if she just could sound cool right now instead. And she does maintain her composure, though it is burnished with a touch of warmth. But Nick has sharp eyes, and sharper intuition: tonight he's been reading people (too) well.
crow
Nicholas has been reading people (too) well tonight, and this nonchalance: maybe a little bit of it slips in the face of that. Just because Nick is perceptive doesn't always mean he knows what to do with what he sees. That doesn't mean that what he sees just now doesn't terrify him, perhaps almost paradoxically, because here: there's this realization.
"I'm glad," he says, and as he kisses her forehead and pushes himself up on one hand he tries tries tries to be cool. He was cool before; he can be cool now.
Anna is still calling for him outside and Nick is sure that very shortly the people who live below him are about to be upset with the weird-looking kid upstairs. Nick very carefully climbs over Pen, who can certainly follow him if she wants, and now he is glad he kept his clothes on after entering the apartment. He (also, with nonchalance) tries to reorganize his hair and tucks his shirttails back into his pants, even as he starts down the stairwell to let Anna inside.
mars
A forehead kiss? You played it too cool, Penelope, the Flambeau thinks to herself, something rueful to the cant of her mouth now. Pen props herself up on her elbows to look after him when he goes. There's something fond in the way her eyes rake over Nicholas-getting-himself-put-together-again. It could've been way worse in another five minutes or so.
And no. No, she does not want to follow him. Once he is out of her direct line of sight, Pen flops back and covers her face with her hand, drags her hands down her face and over her throat, and then she sits up. Does not bother to try and put the femme fatale waves, somewhat mussed now, back into order, though she does fix the collar of her dress, and settles herself curled up by the couch arm instead, legs tucked beneath her, elbow on the arm, and in her coat is her phone, and if there's much time between Nick opening the door and the siblings reappearing, the phone will be in her hand. There are messages to check.
mars
...And alert nonchalance to embody.
crow
There are messages to check: Pen probably gets through one or two of them before Nick can make his way back up to the apartment with Anna.
The first thing she will observe about Nicholas's sister is that Nicholas's sister does not have anything approaching or resembling an inside voice. As they move up the stairwell back up to Nick's apartment (he left the door hanging open), the Chakravanti's voice does not carry even though his sister's does. "You didn't stay with Thane?" she can hear Nick ask, and then the woman's voice:
"Well, no. I came here to spend Christmas with you, right? How was the party, Nicky? You don't seem to have been cursed and you're sober, so does that mean it went well?"
"Let's - " A little urgency to Nick's tone, there.
And then the crowns of their heads, or more appropriately their hair, appear at the top of the steps, and soon they are back in the apartment. Anna is wearing some sort of flowy deep green dress, seasonally appropriate in color if not in the type of fabric or warmth, and her hair is only a little longer than Nick's, and they both look quite alike: light brown skin and eyes and nose and mouth all the same.
"You didn't tell me your girlfriend was here! Hello! I love your dress!"
mars
"Hello. Yours is quite lovely too; like a forest all transformed and you dryad-ish in it," Pen says, with the spark of a smile. She puts the phone aside; she was just texting with Robin and Arianna anyway. Pang of conscience. "Call me Pen. Anna, right?"
crow
Anna (aristocratic A, of course, all the stress on the first syllable - she is rather sensitive to what sounds like the drawn out twanging sound that is part of the more popular pronunciation of the same name) flits through the room and plops down next to Pen on the couch, much like a friendly cat beelining for a rare guest in its home. It's not Anna's home, but she treats it as though it is. "Yeah," she says, and arranges the dress around her knees, clearly pleased with the compliment.
"Nicky's said a lot about you!" And Nick, who is shutting the door and still trying to maintain his desperate coolness, shoots her this look, see, that is shadowed over his shoulder, so Pen probably misses it.
"So," and this glint in Anna's eyes is familiar because Pen knows Nick, she'll recognize it, "just so you know, I believe in freedom of information, which in this case means I will tell you whatever embarrassing stories you want to know." A beat. Capricious thing, Anna. "You should tell me how the party went first, though. Nick said you both went to visit your mentor?"
Nick has been edging closer to the two of them, cautiously.
mars
Pen is not yet (?) dismayed by Anna's exuberance or directness, but then she tends to be direct herself, if more reserved (when she is not being rash, or impetuous, or brash; all words which are variations on a theme). Her eyes find Nicholas after Anna has asked her question, linger (gaze) for a moment, contemplative. When Anna sat beside her, she shifted so she was less languorous Rossetti model over the couch arm, more attentive and readied, her arm against the couch's back.
"Oh yes. Drinks and presents at Lysander's, in the presence of assorted cabal members - his, not mine until Nicholas agreed most chivalrously to come with - and other associates. By the end of the night they all liked Nick, especially Apollonius, who is inclined to like anybody who can keep up with his tales. And tell which ones are Tall."
"As for embarrassing stories, what is your most embarrassing story?"
crow
The look that Nick gives Pen as she asks after embarrassing stories, it is worth of its own tragic epic: et tu, Penelope? This is where he disappears into the kitchen to go find something to keep his hands busy, perhaps food for all of them or some of the alcohol he has stored away for occasions where his girlfriend and his sister bond over the only topic they know they have in common.
"You charmed a room full of people? Who would have thought?" is Anna's parting taunt to her brother. Then, to Pen, "Would it have made you nervous to go on your own? Nick said there were a lot of Adepts there. That would have made me nervous."
Then again, Nick has mentioned that his sister is a Disparate. She continues on, "Well, for stories...hm," and this pause, though it's not immediately evident, is because she has to think of a story that is not also mean: she has some sensitivity, at least. "I don't know if we can say that this is the most embarrassing, but we're just meeting, right? Well, so I don't know if he has told you this, but Nick was kind of a little casanova when he was a kid. Anyway, there was this girl - what was her name, Nicky?"
"I am not helping you," and muttered though it is, it somehow carries from the kitchen.
"Eva! That was it. So Nick was this little freshman - "
mars
The look that Nick gives Pen gets a returned blank look and eyebrow quirk, and then all of Pen's attention is for Anna. Would it have made her nervous? The curve of her mouth is wistful, but untroubled; she hand-waves it, with languid élan (Daring), and she winds up resting her elbows on her thighs and cupping her chin in the palm of one hand. Eyebrows go up at Nick as a little Casanova and Pen bites the inside of her lip, and I'm not helping you, and Eva! That was it, So Nick was this little -
"No no no," Pen cuts in. "Wait wait wait. I am sure I want to hear this story," because she really does, "but I meant your most embarrassing story. I see Nick often, and hope to see him oftener; but you will be winging back home so I won't have a hope of learning yours. Here, I will start you off with one of mine!"
"I was very good at word play when I was younger, a teenager, and I was also very Catholic. The neighborhood was one of those neighborhoods where everybody knows everybody else, you must understand, and the Church was home to all manner of shenanigans. My friend and I had snuck in on a Thursday during fifth period, some time we were supposed to be in school, and she offered to pay me one dollar for a really filthy poem about Father Bryan. Many innuendo were made, the Pope Hat was not spared, and I thought liturgy a splendid slant rhyme for little orgy."
It's in the pronunciation. Pause. "It was just really bad, and I wanted to show off, so I threw myself into the recitation just it were a musical. Of course when I was done turns out Father Bryan and, much much much much much worse, Madeline who was one of my mother's bosses, had come in from the side and heard ... Judging from Father Bryan's face, quite a lot."
"Then once when I was waitressing a coworker made me laugh so hard I sneezed a noodle from my dinner out onto a customer. It hit the customer in the eye. Now you, please! Story about Nick or story about yourself or both."
crow
He'd disappeared into the kitchen, but here's where Nick pokes his head back out; he'd been half listening as Anna shared those details about a period in his life he doesn't particularly like to revisit.
Anna, for her part, seems delighted that Pen offers a story first, laughs and claps her hands together on the topic of splendid slant rhymes, and - yes, there's the bonus story of a noodle out the nose as well. "That was very gracious of you to offer up your own first," she says, and then the tip of her finger finds its way to her lower lip, makes an indent in the skin there.
"Well, there was this golf course near my friend's house, and sometimes when we would have sleepovers we used to sneak out and walk on the course at night. One of my friends got this brilliant idea that since it was past midnight, we should go streaking. So that happened. But you know, it was really dark, and nobody I guess lights up golf courses at night because no one is fucking golfing at night."
Beat. "So anyway, I was feeling really energetic that night and ran off away from everyone else, and fell in one of the sand traps. And I broke my toe. I don't know if you've ever broken a toe, but it hurts like a motherfucker, and my friends had to pull me out of the sand trap - and I was in tears of course - and help me get back. We told no one and I've kept our vow of silence until tonight."
Anna smiles, in this way that indicates that she is absolutely sincere. Maybe. "More recently I gave...more or less kind of a presentation, I suppose on exercising magick through artwork to this group of Disparates I know in New York, and someone kept falling asleep with his mouth open, and I laughed really hard when I noticed him the first time and maybe kind of snorted a little? Which just made me laugh harder, and finally just couldn't continue." This, a little rueful: it's fresher, but since Pen gave two she feels she also ought to give two.
"As for Nick!" - and this is where Nick disappears again, back into the kitchen -
"So Nick was this little freshman and Eva was...like seventeen, I think? And had a boyfriend. Nick was always pretty cagey with me on how this actually went down, but my understanding is that he showed up at the high school, and the boyfriend's not thrilled about it, right? So long story short, he gets shoved in a locker sometime around fourth period."
From the kitchen, there are splashing sounds. Perhaps they are meant to drown out the sounds from the other room.
"The school day comes and goes, and when we all get home in the afternoon no one has a clue where he is, and as the day gets on Mom starts to freak out and actually calls the police. It ended up being this big neighborhood event, with everyone searching for him everywhere, and at one point one of the cops finally gets the idea to go check the school. So they found him pounding on the locker and yelling for help, with most of his clothes in another locker. And for some reason the story he tells us all at first is that he was tired and wanted to have a nap. In the locker. And that's the story of how Nick narrowly avoided becoming a statewide Amber Alert."
Anna looks over the back of the couch toward the kitchen. "You can come back out now, Nicky!"
mars
Pen smiles at the sand trap story, an engaged listener whose expressions change over the course of a story, and of course the smile is a cinder-spark of a thing, smoulder away; of course the sparks settle in her eyes, make them glint. She rests her chin in the palm of her hands again and the smile fades during the second story. Instead, she winces, good natured sympathy. The Nick story is met with wide eyes, because Pen has a soft heart.
...And she doesn't say anything at all yet! Pricks her head up a bit at the prospect of Nick returning from the kitchen.
crow
Anna: does not appear to have an especially soft heart. Witty and engaging, certainly, and possessed of an effusive warmth and an easy sort of affection, but there are many ways in which she is dissimilar from her brother. She has crossed her legs and leaned into the corner of the couch, and she peers over the back of the sofa again.
Nick finally emerges, trying not to look too hangdog here, and he has three tumblers neatly triangled in hand. There are two glasses of whiskey, and what looks like rum and Coke in a third glass, which he hands to his sister. "Oh, you remembered," Anna says, with evident pleasure as she takes the glass from Nick.
Anna is sitting where Nick himself would've sat had she let him sit first, and so after assessing placement, Nick goes the house cat route and finds a way to wedge himself in behind Pen, even as he hands over the glass. "Let's make high school off limits for the rest of the night, okay?" And here, he looks sidelong at Pen, and the look is a little questioning but still: he's trying to maintain his equilibrium.
mars
[C'mon dice, three successes on this Manip + Subt. Gimme a chance, brah!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
mars
[TY dice! I see you respond to bro-talk.]
crow
[Nick: what is going on :( ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
[Anna: Oh?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
[Anna: Rerolling!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
mars
Families can be difficult. Pen knows. The last person she seriously dated (Robin) never met anybody from her family, and if Pen ever met any of his family members there was no physical affection encouraged. She is happy to facilitate Nicholas squeezing in behind her. New England houses are notoriously (expensive) difficult to heat, and her bare back is cold. And she likes him, and wants him, and would rather lean against Nick than a couch any old night. This is exactly what she will do, ideally allowing herself to sink so her head can be on his shoulder or breastbone. Pen rests a hand on Nicholas's knee and glances at his face: who knows what it means? Occluded; occulted. Not even remotely uncertain. Pen has what one expects of a Hermetic of House Flambeau: a dashing sense of self-possession, a clear-sighted sense of the future.
She is grateful for the whiskey, holds the glass from the bottom rather than circling it with her fingers, but doesn't yet take a sip. After that glance at Nicholas's face, Pen put her attention back on Anna.
"So you incorporate Art into your Workings? What kind of art do you do?"
crow
Pen's head sinks onto Nick's shoulder or breastbone; one of his arms has hooked around her and drawn her in. He tucks his chin against the back of her shoulder, where he perhaps means to stay. Anything that Pen's glance means now, he misses it; perhaps whatever intimations he had drawn from her earlier have him distracted. Or it may just be the presence of his sister.
Anna, for her part, does not seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary either. Pen is new, and there is this way her eyes settle on the two of them on the couch, and her mouth bows into a smile. She tries to touch it with something sardonic, to indicate that they are a step or two away from making her gorge rise in perhaps more subtle terms, but Anna is just too sincere for that.
"I do a lot of different things," she says, with an air that at once some how manages to be arrogance and modesty. Paradox: it's to some extent the core of what they are. "Mostly painting and crafting, making the old new again and stuff like that. For me it becomes ritual. I think it's that way for a lot of the Disparates, at least in New York. I'd like to see more community built around it."
mars
"Did you do that before you Awakened?" Pen asks, and now she takes a sip of whiskey, teasing her tongue by holding the (it doesn't really scald; this is illusion) liquid there for a moment before swallowing. Dragon's smoke, or autumn earth after rain, something lightning-blackened. "Try to build community," she clarifies. "Want to build community."
crow
"Hm," Anna says, and tilts her head, made thoughtful by the question. Nick, for his part, is content to sit behind Pen, nestled into her and listening to the two of them. They seem to be getting along well enough.
"I think in a sense, I was always trying to do that. But it's different once you Awaken, you know? The stakes are higher."
There is this appraisal of Pen then. "What's being Hermetic about for you, then? I - " a beat, "hope this doesn't offend you, but I feel like a lot of the Hermetics I meet get so caught up in the trappings, you know, like this symbol or that symbol and this ancient text written in a dead language."
mars
Nicholas can feel how Pen braces herself (subtle) as soon as Anna hesitates. Pen is usually one step ahead, and if there's one thing non-Hermetics will bring up to Hermetics, it's how Hermetic they are. Usually the confession following is unpleasant. Pen distracts herself by playing with Nicholas's kneecap, then his arm. Where's his wrist-bone? She circles it with her thumb.
"I feel like a lot of Mages hold that impression of my tradition," she says after a brief pause. "They," quirk of her mouth, "are not usually part of the Order, or if they are, they are not yet awake or are mired in place."
She is quiet for another moment, considering how to answer Anna's question. Her gaze is steady on Nick's sister, pensive lake-witchery, a sweet gloaming darkness. She could be a Gustav Klimt vision of Nimue, all aware (intellectual and physical) ardence, expressed by dramatic but languorous sensuality, curled and enwrapped by a curly-haired man whose face is half-hidden. Klimt almost never painted men.
"Do you want to know what being Hermetic is about for me, or what being a Mage is about for me? Because the latter is the more important question, and the one which defines me as Hermetic. Being a Mage is about doing good in the world -- and leaving it better when you do leave it. Being a Hermetic is about a wielding a vast tradition of knowledge, of excellence and experimental, towards that purpose. Being a Flambeau is about protecting those who would do good, about building a bright future . Being all those things is, for me, about being the best human I can be -- and more importantly enabling others to be the best human they can be, preserving their right to choose what they want to do in the world."
crow
Nick, wrapped around and snuggled into Pen's shoulder as he is, could give the impression of being peripheral in this conversation. He is, in that he is not directly contributing to the discussion: still, his ears and eyes are sharp, and perhaps he is learning things about both his lover and his sister in this conversation the two of them are having. Klimt almost never painted men, or when he did, they were a modifier to the centerpiece of the work itself.
There is a sense, in the way that Anna smiles at Pen's response, that perhaps she is well aware of the impression of Pen's Tradition that others hold, and that perhaps this was utilized in just such a way - to see what Pen would say. Her smile is at once a mischievous thing, and sharp. "That's interesting," she says, and means it. "Do you think you have to be Hermetic to do all of those things, out of curiosity?"
There is this look Nick gives her over Pen's shoulder, one that Pen can't see unless she were to angle her head back. Anna's eyes meet her brothers, and her nose wrinkles even as she smiles at him, a sort of expression that indicates that there's not much to be helped now.
mars
"I don't believe you have to be Awake to do all those things," Pen says, gravely.
crow
Pen says this, and Nick's arm tightens around her: a small gesture. It could go unnoticed.
Anna, for her part, seems a little contemplative, perhaps wondering if there's some other question she could undertake next. But, instead, her eyes meet Nick's again over Pen's shoulder, and she says, "I like this one, Nicky." Then, to Pen or perhaps to both of them in a way, her voice a little effusive, "It's nice to see you two together. Nick's never really introduced us to anyone before."
At which point Nick says, "I've never had the occasion. Anna, you should tell her more about the work you're doing in New York."
And Anna says, "We've gotten money together to make a...center, of sorts, for Disparates. There's not much more to it."
mars
[I lied so well last time. I still hide things now, right?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
crow
[Oh Pen.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
[Anna: You are both so precious.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
mars
[Glory is so fleeting...]
mars
Pen has had a long couple of days, and she doesn't want to sleep, but she is weary; fraying, a little, at the edges. She meets Anna's approving comment with a certain learned tolerance and a touch of discomfort, which she tries to keep sheathed, veiled, hidden, tucked away, a card up her sleeve, what card, no card; there is no card, there is no sleeve, her arms are bare - see how bare they are? The discomfort could have its roots in anything.
But she is also - carefully, cautiously - touched. Because (and keep this sheathed, too, Miss Penelope Mercury Mars) she is smitten; and somebody as smitten as Pen, as twitter-pated, has to keep that carefully veiled by an air of self-possessed cool. She is also quietly disbelieving, because she's pretty sure Casanova Nick and nosy siblings = lots of 'anyones' introduced.
These are all undercurrents, not even parsed: just felt - Pen is a creature of sentiment - and then we move forward.
"What if someone who wasn't a Disparate wanted to drop in?" She sounds curious. She is.
crow
"We'd welcome them, of course. Or at least I would," Anna says, and there's this lift of her chin that suggests - again, this utter sincerity, because Disparates too can have pride, and that sometimes the correct choice is to stay somewhere in between and apart. "If you ever come down to New York, Pen, we'd love to have you there."
She looks between both Pen and Nick then, and she says, "I'm getting kind of tired, though. Maybe we can all get breakfast in the morning?"
"Maybe," Nick says, and he for his part seems all too happy to break off the conversation with his sister. He already knows everything she's going to say, after all. Nick, perhaps, is wondering whether he ought to check in on Thane, because his friend is still new, and because he has too often been the neutral party between Anna and her dalliances. Or perhaps this: he is anticipating another conversation, he is wondering if this is where he is about to make a terrible misstep. "Don't stay up on our account, Anna."
mars
[Hmmm...... stamina! for alcohol consumption.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4) ( botch x 1 )
mars
[Heeee.]
mars
Nicholas knows what a trying couple of days Penelope Mars has had. That a widderslainte opened her with his knife not twenty four hours earlier (or perhaps, by this time, twenty four hours earlier), that she has burned a body to ashes and bone-dust, that she has fought a duel with a man built like a mountain if the mountain were a bear and a bear was a mountain, that the Hermetic party was stressful (he caught those undercurrents, after all, between Pen and the perfectly pleasant - more than pleasant, outright likable - Alexandra), and he also knows the last time she ate anything. Before she picked him up so many hours ago.
Pen was once like Anna. When she was a Disparate, she was happy to be a Disparate. It was better than the alternatives, she thought. But then she made a choice. Now she thinks Disparates are too bad. Haven't found their home yet. Are selfish, or thoughtless. The redhead's mouth quirks, and she says, "Breakfast would be nice." Head-tilt to look at Nicholas's face again.
Don't stay up on our account, Anna. And Pen decides she'd like to drink the rest of the whiskey in one gulp.
This turns out to be a mistake.
We will see how in a moment, but a hint: her hand is clapped over her mouth; she sits up straight, instead of lounging (comfortable) against Nicholas.
crow
[Nick: I'm going to take my cue from this and drink all of mine. How do I fare?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 7) ( success x 1 )
crow
Pen tips back the rest of her tumbler; Nick, only seconds later, tips back the rest of his. It slugs into his guts, turns into something burnished and glowing within him, but there's no reeling: it's been a while since he too has eaten, but he perhaps has some practice in this regard that Pen doesn't. Even if it was a while ago.
Anna, capricious fey type creature though she has been throughout their brief meeting, has a smile that is tinged with warmth as she rises from the couch and ruffles her fingers through her brother's curls, and then leans down to hug Pen. "I'll see you both in the morning, then." Her glass still has a healthy amount of rum and Coke within; she takes it with her into the spare bedroom.
Nick, his brow furrowed this time with concern, glances toward Pen as she sits with her spine straight as a new-forged weapon. He has set his glass aside; almost as an afterthought he reaches out and takes Pen's from her too, setting it on the coffee table beside his own. When he rises he offers her his hand to steady her as she gets up.
mars
Hah. 'Get up.' What noble aspirations Nicholas has for their future. Pen almost, allllmost loses that last swallow of whiskey and the contents of her stomach (bilous humours, churning) all over Anna's shoulder. She does not. She also does not seem to notice when Nicholas takes her glass. Or when Anna leaves. Pen gives Nicholas a wide eyed look, hand still clasped to her mouth. It is a look that immediately transforms into something (sleepy [dreamy]) hooded, and she shake shake shakes her head. Sweep of femme fatale curls (still holding strong) over her shoulder, over one eye. Her left. She closes her eyes, lowers her hand, and says, "I can't. Why are you so fucking beautiful?"
crow
There is this moment where Nick's eyes sweep over Pen to take inventory, and he notices the hand clasped over her mouth shortly after she'd downed the rest of the whiskey, and it wasn't too long ago that she had a buzz going. His eyebrows are touched with rue: he did not think he'd given her that much. At least, he isn't feeling it.
Nick lowers himself back to the couch, and very carefully (to minimize vertigo) reclines back into it, pulling Pen with him. "How about we stay here." This assertion that he is fucking beautiful: he dismisses that as a drunk person saying drunk things. "You're beautiful too," and though this is sincere it is also said with the awareness that he doesn't want her to throw up all over his floor or add another story to her embarrassing-stories list. "Do you want to go to sleep?"
mars
[Oh man are you DISMISSING MY ASSERTION OF YOUR PRETTINESS HOW DARE YOU. +1 'cuz totally drunk]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
crow
[Nope. Go to sleep, drunkface.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
mars
[omfg]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
crow
[Sigh.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
mars
[c'mon!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
crow
[Really?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
mars
The desire to vomit passes, but her mind does not become clear and sharp again. The world swims around her, and she is loosed, unhinged, bespoken; unable to keep her thoughts to herself. You're beautiful too, he says, after lowering himself back down to the couch; Pen laughs at him for saying that's why he is so beautiful. The laughter is sincere; she is drunk, heedless, lacking inhibitions. She is often frank, but it is still reserved. Right now, she is not reserved: she says, "No, I do not want to sleep. I want you to undress me." She slides a finger under the collar of her dress and pulls. Then: "I want you to be unclothed. I want you to," and she says something too filthily poetic - possibly ad-libbed from the Father Bryan poem - to be transcribed here. She sighs: "I want you to like me, but I feel like I'm messing it up. I still don't want to sleep. I'd rather mess it up awake then sleep through you. You're so fucking beautiful."
mars
[FILTHY POETRY.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
crow
I want you to -
Whatever bit of filthy poetry she says next brings fire to his cheeks and his neck and ears: in other words, Nicholas becomes incandescent just now, whether he was a young Casanova or not. (A thing unsaid, that he perhaps would have clarified tonight: Pen is the first person he has dated seriously, and this is tenuous new ground, this euphoric mixture of filthy poetry and the brilliant wild chaos of every emotion inside of him right now.)
"You can't mess it up," he says, and his voice is quiet but intense, with fervor. He doesn't know what else to say, but there is this almost helpless: "You are a lot more drunk than I am right now. Can you get up?"
mars
+7!
mars
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
crow
[You are the worst +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
mars
Pen can indeed get up! Pride! Rashness! But as soon as she gets up, she loses her balance and will absolutely end up on the floor. Such is the nature of a botch-drunk.
crow
Nick: We will carefully walk away from the couch. Carefully. In that I will probably be holding you up.
crow
[Dex + Ath]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
mars
Pen scoffs at Nicholas, but the scoffing isn't meant to have a sting (no scorpion scoff, this). To show him just how scoff-worthy his doubt is, she springs up; and would, were Nicholas not less drunk and sharper and attentive at the moment, have promptly been undone and laid low by dizziness. She does sway, unsteadily. Fortunate, Nicholas catches her.
"You see?" she says. "I did not fall."
Tomorrow, she will be very embarrassed. "Are you certain I can't mess it up? I have before."
crow
"You didn't," Nicholas says agreeably, when she says she didn't fall. He's feeling the alcohol too, though without near as much sway as Pen; his inhibitions are still firmly in place. Tomorrow, he will not be embarrassed, but he will be aware of, and feel, how very embarrassed Pen is, which is much worse.
One of his arms around her shoulders and the other at her hip, steadying her as she walks, Nick directs them toward his bedroom, which has moonlight slanting in through another large window and a bed that is heaped with blankets, including a dark red down quilt that he might have given up his firstborn to afford. This room is simultaneously less cluttered and more full than the other: photos cover the walls in this room, splashes of color and design that spiral into each other with intent, with purpose. In the corner there is a stone basin of water, still and clear.
"You haven't messed it up with me," he assures Pen, and if his voice is strained it may be only because there is no way he can talk to her in this state, and there are things to say.
mars
Pen, when she is this drunk, becomes recalcitrant when there is something she wants, and thinks she is not getting. She refuses to budge after a few steps; they aren't quite to his bedroom. She takes a very, very deep breath; the inhale shakes her entire frame. The exhale, too.
"Do you like it when I make you blush?"
Pen flings her arms around Nicholas's neck: presses herself close. The next moment she'll be unbuttoning his shirt or his pants: anything that is interfering with her dream of an 'unclothed' Nicholas. Anna? Who's that?
Her voice, ironically, is quite sober: "I feel like I've always known you. Do you ever have those dreams? Nickolai, what if you and I are a dream."
crow
"I...yes," he says, to blushing, and he is still for a moment when she flings herself close, because of course she is still much drunker than he is. She can hear him exhale as one of his arms encircles her waist; the sound is ragged.
Her voice is sober, and this is where he looks at her again, where his eyes sweep over her face. "I feel that way too, sometimes," he says, and then, "Maybe we have always known each other." It's slow, the way in which he says this, halting; perhaps he is imagining Anna opening the door and telling them to get a room, or any number of mortifying things his sister could devise.
"I wish I were more drunk."
mars
He wishes he were more drunk.
This is when Pen kisses him on the mouth. He can taste whiskey, and thankfully that is all. Whiskey, and Pen, and Pen does unbutton his shirt before switching to his trousers and shimmying them off his hips (unless he has an objection and stops her).
"I don't," she says, earnest. Earnest as he has ever heard her, which is earnest indeed. "Though Bacchus is an attractive god. I wish I were less drunk, but only so we could be equal."
Then: as if struck. "Do you want me to sleep?"
crow
He has grabbed a handful of the fabric of his trousers, holding them in place around his hips or as in place as he can get them to remain, and his smile is tinged with rue. "Only so we could be equal," he says, and there's effort that it takes to say this: perhaps she can tell.
He hesitates then, and has read that stricken look, and says, "I just want...anything you say to me to be something you'd say if you weren't drunk."
mars
Pen leans back and back (is his arm still encircling her waist? Let us hope. Otherwise, she is going to wind up with her back against the doorframe of Nicholas's bedroom, surprised by how hard it hits her between the shoulder blades), and having left the fate of Nicholas's trousers to him she instead slinks her hand up his arm, either pulling him into the Fall-Against-Doorframe (shared air of surprise?) or just pulling Nicholas forward. What can she tell about him right now, with her eyes thoughtful and her inhibitions gone?
"If I weren't? If I were not? Nicholas you are the quiet hush of first Spring you are cold moonlight on cold stones that radiant sift you are a candle flame and a hope you are a river I want to swim, you - you you you. You don't need to be afraid I will say something I would only say to you now. Nicholas you make me want to build cities and see them turn turn to gold you do make me want," ragged caesura. Dionysian Pen: just wants to wring pleasure from the warmth of Nick's body and the unsteadiness of her perceptions.
She blows the swoop of hair which is very determined to fall into her eyes away. "I won't say it. Say things to me instead. Talk to me and perhaps I will fall asleep and remember how to keep my hands off you and just enjoy the anticipation of before-I-touch-you that might happen. If I am drunk, hmm."
crow
Nick's arm is still encircling her waist, but Nick: he's not particularly strong. As Pen starts to sway backward she pulls him with her, though the resistance makes her impact of her shoulderblades against the doorframe a little softer than it might otherwise have been. There is this huff of surprise: his thoughts are foggier than they were, between the alcohol and Pen and her poetry and he does want her, in this way that is perfectly evident when he tumbles into her against the doorframe and watches her as she speaks to him.
She can tell that there's a slight tremor that passes through him, though with his shirt unbuttoned and the sun long gone behind the horizon and the vast chill of the main room of his apartment, it is probably just the cold.
He smiles, then, something radiant just touched with rue, because Pen makes the words sound so easy. "I don't know how to say the things I would like to say," he says. And then, after an inhale, something that shivers in his lungs as it makes its way into them, "I just want you to know me the way I want to know you. I don't - I've never felt that way about anyone."
mars
"Why not? You don't like people to know you or you just don't like them to know you as well?"
crow
Nick has been edging them away from the doorframe towards his bed, if only so they can make it into the safety of his room and shut the door. They are still very much within the Sibling Danger Zone, and if Anna were to come out and find him half undressed she would never let him hear the end of it.
He considers the question and the corner of his smile twists a little, into something slightly uncertain. "Both? I feel..." A beat where he considers, struggles for words. "I don't want to do or say anything to mess things up either."
mars
Pen can be edged from the doorframe and further into Nick's room. Her (Dionysian) attention is narrow, narrowed on Nicholas the rest of his room a suggestion of shape and space and potential, an abstract where Nicholas is concrete and touchable (but she said she'd try not to). He doesn't want to do or say anything to mess things up ei - and the second half of that word gets swallowed; she kisses him, fiercely: "You couldn't. Who are you? You couldn't, Nicholas, even if you told me that - that - "
Even Pen's invention has some limits. "That you were - a mushroom with powers whose - God-given, God-driven goal was to ... Fight the Order of Hermes." She laughs: "I don't know. You couldn't. How do you want to know me?"
crow
He laughs, too, and as they pass into his room he shuts the door behind the two of them, and they are no longer in danger of Anna happening upon them both in a state of undress. It's an old building and the walls are thick besides; this, he is grateful for. He is already concerned that Anna has overheard their conversation, that tomorrow morning at breakfast she will find a way to bat her eyelashes at him and sigh I think we've always known each other or some similar phrase that lovestruck fools say that makes it perfectly evident that they are lovestruck fools. "I guess I can be pretty sure I'm not a mushroom."
Here he shrugs his shirt off, finally, letting it puddle in dark violet ripples along the floorboards like a shadow with its strings cut (you could fold it up and box it away, like Peter Pan's.) "I - " He is looking at Pen and considering her question, of how to express himself in a way that encompasses all the things that he wants. "I want to know who you are and who you've been and where you're going, and the self that you don't show to anyone else. The - you past midnight after we've been up too long and around other people all day, and who you are when you shape reality to your Will, and..."
He trails off, raising a hand to the back of his neck. "You make me want things I didn't think it was possible to actually have, and - think that it could be."
mars
He can be pretty sure he's not a mushroom. Pen says, dramatically (and loudly): "I would be desolated!"
Then she grins: sharp and bright and direct eye to eye contact joyful.
Pen forces herself to take her hands from Nicholas. It is an effort; visible, with density; she bites the inside of her lip after she has done it and she regrets the impetuous toss of her head (hair, out of the eyes!) as soon as she does it, for Nicholas's room swims, but he doesn't. He is looking at her and she looks at him looking at her, her eyes wide and intent because she is focused and focusing, but she is also drunk. This is established. She has backed away to his bed and now holds a hand out to beckon, come hither, some Pre-Raphaelite Maenad-Siren thing, imploring and demanding: come come come. But:
"What isn't possible to have? What things?"
Serious, serious, serious.
crow
Pen backs away to his bed and holds out a hand to him, which he takes, though before he answers her he breaks eye contact long enough to let his pants finish falling off of his hips, and he places another hand on the bed to use it for support as he wiggles the rest of the way out of them. He has not been unbalanced so far, but it wouldn't do to come crashing to the floor because he trusted too much in this while trying to get undressed.
It provides a needed reprieve anyway, for him to gather his thoughts once more and say: "I just didn't expect to feel this connected to someone. It's not...it doesn't come easily to me." Serious, serious, but they are still so new and he is still young and unsure of himself.
mars
"Ooh yes shimmy just like that!" Pen says, bright! as a flake of fire! and though it is meant as a tease: it is also meant, meant in a deep and visceral fashion. Lustfulness does exist in women, whoever says otherwise is a liar.
But she is thinking, slowly, about the rest of what Nick just said. Bed bed bed bed. Once they are safely ensconced there-upon and Pen has wound her fingers in his hair once they are physically close again she asks a question which isn't the one she thought she was going to ask. Bemusement: "Why didn't you think it was possible for you?"
"Do you believe me?"
crow
Lustfulness does exist in women, and Nick - who is quite comfortable with the fact - appears also to be comfortable with being an object thereof. He grins as she teases him, thankful once more that he did not choose to risk crashing to the floor.
His bed has a pile of blankets so deep that it wants to recall the dry heat of a desert summer, and he has burrowed into it and settled with one of his arms around her and her fingers in his hair. The first question, when she asks it, makes him sigh and - well. He answers her with a question first, his eyes searching hers - seeking to understand just how drunk she is still, perhaps. "Believe you about what?"
mars
"Oh." Pen looks surprised that he would question her question. Didn't he follow what she just said? There is this about Pen: she will gaze sidelong on occasion, will regard some distant point off to the side when she is trying to recall something, when she is poised between answers, but when she is giving an answer she will always look a person in the eye. Direct. "Beauty," she says. "Yours, specifically."
crow
Her eye contact is direct, and Nick's is not; he looks everywhere else, past her and through her and above the two of them. He finds it difficult to maintain eye contact when revealing some self-truth; understanding other people will always be easier. "I believe that you believe that about me," he says, finally, and now his eyes finally do return to hers because he has found his answer. "I'm still on the way to...believing the rest myself."
Nick sighs, and his hand runs up along and over her back, over the curve of her shoulder blades and spine. "I've never actually been in a relationship before." A beat. "Anna using the word 'Casanova' earlier was actually pretty considerate, for Anna. I was...really fucked up as a teenager, actually, in a way that I thought for a long time wasn't going to get better. I just tried to...to connect with other people for so long, and it never worked, and so I'd move on." Exhale. "It has gotten better. A lot better. But I think after that, expecting things to turn out the way I want them is still hard."
mars
Pen - being water-clear, being lake-light herself and witchery - is an open book. He knows how to read people who are less legible than she is in their expressions. Eyebrows draw together and lower when he says he's never been in a relationship before, concentration and surprise (is he fucking with her?) both. 'Casanova' was considerate; perplexment. Bemusement. He was fucked up as a teenager, and though her brow eases, the trouble stays; the concentration stays, too, perhaps more fervent than it would be if she were sober, but probably not. Pen is a passionate woman, and rather brash. She has, impetuously, decided to touch Nicholas's mouth with her hand he might be finishing a sentence I want them is still hard. She is still wearing her dress but it isn't bothering her yet, not when Nick still has access to her back. She had propped herself up on her elbow in order to regard Nick while he told his story, but now she stretches that arm out and rests her head against her upper arm. Languishing, dramatically, again.
"I'm sorry you haven't had a good first love yet. I'm sorry that is the way things were for you. But I'm very selfishly, very greedily happy if it contributed to you and me being here together like this. I find it hard to imagine not knowing you like this. And I have a very good imagination."
crow
Pen is an open book; this is a fortunate thing, because Nick is watching her every reaction to what he says, because these things he just said are some of the things he has been worried about telling her the most: he knows how they sound and that they don't particularly engender trust. Years have passed since he stopped carrying his former diagnoses around like an anvil looking for a hammer, but shame is a difficult thing to shed fully.
There is a slight smile, wistful perhaps, that indicates that no: he is certainly not fucking with her. Perhaps her hand is still there on his mouth, and she can feel the pull of his skin.
"I'm glad I am who I am," he says, because perhaps this was unclear, and perhaps he only needs to say it. He has met her eyes again, and then he asks, "Does any of that bother you?"
mars
Pen has to think about her answer. Pen has to think about her answer, and perhaps (Time being strange when one is drunk) she is quiet for what feels to Nicholas a very long time. During that very long time (which is not really that long, all things considered), she caresses him, keeps her head canted on her upper arm, keeps her gaze on Nicholas's face. "No it doesn't."
crow
She is indeed quiet for what feels to Nicholas like a very long time; and during that time he looks away from her, tilts his chin down and watches the play of light along her arm as she moves. She says it doesn't, and he believes her, and bows his head in against her, his fingertips still lightly tracing the curve of her spine. And he falls quiet, perhaps forgetting the tacit agreement that he would talk.
mars
Talk to me, she said, and perhaps she will remember how to keep her hands off Nick. He's not talking; she is not remembering how to keep her hands off him.
At least, not very well.
But even drunk - perhaps especially drunk, fog not lifting because this is not one of those nights, but fog silvered and mysterious, fog for proper ambience fog like the sea in the morning sometimes where the horizon has receded into a suggestion where Monet couldn't do justice where Turner could only dream in thick oils - even drunk, Pen knows knows knows can tell must guess (she can imagine) that this was a weight for Nicholas.
So she smiles and hums when Nick bows his head in against her, and she stares (gazes) at him with an artist's detachment (impassioned detachment - there is no detachment; she'd burn; she burns), giving time up so he can say more if he wants to.
Then all at once she sits up and untangles herself so she can say: "I want you to undress me." It doesn't need to be sexual; she just wants him to undress her. She wants him in a number of ways, each one splendid.
Later, later, later, when the alcohol is finally leaving her system and she is finally feeling the exhaustion (limned in it) and ready to allow them both to sleep (energy, dimming), Pen will want him to be her blanket. And a glass of water. And not after closing her eyes, she'll open them again to tell him some urgent bit of nonsense: "The angelo is tubular but cinnabar bells not bats."
And then sleep sleep sleep sleep. Tonight no sense of personal space at all.
crow
[wtf, Pen? Willpower because I reaaaaaaaally want to figure this out.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
mars
He's quite the riddle master, Nicholas Hyde.
The message is in a cylinder and of mercury (the messenger, air and light, Pen's) translated by signal but then dangerous and confusing to hear.
That's one possible unriddling, and the clearest.
Another possible unriddling:
The angel is in glass but bats (literally bats) did not release the angel it was the bells rung by the thieves.
crow
There is this space she gives him in which she allows him to say something more, but Nicholas is quiet; there is more he could say, but it is all something he will leave for another time, and another night. And neither of them have said it, but Nicholas saw this earlier: there will indeed be other nights, and night before night is spread out before them now. He is not in a hurry to unburden himself or to overwhelm Pen with the weight of his fears and the dozens of times and ways in which he has died and been reborn.
She wants him to undress her, and so he does, his fingers only slightly clumsier than usual from the slow burn of the whiskey still working its way out of his system. And he wants her in a number of ways, and is too tired now to fight any of them, to cling to any fear or thought of how this night should've gone or the things that he would still like to say.
And in that abandoning of inhibition which alcohol couldn't accomplish but this unburdening of himself does, yes: there is poetry.
Later, after he retrieved her a glass of water, he is all too happy to enfold her with limbs and body and abolish any sense of personal space either of them might have been clinging to. And he is too happy to dim and drift to sleep, until his eyes struggle open too, long enough to hear this pronouncement of Pen's. Maybe she can see the way his eyebrows furrow as he tries to make sense and logic of what she has just told him, whether there is this sort of code and whether there was something horribly significant that he just missed.
Pen sleeps. Nicholas, eyes wide and brows furrowed, stares out into the dark for a while longer.
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