The House of Mars and Hyde is quiet tonight as Nick arrives home, unsure of whether or not he will find Pen back yet. The car pulls up in front of the house, and the hour is either very late or very early, depending on one's perspective; soon the sun will begin to show itself and the first rays of pink dawn will stretch across the horizon. He pulls the car into the garage, looks around for Pen's motorcycle: no, not here yet.
Nicholas pulls his backpack out of the passenger seat as he disembarks, shuffling across the driveway and to the door with every intent of going inside and straight to bed. He called off work tomorrow; a fortunate thing given his particularly late arrival.
As he enters the front door he wiggles out of his boots, which are stained with mud and have bits of grass stuck to them. The backpack, too, he sets just inside the door, and his sweater finds a home on one of the doorknobs in the hallway. He is quiet only to avoid waking Ari up, and he does not strip off all of his clothes as he goes only in case she is already up.
Pen
Vroom!
Vroom!
Motorcycles are not usually quiet and on this night no exception. Nicholas is only just home with the not-so muted man-made thunder approaches; rattle-roars; then quiets, easing off like a lion purring sleeping and -
Key in the front door, rattle, rattle; come on, door! Oh. It was unlocked; that's why she was having trouble (slammed into it with her shoulder, surprised to find it didn't budge). Inside, Pen locks the door, sighing back against it for a moment: it is good to be home, to close her eyes and soak up the sense of Home which pervades it now: the strong whisper of Nicholas (hallowed [reverence]) and, beneath it, very slight, star-glint of Arianna.
She heads to the kitchen first; gets herself a beer, opens it against the counter, and then trails upstairs. Maybe she'll meet Nicholas outside the bathroom: or at the door of their bedroom. Pen: frozen, caught-out, ack: "Did I wake you?" she says.
Nick
The roar of the motorcycle cuts through the hush of early morning, and it is very likely that at just this moment everyone on their street, woken up exactly one hour before their alarms, is wishing some sort of special hell on the couple at the end of the street. Nick, however, expects Pen before she enters the house; he can hear the door rattling downstairs as he's finished brushing his teeth and has crossed over to the bedroom. So he waits for Pen, with a bright bleariness to his eyes because even though he is fucking exhausted he is looking forward to talking with her about the encounter with Crow.
Pen, beer in hand, arrives upstairs and finds him in the doorway, and he certainly looks tired enough and rumpled enough for her to think that perhaps she has woken him. "No," he says, his voice very soft (Arianna), "I just got home myself."
Nicholas stands aside so that she can enter the bedroom, whereupon he'll shut it after her. He is only considerate of their friend and cabalmate, thoughtful; and also just at this moment he does not want to talk to anyone other than Pen, even a dear friend. As soon as the door settles in its frame, Nick beelines for the bed, which he hefts himself up on so that he can sit crosslegged. She can tell, if she looks toward him, that what she is seeing right now is the ash left behind after a nervous exhilaration burned through him earlier that evening: still there, or its traces are, just diminished now by time and sleep deprivation.
"Kiara and I got a lot of information. How did the ritual go?"
Pen
Pen sets the beer down on the top of a dresser and pulls off her coat, drapes it over a chair, or maybe over a laundry basket. The shirt comes off next, and then the bra, and Nick is settling onto their bed cross-legged, and of course she looks toward him. Of course she does.
"You look like a cup frothing full of moonlight; it must have been good information," Pen says. She picks the beer up again - bottled, so she holds it by the neck between thumb and index-finger.
Her night clothes (they're rather fancy, truth be told: a rose-blush pink silk camisole with creamy lace along the straps, the collar; rose-blush pink silk shorts which match; it's all vaguely 60s; something someone might wear in a movie, or own but forget to put on) are already laid out right there beside the bed.
She hands Nicholas her beer so she can get her boots off, sitting on the edge with her spine curving, like so. "Long," she says. And then through gritted teeth, stupid boots, off! Off! "But interesting to watch; I'm not," strain: BOOTS. OFF. OFF BOOTS OFF, "certain I understa - " Her voice suddenly lifts: the boot came off. Flies a good couple feet and thunk. Now the other one. Boots are always a bitch: especially when she forgets about the knife in her boots and it goes clattering to the floor, which is the case now.
"Understand how they work their magick, but it was interesting to see the rite. Tell me about your spirit quest. Was it fun?" This quick-flash, side-long smile: "Should I not ask about 'fun', given the serious context?"
Nick
"It was more than I think either of us expected to get," Nick says, and then he quiets; because of course he's watching her. There is this spark of good humor as he watches her struggle with her boots, and he ducks his head and laughs quietly as one boot flies a few feet, as the knife goes clattering to the floor.
He had been very careful about not waking Ari.
He takes the liberty of sipping from her bottle of beer. His night clothes consist of a pair of loose-fitting black yoga pants and this is all; far less fancy, all told. He carries a faint whiff of sage and smoke on him now, which she can perhaps smell on him as she draws nearer, the remnants of Kiara's portion of the ritual.
"It was fun, in a way," he says, with this little half-smile. "We went to the river park by the college of public health, down near the water, and I helped Kiara summon a crow spirit so we could ask what it knew about the compound and see whether it could tell us whether Alex was located. She was very easy for me to work with, actually."
There is a touch of wistfulness here that is a little hard to place; perhaps Nick is missing Thane. They both miss Thane. "I bargained with it, so we offered secrets in exchange for what it knew. It told us that Alex is alive and went Seeking, and gave us this sense of what it looked like inside...Crow called it Spiderhome. He's being held in a basement of one of the hospital wings, from what I could gather." A beat. "I wish you could have been there to see it, Pen. Crow is...this dark lyrical thing, like poetry and secrets given form. I think you would appreciate what spirit work looks and feels like."
Pen
"He went Seeking inside a Technocratic facility? Good for him!" Pen says, shimmying her trousers off and then her socks. Haphazard exhaustion undressing. Before she puts her elegant silk froth, she reclaims the beer and takes a pull; hands it back to Nick in order to complete the transformation from Pen-who-might-go-outside to Pen-who-is-only-for-lounging.
There are still many rings on her fingers; she will take all of them off but two. Pen wants to ask Nicholas the secrets he gave up; her interest is piqued; but - see - a struggle: asking what the secrets were makes them less secret. Retroactive cheapening of a gift? A poor tactic.
"Are you trying to turn me into a Spirit mage?" she teases him (?), crawling onto the bed now, taking her beer back again. Rather than sit cross-legged, she kneels, knees a little splayed.
Nick
"That's what it sounds like," Nick says. He takes another swallow or two from the bottle when she hands it back to him, then leaves it balanced on the side of his knee, where it leaves a light ring of condensation on the dark fabric of his pants.
He wriggles himself around to face her more fully after she has taken her beer back, leaning back on the heels of his hands. When she teases him, there is this sly little smile and an arch to his eyebrows: maybe. But then, "If you learned spirit magick, what would I do? No. I just want...I'd like to show you. And I think you would like it."
There is this stillness that follows his words, but it is a weighty sort, the way the air grows stagnant and heavy with moisture before a thunderstorm rolls in. "We also...Crow told us that there's a sleeping Oak near the compound. I think, from what I understood him saying, that it might be a slumbering Well. Kiara thought about Awakening it, but I think if we were to do that the Union would destroy it." His eyes have trailed away, come to focus somewhere indeterminate in the direction of the floor. "I also think he might agree to being a distraction, when we send the team in. I could probably work with him to do that once he's been summoned."
Pen
"Show it to me, then; make me a promise. I want to see what you want to show me; even more."
He said he'd show the spirit world to her once before: they never got around to it, he never figured out how, life. Things happen.
The Oak might be a slumbering Well. Pen's interest - already engaged, because she does find (has always found) Nicholas's stories of his adventures with otherworldly creatures to be fascinating (even if there was a period of time where-in she did not always trust them, considering his penchant for tall tales) - but her interest grows keener, sharpens.
They're going to make short work of the bottle at the rate they're going. But Penelope holds it between her knees, at rest; her gaze has turned inward, because she is thinking about what he has said. Whether a distraction would likely work, or be worth the probable sacrifice.
"Hmm. I'm not certain an oak - an Oak? - just - hmm. If it is a Well, we may not want it to be awake again; I am inclined to agree that the Union would destroy it, or at least turn it to their purpose - and the kind of distraction that would be might be better held in reserve."
"Tell me more about Crow."
Nick
"I promise I'll show you, and soon," he says, and perhaps he is recalling that he had said something like this once and it did not happen; this, evidenced by the somewhat somber set of his features as he looks down and away again once more. He didn't learn, and there was a long period where he wasn't doing much spirit work at all. "Once I figure out how to step sideways, I'd like to find a way to take you with me."
Portals: he knows they exist. He is still not sure what he found, the time when he broke through on his own, whether it was a portal or a shallowing; he was too young and inexperienced then to know for sure and now he cannot do more than guess. Still, these things can be done.
To the thoughts she offers on the Well, he only nods. His eyes have returned to her by the time she asks him about Crow, and his gaze is lingering, thoughtful, on her and how she is seated and the red of her hair and how particularly picturesque she is at the moment. "Crow is really a murder of them, actually. They roosted in one of the trees and spoke to us in riddles. I've bargained with them and with Raven for secrets before, sometimes just to talk and see what they know. Their understanding of the way things happen isn't always the same as ours. They're...I'm not sure if they exist outside of human understanding, or if they are a fragment of human understanding, or if they're the embodiment of stories that we've told that existed past what we can remember now. Maybe all three of those."
He has drawn in a breath, this expansive quiet thing that swells his chest and shoulders. "I gave it the name of someone I know will die two days from now, among other things. Sometimes that's all they want, is just to know things."
Pen
[Stamina?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Pen
Pen considers Nicholas: a clear-eyed, poise in stillness kind of look. He gave it the name and time of a death. Among other things. An answer that does not stay the existence of her curiosity because what other things, what other things, but she still does not ask. Instead: this unbidden smile - sudden, sweet (it is an ache sometimes - this; it is a sluice of moonlight on a calm lay of water; that rill of brightness gathered by the sea-wave on its way down).
Pen hooks the neck the beer bottle up again between thumb and forefinger and she is very weary but she does not lose focus or give in to the tidal tug of the desire to lose consciousness. Pen wants to be here, awake and with Nicholas, that look in his eye as he talks about - all of it.
"What is the very strangest secret you've bargained out of them or Raven - shall we just call them the Family Corbae - before?"
Pen is not good at lying, manipulating; Pen is very good at quick-witted bargaining, or she is if the wind comes from the right direction and pride is not at her heels.
Nick
Pen has managed to stave off sleep so far; Nick only has because she's gotten him talking. Still, he is beginning to move in a direction that is more horizontal, leaning farther and farther down, and finally he gives up and is stretched out on his back. There is a look over at Pen, at which point he shifts himself around so that his head is in her lap (or, if she is still kneeling, resting on her thigh), which is infinitely preferable.
He can see her smile upside down, this aching thing verging into loveliness, and in watching her he perhaps has no idea that she is wondering what other things. Even if he did: Crow had asked him for two tears, and he is done with tears for tonight.
"The strangest? Hm. They've told me all kinds of things over the years. When we met, a long time ago, and I ran into you and Robin and Thane, I knew where to be because of what Raven told me. Crow led me out of the shadowlands, when I was there once. Crow also told me the name and title of the Chakravanti I was before this, once, when I asked and paid for it. But...hm." His expression and wandering eyes suggest that perhaps he has heard a lot of strange things from the Family Corbae over the years. "They know and would share all kinds of things. A Hermetic Adept in New York had a lover who was some Conventional, and they were very careful to tell no one."
A beat. "Back when I was Disparate and it was difficult to find Wells to drink from, Crow would tell me where to find them and how to get in and we would go steal from them together." This quick smile, and it's not embarrassed precisely but - well, that was a different Nicholas then.
Pen
Another long, slow drink of the grain-juice, so much for John Barleycorn, and she was still kneeling but when it looks as if Nicholas is going to rest his head on her thigh, she shifts so he has a lap instead, warm warm warm, and if she spills beer on him in a few minutes well: he is the one who understands the Art of Time; he could've seen it coming; maybe she won't. She combs her fingers through his hair as he talks, especially paying careful attention to the curls around his ears, which she is certainly getting labyrinth-lost in. Coil, curl, follow, smooth, oh, again; this way; that, oh another stray, and so it goes, ad infinitum.
He is certainly absorbing her attention with this list-collection of strange things; Pen hadn't any idea Crow had so much to do with the first time she crossed his path. "What!" at a Hermetic Adept in New York had a lover who was. Pen sounds scandalized, in spite of her humanist leanings on the subject of conventionalists. And - this quick smile from him, this slow smile from her.
"I wonder what it would have been like if we'd met before we were initiated into our Traditions."
Nick
Nick has closed his eyes, which more or less ensures that if she spills beer on him in a few minutes he most certainly will not see it coming. A contented hum as she plays with the curls around his ears suggests that if this happened he might not even notice or care. His hair certainly has gotten long; it's hard to tell where they end and begin, as they spiral into each other and against his skin.
Pen's surprised utterance causes him to open his eyes, and she is scandalized but Nick has this conspiratorial look here, something that is simply pleased to have surprised her so. It was a good secret to tell, apparently. "Like I said, they know all kinds of things." And if it seems like Nicholas spent more time interacting with spirits than people for a certain period of his Awakened life, well, that supposition wouldn't be all that far off the mark.
"I wonder that too. I was so much more directionless then." Part storykeeper, part shaman and part knave, in truth, and unharnessed by the sense of duty he now carries with him. There is this little smile as he reaches back and gives a gentle squeeze to the area just behind her knee. "What were you like, before joining the Order? I have a hard time imagining you as anything other than Hermetic."
Pen
"Oh really?" Pen sounds quite Arch, and she doesn't know what to do with the two-thirds empty bottle and passes it from one hand to elbow and then back to her hand again, and now she can play by gently tracing Nicholas's mouth. Her eyes drift closed; her eyes open again after a second too long. That archness remains in her tone, challenge just-unsheathed, glint of some blade in a court settling, a bit of dazzle among the shadows, an invitation (playful in context). "Why is that?"
Nick
Nick, whose eyelids are becoming heavy, angles his chin up to regard her as she shifts the bottle from hand to elbow to hand, as she traces the line of his mouth with finger or thumb. She questions him, and he laughs. "You're just so...Hermetic," he says. "In a good way. You're all the things that people who aren't of the Order admire about the Order. Which you maybe were then, too. It's just like trying to imagine you with a different hair color."
Pen
His laughter means her thumb hovers above his lips; traces them again on the word Hermetic, and smiles another quick and sweet smile. Time for another drink of beer which -- oh no: he makes her laugh; trying to imagine her with a different hair color. Easy to imagine her laugh-choking on beer, which dribbles down onto poor Nicholas. She wipes his face with her hand, shoulders hunched not in apology but a certain caught-out whoops; the corners of her mouth tighten in a way which drags out handsome dimples. "Apologies, my darling," her voice is choke-hoarse, water-hoarse. She clears her throat; the last of the laughter is dislodged. Ahem. "Before joining the Order, I was ... I don't know, myself. Very much myself, and determined that I would not join any sorcerous organization, but determined also to dare all." Gone sing-song: "Maayybe you should ask your good friend Crow."
Nick
He can see the beer falling for his face in the time before it does, which is much less than a second but seems like it ought to have been longer: time is funny that way. In that time he has squeezed his eyes shut and tilted his face away so that it splatters on his cheek, and he is laughing himself as she wipes it away. "Maybe I should," he says. "Though I see less of Crow these days than I used to." He has much more human connection now than he did; perhaps this is part of that.
He has now gone back to looking up at her, though with more caution and an eye for falling beer. "I could see you that way," he says. "Was there something that made you determined not to join an organization?"
Pen
"No," Pen says, and now that she has wiped the beer away she keeps her hand on Nicholas's cheek, leans down as if she would touch her forehead to his but cannot quite traverse the distance. The beer bottle is held firmly in her other hand, near her knee; less than a fourth left; she should just swig it. "Only a want; for self-sufficiency, self-mastery; for my own mind, made; for love of - well this you know: they all seemed so selfish. I was constantly getting in trouble before I joined the Order."
Because Pen was so good at staying out of trouble once she joined it.
The narrator bites their fist and turns their lying head to the side.
Nick
They've spoken of this before: of selfish Traditionalists, selfish magi. Nicholas had agreed with her then; his eyes say he agrees with her now too. She has leaned down, and maybe the two of them are almost statuesque in this position, curling into each other as they are. "We probably would've gotten into a lot of trouble together."
Pen
"Mmhmmm." Pen's eyes drift closed and stay so. She is not asleep; she is resting her eyes, and listening to Nicholas: his breathing, his voice, the very Nicholasish silence between breath and voice.
Nick
They are both resting their eyes, which will probably turn into sleep in rather short order if neither of them say anything more. Nick, who is wavering somewhere between conscious and not (more on the conscious side, for now) is listening to Pen, leaning his cheek into the warmth of her hand. And after a moment, he'll recall that: "You didn't tell me about the ritual."
His voice sounds far off to him, though after a moment his eyes struggle back open.
Pen
"Hmm?" A jolt; Pen's eyes open quickly, gray as the underside of a knife washed in rain-water; there's a radiance to that kind of gray. "The ritua - oh. The spell of finding. It went well," she sounds cautious, judicious even: "Sera found a time, a place, and the woman who is connected to and most likely to help get Alex out. We just need to go there and talk to her, and if it happens to be a trap, I will be ready and deal with it."
Nick
If it happens to be a trap -
Here are words that could have him awake for a while longer. Instead of reflecting this concern on his face, Nicholas instead gradually, slowly, raises himself, then reaches to take the beer bottle with a couple of swallows left in it from Pen. He stretches out, across Pen's lap momentarily, to place it on the nightstand. Muscles that are sparsely wound around his bones flex and slacken as he returns, only to worm his way up toward the head of the bed. This is not an elegant thing, nor is he especially concerned with elegance just now. He manages to swing his legs under the blankets and burrow, and then glances toward Pen, this thing that would be expectant if it weren't half-asleep.
"You'll have to tell me more about what it was like to watch the ritual," he says. "Who is going with you? When you go to meet with the woman."
Pen
But hey no Pen follows the beer bottle over to the nightstand stretching after Nicholas to reclaim it while giving him a look that is all air of injury. She tips her head back; her throat is long; she finishes it off, makes an aaaahhh! sound afterward, smacks her lips, then drops the bottle onto the floor. Fortunately, it hits her shirt or trousers, something that didn't make it into the laundry basket, and is in no danger of shattering; and oh, oh what? Nick is inelegantly burrowed under covers. Pen in pink silk grins at him, actually gets off the bed in order to circle aimlessly (no there is an aim), forgetting about the bottle, over to the a lamp with a red shade and crystal-fringe which has provided ambient glow; she turns it off. The room is now dark; she returns to the bed. The mattress reacts to her weight; then a cool breeze slips beneath the covers before she does, pressing herself quickly to Nicholas.
"It was like watching your words read by someone else, like - it was interesting, the technicality of it, but it was strange. I am going alone - well I'm going with Sera, that is not alone, and Kalen will be there, but I am going alone."
She is making half-sense, or maybe less than half-sense, nonsense!, but she doesn't sound worried or concerned; just dreamy: "Sera is so very good at things. Maybe when you teach me Time I should just watch you Work?" Even dreamier - can't quite bring herself, but almost to brush her voice with shades of lechery: "I like to watch you work. Ha."
Nick
Pen presses herself to him, and there is a half-second's delay before his arms wrap around her. He spends a moment wiggling and readjusting, the better to not wake up with multiple cramps should he fall asleep in this position, which seems increasingly likely. "I want you to be safe," he says, when she says she is going alone, because he was perhaps able to glean her meaning.
But he will let her continue on, and then, "Sera is very good at things. Sera doesn't like other people to know she is good at things, I think," and he too is dreamy, even in this thoughtful assessment he offers of the Adept. A beat, and his tone...well, it tries to be suggestive. It is far too sleepy for that. "I like to watch you...no. I am too tired to be clever, Pen."
Pen
Pen jolts-rouses again; propping herself up on her elbow, eyes open (mostly) all the way, blink, blink, blinking. In the darkness of their room, Nicholas is a suggestion of shape. "What time do you want to wake up tomorrow?"
Nick
Pen has propped herself up on an elbow, and she can see his eyes are closed. He lets one of his arms slacken, enough to allow her to rise or shift as she likes. "Whenever I wake up. I called off work because I didn't know how I'd be feeling after the ritual. Why?"
Pen
"So I know when to wake you up," Pen says, hand goes slip-slide over his stomach and she closes her eyes again. The adrenaline from the jolt-awake filters away; she feels quite languorous, and whatever he responds (words or silence) it is quite likely will find her already asleep.
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