Apology Dinners

Nick
It is a Sunday evening, with Nicholas coming home just as the world has gone golden.  He'd told her that he and Ari were going out to the park, and so they had, with ginger beer and a little blue box full of blackberries.  The stains are still on his fingertips when he arrives home.

The hour is not late and so Nick is not as quiet about his entry as he sometimes is when he is more worried about disturbing Pen.  He has a heavy blanket over his shoulder which he shook several times to rid of dry grass, and he has two ginger beer bottles that are for the recycling bin.  The quiet latch of the door, and the louder clatter of bottles into the bin, are the first things that Pen hears from him as he enters the house.

And where is she?  He looks for signs of her first, the way he always does: scents from elsewhere in the house, or light reflecting off the walls from lit candles, or the sound of her at Work upstairs.

Nick
[Perception + Alertness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen
The door is unlocked when he comes home.

Pen is not in the backyard or in the hammock. Pen is not in the kitchen or the dining room. Pen is not in the living room and she is not in the foyer by the front door and she is not in the closet and the door to the cellar is ajar, but there is no light coming from down below which might indicate Pen is at the forge. The lights are off, all of them. He'll have to look, proper, before he finds her.

Pen is, restlessly, at her work table, her elbows together and her her hands clasped so her thumbs neatly line-up and her mouth pressed against her nails, and the points of her elbows on the table, and the work table is strewn with books and piece of paper and different inks all set up, their colors meaningful to Pen as well as to her work, and a cup of black tea making a ring on one of the pages, and she is just pushing up from the work table (she could always write at the desk) when she hears the noise of Nick come home and she closes her eyes and reaches listlessly for one of the fountain pens this one made with wood from a city drowned in one of the rivers which criss-cross Quebec and the color of a sailor's heart and chased with silver and she taps the pen and taps it and opens her eyes, then reaches for a short-sleeved diaphanous thing of blues and grays and greens to throw over the sweet white slip dress she is wearing because she should be out on a walk.

Nick
He looks for her in all of these places first, and finally makes his way upstairs when he does not find her anywhere below, or in the basement.  Even upstairs, there is nothing to give away her presence right away: he has to look for her, and finally what he hears is the scratching of a pen and the faint rattle of a desk as he rounds the corner in the hallway.

Nick pokes his head around the door and into Pen's study, just in time to sight her throwing on an extra layer in preparation to go outside.  "It's still pretty warm out there," he advises, as he steps fully into the door frame, though he leaves some space for her to exit the study around him should she wish.

"Are you going out on a walk?"

Pen
To Pen, the click of her throat when she swallows is loud. It is all she can hear. It did not clear her throat. Pen still feels it there: a lump, a clot, the sediment left behind by not so long ago flood of fury, the signs of which are evident in the expressive quiver of her eyebrows, the sharp set of her jaw, even the salt-thick spike of her eyelashes. But the look Pen gives Nick is a startled one: as if she expected to be out of the study before he found her, and on her way down already.

Pen doesn't swallow a second time and her voice isn't thick, only a touch lower than it might otherwise be. "No," and her lashes flutter, and she casts the diaphanous bit of nonsense aside. The sweet white slip dress is not quite appropriate for outside, or wouldn't be according to her mother: a shade too transparent. "I was thinking about going on a walk before you got home to clear my head, but I spent all my time thinking about going on a walk."

It is difficult for Pen to be mute; she presses her lips together, makes a little Valentine of them, and then, "Nicholas, are you glad of your Sunday afternoon?"

Pen
ooc: no, make that "Nick, are you glad of your" etc

Nick
[Uh oh.  Are you angry, Pen?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 4 )

Nick
Her dress is a little too transparent for outside, or so Nick's mother would say as well: his eyes linger in the split second before they snap up to her face, because she is speaking in a low tone that he recognizes.  And they have fought often enough before that Nick ought to know by now that there is little chance of stopping that which has already been set in motion, but he often tries every time.

He recognizes, too, how she presses her lips together, the quiver of her eyebrows.  His own bow together, are drawn up and toward one another in dismay even before she has asked him about his Sunday afternoon.  "Ari and I went out to the park and talked for a little while," he says, though carefully, carefully, because he is not yet sure what has angered her.

"You, uh, you look upset."  Sometimes it's just better to rip off the band-aid.

Pen
[Pen: *squint* Are you playing dumb? Do you really have no idea why I might be angry?! Perc + Emp.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )

Nick
[Nick really has no idea why she might be upset.  He is confused and worried that he has done something really wrong.]

Pen
[...breathe, girl. Willpower to be collected, man. Composure. Like a grown-up Hermetic.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Pen
[Suck it, Hannibal & Bran, that's how its DONE, son. Team Lysander's School.]

Pen
He says she looks, uh, upset. Pen cants her head to the side, her chin held loft, and casts a glance over Nick's expression. His mouth, his chin, his jaw, his throat; the small details are the ones she notices sometimes, the ones which tell. She finally goes fishing in his eyes for a sign that he is (as she first suspects) stalling, searches for some shadow of understanding, and finds none. Pen's lips part on a word but the word becomes air, a shallow exhale, and she brings her hand up - the gesture is loose, unconstrained although controlled - to the top of her head; she buries her fingers in her hair, which is loose and wild and still-damp, between dry and wet.

"I broke my phone's screen. It shattered; it looks like a piece of snow onyx, or a flaw in ice, or a broken universe. I'll fix it tomorrow."

"I am upset. I am furious. You can't - " she is shaking her head, looking up at the ceiling, the place where the wall kisses the ceiling; otherwise, she is still; a poised woman, an omen - and see, listen, there's this thread, taut, this imploring note - " - Do you really not have any idea why I might be upset, Nick? You don't think anything upsetting has been put in motion?"

Nick
"Today?"  Nick's eyelashes beat a few times against his cheeks the way shutters will flap in the wind preceding a storm.  There is still no light of understanding there in his eyes: only apprehension, once she has told him that she broke her phone.

His eyes flick away from her then and over her shoulder as he considers what he might have done to awaken this sort of ire.  Then, finally, he lifts a hand to the back of his head and winds his fingers into the curls at the back of his neck.  His eyes are on hers again, assuming he can catch them where they are pinned on the ceiling (no, where the wall kisses the ceiling).

"I, uh.  Are you upset that Rob might be coming to visit?  I can...I mean, I can call everything off if it's going to upset you this much."

Pen
"I look forward to the sight of Rob's face as much as I look forward to a UTI," Pen says, with an air of (furious) poetry, even if the words are plain. "I never thought you had half a chance of 'convincing' Ari, I should say rather bribing, or would I use the word 'bargaining'? I don't believe I would use the word 'bargaining,' maybe 'suckering' - but 'suckering isn't right. Suckered. To be suckered. I never thought you'd be able to have half a chance, less than half a chance, at convincing her, but no, I mean yes, I'm not thrilled about that, but that's not why I'm angry." Her breathing is beginning to come more rapidly; her eyes gone sword-dark, sword-bright.

Nick
Nick recognizes this change in her demeanor, and he visibly braces himself.  She can see it, in how his muscles tense and pull taut, in how he draws himself up where he stands in her doorway.  "Then, um, why are you angry?"

She can see his eyes flicker as he seizes on her words, as he tries to piece together something from her words - but no.  Not yet.

Pen
"Because! Nick! Three favors! THREE favors, just to bring Rob over here? Three favors, unspecified, no time limit, to another Willworker, that was how you 'convinced' Ari to agree to apply to Michael's? I'm angry she's taking your part over mine anyway, but I'm also angry that she asked that of you, that she's sticking to it under the guise of helpfulness, and I'm angry that you didn't even try for a better deal. Or did you? I don't know; I believe," and see, that sword-bright edge comes from furious tears; her voice catches, snags, and she crosses her arms over her chest, tight, tight, "that you are cleverer than that. We just had a conversation about bargains."

Nick
"I did try," Nick says, though it is not with any particular vehemence and so she can perhaps gather: he didn't try very hard, was not very persistent.  Her arms are crossed, and his fingers are still tangled in his hair which he tugs as he half-turns from her and then back.  "It's Ari, Pen.  She's not going to ask anything terrible of me.  It's just in good fun."

And now his hand lowers once more, falls loose to his side.  "You know that if it had been anyone else, I wouldn't have agreed."

Pen
"Oh, all right, certainly, though didn't you agree to something just as bad with Robin Anton? But if it's just in good fun," and her voice wavers, dips like sheet metal; there's a rill of light, and she swallows: fine. "Sure. It's really fun to have to do what somebody asks of you, no matter what it is."

Pen half-turns toward her work table and doesn't seem to know what to do with her hands. She starts toward the door and Nick, pressing her back against the doorframe, see, like so, hand flat on the wall.

Nick
"Rob's a friend too, he's not going to ask anything terrible of me," Nick says.  And as she moves toward the door and presses her back against the frame to avoid touching him, Nick takes a few steps back so that she can move unencumbered.  There is a flicker of hurt there on his face as there always is, but over time he has grown accustomed to how she is when she is angry.

"I'm the one who has to do it," he adds, to the last.  There is a little furrowing of his brows, now.  "Not you."

Pen
He takes a few steps back and Pen flinches and steps back over the threshold and into the study. She spreads her arms wide, braces herself against the doorframe, and slides her hands down the frame slow. Her heart is gone too too loud and when Nick says 'not you' it's as if the words were silver scissors went snip snip and cut the strings her hands drop and she leans hard against one side of the threshold again, an asymmetrical Nouveau Medea.

"What?" It's barely a sound; it is spare. "Nick, we're partners," her shoulders curve inward and she puts a hand over her breastbone, "I love you, I swore myself to you, I'll swear it again, but we're -- when something happens to you, it doesn't happen only to you. And vice versa. I thought. I thought, but."

"And Rob's an asshole, even when he likes you. An ambitious asshole, who I'm sure wouldn't actually ask for your True Name or mine, but might still ask you something that is terrible. As long as it doesn't kill you, it can make you stronger. And if he gets something he wants out of it, good, he used the right tool for the job!"

Nick
"I didn't..."  The furrow in his brows grows deeper, is only complicated by the way they are trying to lift now, too, and they are matched contortionists here each trying to move and bend in a way they weren't meant to move and bend.  "I didn't mean it like that, Pen."

He bites the inside of his cheek.  "Rob won't be asking anything of me, since he lost.  I don't know my True Name, anyway, in order to give it to him.  And Ari won't ask anything like that of me."

There is a little frown that sketches itself across his mouth now, just a deep unhappiness: doesn't quite touch misery, but it flirts with it, leans forward and then pulls back.  "I just...it seems like this feels more significant to you than it does to me.  Are you worried that I would make another bargain that would put both of us in danger?  Or are you...are you just disappointed in me?"

Pen
He didn't mean it like that, Pen. Pen presses her palms into her temples, her fingers curled and rigid, and she glances downward, neck a lily-stem curve, and then her hand finds her breastbone again, creeps up to her collar, and her head stays bowed until Ari won't ask anything like that and her eyes flick (sharp) back up; they'd fling lake-light, sure, or blood, or both.

"It does, doesn't it," she says, right over Are you worried. Silent for Nick to ask his questions, and then she slips around the edge of the door frame, so from his perspective she is bisected. The wall cuts her vertically, up along the side of her spine, mid-shoulder, and she is looking over her shoulder at him.

"I'm disappointed in Ari, I'm worried that you won't, that you can't, god, why can't you see that even among friends, dealing -- as a Mage, Nick, as a Mage whose word can change reality -- that it is still a serious thing?"

"Improbable things can happen; you can know somebody really well and not expect them to -- after all, hey, I thought that Ari would never, ever, ever ever ever agree to work in Michael's, no matter who bribed her, was suckered by her, whatever, but I was wrong. And I know Ari really fucking well, Nick.

"And I knew Rob really well, too, but -- "

She makes a sound; strangled, groan; withdraws behind the wall, so only her shoulder, the curve of her hip, the back of her neck, a hand: they're all that's visible, for a moment.

Nick
There is another name that occurs to both of them just now: she is the subtext that lies buried so often underneath their fights, their secret fears that are not so secret after all.  The name is on his lips but he does not say it after it occurs to him to vocalize it, to say that he understands why she worries.

Instead for a moment he is just silent.  He stands past the door frame with his head bowed, and finally he sighs and steps into her study after her, reaching a hand for her.  "You're right, and I'm sorry, Pen.  I'll be more cautious from now on.  Even among friends."

Pen
[*squint* Wut. Sudden about face. Why. Are you humoring me. Empathy!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

Nick
[When Pen looks, she'll find his brows lowered over his eyes and they too are expressive: she'll see worry there, and embarrassment, and concern.  And if she looks twice, she'll see a shadow.]

Pen
He finds her with her head against the wall, tipped back; her gaze cast upwards, and her expression just as tragic as her (ardent) voice, and should his hand find her, she straightens and will come to him - but her hands and arms aloof while the rest of her is more willing, see, to bend. And she gives him a sharp look, all of her looks can be sharp in a certain mood, and she says, "It's serious to Hermetics, the keeping of bargains and compacts, and there's still three favors, and it," Pen shuts her eyes tight, tight, tight, "if you two want Rob so badly, you can just go and have him. I'm not keeping you from being his friend, even though he is a cankerous shit dragging a shard of glass out the rectum wherever he is."

Nick
His fingertips, still stained purple with blackberry juice (though he has not noticed this in some time) light on her arm just above her elbow, and he opens his arm to allow her to his side once she turns back to him.  "I know you won't keep us from that," he says.  "But I never...I'm sorry, Pen.  I wasn't very considerate."

A beat.  "You've never told me what it was the two of you fought about.  But...regardless, I owe Ari whatever I promised and I won't do anything like it again."

Pen
He wasn't very considerate.

"Of yourself," Pen says, fiercely. He'd opened his arm; so when she went to him, it was to lean against his side, so, and she knows her breathing is erratic just like she knows her skin is hot to the touch although she is pale with anger: wild-fire, heat-lightning, invisible signs. As a child, when she lost her temper with the other children, the ones she was taking care of, she would leave immediately, because she didn't like to make them cry or let them see her distress. She'd throw rocks at cans and go for walks, often in the woods. Going for walks in the wood when at her most passionately moved was often helpful;--not always.

He speaks on. Pen's teeth don't grind, but her jaw sets; her teeth pressed too close upon one another, and tension a ripple of portent up her back and into her shoulders.

Nick
"I meant, of you when I asked Rob to come out here," he says, and the reply leaps from his tongue before he has adequate time to digest her reply or try to get to the root of what it is that upset her to begin with.  Nicholas, too, has his blind spots, insightful though he often is.  His arm hems her in against his side, and now he can feel her skin burn beneath his hand, beneath the white slip she is wearing.

"Is there...are you still upset, or do you just need a few minutes?"

Pen
Pen in a temper has a natural progression. Inciting incident. Fury! Ranting! Storming about! Tempestuousness, unadulterated! Easing off, a mild drizzle, more fury! FURY! Then it's done. Earnest apology, sorrow. How many times her temper spikes depends entirely. Right now:

Pen inhales, sharply. Leans hard and bows her head to rest her chin on Nick's shoulder, rather than making any immediate reply. Her heart goes: fox and rabbit fox and rabbit fox and rabbit run run run. Her arms and hands are still unmoved, her fingers curled into fists.

This way, see, Nick cannot see her facial expression.

"Of course I'm still upset. Ari -- " Pause. "And you, and Rob. Why do you even think I'm upset?"

Nick
It is fortunate that Nick cannot see her facial expression.  In spite of what Pen might have wished, at least in the past, it is very rare indeed for him to engage her directly, to return fury with fury.  Quiet sadness and worry are far more common, as is the desire to find a middle ground or simply end the argument.

She inhales and she can feel beneath her chin a roiling shift, muscles drawing tight against one another and then loosening again.  He is preparing himself for round two.

"I thought...I just figured that you were upset about Rob, and then about me promising to Ari when I should have known better.  I already said it wouldn't happen again."

Pen
"You said what wouldn't happen again?"

Her chest doesn't move; she is holding her breath. It's a charm against tears.

Nick
"Me entering into a bargain with a friend without being careful.  Or, well, making that kind of agreement with anyone again.  Something undefined and without terms.  Because you're right that it affects you too."

She is holding her breath; his hand finds the small of her back where it draws small circles: this, too, a charm of sorts.  "I'm sorry."

Pen
The tension in her eases into a minor key, and a second passes, and then Pen lifts her arms, left hand coming to rest on Nick's elbow, and then she removes it in order to insinuate her arms around Nick and hold him (fierce) tight. The unshed tears shiver against her eyelashes; reconstitute her workshop and study into an impressionist painting; she blinks, and the tears race each other. One loses its way at Pen's mouth. The other finds the edge of her jaw, and drops off, and each is followed by another. "Okay," she says.

A beat. "But do you understand why I find it upsetting, or do you think it's just a quirk of personality? How would you like it if I owed Jonas three unspecified favors, which he could collect at any time, and I could not refuse? I mean, on top of..."

Her voice becomes fog; as light, as tenuous. "And do you..."

"Did I ruin... Was I bad to you and Ari, with Rob and Thane?"

Nick
"I..."  Pen mentions Jonas, and Nick has to consider this, to wonder at how he would react to such a thing.  "I wouldn't like it," he admits finally, "but I trust Jonas.  I don't think he would ask anything of you that you wouldn't willingly give.  I think Ari is the same."  There is a lilt of uncertainty in his voice there, laced beneath his words and so finely so that it could go unnoticed.

"But the point is that it bothers you, so I won't do it again."  His other arm finds its way around her, and of course he can tell that there are tears spilling.  "I don't think it's just a quirk of yours.  It's...you're worried about me."  And here Nicholas bites the inside of his cheek, because he worries about her too, and this is not the time.

A space opens up between them, however slight, when Nick draws his head back so that he can look down at her when she asks him another question.  "Were you bad to us?  When?"

Pen
[Oohh? Uncertainty? Perc + Emp! Without the usual acute eyesight help.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Nick does indeed have some uncertainty about this, primarily because he is aware that even though he does indeed trust both Jonas and Ari, they both have their own quirks of character and limitations.  He does not imagine that Jonas would ask something of Pen that she wouldn't willingly give, as he is now: he thinks similarly of Ari.  Nick also knows that things change.  He does not like thinking this way and thus, the uncertainty.]

Pen
"When we ended the old cabal. After we did. I don't know."

Another tear, and another. She is crying in earnest, now. It doesn't quite touch her voice; her voice stays clear, only a little wavery now and again: somber, or silver brushed.

Pen, see, is agitated. She turns her head so she is resting her cheek on Nick's shoulder again. Her hair is a bright flag down her back, full of glossy shadow the way it is when damp.

"The point is not that it bothers me, the point is that it's dangerous, the point is that it's not well done, that even just as a fun game it's - it's not good practice, it's settling bad habits, it's - it's with Mages, Nicholas, and - that phrase! That idea. Anything that you wouldn't willingly give; Ari used it too. It's bull shit. Then don't hold fucking favors and try to defend them by saying they were fairly won or imply that it was just a test or a defense against some nebulous worse thing and then refuse to use them up. I'm not trying to say that Ari or Jonas or anybody, any of our friends or your friends, are bad and are going to ask something that would, but it takes away your choice."

Nick
"You've never been bad to me, Pen.  I don't...I can't speak for them, but I don't think you were bad to the others, either.  Things just didn't work out.  We all had a part in that."

And there are no tears upon his cheeks, but he sounds for a moment as though he had swallowed a stone, as though it were sitting there smooth and dark in his throat.  He begins to walk them, step by step, toward the chair in her study, a sort of staggering slow dance without the accompaniment of music.

"You're right, and I'm sorry," he says again.  And there is the same sincerity as before: he is contrite now, even.  "I'll be more careful, Pen."

Pen
Pen's arms tighten around Nick - they're already so tight - but she doesn't stay rooted. Her study has a comfortable arm chair and a day bed, a stool and a desk chair. A wealth of places to lounge, recline, or otherwise be picturesque and productive. She doesn't say anything yet, but she's thinking. Perhaps growing calmer; the tension seems to have gone down to a mere whisper and - hard to gauge - perhaps her skin isn't quite as full of wild fire.

Nick
Nick twists his head around to survey the available places to seat the two of them: and sometimes with a wealth of choices one may be left indecisive.  In the end, he moves the two of them toward the day bed and then folds his legs beneath him and sits, pulling Pen down with him.  "I think Ari isn't feeling well today.  Maybe she'll change her mind if she thinks on it."

Pen
They go down together. Pen breaks from Nick just after, so she is not such a sprawl across his lap, and she pushes witch-wild strands of hair away from her face, where they've caught at the corner of her lips. She doesn't wipe her eyes or her cheeks, and her hand is still in her hair, still pulling it back still following its length when she is looking at Nick with wide eyes, saying, "Isn't feel well today how? Why do you think so?"

Nick
"She just seemed more tired than usual, that's all."  He is watching her, and now his eyes track her tear-trails down her cheeks, though he hasn't lifted a hand to brush them away.  He half-turns on the day bed to face her, reaching over so that he can rest a hand on top of her thigh.  "She didn't say anything, it was just something I noticed."

Pen
"Oh." Her hand twists her hair then leaves it half-draped over her shoulder and, now that concern over Ari's health has been dealt with, she is back to a rather cool ( - not removed; she feels it too deeply) anger. "Then I don't see what that has to do with anything at all. If she gets a job, I'll have to set up some fake wards to fuck with Rob's head." She pauses. "Not ... in a bad hostess way, or a way that would look badly for you."

Nick
"No Green Doors," Nick says, and there is humor that rumbles just below, something that stops short of mirth.  His eyes are seeking hers out, now that there is that sword-brightness in her voice once more.  "Maybe she won't even get the job."

Pen
Pen's gaze meets Nick's and then it shifts in a way it isn't too difficult to read as guilty, the aftermath of a scheme, and since she braces herself with her palm the next moment, fastening her gaze on his hand on her thigh instead, well.

Distraction.

"We are fighting. Until she apologizes." Note: Pen sounds both dolorous and burnished up with anger; defensive. She does not look like she will smile again, and the unbidden sigh, rise and fall, of her shoulders is like an underline of this idea.

"Maybe Silas will help her get the job."

Nick
"Maybe," Nick agrees, though he does not sound especially committed to the idea.  He has met Silas only twice, still, and brief times both of these: barely long enough to say hello or introduce one to the other.

He leans toward her now on his arm, his head bowing close to hers though it never quite touches; strands of her hair shine against his like a coal breathed to life.  "Can I make you an apology dinner?  Or go get something for you?"

Pen
Pen searches Nick's face. Some people can be self conscious under such regard, or giving such regard; it is absorbed and absorbing, and it is not explained. The anger in her voice is almost gone from her face: left behind, perhaps, an edge to the grey of her eyes, a melancholy lilt to her mouth even when it has softened, a weariness. Pen: she reaches for Nick's shoulder, the place where shoulder meets neck, and smooths her thumb upward until it meets his jaw.

"I want steamed mussels," Pen says, "or shrimp tacos."

In truth she isn't hungry, but she's willing to allow dinner to stamp peace on their argument.

"You should practice making apology dinners. I'll be demanding something from you for every night Rob is here, if he does come."