Since the summer began, it has been like Nick to come home later on several nights that he works throughout the week. He texts her, sometimes, when he does this: pictures of the river, or pictures of things he has spied on hiking trails. This is frequently when he goes to do his own Work. For Nicholas, magick is something like keeping a second job.
Tonight was a series of little pictures of a crow he saw at the river's edge, and a rabbit, and fields hazy and golden in high summer. He'd told her he would be meeting with Ned tonight.
So the dark is rising when Nick comes home at last: Pen can hear the telltale beep of the car horn. It is like any number of nights they have passed together in this house already since they moved in last winter.
Pen
It is easy to forget to be humanblooded when you lock yourself in a tower all day and give yourself over to sorcery because you know your lover isn't going to be home until late anyway and your best friend is at convocation and you're not more interested in anybody else than you are in spending a day honing your knowledge shaping your mind into a powerful thing. It's easy to forget to eat when you are concentrating and it's easy to lose track of the time when you are wrapping yourself in the study of timeless things and it's easy to thin away to nothing. It's easy to forget until somebody sends you a series of pictures of a crow at a river's edge ("A very flirtatious specimen, Crow! You do that with your eyes!"), and a rabbit ("[carrot emoji]"), and fields hazy and golden in high summer ([line of poetry]), and then if you have named yourself Penelope you press your palms into your eyes until the darkness swims, and then you leave your circle and clean up the tools of your Art, put your wand which is sweat-slick away in its box, go wash-up, then you go out exploring -- for a little while. You hesitate over your wand, but leave it, in the end. Daring.
(You know a Word which will bring it to you, no matter where you are.
You are working on learning another Word, which allow it to be found where ever you need it, whenever you need it, but you don't quite have the understanding yet. It is difficult, being a woman of sorcery, a page of mystery.)
And timing sees fit to return you to your home with a paper bag full of unnecessary groceries just as your lover, the one with the crow black hair, the only one, returns to your home, and you brighten right up and hurry to meet him at the front door, or better yet before he gets out of the car, sliding across the car's nose like you're careless and fancy free and then, hello, hello, hello.
Nick
It's easy enough for him to catch Pen as she goes sliding across the hood of the car, catch her in the hook of an arm and draw her against him. There is a paper bag in his left hand, pastries and fruit for the morning because he suspects that sometimes Pen forgets to eat when he is gone during the day.
Nicholas places a kiss on the ridge of her cheekbone, which does not take long to turn into a more proper kiss; she is held in against his stomach at the moment and he has not gone to release her just yet. "Hello," he says. Then, effusive and against her shoulder, "I missed you today."
He does let go of her now, glances down at the bag she has in hand full of groceries. There are crickets chirping in far away fields, outside their little row of houses. Across the street the Irvings have exchanged their FEEL THE BERN sign for a more modest Hillary '16; next to them there has been a corresponding response, because for every action a reaction. Last week the Kidds' mailbox was knocked off its hinges. Probably just the kids running around town.
Nobody bothers the House of Mars and Hyde. Maybe it's just luck. "Are you just getting back?"
Pen
As his paper bag crumples, as hers crackles, as he draws her against him, the air hitches in her throat; it wants to stick around for this next bit. Pen would kiss Nick until the dark finished rising, there on the threshold of their home. Her bag comes perilously close to being set on the hood of the car, where it would have slid down to the ground, cracking the contents and sending them spilling over their driveway, christening the threshold, absolving it and swearing it in. Nick against her shoulder, and Pen kisses Nick's temple.
"Hello. Why did you miss me today?" The uninitiated might consider Pen's voice to be calm; they would miss the undercurrents delight and play, the deep wonder beneath. When Nick releases her, she adjusts the bag in her arm and opens the top for him to see the goods:
A very cold glacial green glass bottle of vodka, a jar of pickled herring and a can of black caviar and a bag of dried apricots.
Nick
"I see a theme here today," is the faintly amused comment he makes once he has seen the contents of the bag. His eyes are lingering on the apricots, though he shifts his own bag in his arm and places a hand on the small of her back to guide her along with him toward the front door.
"It was a long day," he says. "And I kept seeing beautifully poetic things and thinking you would have the right words for them."
The front door cracks open for the two of them, and they pass the threshold into a dark room. "Ned had a lot of questions for me, and I also couldn't help but think of all the things you would have said eloquently. I missed the sight of you," he adds, and that is one of his moments of rare frankness, delivered with a thoughtfulness as he stares ahead and sets his bag down so that he can remove his shoes.
Pen
"It is my mood," she says, to his remark about themes.
And, inside.
"I missed your eyes," Pen says, honestly, and pleased at the neatness of this: he missed the sight, she missed the seeing. She does not set her bag down. She follows Nick down and stops him after he's taken off only one shoe; follows him down, which is to say, crouches if he's sat himself on the stairs or is quicker than the hunch one does when one abuses shoes by kicking them off at the heels, and she carefully cups Nick's jaw in one hand. She goes lightly on the balls of her feet, rocking forward, that she might - with deliberate regard - kiss Nick's eyes shut one after the other. She could be following a measure. She leaves him to his shoes after, snagging Nick's bag as well as keeping her own and heads into the kitchen.
"What sort of things would I have said eloquently?" Pen asks from the other room. "What sort of questions did he have for you? What sort of answers did you have for him?"
Nick
Nick's eyes, for all that she missed them, are slightly widened in surprise when she so quickly catches him, though this fades into warmth soon enough. His eyes are still shut when she wanders away from him; after a moment she can hear the soft click of one shoe, then the other, as they fall back to the ground. The faint jangling of keys marks him as he follows her back into the kitchen.
"I think he's beginning to define his purpose. He had some questions about other things he'd heard about - about things like the Fallen, and about Marauders. He...seemed to believe that the things he'd heard about the Fallen were caricature. So I told him. But not...I wanted to be able to say it like you would."
He comes up behind her in the kitchen, his hands tucked away in his pockets. "He has a lot of questions about things like that, and I talked to him about balance. About...how if souls that Fall are still tainted when they pass again through the Wheel, eventually that will be all there is. So I talked about the importance of fostering hope, too, in bringing balance."
Pen
He comes up behind; sees, perhaps, the quick shiver, a grave walked over, a memory slain, because the Fallen. She has bad dreams sometimes, Pen. Nightmares. Not every night, not every time she closes her eyes, but sometimes. She is a soldier, after all.
"No. Sometimes eloquence -- my kind of eloquence. Sometimes they don't believe it, because it is too -- I think you probably said it well. Better than I, even. What purpose do you think he sees for himself, then? A hunter of bad things?"
She is clear-eyed, and does not look away.
Pen is unpacking Nick's bag of fruit and pastries first, setting everything out on the counter, because she likes to look at plenty; she has bought fruit before just to watch it rot, and know she won't need to eat it, know that it is a luxury that it has time to rot. She is tender when she puts the can of caviar down on the counter and reaches for the can opener, abandoning the chore of putting everything away for the idea of the onyx-dark moon-gleam salty bite-your-tongue delicacy.
Nick
The quick shiver does not go unnoticed, and it echoes within the great chamber which contains his heart, his breath. Nick steps up behind her now, a few inches back so that he will not be in her way as she unpacks the bags, and with his hand on her hip he kisses the back of her neck. It provides him a good vantage point for looking over her shoulder, besides.
"I think he's starting to see himself as a protector, kind of," Nick says. "A shield. I think he can grow into that. And I think it...I think it will serve him better, to think of himself that way. It'll help keep him from getting tunnel visioned."
He watches her reach for the can opener, and lifts his head away from her shoulder. "Do you want me to find crackers?"
Pen
"No." Pen leans back to close the inches he left between them. She is conscious of his fingers on her hip the way one becomes conscious of the sun when the golden pleasure of it is beginning to turn to heat. She does not turn to look at him; doesn't quite close her eyes, though she nearly does.
No, she says, and let a moment pass. Please.
And then she goes onto the balls of her feet again to reach, without crinkling, into the paper bag and pull out some very unnecessary thing she bought, which is in a muslin pouch. She opens the pouch's mouth and what do you think it is she bought?
Two spoons made from mother of pearl, for eating caviar.
"Unless you want crackers," she amends, soft. "But then creme fraiche too. Nicholas, you think it will serve him better than what?"
Nick
Let a moment pass. And so he does, with his mouth nestled against the back of her shoulder, and his eyes are shut as though he'd never opened them after she kissed them closed moments ago.
When Pen shifts away from him Nick moves around to her side, leaning against the counter though he leaves his fingers tethered to her hip. There is a crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes as he notices the little spoons that she bought.
Unnecessary: but people who grew up with only the most necessary things (or sometimes without even those) sometimes glorify in the unnecessary. Nick knows that: he grew up with his own kind of scarcity.
"I don't need crackers," he says, and he leans a palm on the counter. There is a soft swell of silence, a brief thing before he adds, "Better than...only thinking of himself as a hunter. I just hope for more for other people than that."
Pen
Up under her dark lashes, a flick of a glance. They're burnished only in rare light: when her profile is just so against some luminous thing, the window light or the hall light left on and spinning shadows. He doesn't need. Does he want?
Pen sets the muslin bag on the counter and brings the can-opener to bear on the can of caviar. The smell: pungent, salty, immediate -- but delicate, too, a splash of salt on the wrist: it touches the tongue. Then she cants her hip into Nick's hand, or Nick himself. Takes the bag of dried apricots out next and lets them spill out of the wax-paper: dried pieces of autumn-color, dull jewels promising sweetness. Then the bottle of vodka. As she withdraws the bottle (as a sword from a stone), the empty paper bag falls a slow measure to the side. The vodka clinks on the counter, and Pen says as she goes through these motions, "Salty, Nicholas, or sweet?"
And depending on his answer, she'll neatly draw out a piece of fruit or just as neatly dip one of the new spoons into the hematite-dark caviar for-to-feed him.
And watch his mouth, and ask, "Why better to be a shield than a hunter?"
Nick
Nick's nostrils flare only slightly as the can opens: it smells like the ocean, like wind blowing in off of the sea. He leans on an elbow on the counter, his eyes tracking the apricots as they spill out in front of the two of them. "Salty, please," he says, because evidently that is his mood too.
He is crushing the caviar against his tongue for a moment before he answers her, evidenced by the flexing of the muscles against his throat and a quick breath in through his nose: brine. Then he swallows and he says, "I think being a shield allows a person to be more mindful of the reason we do what we do. It's more focused on what you give to the world and less on what you take from it. I think it...well, I just think it's a healthier frame of mind, and less likely to lend itself to Jhor."
When his eyes meet hers they are dark, thoughtful. "What do you think?"
Pen
Here is a lesson. Nick might swear on his love of secrets that Pen is going to kiss his mouth, the way she is studying him. The faint tension in her body, the kind that is precursor of a movement rather than the warning sign of reaction. She herself takes up a piece of dried apricot and bites it neatly in two, sucking on the dusky interior. Distilled late afternoon, a coagulated dawn. She leaves the counter and Nick after in order to pull out two shot glasses, one of cobalt blue glass, the other of hammer-beaten copper, an apprentice's work (Pen's work) - and unless Nick has relocated, she comes back to the counter to set these down and pour them each a shot of cold cold vodka vodka clearer than rime as clear as the air. She forgot to leave him his spoon, but kept it with her, tucked in against her thumb and forefinger. The other spoon, though. Unused, untested.
"You know I cleave more to the concept of 'shield' than other, but for the sake of trying to be true, I might say that it is not better to be a shield than it is to be a hunter. I guess the idea of hunting the bad things instead of defending against the bad things connotes the provision of a necessary service without also the idea of protection, of personally treasuring something that is. The hunter can provide, right? The hunter is a provider, the hunter can bring back - it isn't all taking - but the hunter can be alone. Lonely. The shield is useless alone. What does it do, without anything to shield? Or anyone?"
"Most of the hunters I've known have hunted in order to protect. They've just also chosen to protect by isolating themselves. Is it less healthy to stand so that when you fall you bring no other tower with you?"
Nick
In Pen's body he reads a faint tension, a potential for movement, bound energy, and because these things balance out (equal and opposite reaction, see: the concept is the same no matter which paradigm we choose) there is a corresponding tension in him, a wanting. Pen leaves the counter, though, and Nick watches her as she takes down the shot glasses. He reaches for the spoon left behind, though he holds it between thumb and forefinger and without dipping it into the caviar.
Vodka splashes into each shot glass while she answers him. He is still watching her, though he is watching her hands now, the bones beneath as she twists the cap off the bottle, as she pours.
"I suppose my thought is that you might be less likely to fall, if you don't isolate yourself," he says, though this too is thoughtful, is not wholly decisive. "And I think helping people not isolate is something the Chakravanti do very poorly."
Pen
Pen does not move to take up one of the shot glasses. She runs her finger up the length of the bottle, catching condensation, drawing a smooth line in the frost. Her boots are still on. Another moment of tension, this as Pen braces herself on the counter, in preparation of pushing herself up to sit on its edge. Here is the beginning lift, and then instead (economy) she cants so her weight rests on one hip and she can unzip the boot then pull it off. One, and then two, and on one of the boots her finger leaves a wet mark like a kiss. As she does this, her eyebrows perk like that's a response, a statement, on the Chakravanti and what they do well, and then she adds: "What more do you hope? What is the ideal?"
Nick
"I...I don't know," Nick says. His head is bowed as he watches her, still leaned on one elbow against the counter, gently swaying his hip into it too after a time. The spoon is still held between his thumb and forefinger.
He looks down at the spoon now, then scoops another mound of caviar into it, and they glitter there like beads of night. He transfers the spoon to his mouth, holding his other hand beneath it to catch any errant eggs before they can fall to the counter. He rolls it around in his mouth, his eyes flicking off to the side, toward the window and out into their backyard.
"I'd like to see something more supportive. Something like what Miles started, I suppose, but...maybe with more focus on what people need, and more focus on...teaching in general. I think," and hesitation, here, as he bows his head and his gaze directs itself back to the floor for a moment, "that other than the chantry Miles started, the most interaction I've had with other Chakravanti has been when we were in a war zone, or when we needed to hunt down someone else who was in danger of falling. I feel like...there has to be something else. I think that's something the Order does well."
Pen
"The Order does everything well," Pen says, solemnly and with a straight face, but look there, Nicholas, there is an elusive gleam (illusive, too?) in her eyes, a rill of brightness, a challenge softened by this impulse: she dips her finger into the caviar, instead, scooping the delicacy out; look how it catches on her fingerprint; look how she offers her finger to Nick (she cupped her other hand beneath it, so nothing would drip except on her palm; see the dark constellation there?) and says, still solemnly, "I want you to tell me if it tastes different now." Her eyes leave Nick to touch the caviar; when she is a sensualist, she devotes herself to it; there's an experimental air about her, see.
Nick
"Everything?" Nick asks, and a corner of his mouth snicks upward, and there's a lift there to both of his brows. He watches as she dips her finger into the caviar, glances down at the proffered fingertip, and when he leans his head downward his lips seal over it like a kiss. When he lifts his head again his own fingertips reach up to his lips, to catch any that might be in danger of rolling from his mouth; nothing does. "It's saltier," he says, with a trace of surprise and amusement that he is surprised.
Pen
"Is it really? More like the sea or like a table full of moon-silt or something else?" Pen's turn at last, isn't it, to dip her spoon into the caviar and hold it up to the level of her eyes and watch how the darkness of it plays with the light and then put it on her tongue and feel the texture of the mother of pearl beneath the salty pucker of fish eggs and she swallows hard and licks her lips, half-closing her eyes - give up a moment to this.
Nick
"More like the sea," he says, and his eyes are on her as she sets a moment aside, as her eyes half-close. He rubs his thumb against the handle of the spoon and then sets that on the counter and reaches for one of the apricots. Half of it lingers in his fingertips once he has bitten it through.
"I'll have to think on all of it more."
Pen
"Mm." Pen smiles at Nick. The smile is in her eyes; a radiant bow. She smiles as if she wants something from him; and as if she is happy with him.
Now she slouches, planting on elbow on the counter's edge, and her hand hovers over the shots. Which glass will she choose. Which glass will she choose. The one as blue as a gown painted by Millais, and she readies herself to take a pure shot.
"And yes, the Order does do everything well. Do you disagree with me? And what you said, your answer... I meant more what do you hope, what is the ideal, for the individual. Not for the wonderful future."
Nick
It is Nicholas's turn to be studying the curve of her mouth, to have a faint tension in his muscles, a promise, as though he'd lean forward and kiss her at any moment. It remains a promise only; Pen is taking up one of the shotglasses and so Nick reaches for the other one of beaten copper.
He lifts it to his lower lip, breathes in first: it smells the way winter ought to smell.
"I do disagree," he says. "I've yet to meet an Order mage who was content to stay still and do nothing." There is another smile here, a crinkling of his eyes as he teases her, before the expression fades into thoughtfulness. "I suppose for him...if he were initiated, I would like to see him as something...more whole, I suppose. More aware of the preciousness of the things he wants to protect, and so more connected to them."
Pen
So, her turn, then, to brace herself; to anticipate, and be left wanting; Pen sublimates the wanting into: she throws back the shot. She gasps, sharp, when the vodka strikes her chest; and she steadies herself against the counter, dipping toward Nick. Then it's an up-through-the-eyelashes look: a clear-eyed (vigil) observance.
Nick
Nick throws back his own shot only a second behind her, and there is no gasp from him: he only raises his hand and rubs it across the center of his chest, as though he could soothe away the fire that sprung up there. He is watching her now again as he sets the glass back down on the counter, and it catches the light filtering in through the window and glints there like a red star. "What is it?"
Pen
"What if he works best disconnected? What if he loses himself, when he focuses on the preciousness?" Pen licks the inside of her lip, a testing thing; it is very strong vodka. Then she takes up her finger again, and dips into the caviar: delicate, deliberate.
Nick
Nick finally pops the other half of the apricot into his mouth; there is a bunching of the muscles at the hinge of his jaw as he chews it slowly, his eyes unfocused. "I suppose that's a possibility, from what he's told me about himself. Ultimately he's really the only one who can know what ideal he's striving toward. But I only...I'm not sure it's possible to wholly protect and remain disconnected from what you're protecting. You are a part of creation, and so you, your self, would have to be a part of that."
Pen
Pen licks the night-dark jet-seed caviar from her finger, and does pay mind to the taste and how it might change, away from a spoon which is supposed to impart no flavor, no stain of its presence, and she sighs as she does, and she makes an encouraging lilt of sound but is: staying still, doing nothing.
Being aware; waiting, aware.
Nick
Nick leans back against the counter, lets his hip bump against the side, and he is watching her face as she licks the caviar from her finger. "I don't know. I just feel that...everything is connected to everything else, and our actions ripple outward. I think as mages we have to be mindful of that. I suppose that...that mindfulness is more what I'm hoping to see."
A beat. "Though now I think I've just confused myself into not acting because I don't want to impose my views on someone else."
Another crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes just before her hip lures his hand back to it. "Are you trying to prove me wrong?"
Pen
He thinks he's just confused himself - Pen laughs. The laughter is transformative, and quicksilver, and her eyes are mercury; she walks her fingers around the shot glasses, toward the bag of dried apricots. Pulls one out, and as Nick's hand finds her hip, tears it apart: inches closer; drifts so. The laughter retreated as she listened; is more evident, revelatory, in the widening of her smile at: are you trying to prove me wrong. But Pen doesn't stay silent. Pen leans in and says, "What is it to impose?"
Nick
Her laughter is a siren song: Pen drifts closer to him, and Nick takes a half step to close the remaining distance until she is flush up against him, until he can lean his chin against her shoulder. That is, until she lifts her hand to eat the apricot she is tearing apart, and then he tilts his jaw back and away from her, so as not to impede her movement. There is a gleam here in his eyes. "I think you might be sharking me, Pen."
His fingertips are sketching slow circles against her hip, and his head is tilted down now; occasionally he glances up at her through his eyelashes. "To impose would be to...put my vision or my beliefs ahead of what another person wants. To invalidate or disregard what they want so that I can have what I want instead."
Pen
He closes the distance and she holds her breath; it is sweet to do so. It is sweet to focus on the weight of Nick's chin against her shoulder. It is sweet to note the curl which brushes against her cheekbone and almost tangles up in her eyelashes. It is sweet to exhale, all at once, and circle your arm (if you are Penelope) around your lover's shoulders, and turn your own head away and devour the apricot that way and be aware, see, how your fingertips are both sweet-sticky and salty now, ghosts of different flavors, how there is a bottle full of winter-light still waiting, how he - he is not winter-light; that is never the season you associate with him; and don't you taste salt when you think about kissing his ear? You don't kiss his ear. You you you: Pen. Pen's expression changes; this time, bemusement mingled with laughter, "Sharking? Why do you think I might be doing that?"
"Why would you put someone else's vision ahead of what you want?"
Nick
"They're very clever questions, that's all." Nick's eyes have fallen shut; it would be difficult to see from the angle she is at but his meditativeness, when he is meditative, is almost palpable. His fingers walk toward the bag of apricots, though they stop short; they remain there and consider for a while longer. Nick still smells faintly of soap from this morning, of the warm scent of the oil he uses on his hair in more humid months.
"Because I would rather..." He stops, and there's a flicker of his eyes beneath their lids as he tries to process her question, as he plays it back in his mind. "Because I don't have a right to...to tell them what their vision for themselves ought to be, I suppose. I would rather not get what I want than force something on someone else."
Pen
"Did Delilah have the right?" Pen asks him, her voice pitched low; its most intimate. A tone of voice for endearments. "Did Lysander? Do I? Is it right to be nothing, in stead? Less," she says, and softly breathes across his neck, "than air.
Nick
The food they have been eating is food for cold weather, the sort that has its origins in ice and deep fjords and dark conifer woods, and so it is right that he should shiver. The tremor is momentary and then gone, and: he is still giving her words their weight. His hand leaves the counter now, following his arm as it wraps around her and settles around her waist.
"I think you're right," he says, and then a thoughtful little noise follows. "I suppose I...there is some imposition inherent in taking any kind of action." He considers the arch of her hip bone with his thumb. "If you were to teach someone to be a Hermetic, how do you think you would teach in order to respect both their desires and the Tradition?"
Pen
He shivers, before his arm slips around her waist, and Pen is delighted, and bites her lower lip, and her breathing goes shallow, and she listens with her head bent. His expression is hard to see, the way they are positioned; but the same holds true for hers. This is an exercise in restraint. Her hips kiss his.
He thinks she's right. She grins. "We always are," over his thoughtful little noise, and that: a whisper, and a gleam. How would she - ?
Pen glances down at his hand at her hip; watches it for a while instead of anything else. "Well. I would simply give them loads of work and then they would choose to stick with it or to fail out," Pen says. "Desire is mutable, in a way, isn't it? I mean, Nicholas... a Tradition is just a tool."
"Will you pour us another shot?"
Nick
Will he pour them another shot?
Nick is reluctant to lift his hand away from her, but he does it, and he leans over (into) her in order to reach past her for the bottle of vodka. He pours it into the shot glasses with his arm over her shoulder. Miraculously, cold vodka does not go spilling over the counter like a shattered glacier, none of it overflows from the shot glass of copper or the one of deep ocean.
The bottle he sets back down with a rattle. "Is it just a tool?" he asks, and his voice is musing, is thoughtful. "I think I..."
A beat, as he takes his shot glass between thumb and forefinger and gazes into it. "Some different sects of the Chakravanti and the Akashayana talk about life being suffering. I think...I'm more deeply troubled by the idea that to live is to cause suffering, that it's unavoidable. I think a Tradition is as much a tool as it is a philosophy that guides you on what to do with your magick."
Pen
Pen attends the unsteadiness in his arm as he pours (or the steadiness). She leans against the counter's edge (sometimes she wants his back against the wall. Sometimes her own). She does not unhook her arm from his neck. The timber of his voice is close to her ear and she has to imagine what it is he is doing, construct a story based on what she feels. She reaches for her shot glass and she is not using the Art of Correspondence, but she is a Mage who has surpassed the rank of Initiate Exemptus in this Art, and sometimes it shows in the way she interacts with the world; a sense of assurance, of regard, when it comes to where objects are.
"And philosophy is a tool," Pen says, "We use it to be ourselves while we are alive. Do you believe life is suffering?"
Nick
There is a little quirk of his mouth when he answers; she cannot see it, but perhaps she can hear it when he replies. There's a certain way words are shaped, isn't there, depending on how the lips pull, depending on how the muscles in the throat work. "Only half of it. I think we're constantly balanced on the edge of suffering and joy."
His voice, or the lower edge, the vibration of it, was close to her ear; for a moment it is much louder as he leans his head down to kiss the outer shell of her ear, the upper curve. When he separates it is only so he can lean his upper half back far enough to lift the shot glass without risk of spilling. "What's it a tool for?"
Pen
Pen smiles because of Nick. The little quirk of his mouth the rumble of his voice the touch of his lips when and as he says what he says very Nickishly the Nick she likes best and would not imagine being without because a spirit might have its necessities as a body does and a body wants air and a body wants food or it will wilt and a spirit wants Nick saying things like we're constantly balanced on the edge of suffering and joy before kissing the spirit's body's ear. He leans his upper half back far enough and so they can look one another in the eye again for at least a short while. Pen also brings her shot glass up. Brings it to her mouth, and says, "Figuring ourselves out," and then throws back that shot, too. "Figuring out what our Selves are, and could be, and should be, and ah," Pen reaches up to feel her tongue. Still there? Okay. Doubtful for a second, but: still there.
Nick
Much like before, Nick throws his shot back a second after she does hers; it hits the back of his throat like a ball of ice and slides down clear and tasting only of cold, the way good vodka should. He clears his throat as he sets the shot glass back down on the counter. "Do you feel closer to that than you did?"
Pen
"Than I did when? Right now?"
Nick
He laughs. "No. Than your last Seeking. Than the one before that." The corner of his mouth hooks and then he leans forward again, his chin over her shoulder. "Or than you did five minutes ago, if you'd rather that."
Pen
"I don't know. Perhaps. Should I say 'I don't know, right now'?" He has hooked his chin on her shoulder; she sets her shot glass down on the counter. This time he can feel the singing of her muscles; the possibility that she'll do this one thing, which she doesn't do. Her arm around his neck does loosen; her hand does slip down his back; it runs along his shoulder blade. The rest of her weight is on the counter.
"I believe I know myself better than I did three years ago, four. Five, six, seven eight nineteneleventwelve." Pen: she laughs; it's soft; a clot of smoke, falling apart; all husk. Then: "But it's like... I don't think my belief is going to impose on somebody else. I just think... eventually, some choices are lost and you don't get them back. But it's better to lose them than to never have a chance to make them."
Nick
He can feel the singing in her muscles; it finds some chord within him, and he too becomes possibility, contained. He instead slides both of his arms around her, braces them against the countertop as he leans forward. "It's always acceptable to say you don't know, right now."
He listens. Her laugh, melting away immaterial thing it is, draws his lips back to her ear a second time. "Are there choices that you regret losing? Or not having the chance to make?"
Pen
"Nicholas Hyde," she says, soft. Name a thing, and shape it out of air and darkness. "There probably are. I can't think of one now. You answer your own questions. Answer so I can hear you."
Nick
"Mm?" Her ear is against his throat again as he tilts his head to listen to what she says. It's with the sort of laziness that wants to look down at her, but doesn't want to move away; he is suspended. "Answer my..." And he laughs too, now, something that is half a rasp.
"I regret...the times when I've made you make the hard decisions, take the risks. Sometimes I regret not appreciating the time I had with Anna and Vivienne growing up more than I did. Not putting more time into the two of them, and letting them both decide how things were going to be."
A beat. "But I'm happy with how things have turned out. So it's hard to regret, wholly."
Pen
"You haven't made me do anything," Pen says, automatically, and Nick is leaning into her (at this stage, onto), and she glances downward; it is a thoughtless gesture, signifying nothing. Pen traces the line of Nick's waist. "And if you have, I wanted it. I wanted to do it. Do you think that's wrong, Nicholai?"
Nick
"Of course not," he says. "I only...I mean I sometimes do regret the times when I haven't acted." A beat. "I suppose all I can do is present the understanding that I have to present, and give the work that I'm able to give, and anything that he does will have to go from there."
Pen
"You are going to begin laying the groundwork, then? Chakravanti 101. See if he's up for more classes, later on, or if he'll switch his Major?"
Nick
"I suppose so," Nick says. "I want him to...just think about the implications, I suppose. He says he's prepared for the kind of life it is, but I'm not sure anyone ever is."
He adjusts his weight, shifts slightly to allow her to move her back away from the counter should she wish. "I suppose I've only been thinking about whether he's more like another Jonas, or if I can help him differently. Whether that's the kind of role I should let him slide into, or not. I suppose time will tell."
Pen
There is no accounting for taste. Pen says, "He is not like another Jonas," and one might read judgment in it; one might not.
"He's himself," she says, earnestly. "You want him to be something that isn't a monster. Maybe he is already a monster. You want him to be something better. Maybe he is already better. I don't ... It's good to be aware, but it's no good at all to be still. Which I can be. Better than you."
Pen: a quick grin. Both of her hands find Nick's head. She does not take the opportunity to move back away from the counter, but leans back. Rattle. The vodka bottle. Presses her forehead to Nick's. Wants him lain against her as a bookmark is to book: that neat, that close.
She breathes in slowly, thinking about whether or not she wants to pursue a discussion of what she thinks of Jonas versus Nick versus anybody else, whether she can even elucidate what she is thinking.
"It's not a slide if there are other places to go."
Nick
"I didn't mean to imply that I think Jonas is a monster," Nick says, and this is quiet, and he is indeed still: though there's an edge here, something unsettled, the way a glade of birds will go silent at the crack of an errant foot on a stick. "You're right. I'll have to...talk with him, see what's going on with him more."
Pen leans back, and pulls him with her, and they are that neat. That close. "Think less."
Pen
He didn't mean to imply that
"I didn't either," Pen says, and her tone of voice is unworried; low, perhaps; the moon might set in her voice. There is no edge; she tucks her observations away, or forgets them. The vodka and bites of caviar and apricot are almost all she has eaten today; she lives in coffee and water and the indulgence of the gods.
You're right
"Hermetic," it's shorthand for 'you're right,' Nick! she murmurs, and it is a tease.
Talk with him. See what's going on with him more.
Think less.
"If you want to start him learning how to do things properly, according to you guys, then you should do that without worrying that you will be imposing. Without worrying, Nicholas."
Nick
Nick's only reply is to nod, and this is only a slight movement of his head, an incline of his chin, but with as close as they are she can feel it. She can feel the brush of his curls against her cheek, the way the muscles in his neck coil and uncoil and are still. And then he lets out a long, slow breath of air, and it stirs up a hollow between them as his chest deflates.
He reaches behind her, fumbles around for a moment where he cannot see, and finds an apricot. "I'm starting to feel that vodka."
Pen
Pen laughs, again.
"I felt it as I carried it home; I knew it would be winter light scratching at my rib cages; it would be a burning in the pit of my stomach. I could throw up. I won't. See?" Pen: handily steals the apricot away from Nick, and will feed it back to him if he still wants it. She waits for him to be done chewing, waits for him to swallow.
"What do you want to do?"
Nick
Nick accepts the apricot back from her after she has stolen it (though a plan, backfired: perhaps he meant for her to keep it, to eat it herself) and it takes him a moment to chew, for the taste to finish blooming over his tongue. "Eat, to offset the vodka. Later - "
And he pulls back long enough to look at her, long enough for his gaze to sweep over her burnished eyelashes, the lake-light of her eyes. "I've been practicing a ritual. Since you've beaten me at being still, would you like to help me practice it?"
Pen
Later, he says, and Pen says at the same time: "Do you - "
Then she holds her tongue; doesn't budge from silence until he's done. Her eyes are brim-full of play if there is any contest. She was only going to ask him if he wanted her to make him a sandwich. If he wanted her to feed him some bread. Aren't her fingers still in his hair? They tighten and look interest:
"What kind of ritual is it?"
Nick
Do you -
It almost stops him from speaking; his eyelashes flicker as though they too are part of the struggle to hold onto his train of thought. "It's a cleansing ritual, though I don't have sufficient understanding of Prime yet to make it really effective. The first half is silence. Or just presence - being fully present in the moment. I've been struggling with it, a little."
Another quirk of his mouth, and his eyes too glint now, playful. "I thought maybe you could show me how it's done."
Pen
"I'll teach you!" Sufficient understanding of. Pen is ardent. She tucks her face in against Nick's neck for a passing moment. Perhaps he has to repeat himself. Perhaps he waits until Pen untucks her head. Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he stays at her temple or her ear and enjoys this very particular bodily shudder, followed as it is by: one hand groping the counter until she finds the shot glasses and she can move those. Until she finds the slippery neck of the vodka bottle and can move that too. There have been any number of promises made by muscles and expressions which have passed unfulfilled.
This isn't one. Her body promises that she will sit herself on the counter and it completes that promise and her arms around Nick's neck promise sweetness just as the apricot did (does [or its ghost does. She wonders how haunted he is, Nicholas.]) and so do her eyes.
"Maybe I can. Maybe you should show me what you have in mind. How you have practiced it." Beat. Earnest: "I'm not hungry; I only want you."
And so.
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