Water and Oil

Pen
[Stam.]

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

Pen
[Int + Research.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Pen
[Stam]

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

Pen
[Wits + Expression]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[Stam]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3) ( botch x 2 )

Pen
The state of the House of Mars and Hyde is a state of emergency. Quiet emergency. Quiet, fluid, unceasing: emergency. Emergence. Water is emerging, has emerged, from the bathroom and there is a great deal of it in the hall, where it should not be, beginning to pool and puddle. A lake. A lake must start somewhere. A river, too. The bathroom door is ajar. The door to Nick's study is closed. The door to Pen's study is open. The door to their bedroom is closed. Water is running, still. Suds and bubbles have long since flattened, a suggestive pale-water iridescence slick still over the bathroom tiles. The soaked bath mat, sudden.

Pen is dead asleep on the floor of her study, in a heap of papers and books and notes and pens. A bottle of ink has spilled over; would that be so bad? Perhaps not so bad if she weren't also lying in it. Her last conscious thought was something along the lines of I don't need coffee I'm not tired Nick'll be home in a couple hours I don't need a nap but oh one more chapter before I take a bath that'll brace me.

Nick
For Nick, at first, it is like any other night: he pulls into the driveway, then into the garage.  There is the click of the car door and the car chirps when he clicks the auto lock on the fob.  There is the whisper of cloth to herald him as he walks into the door.

Nick knows as soon as he walks inside that something is not right, but it takes him a moment of glancing around, listening in order to understand what it means when his heart quickens.  He realizes: that sound of water falling is not the toilet that always runs, it is not Pen washing vegetables or her hands, and the sound is somehow much too flat (too continual) to be Pen running a bath.

So he starts upstairs.  And: disaster.

Nick makes a wordless shout of horror and staggers through the growing puddle into the bathroom, where he sees the tub, overflowing, the sodden bath mat, the shimmer of water all along the floorboards and tiles.  Water cascades about his feet and over his dress shoes as he makes his way over to the tub to turn off the tap, and squeezing his eyes shut he rakes a wet hand back through his curls.  There are curses forming on his lips that he hasn't spoken since high school, some Spanish ones for which he no longer remembers the meaning save that his grandmother would have slapped him for saying them.

"Pen?"  The fevered pitch of his voice carries.  "Are you all right?"

Pen
[... Alert enough to wake up. Wits + Alert. +1diff.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Pen
Something causes her to open her eyes, to jolt back to consciousness. The jolt comes first; lightning must be compelled to follow certain paths before the monster wakes; we know what the lightning was, Nick's voice, and we know what the jolt was too, the fear which is a match head scratching in the sound of her name; we know that. We readers. We omniscient types.

Pen does not know. She jolts back to consciousness and opens her eyes and dry swallows, shakily pushing herself up. She wipes her mouth with the palm of her hand, smacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and she croaks, "What? Nick? I'm here," in a voice that Hypnos is still, quite jealously, mostly holding hostage; and then she curses because fuck that work her handwritten notes the INK (which is also down her clavicle her shoulder soaking into her robe ruining it as surely as it ruined the notes but not the NOTES fuckfuckfuck it's so hard to separate spilled ink from words written in the same ink FUCK).

Nick
Pen cannot generally hear Nick's footsteps, but she can hear him sloshing through water, can hear it drawing closer to her: perhaps it makes her think she is still dreaming.  Her husband appears in the doorway with his sleeves and arms and the front of his shirt and pants and - well, most of him - darkened with water.  "Are you - fuck," he says when he sees the ink.

He grabs another fistful of curls with his wet hand, gazing over the scene in dismay.  "What happened?  Did you fall asleep with the water running?"

Pen
Pen is awake now. Her head hurts and she doesn't feel well, but she is awake and not slow to put together a conclusion. Sound of water in the hall and Nick's front soaked, shadowed by water, when he appears framed in her doorway the wild undercurrent in him more evident.

Her brow creases with consternation, stricken apology. Her lashes flutter, without quite closing. "Yes." Her voice is still diminished, far away in another world, dwelling with the fairies. "Shit. I'm sorry; is it bad? I'll clean it up. Don't worry. What time is it?"

She swallows again and rubs her eyes before (still shakily; she is awake, but it cost) rising to her feet and going to see what the damage is in the hall, catch herself on the very threshold Nick is in. Was in. And lean, to see.

Nick
[Deeeeeep breaths, Nicholas.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Nick
His fingers tighten in his curls as he looks at her, rubbing at her eyes, her mouth and throat dry, her voice far and away.  His eyes are coals.  And she can hear the deep breath, can read the restraint in his muscles, and when he exhales it is an outburst: "Cojeme," exasperation, as he turns to glance back into the hallway.

"It's not good," is what he says.  There is another long breath, and a more measured exhale this time, as he steps aside to let her see out into the hallway.  A beat.  "Why didn't you just go to bed?"

He berates himself the moment he asks: why is judgmental phrasing, an amateur move for someone who asks a lot of questions of other people, but it springs from his lips anyway.  "It's only nine-thirty."

Pen
Pen's forearm is braced against the door frame's edge and she rests her forehead against her forearm. "Oh." Is her reaction to the flooded hall, the spreading damp the glint of hall light or evening light from high windows. He wants to know why she didn't just go to bed. An unadorned syllable. Pen swallows again. So much water, but her throat is dry. What kind of poet has a dry throat? "I wasn't tired. It was too early; not even nine-thirty." Ghost of humor, there then gone. "Why don't you go downstairs, I'll clean it up, I just need my chalk and..." Pen (guiltily) turns her face downward lashes sweeping low over her cheekbones temple against her forearm now and then she braces herself against the door frame with her hand instead, straightening.

Nick
Pen needs her chalk.  There is a muscle at the hinge of Nick's jaw that is tight, but it soon loosens again.  See, he had almost offered - but she will do it much more quickly, and much more completely.  "All right," he says, and this is a sigh, and then he shuffles off toward their bedroom so that he can discard his wet clothes.

She can hear: the wet shuffle of his shirt and pants as they slough to the floor.  Nick passes her through the hall in a grey T-shirt and a (dry) pair of boxers as he heads down the stairs, and: the sound of running water from below.

He does not remain downstairs, and soon will reappear with a glass of water for her in one hand and a glass of scotch (also for her) in the other.  He extends them toward her, with barely a grimace as his bare foot comes into contact with sodden rug.

Pen
[Ehh.... let's see intelligence + enochian.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[Vulgar Forces/Matter/Corr thing, -2 diff (thanks esoterics).]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Pen
They part ways. He changes.

Pen goes to her apothecary's desk and opens the drawer with her metallic chalk. Bypasses metallic chalk in favor of some muddy red charcoal, then decides to bring out the gold chalk after all. There is a box of tea lights and another box of matches on her day bed and she opens them, sets three tea lights down and sets them aflame with a kiss from a single match after it has been struck. Water is running below, Pen is drawing a ritual spell around the three points of flame, kneeling in the threshold, drawing a circle around herself and on the palm of her hand. She still has a mark on her cheek from the corner of a book. She has her hand flat on the apex of her Working, written out in front of her rather sloppily, hastily, sufficiently but without brilliance, and her eyes closed a line of concentration between her eyebrows. She does not have the care yet to put her will into the Working, but her will is sufficient without pushing it so hard into the work; as Nick grimaces at the sodden rug, the rug becomes a lot less sodden. A neat trick. All the water is leeched up and out of the carpet out of the floorboards a stream in the air held separate from everything, and it dances back into the bathroom; the drain slurps it up, the sound of a dragon waking. It will take a little time. Perhaps Nick will decide to drink the Scotch himself while he waits, and then the ritual is complete, and Pen smears the whole of the writing away with her hand leaving behind only a ghost remnant and she sighs big.

Pen
[And eh, let's see what Paradox has to say. That was a +1, but surely she's no2 q5 5 temp points by now.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[Soak?]

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

Nick
Nick does not drink the scotch himself while he waits.  He waits patiently, and the rug becomes dry under his feet and Pen can Will the water through the air and back down the drain as though the whole mess never happened.  It's a neat trick.  She can even undo whatever damage might have been done to the floorboards later, if need be.

So Nick waits, though he does move to a chair and seats himself, still with both glasses in either hand.  He is still calming, his breath is still slowing and becoming something closer to normal.  It is when Pen swipes her palm across the metallic chalk that he rises again, moving toward her and offering her one of the glasses (the water first.)

Pen
"Thanks," Pen says, matter of course, cursory, a cursory sip of the water too, which becomes less cursory because as it turns out she is thirsty, her throat knew it, she can feel her throat and tongue as if they're limned in silver and darkness, air and darkness, and then she puts the glass down and wipes her hands on her shirt and crawls over to her books and papers and rights what she can there physically with her own two hands, grimacing once because reality slapped her and it hurt, it sought to hurt her more, but she is hardy as most Flambeau need to be, and once because it is so bad of her to have fallen asleep on top of her papers like that, words destroyed, smeared, unintentionally. The ink, too. Bah. "Did you eat? Do you want to order pizza? Or I think there's quesadilla fixings... Did you have a good day today? Other than being surprised by the flood."

Nick
"Let's order pizza," he says.  "I'll make us something for breakfast with the tortillas tomorrow."  He is watching her as she goes to right her papers, as she grimaces though he cannot see a bruise or nosebleed as they sometimes appear on other people.

Wordlessly, he wanders back into the bathroom while she is gathering her papers and inks back together, trying to piece together what she can of her ruined notes.  Momentarily there is silence, and then: the whisper-rattle of water hissing through the faucet and into the tub.  He left the scotch for her there on the end table.  "I had a good day," comes his voice from across the hall, over the sound of the water.  "I went up to Sera's cabin in the mountains after work.  That's where I was.  She's hiding a kid there."

Pen
He's in the bathroom so he has what he can hear. Nothing, because Pen isn't very noisy, although she isn't preternaturally quiet unless she's made herself so.

"Did she want you to talk to the kid?"

Nick
Nicholas nods before he recalls that she cannot see him.  There is rising steam; he is looking for whatever she usually puts in the bath, and glances between bottles and oils before he simply gives up and decides that part at least is something better left to her.  "Yes," he says, belatedly.  "He was...she wasn't very comfortable with the situation.  She thought she'd have a hard time being objective with him or helping him in the way he needed, I guess.  Or she just wanted my thoughts."

Pen
"I don't think being objective is always so great. What do you think?" About the situation or the kid of Sera, she means, her tone says; not about whether or not being objective is always so great. Conversational nuance, ho.

Nick
For a moment there is silence in the other room, other than the sound of water pooling inside the tub.  "I think sometimes it's helpful to be able to listen to people without judging what's happened," he says.  "Whether it's possible to be truly objective is beside the point."  Her tone did not invite it: regardless, he says it.

Another moment without his voice, with only the water sloshing at the sides of the tub.  Steam is beginning to find its way into the hallway, to drift in ghostlike tendrils around the frame of the door.  "He definitely did some bad things.  But it sounds like he was brought up isolated, in an abusive home.  And it also sounds like the people who found him didn't see that."

Pen
"Did he do bad things to other people? How did Sera come to be hiding him?"

Pen could spend the rest of the evening sifting through her papers and books, but she is sensitive to the sound of running water at this precise moment in time, so she abandons the papers once she gets frustrated with them; goes down and crosses the hall to peer in at Nick, just in time to hear his answer. See him make it. She tries to be stealthy, too, so maybe he won't even know.



Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Do I hear?  -1, water is noisy.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[No ties in America!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Nick
[Tiebreak!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nick
Nick is standing in front of the tub, which is perhaps a third of the way full: not quite where she would want it in order to have a bath.  He is still hopelessly shuffling through bottles, unscrewing the cap off a few of them (perhaps to determine by scent which of them she uses.)  He holds one beneath his nose, only to lower it just as she is appearing at the threshold and look back at her.

There is a glint of amusement there: and it was a good effort on her part, and yet.

His amusement fades, but he still extends a hand to her so that he can pull her into the room.  "Sera said she met with a Chorister who was a cop," Nick says.  "Who, I guess, was initially contacted by Grace.  Grace found some sort of...shady snuff film ring.  The kid's dad was the one running it.  I guess he ran the website and maintained the code, with knowledge of what was going on, but didn't directly participate."

Pen
"The Chorister was originally contacted by Grace?"

Nick has a lot of choices. Pen, when she decides to luxuriate in a bath, chooses what she is going to luxuriate in on a whim. There are salts and bath bombs and oils; it's like alchemy. Earlier, she'd meant the bath to invigorate her, to keep her alert; she doesn't say this now but unbidden she smiles at Nick (all rue, all rosemary) without realizing quite she is does so.

"I'm still unclear about how Sera came to be hiding the kid, and not Grace or the Chorister, if the object was to take the kid from his father."

Nick
"I think so," Nick says, "but I'm not completely clear on that or how Grace found what she found.  I just know she was involved.  Sera said more about the kid."  He screws the cap back on the bottle and shakes a little vial of salts.  "What do you usually put in here?"

He is looking at her now, and there is a smile touching the corner of his mouth because that is what happens when he sees her smile that way, unbidden.  Then he says, "I'm not completely clear on that either.  It sounds like the Chorister didn't know where to put the kid, and Sera had a remote place to offer so she took him off her hands."

Pen
"Did they say why they didn't let the proper authorities - " - here a rueful twist of her mouth here, and she trails her fingertips along the sink, sliding along the counter so she can be closer to Nick and the promise of a bath - " - take the kid? Is he awake? I put whatever I feel like. Put whatever you feel like, Nicholas."

Nick
Put whatever he feels like, she suggests, and so Nick takes a whiff of another few bottles and then begins to add one to the water (with guidance from her on how much to add.)  It smells of dry heat and sandalwood and sunlight, and as he adds it his other hand without looking wanders around to find the small of her back.  "He's Awakened, so I assume that's why they took him instead.  He's just an apprentice.  He would've gone to the Conventionals, I assume, if they hadn't taken him, and I think they knew that."

Nick closes the bottle and breathes in deep before setting it aside.  "I might ask for their information from Sera or Grace.  It would be good to talk to them about him, I think."

Pen
"Under what circumstance did they come to take him?" Pen wants to know. And, "Their information? Whose?"

Pen is guiltily noticing details left over from the flood while Nick adds the bath oil and she thinks about this kid and Hermeticism and the architecture of culture. Here is one such detail: A miniature rubber ducky on the ground behind the toilet, there only because a wave took it there.

Bath oil. Observe how lovely it is, how it separates: singular. How it floats on the water, beading, little drops of clarity which throw little translucent shadows. One is supposed to put one's arm in and blend water and oil.

Nick
Nicholas evidently does not know what one is supposed to do with bath oil; he looks at it for a moment beading on the top of the water, and glances over toward Pen.  He has not noticed the ducky behind the toilet, or any other thing that indicates their world was briefly thrown into disarray.  Nick is thinking about what he wants to put on a pizza, and Nick is thinking about climbing in with Pen even though that was not part of the evening's plans.  Some days require flexibility.

"I think their own information," he says.  "But I'm not sure of the specifics.  I mostly talked about Grant with Sera, not the operation they broke up."  His thumb traces the dip in her spine where it curves inward, at her lumbar.  "Maybe you should come with me, if I go to talk to them about him."

Pen
Pen slides even closer to Nick, although from this angle she has a much better view of the poor rubber ducky, which looks at her accusingly from the ground, its painted plastic eyes big and bright and just a bit reproachful. Behind the ducky is a pen for writing on the walls of showers, in case you have an idea you just can't go without writing down, or you're a child. The fabric of her ink-spattered (ruined) robe is slippery under Nick's thumb, the way fish scales look but aren't; the way the word silk sounds when you speak it.

He thinks their own information. Nick doesn't often confuse Pen. He tricks her, yes. But her expression is rarely one of unadulterated puzzlement; she gazes at him, head at an inquiring slant, brows drawing together, a shadow passing.

"Talk to ... Sera and Grace about Grant, or the kid?"

Nick
"Talk to the Chorister about Grant," he says.  "If I can find out from Sera or Grace who the Chorister is.  The cop."  He has noted the puzzlement on her face, to which he simply shrugs one shoulder, and the mirroring he does of her expression is eloquent: the situation is not very clear to Nicholas, either.

As she draws nearer to him his arm wraps the rest of his way around her, and he leans forward to turn the tap off since the water has drawn high.  "You should get in while I go to call the pizza place.  What do you want?"

Pen
What does she want.

She hums, thoughtfully. "Oh. Grant is the kid. The Chorister doesn't have a name. Does Grant feel as if he is being held against his will?" The question is a curious one. "Does he know he's Awake?"

Nick doesn't know the situation, but: he talked to the kid. Who is Grant? Pen is still a touch puzzled. Blame her abrupt wake-up call, the rigors of finicky magick just after. When Nick wraps his arm around Pen's waist, Pen wraps her arms around his shoulders (oh, were you leaning; okay, we'll both lean) and bows her head so her mouth is pressed against his shoulder. No Nick no stay no.

"And I'm not very hungry; how about a large half the usual, half something surprising."

Nick
Pen has her mouth pressed against his shoulder, Pen is leaning, and Nick presses his mouth to the top of her head before he straightens once more.  "I don't think he feels he's being held against his will.  He does seem very hungry for company, though.  His contact with the outside world was pretty limited while he was living with his dad, I think.  I'm not sure what his understanding of being Awake is, though.  My guess is that it's also limited."

His fingertips walk over the neckline of her robe, though he leaves it for her; his eyes are thoughtful.  "All right.  Let me go get my phone."  Discarded, see, with his sodden dress pants and shirt.  "I'll be right back."

Pen
"Is he scared of his dad; I mean to say, are the people he was working for - what happened to them, or is happening to them?"

Nick already said he didn't ask much about the operation, but Pen asks anyway, just in case. Her arms tighten around Nick's shoulders as he says let me go get because she is contrary. But they only tighten for a moment; she lets him go, and bends to rescue the rubber duck and set him floating on the water. He is wizard rubber duck. Very dapper. This is her opportunity to comb her fingers through the oil and water, disturb the clear shadows, the little pockets of condensed light, send the surface shivering and discard her robe. The robe: broad neck went slipping over her shoulders when she bent to set the ducky free and she held it against her clavicle and it is all abandoned in one swan graceful loop (plunk, to the floor; we are messy when we are mages) and thank god for big tubs and the smell of the bath oil is strong enough that it has filled the whole house Nick can smell it from downstairs and Pen closes her eyes and is in danger, sans somebody to talk to, of falling asleep in the hot water, but fortunately Nick is going to be right back so she rests her elbow on the big tub's lip and rests her temple on her fist and tries to think.

Nick
"I'm not sure what has happened to them, but it sounds as though the operation might have been brought down already," Nick says.  A little point appears between his brows, and he leans forward to place a kiss on her collarbone, well away from the spattered ink, before they part and he goes to retrieve his phone.

He is aware of the danger, aware that she might well fall asleep in the water if he takes too long, and so he is brief.  He comes back to Pen thinking, or trying to think and who knows how successful she is because she is exhausted.  His eyes fall on her there in repose looking half pre-Raphaelite and half-Rodin, and he grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head, shucks his shorts next, and both flutter to the ground beside her ruined robe.

He moves around behind her, and after giving her a moment to make space for him slides in behind her against the back of the tub, letting his legs extend on either side of her.  "What are you thinking about?"

Pen
Her gaze is hooded when he reappears, her lashes dark and her eyes too. The color of the water, but with a luminous suggestion; she is languid when he appears, and she lets her head loll back to watch Nick disrobe, and then blinks because he wants to join her. Big tub: a perk. She sits up, sliding forward, and then lolls back once he is settled. The ends of her hair are wet; they'll stick to him where they don't float. "Kidnapping and the lost children. The ones who have to live off the grid because they can't live on the grid naturally, without suffering great consequence. I think that's why They're so good at recruiting -- if they really are, and that's not just the shadow of reputation. It's less... what?"

Nick
It is Nick's turn to be confused when he often is not.  She cannot see the puzzlement that appears, the furrow of his brow as he tries to process her words.  Then his eyebrows lift and he says, "Oh.  Do you mean the Technocracy?  How they recruit?"

He wraps an arm around her, smoothing her wet hair back and away from his chest.  There is ink curling from her skin and into the water, staining it a little darker than it was before.  "I think it would've been bad for him if they'd picked him up.  I'm glad they didn't."

Pen
"Also, they're the enemy," Pen says, tilting her head back to peer Nick-wards. She is rather listless, rather spineless or as spineless as a creature with a vertebrae can get in the water. She likes water: look at her, Melusine, ondine; the moon cast her skin takes on, the rose flush of it when the water is warmer, the green shadows. She runs her fingers along the hairs on Nick's shin, then along his calf or thigh: releasing trapped air bubbles. "But why do you think it would have been bad for him if they'd picked him up?" A pause. "If we found some newly Awakened person whose life seemed poisonous, unsafe ... What would we do or recommend?"

Nick
Nick lifts his hand from the water and wipes at her ink-stained skin, leaving it clearer than it was: though ink usually never comes away so easily.  He is leaning his chin against her shoulder; he closes his eyes as her hand wanders up his leg.  "Having talked to him, I think he would have done very badly there," he says.  "He was raised in an abusive environment in isolation, and I think he would have...done some of the less ethical things the Union does without question.  At least now, he can be allowed to pursue what he wants and taught to question how he was raised."

There is a soft exhale; the air puffs from his nostrils and against her skin.  "It's less what the Union would do, I think, and more what it is as an entity."

Pen
"Can he be allowed to do that now? You don't think he would have been taught to question how he was raised in the Union?" Then, coaxing, pitched low, "If you're going to do that, get a wash cloth. Your palm isn't abrasive enough. When is the pizza supposed to be here?"

Nick
"Not for forty-five minutes," Nick says, and when she suggests he get a washcloth he half-rises, leaning over over over so he can reach one of the drawers in the bathroom cabinet.  He manages to tug a washcloth free and then settles again, drawing it down into the water so he can wet it.

For a moment he does not answer her.  He has covered his palm with the washcloth; he rubs at her shoulder with it, scrubbing some of the ink free.  Then, "I think he might have been taught to question, but differently," he says.  "And depending on who found him, I suppose.  But that's beside the point.  I think I was able to help him today."

Pen
Pen is quiet. Her eyes close again but he can't see that, Nick, can he, and she is often languid in her movements. "You're right. The point is ..." Pen trails away. "The point is what would we do. If we found someone. The point is... I don't know what the point is for this poor guy, not having the full story," and Pen, she traces the shape of Nick's kneecap with infinite care. She turns her head suddenly, back muscles pull against his torso and she looks at what she can of Nick's face. "You are a help."

Nick
He is looking back at her when she tilts her head to look at him, and the scratch of the washcloth against the flesh of her arm stills.  He leans his head down a scant few inches and places a kiss against her temple, which is still dry.  "I'd like to have you with me when I go to talk to the Chorister," he says.

A beat, and he rubs the cloth over her forearm and hand now, pays attention to each finger.  "I want things to get better for this kid.  He seems to want that too.  I think if I found someone...I would take them out of that life, that unsafe situation, if they wanted it.  I can't imagine wanting to do anything else."

Pen
"Because Choristers usually like me?" Pen says, with a smile that opens like a fan with an elegant snap to it. She isn't lying, or being sharp; Choristers have often liked Penelope Mars in the past, and she has often got along well with members of the Chorus. Pen's lashes flutter again when Nick works the wash cloth over her fingers and her toes curl; she settles back down slip-sliding settling.

The bath oil - the copious amounts of precious bath oil - make it so they're practically in a fog of scent; the tub itself is very, very slippery; no purchase to be found. "I'm happy to accompany you. What do you want to ask of the Chorister?"

"And... what would you give them instead of that life? I don't know. I'm talking hypothetically but I'm not... I am looking for a plan, I guess." Pen sighs - it is wistful. "Plans." And why she sighs is anyone's guess.

Nick
"Because everyone likes you," Nick says, and his tone is warm but still touched with humor.  Penelope Mars is exhausted: it comes through despite the snap of her smile.  He keeps his other arm, the one not busy with the washcloth, around her waist; it keeps her from slipping too far into the water.

Him joining her might have been at least half intended to keep her from drowning herself in the tub: an undignified way to go, to be sure.  "I want to ask what else needs to be done about Grant's father.  And ask if there's anything else she knows about him that might be helpful for me to know as I talk to him more."  Too many unknowns.

"I'd want to give them another life, I suppose.  One that they want and can shape for themselves."  Pen sighs, and it draws his eyes back down to her.  "What sort of plan?  Why?"

Pen
"Crow," she says, just as someone else might say beloved.

The ink has mostly bled away, but its ghost remains on her shoulder and under her collar; on her earlobe, where the water hasn't touched yet. More of her hair is wet; her jaw she let the water kiss that for a moment when she sank down low. But now she reaches for the wash cloth takes it for herself and then for a bar of soap in some convenient shelf in arm's reach. The bar of soap is already foamy, scurf of flooded bath remnants on it: she lathers the wash cloth up, then slaps it (water goes splish! Splash! Drop-for-the-eye!) toward Nick's shoulders and there. Texture, man. All about the texture: up the side of his neck, then down again under his arm then against his side and under the water but still against the skin where it's somehow less cat's tongue rough and it floats diffuse there's his arm wrapped around her waist that gets the washcloth treatment next.

"Plans for what ifs and haven't beens and aren't yets and may never bes. Plans for just in cases. Plans so instead of reactive it's active. It's lights camera action. Shun the lack of plans, Nick, put in a parliament, but not of owls. Did the boy hold the cameras or edit the footage?"

Nick
Nick's eyelashes drop low over his eyes, hood them, as she scrubs the washcloth over his shoulders and up over his neck.  The muscles in his stomach shift against her back, slip and pull, as he slides a little lower in the water.

"I'm not sure of the specifics of what he did," Nick says.  "I thought he was only managing the website.  He might have been editing the footage.  I don't...I understand why what he did disturbs Sera.  Why she has trouble talking to him or giving him another chance."

Pen
"What does he feel like? Was his father Awake, too, or a Sorcerer?" Pen slips the washcloth down and away and then drags it so it flattens just beneath the surface of the water -- she watches it drag. There's not a great deal of water to play in for a wild wash cloth, not with knees and other body parts in the way, but there's sufficient. She closes her eyes and lets the washcloth spin off her finger.

Nick
"He felt...immaterial.  Ethereal.  I'm not sure whether his father was Awake or not though."  Nick's arms have both found their way around her now.  He leans his chin against the side of her head and closes his eyes.

"You can come and meet him too."

Pen
Hark, a rubber duck! She moves her hand under the water to get the duck to roam toward Nick's elbow. Waves are made. Waves, ripples, glassy suggestions. Her eyes are still closed. "Immaterial. Who, Grant?"

Nick
"Yes, Grant," he says, and again smooths her hair back and away from her face and into the water.  Red tendrils float around the two of them: a nymph, a water witch.  "Kind of fey, almost."

Pen
"Where? We should find -- no, I'm. What? No. Nicholas, what do you want me to look at when I look at Grant? What do you believe he might be instead? Do you, is the Chorister going to -- is there anything else I should know? Is there no internet at the cabin?"

Nick
"There's no internet at the cabin," Nick says.  "I took him out on a walk, instead.  He seems pretty eager to explore the world and see something other than the internet.  I mostly think it would be good for him to meet other people."  He lifts a hand to her forehead to smooth her hair back away from it.

"Do you want to go to bed, Pen?  When's the last time you ate?"

Pen
"Lunch time," Pen says, dismissively, and with an air of truth. It's easy to have an air of truth when one doesn't know the answer, but thinks that sounds about right. Loop holes of truthiness. "Did he have any idea how long he'd been Awake? I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay"

Pen
ooc: stay awake." is supposed to be how that ends.

Nick
"How long ago was lunch time?" Nick asks, and this with a quirk of his mouth.  Wise to her tricks, perhaps, even if she has used them to also trick herself.  "I don't think he knows how long he's been Awake.  I haven't really talked with him about how he sees magick, yet."

She says that she wants to stay, and so he tugs her back against him, holds her there.  "Stay, then."

Pen
"When lunch time usually happens," Pen says, airily. "You know I follow schedules and lists. Do my hair?" Pen takes a deep breath, and submerges. Not suddenly enough to accidentally, say, injure any part of Nicholas or cramp him, but slowly enough to give him time to be prepared. Her hair is a halo; she looks like one of Klimt's water snakes, eyes closed; opens them after a moment; the air bubbles stream around her ears, pearl her shoulders, luminous, escape artistry. Then she exhales; slowly. Sits up. By then Nick's surely grabbed up the shampoo--and not ten minutes later the doorbell will ring, pizza (early) arrived.