Soon or late, when one person is over at the other one's place more or less all the time, it stops making sense to pay two rents. Nick is still figuring out where his life fits into hers, which is more difficult when they are making her apartment a shared space rather than co-creating a new one. Still, they are young and they are close and they communicate better than many: it'll work.
Pen's apartment, recall, is on the third floor of an old building and summer is drawing down and so it has been recently repainted, at the end of the warm season. It's crisp on the outside, new as a blank sheet of paper, without the grime the seasons have tracked over it nor the salt and snow of winter scoring the paneling.
Today, Nicholas is alone, at least for the time being. Not too long ago, he moved in one of his bookshelves, one of the few things he kept from his old place since the hollowed out canoe shelf was a particularly prized possession. It stands near Pen's, out in the wide space of the main room.
He is at his computer, and the soft glow it emits where it sits in his lap, throwing a pall over his face and the back of the couch, is the sole source of light save that which is fast fading in the windows. It's a Friday night, or maybe a Saturday, but this night he is working, tapping away at what is perhaps a journal entry, an effort to collect his thoughts about something or other. Sometimes a helpful thing, that.
It's been quiet today, without interruption from their cabalmates or friends. He doesn't mind it tonight.
Aidan
Outside:
somebody's car is loud as fuck, turbulence in sound, a roar which peels off and off, accompanied by some music just as loud - glass shudders even on the third floor. The music gets distant; let that pass unnoticed for now.
And perhaps ten minutes after that, somebody begins pounding (with their fist) on Pen's door. BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Pause. BOOM BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM.
Pause. BOOMBOOMBOOM.
Pause. Smaller tap, as of a kick. BOOMBOOM -
Nicholas
The heavy thudding against Pen's door startles Nicholas out of deep thought. His heart mirrors the next few hammer-beats against his ribs, races because he is not a warrior, has no idea how to still it in the face of threat. Or, as he initially believes, the police knocking at the wrong apartment.
It is still strange for him to consider answering the door, because he still thinks of it as Pen's door and because he has yet to get to the post office to officially change his mailing address. Somehow that matters. He isn't sure how or why it matters, but it does. Maybe it's the ceremony of the thing, the ritual. Either way, there's a moment's hesitation as he sets his laptop aside and rises from the couch, which might be cause for a few more raps at the door.
There are no weapons nearby, and even if there were he'd have no idea of how to use them.
He walks to the door, his footsteps barely a whisper against the wood planks, and he is at this very moment wishing for a peep hole that would let him see who the hell is out there. It's an old door, old apartment; there isn't one.
So instead he unlocks it, pulls the door open just a crack. His curls precede him around the corner, and his eyes follow as he looks around the doorframe and out. "Hello?"
Aidan
There is a young man (kid) standing outside, fist poised to slam into the door again. The young man's knuckles are cracked, well-used, and he himself is a sharp-looking thing; handsome in a rough, devilish way; strong jaw, perhaps rather pointed, his lean cheekbones boyish rather than hardened. How do you like your blueeyed boy, Mister Death. He's wearing a thin band t-shirt, a pair of gray trousers hanging on narrow hips, a baseball cap, hint of ruddy hair beneath and scruff of beard on chin and jawline, a nose on which there is a scratch but no sign of break it's straight as a prince's. Even a generous mouth: the kind given to smirking.
So Nicholas unlocks the door and pulls it open just a crack, the young man's fist slams into the door again (strength there, obviously), and then Nicholas's little hello surprises the young man who finds Nick and looks nonplussed and frowns. He narrows his eyes, squinting. And then he leans away from the door, glancing down the stairs, rubbing the side of his neck.
"Sorry man must have the wrong door."
Nicholas
Here's the young man, and there are only three apartments in this building so the likelihood of it being the wrong one is slim but present. Nicholas steps into the door more fully, letting it fall open once he has ascertained that this is not in fact a client who somehow managed to obtain his home address and come calling. (At least, he doesn't think so: he has a good memory for faces.)
He is wearing a white T-shirt and a long pair of grey shorts, pinstriped; as is often the case when someone finds him at home, his feet are bare. They have spread out over the worn floorboards in front of the door, toes thoughtfully curling for traction as he eyes the young man there.
"Who are you looking for? You could try the neighbors downstairs," he says.
Red haired people aren't that rare, after all, and it doesn't occur to him at just this moment that this might be one of Pen's siblings. He barely hears about them, after all, and he has never met them despite living in roughly the same geographical area, and they still Sleep.
Aidan
"Enh. Nah." The young man rubs at his jaw with the whole of his hand, thumb poised out; he finishes this off with a grin, this flash of a thing that has probably made his mother forgive him all manner of trespasses for what a hopeful thing it is. "Probably got the wrong house. Some of these places look the same. One white house is another white house."
He hand waves and then heads back down the stairs; a lot of energy, a bull in a china shop.
Nicholas
"They confused me forever too," Nick says, and his tone is friendly, kind, forgiving of this stranger's trespass on his doorstep. "Sorry, man." This, to Aidan just before he turns and tromps down the stairs, and maybe he isn't the one who ought to apologize but it's apologetic nonetheless: this easy sympathy for someone who shows up at the wrong door and disturbs a stranger in the middle of the evening.
The door shuts with a click, and Nick returns to the couch. His heart, insofar as he is aware of it, has begun to slow back to rest once more.
He settles, and takes his laptop back into his lap, and tries to immerse himself again. It's difficult, once he's been shaken out; one's innermost thoughts are like that, fleeting and buried beneath layers and layers of inner babble and distraction.
Aidan
Fifteen minutes pass. Fourteen, were Nicholas - aware as he is of the passage of Time, or aware as he can be - to be precise, and thirty three seconds.
Then: BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. Pause. Something lower, as of a kick, and right on top of that BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM, followed by SLAPSLAPSLAP open handed hit.
Nicholas
The young man, when he showed up at the door, did not seem drunk and did not seem high. He's developed a fair eye for this, over the past few years; crisis centers are rife with people who come in after a relapse, or who are withdrawing from some substance or another, and heroin has only just begun to ravage these parts. (It's not the high, there, see, it's the withdrawal, the shakes that leave people screaming and desperate, and Aidan didn't look that way. Not today.)
He didn't look drunk or high and so Nick has no other explanation for the fact that he has started pounding on the door again. Maybe he's somebody's jilted ex. Who knows.
So he sighs, sets his laptop aside again, and goes back to the door. This time, he opens it more than just a crack, stands as he was before in the entrance, his hand still lightly resting on the doorframe. "Hey again," he has started to say even before he has fully seen Aidan there in front of him.
Aidan
[Erm. Strength + Brawl, we guess? For kicking the door outta that dude's hand.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[holy shit wtf is happening right now reflex Strength + Brawl, untrained]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (1, 10) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
The young man (Aidan; it means little fire; it means ardent, but that's his sister's crown; his sister's halo) kicks the door, hard, and it goes tearing out of Nicholas's hand. He doesn't storm the threshold; maybe it was an accident (it wasn't; it was fortuitous coincidence. He could've stopped himself; he didn't want to). He peers around Nick's shoulder, and then says, "This is the right apartment. I triple checked. Who the fuck are you?"
Nicholas
There are a few things that could be happening here: it's lucky that Nick's not a man who tends to jump to conclusions. Anyway, even if he were, at this very moment he is too stunned. The door was ripped from his hand, bends back one of his fingernails and tears it clean and batters his fingertips, and his reflexive movement once the door has swung free is to bring his hand back to him and curl it into his chest. The hiss of pain that he emitted then was not the sound that a brawler, trained or untrained or of any sort, makes.
He stares at Aidan with wide hazel eyes, unsure whether it will do him any good to run. He has summoned terror crows to peck out a man's eyes and he has done worse than that, but very little of that matters in the face of someone who could flat out beat the shit out of you.
"My name is Nick," he says. He is using his best soothing Counselor Voice. Then, moving his injured hand away from him, "Let's try to figure out what's going on here, okay? Who is it that you're looking for?"
Aidan
A muscle in Aidan's jaw leaps; his jaw goes tight. His face goes blank and expressionless, except for a certain watchful threat in the eyes.
"Yeah but who the fuck are you 'Nick'? I'm looking for Elaine. Penny. Pen." The last syllable is a touch impatient and insecure both; he knows what Elaine's strange friends use as a nickname for her, of course.
Nicholas
It's strange, hearing Pen's name from a man who is Asleep; or, he is either Asleep or skilled enough to mask whatever resonance he may have. Nick has not ruled either of those things out. He is watching Aidan with a sort of eliciting expression, a desire to connect; this however cannot wholly conceal the fact that he's afraid of Aidan, and just now he doesn't try.
"She's not here right now," he says. "But she'll be back in a little bit, if you want to wait."
Aidan
"Yeah. Yeah, I think I do want to wait," Aidan says, and he doesn't linger on the doorstep: in he barges, brash as anything. If: Nicholas is afraid of him, good. He must be afraid because he's done something wrong, eh? Probably to Elaine. Such is the logic the young man employs, and the side-eye he gives Nicholas is razor-sharp.
Nicholas
His fingertips are throbbing, and sometimes pain: it clarifies. Nick, too, is sharp, though his sharpness has more to do with looking for the nearest escape route and thinking about whether he could outrun Aidan down the stairs if he needed to, or barricade himself in Pen's study or the bathroom until Pen gets back. (He wouldn't even care if she had to rescue him, come in and Hermetic swashbuckle; there is no shame here.)
"Uh. Well, why don't you have a seat," he says, with a glance toward the couch. He's wishing he shut his laptop, but so be it. "What's your name?"
Aidan
"Aidan." He does sit down: on the couch, by Nick's laptop, which he without any hint of shame turns toward himself so he can see what's on the screen. Some sort of snuff film, maybe. He doesn't know. Elaine's friends are strange.
He is frowning, pushes the laptop away right after. "So," and see here, this right now: this is a really slow look over. Up, down. He's trying to consider everything. Something creepy about Nicholas, though, isn't there. Something (Echoes [Old]) strange. "Why are you here if she's out? Where is she?"
Nicholas
What is on the laptop screen is not in fact a snuff film but instead a Word document, with blocks of text that would seem painfully unorganized to any writer and will seem probably like nonsensical gibberish to Aidan. These are thoughts poured into a blank document, reflections on recent events and how they relate to the Wheel, capital W, see, and possibly a retelling of what sounds like it might have been a dream.
See? Nonsense.
Fortunately Aidan pushes the laptop away. Nick remains standing, for now. There is indeed something creepy about him, even here, even dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts. It has been noted that his clothes hang awkwardly on him, that they are a poor substitute for whatever should trap his form, lend it substance and draw him deeper into myth. "I live here," he says. "She's out at work." At least, Pen's sort of work. It's not a lie.
Aidan
Aidan is not dumb.
That's part of his problem. He's not dumb, but he's not smart in (quite) the way that Elaine is, and he doesn't have the drive she did (which is something beyond the pale, all told). He's intuitive like his older sister, but not quite like; what this means is he tends to be sensitive.
Right now. Knee-jerk reaction; dilate of pupils; this curl of a laugh strikes in his eyes like flint and flash go two dimples and then, "What?" Flat: "You do not." Pause; he considers Nicholas for a second.
"You're her roommate, like platonic, or are you fucking around with her?"
Nicholas
This is one of those situations where it would be easier to lie. It sometimes doesn't occur to Nicholas that there are a lot of brothers who get protective of their sisters in this way, because he isn't protective of his sisters in this way; on the other hand, he might suspect but does not know how Pen knows Aidan. Aidan could be a cousin, or a poorly mannered consor, or someone Pen knows from back when she lived as Elaine, rather than a brother.
He considers Aidan for a moment, and maybe in that little span Aidan can tell that he was telling the truth and also that at the moment he is thinking about a lie.
"I'm her boyfriend," he says finally. "Have you had a chance to see her place before?"
Aidan
[SPEAKING OF LYING LIARS.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Aww. Are you a lying liar?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
Aidan gives Nicholas another cool once over. He is surprised; his angular eyebrows have winged their way up, give him a wondering look. Mild, too. And he eases back, hauling his ankle up so it rests on his knee, follow this up by resting his elbow against the couch's back, some small surprise still.
"You are? Really? What are you, a downgrade?" A beat. "Fuck, sorry, I can't watch my tongue, it's too far under my nose." He sticks it out, like to illustrate. Then he holds out his hand like to invite a shake, but in such a way that Nicholas might be wary of how likely his (poor) hand is likely to be crushed. Aidan is a strong young man. "I'm her brother."
He spells it out, in case Elaine has never mentioned him. (Why would she? he must wonder. She has her interesting life.)
"I didn't know she and that other guy broke up."
Nicholas
Nicholas is indeed wary of offering his hand for Aidan to shake, particularly given his sore fingertips and torn fingernail. Even someone well-intended but given to enthusiastic squeezes would cause a paroxysm of pain, however brief.
Nonetheless, he offers it, reaching out to grip the other man's hand firmly and shake it once or twice before withdrawing, assuming he is allowed to do so.
Nick raises his eyebrows at the word 'downgrade,' at the commentary on the other guy. "Are you upset with me?"
Aidan
Nicholas is allowed to withdraw his hand. The grip is tight, not quite crushing, but: yes, enthusiastic shall we say.
"I don't like you," Aidan says. "You seem like fucking bad news."
Nicholas
Enthusiastic is more than Nick's poor bruised hand can handle at the moment and so there is a visible wince that flickers across his face as Aidan seizes his hand and pumps it. He is grateful when is hand is allowed to fall back to his side.
His eyebrows loft again, surprise and perhaps a touch of bewilderment. "What gives you the impression that I'm bad news?"
Aidan
Aidan cocks an eyebrow, looking Nicholas over. He does a lot of that: the slow perusal, as if on second or third or even eighteenth look, something about Nicholas will have changed. There's a stitch in his forehead, a boyish crease, and he rubs his jaw as he forces himself to think about what he says. A bone clicks.
"Instinct." That's what he settles on. "But come on man I'm sure you don't want to talk about that. What do you do? What's the computer for?"
Nicholas
Aidan could look at Nick eighteen times or a hundred times; very little will have changed about him between then and now. He is still watching the other man with this expression that is as cautious as it is searching. Seeking to understand, perhaps. He makes a noncommittal noise as Aidan settles on instinct.
"I'm a counselor. The computer is for the sorts of things that computers are usually for."
Aidan
"I don't use computers so why don't you elucidate for me, Nick," says his name like it's a knick made with a knife, a little flick of flesh and blood-letting. "What's a counselor use a computer for? You a writer too?"
Nicholas
Nicholas could appear at this moment as though he were impervious to that pinprick, that use of his name as though it could draw blood. He glances once toward the computer. "No, not really,' he says. "Sometimes it just helps me to get my thoughts down." A beat. "So I definitely can't argue with your instincts, but if you're Elaine's brother I'd like to know more about you and get along with you. Is there something I can do that would help you trust me?"
Aidan
[*squint* Perception+Empathy?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[Subterfuge, 'cause there are layers here of course.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Nick does genuinely want to try to get along with Aidan. He is a little confused by all the hostility but also thinks he may understand on some level where it is coming from. It makes him a little sad.]
Aidan
Aidan's eyes hood and he shrugs. "Aren't you gonna offer me snacks or something, if you do live here."
Nicholas
Nick eyes him for another minute, and then he takes a half step toward the kitchen. "Sure. What do you like?"
Aidan
"I'm not a picky eater," Aidan says and maybe it is a trap. He still cannot quite believe that Elaine is living with somebody; he still cannot quite believe that somebody is this guy, of all people. "Whatever you want to have too."
"So a counselor huh. Why?"
Nicholas
It is entirely possible that this could be a trap; Nick knows Pen's background and so he can surmise that Aidan comes from a different one than his own as well. It's written on his face and clothing and in his bones, poverty. It ravages the body and spirit as surely as any physical disease ever will. "I think we have some chips. Do you drink beer?"
It gives him the space to consider Aidan's question. Nick has been asked this question many times, and often by people who do not realize how personal it is. "I saw a couple of counselors back when I was a kid, and they helped me, so when I got older I decided it was what I wanted to do."
Aidan
Aidan rests his elbows on his knees, weight lurching forward into a certain kind of readied stillness. This is a soldier's pose, perhaps, though Aidan is no soldier.
"Yeah," is what Nick's question about beer gets, and Aidan maintains a disinterest - no, not disinterest, but a lack of care, on the subject of chips.
He is, it has already been said, watchful of Nicholas now, his blue-gray eyes suspicious and clear and May-morningish.
(He realizes just how personal the question is.)
"What happened when you were a kid?" Note of interest, there. A dust mote.
Nicholas
Nick only infrequently glances back at Aidan as he wanders back into the kitchen and mostly out of Aidan's line of sight. He turns the faucet on first: rinsing the blood from his torn fingernail. There is a moment of this, and then the refrigerator door opening and shutting and the sound of two bottles being set on the counter. "If you want something more substantial than chips I can make a sandwich or something."
Yes: Aidan does realize how personal the question is, and Nick had suspected as much, and he suspects it moreso now that the questions are continuing. He pulls a jar of salsa from the refrigerator and sets it alongside the beer bottles.
Tortilla chips rattle into a bowl. "Lots of things. A misspent youth, I suppose," and this, with a touch of humor. "What brought you over to see Elaine today?"
Aidan
Aidan doesn't stay seated on the couch. When Nicholas wanders out of his line of sight, he stands up and wanders over to some bookshelves (maybe the canoe book shelf) and begins to look at things. This could seem idle to some people: the way he can't quite stay still; the way things call his gaze although he mostly does not pick anything up. He wants to be able to see Nicholas so whatever he's looking at is somewhere so he can do that.
It takes him a second to answer. When he does, it's to say, "I guess it was about fucking time I met her 'boyfriend.' Why do you write your thoughts down? About what? You and Penny been together for a while?"
Nicholas
"So you just wanted to come by and visit, then?" Nick might have added something friendlier, something about how Pen will be glad to see Aidan, except: he's not sure she will be glad to see Aidan. She has spoken of her family so little.
A beat as he gathers up the bottles in one hand and the bowl and salsa in the other, and then begins to transfer everything back out into the main room. He catches sight of Aidan there by the bookshelves, makes note but doesn't try to draw him away. "Writing down my thoughts helps me process. She and I have been together for...well, almost a year, now. It'll be a year in October."
Aidan
Aidan, long-lashed, handsome, considers a paper weight, a glass bauble with some alchemical symbol inside it which belongs to Penelope, then tosses it from one hand to the other. It's a gesture that looks reckless.
He drifts over toward Nicholas when Nicholas comes out of the kitchen: even reaches to help him with the salsa or the bowl of chips. He has left things out of place; behind him, disaster.
"You moved in together after less than a year?" Aidan says, sounding skeptical. "Whose idea was that? And yeah, I just wanted to come by and visit."
Nicholas
How Aidan managed to leave things in such disarray during his brief sojourn through the living room leaves Nick wondering, glancing at the bauble bouncing back and forth between the other man's hands. He refrains from commenting. "We talked about it together. I don't know if it was more her idea or mine. We were constantly over at each other's places anyway so it just made sense to do."
The skeptical note in his voice hasn't gone unnoticed, but Aidan has already said outright that he doesn't like Nick. As Aidan takes the bowl and salsa from him, Nick waits until he sets them down and then extends one of the bottles of beer toward him. "This must be really surprising for you. I'm sorry."
Aidan
"Is that something they teach you in counselor school? State the obvious fucking thing in a way that makes it sound like you're making conversation, but you're really just stating the obvious? Not making conversation at all letting the other person do that? Way to host," Aidan says, and he smiles (dazzling, flash) at Nicholas, cynically flicking both eyebrows upwards. He has a mobile and expressive face.
The young man does take one of the bottles of beer, though; the bauble gets put down on the couch, which Aidan flops back onto. Languish. Such languishing.
Nicholas
There is this silence that meets Aidan's questions, and a level look that meets his smile. It's only for a moment, but it's there. "I guess if that's how you want to look at it, do whatever makes you happy," Nick says.
It takes him a moment to sit, too, though after taking a swallow from his beer he does fold into the chair across from the couch. "So what kind of work do you do?"
Aidan
[Ooohhh? What was -that- look, suckyboyfriendperson? Empathy woo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 5 )
Nicholas
[Ughhh]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Here's what Aidan can gather about his sister's suckyboyfriendperson.
Aidan can tell that he perhaps touched a nerve: most of the people that Nick counsels probably don't pick up on the tools he is using, much less call him out on them, much less in the way Aidan just did. He is wondering, at this moment, just what the fuck Aidan's deal is, and this is informing some of the way he is interacting with him now.
Mark this, too: he is well intended, he is trying to find some common ground and work his way past the hostility. He is also maybe a little surprised that Pen hasn't told her family about him.]
Aidan
Aidan has been open (in this, he and Pen are alike) about looking Nicholas over, of course. He rubs the bridge of his nose, then decides to reach out for a chip. Crunch.
"Eh. I'm a lobsterman, but I work the oyster beds too and sometimes I bartend down at George's or do dishes at Frank's."
Nicholas
Nick takes another pull from the beer bottle as Aidan answers him, and then sets it down on the coffee table in front of them both, next to his laptop. He too reaches for one of the chips. "Do you like it?"
He is less open in how he is looking Aidan over, but occasionally there is this very conscious appraisal, this taking in of the person in front of him. Maybe he's noticing mannerisms or expressions, things that he can tie to Pen and Pen's habits. Maybe it helps him like Aidan more.
Aidan
"It's work," Aidan says. "Do you like it when clients vomit on you or take a dump in your desk drawer? What's the most interesting thing that ever happened?"
Nicholas
"That's strangely specific," Nick says, and his amusement is in his voice moreso than in his expression. There's warmth there too, or traces of it: Nick appreciates others' humor, or attempts at it, even when he's the punchline. "Nobody's taken a dump in my desk drawer. One client cut another client's hair once and made a doll out of it. That was probably the weirdest thing."
Aidan
Strangely specific? Flash of another smile. It's easy to see that Aidan might use his good looks for evil; heart's might ache afterwards, but they'd probably generally be okay, and even like the ache. Sometimes muscles ache after they've been through rigorous exercise, and later on, they're stronger for it (and one doesn't exercise like that again).
Aidan reaches out for a chip.
He eats the chip. He does not eat the chip with violence. He eats it with finicky delicacy, snapping it in half before eating one half and then the other.
He eats another chip.
Then the beer. Did Nicholas bring the beer, already opened? If he did not, Aidan opens it against their coffee table. If he did, Aidan takes a (broody) swig, holding the neck of the bottle between his thumb and forefinger.
Nicholas
The beer was already opened: the cap wasn't the twist off sort, and Nick brought it already open with the intent of preventing Aidan from opening it against the coffee table or another surface.
Nick lets him eat the chip. Nick doesn't rush him. He takes another swallow from the bottle of beer, letting the silence settle. He is comfortable in it, but he's aware that Aidan might not be, or of what might be Aidan's expectations. So after a moment, "You look like you're thinking about something."
Aidan
Aidan flicks his eyebrows up, a sarcastic inquiry of an expression. Ye-es, and?
Nicholas
Nick reaches for another chip. "Tell me about it."
Aidan
"No. Why do I gotta talk? Why don't you talk about something? Like my sister for instance. And whether your intentions are honorable, or you're just fucking around with her."
He looks: quite vulnerable, saying that, for all he sounds very belligerent or IS very belligerent. There's a certain clarity to his eyes, a certain slant of a glance, a certain je ne c'est quois about the way he twists the beer bottle around in his hands.
Nicholas
There is this quiet appraisal of the young man (kid) then, a sweep of the eyes that end with Nick's somewhat shadowed under eyelashes that are long and dark as a crow's wing. He contemplates the mouth of the bottle for a moment before his gaze redirects up to Aidan. "I love her in a way that I've never loved anything, or anyone," he says. "And I intend to be around for as long as she'll have me. I don't know whether that reassures you."
Aidan
[Obviously, I think you are a liar, so an empathy roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Nick is absolutely sincere. In fact, his speech is plain for this reason: Aidan has been correct when driving at the fact that he has difficulty talking about himself. He might like to say more about his very present and very deeply felt feelings, but he'd have a hard time doing that for Pen and it is more difficult doing that for this stranger.]
Aidan
"Reassures me about what? Whether your intentions are honorable?" Aidan rubs the side of his jaw. "I don't think I've heard you speak to those yet." He glances at the door, briefly. No Pen. Good. (Bad. Where is Pen?) "How'd you guys meet anyway?"
Nicholas
"All right. What constitutes honorable intention, to you?" He can't help but follow Aidan's glance toward the door. No Pen. Bad. (Could she rescue him from her brother, or will it just make the situation worse?)
There is a pause when Aidan asks how they met, because he has never had to consider how to explain this to a Sleeper before, particularly since he does not know what Pen has told her family she does for a living. It is only for a moment, the space between a breath in and a breath out. "It was kind of a random run-in with her and her friends, actually," he says. "I knew some of her friends and got to be friends with a few of them, so I started to see her more often."
Aidan
"So you went after her." Pause. "A random run-in like what - at a fucking bar or something? Which friends?"
Nicholas
[Now I am a lying liar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
"At a bookstore," Nick says, because some lies come without hesitation just because they sound right. He takes another long swallow from his bottle. "Thane and Liz. Have you met either of them?"
Aidan
[(glowerglare) Are you lying to me?!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Aidan
Aidan shrugs; it is a non-answer. He appears to have bought that Nick would meet Pen and some of her friends at a bookstore, though. Maybe he even seems softened, though Pen's desire to be inside bookstores baffles him sometimes (often). A lot about his older sister baffles the Siddals.
Nicholas
Aidan shrugs, and there is another moment in which Nick eyes him. He can imagine Aidan as Pen's brother, but perhaps it has added a new facet of her for him: it is hard to imagine them growing up in the same home together, with Pen as she is now. He might have let them sink back into silence, and indeed does for a moment, but: he is making the effort to talk.
There is this rueful little smile. "As to me going after her, I think it's more accurate to say that I hung around wanting to know her better and made myself available and gave her a few awkward compliments until she noticed. I probably went after her less than I would have most other people, honestly. She scared me."
Aidan
Aidan raises an eyebrow. "You like to be scared?"
Nicholas
"I like to be awed," Nick says, and perhaps cannot quite help the smile that lifts his eyebrows then, smooths out his face and pulls at his mouth. It is fond, and beneath that fondness, this shadow: reverence.
Aidan
"You're plenty odd," Aidan says, after a long -- too long -- beat. Maybe there's less aggression than there might otherwise be. Maybe it's tough to say. Nicholas doesn't know Aidan at all. "Congratulations."
"So what kind of shit do you do for fun, Nick?"
Nicholas
"I've heard that before," Nick says, because he has. Plenty of times, both when he was growing up (little starry-eyed boy that he was) and after he Awoke and the dreamy, spectral quality about him was made manifest.
"I go hiking and sometimes our friend Thane talks me into going rock climbing with him. I like to take pictures," and there is this glance toward the photos of his that he's brought with him, some of which are clustered on the wall near the canoe-shelf, a burst of imagery and color along the back wall. "I'm not especially good at it, but I like it. And I've been learning to garden."
Aidan
"I always imagined Elaine with somebody who was smart, liked to read and maybe fight too. She had a crush on the weirdest people when we were littler, so," and here, Aidan flashes one of his blinding smiles, as if to say at least one thing she was into has stayed steady, good for you. "Someone heroic. I guess you like doing active things because otherwise all you got is listening to other people trying to put their lives together. You do that in an office usually?"
Nicholas
"I've been reading more," he says, which is true. It isn't that he didn't before, but it has been a thing to share with her; and so. The barbs that are there, he ignores. "I work in a crisis center," he says.
The bottle of beer has been resting on his knee, half-full and crested with foam at the top, and he takes another swallow from it now. It makes the way in which he is eyeing Aidan a bit less obvious. "You really don't like counselors, do you?"
Aidan
"What makes you say that?" He sounds surprised, rather than sarcastic. Perhaps.
Nicholas
There is this second appraisal of Aidan. Are his eyes grey, that color of sword light and lake shadow, and do they widen that same way Pen's do when surprised? His hesitation is only to second guess the reply, which is "Instinct," and this quick little smile.
"If I think about it though," Nick says, "the things you've said just imply you don't seem to think it's a very useful profession."
Aidan
Elaine and Aidan do not have eyes the same shade of grey; Aidan's eyes are bluer, more May-sky all-the-time regardless of the surroundings; Aidan's eyes are never stormy. They are the same general shape: they do widen, just the same way.
Instinct, Nicholas says, and Aidan laughs once, sharp and loud, trailing a softer chuckle behind it like the sun skidding down the vault of heaven see and then sizzling this caught-in-the-throat sound.
"Lot of useless professions out there," Aidan says. "Doesn't mean I ain't gonna like the people who do them. That shit's fucked up. There people you don't like because they do some kinda work you don't approve of?"
Nicholas
Aidan laughs, and this pulls Nick's smile a bit wider, and there's that gleam, that sharpness in his eyes that will probably be one day a sight very familiar to Ari, It is transient as starlight (it'll return), and it fades when Aidan replies.
"Not really," he says. "I find things that I like about most people. It doesn't have to be their work."
Aidan
Aidan takes a pull from his beer, regards Nicholas over his fist and the bottle's butt. His eyes are sparkling, certainly, but that's just the light; that's just a trick, like mica chips obsidian glints found in granite or beach-washed stone; it lends him a genial air, or a hard one: you decide.
"Hmm," is his contribution, after. He is certainly trying to let Nicholas choose (force Nick into the position of someone who is choosing) the topics, drive the conversation.
Nicholas
Aidan is trying to force him to pick topics, and Aidan has refused to answer his questions which is how he often defaults to picking topics, and Nick: he's uneasy. Deeply so, perhaps. His eyes flick toward the door once, and yet still, no Pen. He knows where she is, and yet he can't help but wonder where she is.
"What was she like growing up? Pen," he says, as though it needed the clarification. "Elaine."
Nicholas
[Charisma + Empathy!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Nicholas
[Let's try that again. WP, I'm trying hard here.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Aidan
Aidan settles back deeper into the couch cushions, looking for a second like he's going to kick his feet up and put his shoes on the cushions. Something stops him, and he settles again. What was Penny like, growing up?
Aidan frowns, but it's a contemplative frown rather than a fuck-off how-dare-you frown. "What kinda story are you looking for exactly? My sister was just... I don't know, she was really cool in a way that didn't know it was cool because, God, all that reading and studying and shit, she should have been a nerd, but she wasn't somehow. Like really smart, you'd cut yourself against it except she never did that kind of thing. She liked to make things."
Nicholas
Something pleases Nick in what Aidan says; it's there in that smile that resurfaces now. It's not the sort of effusive thing he will sometimes, on rare occasions when caught off his guard, give to Pen in her presence. Here, in his home with her brother who is maybe just beginning to back down off of some of his hostility, he is still reserved. "I think she still doesn't know she's cool," he says.
And: he likes this about Pen, even though he'd like it as much though differently if she did know. Maybe this, too, isn't so hidden.
"Tell me a story about you and her." Nick twists a bit in the chair, lets his back lean against the chair's arm and swings both his legs against the other arm.
Aidan
Aidan's eyes sharpen at Nicholas's pleasure; he takes another glug of beer, adam's apple working. He puts the drink down on - a coaster. Like a thug. A true thug.
"Why don't you tell me a story about you and her first? Make me think you're actually gonna be good for her instead of some albatross or whatever."
A charmer's smile, unsheathed, snicker-snack, to take off some monster's head -- dimples deployed; eyes squinted up in evident camaraderie!
Nicholas
Evident camaraderie, but Nick is not fooled. Remember how he wove his way around each trap Penelope's mentor laid down for him, how he escaped a den of Hermetics with his pride (and pants) intact? He may like people, genuinely, but he naturally tends a bit toward wariness, and sometimes it serves him and sometimes it doesn't.
He also has no frame of reference for the kind of story a boyfriend is supposed to tell a brother. Remember too: he's never done this before. And his stories that don't involve some sort of undercurrent of their life-as-magi are few and far between. He has to search. "Pretty early on in our relationship," he begins, "before it really was a relationship, I guess, she and I met up at a bar to get drinks together. And there was a guy there who was getting - well, you know how some guys get when they can't pace themselves. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened but he got kind of belligerent with me, and I said something to him and he pushed me. Then the next thing I know she's getting between the two of us, staying really level like she does, you know, and...well, he backed down, anyway."
Nick: he's not the best at telling stories, it's been said. There's also this, that he doesn't know how to tell a story that presents the both of them in the best light, that he doesn't know how to talk about Pen and himself in a way that is especially flattering to himself.
He doesn't know what Aidan is looking for, and so he gives up trying to think about it. Or, at least, he tries.
"I just thought it was really cool. But she was self-conscious afterward, I think, and tried to play it off like she wasn't but...well, you know how she lies, I'm sure. So I just...I don't know. I joked about it, and we joked about it, and then we went off in the middle of the night to go down to the water and look for shells, and she talked about her poetry and I talked about things the water has given me. It was a good night."
A beat, and he shrugs. "It's not the most exciting story, but it's one of the kinds of nights I remember really well."
Aidan
[I'm totally looking into your soul, or trying to anyway, while you're telling me this story, because I want to know what you are feeling/what your motives are, jerkface mctoolbagio.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[There are parts of this story I am not telling you about.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Here's the mark of a good illusion: it always contains a little of what's real. It has to, in order to trick the eye or the ear or the mind; it has to be believable. He can tell that much of what Nick is saying is absolutely true, and he can tell that this is a fond memory for Nick, both because of his myriad and very warm feelings for Pen and because...well. There are probably parts of the story he's leaving out, shall we say.
An undercurrent, here: the discussion that they had after the fact, the things Pen perhaps shared with him about her poetry and what he shared about the water, that has multiple layers. It's deliberately vague because explaining that conversation would be impossible.]
Aidan
Aidan's lip curls like Peter Pan's, faced with the mystifying reality of a 'kiss' and 'girls,' at some point during Nicholas's story. He hides it behind another slug of the beer; his is practically gone now. He drank it quickly, but keeps his May blue eyes fastened on Nicholas, rubbing his knee slowly as he (fixates) stares.
"You read her poetry?"
Nicholas
The curl of Aidan's lip surprises Nick at first, and he has to wonder at it until he realizes - oh. There is this sidelong look toward Aidan, something that is not quite guilty, but has something of an apology in it, as though: well, to keep the metaphor, as though he has just admitted to Peter Pan that he kissed a girl once and didn't hate it.
"I didn't right then, but I've read it before. It's really good, I...well, she made me appreciate it in a way I didn't before," he says. "Have you read it?"
Aidan
"Of course I have," Aidan says, sounding surprised again. "We all have. We went to her poetry readings and shit back when she was littler. They were kind of boring, although there was," he pauses; reins himself in almost abruptly, this time the dimples are sheepish and he does flop against the side of the couch. Props his head up a second later, with his fist.
Nicholas
"There was what?" Nick tries to sound casual, but Aidan has had Mr. Hyde's number tonight, hasn't he. He's very curious, and moreso when he notices how sheepish Aidan is; he just can't help himself.
Aidan
"Somebody I liked who used to go to them. But I was a kid, nothin' much to look at then. Hey can I ask you something?" Aidan says. "Kinda personal something?"
[And he is the soul of innocence, too.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[You are not.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Nicholas
[Pen, when are you coming home? Are you home yet? Omg.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
Ah, insight and understanding.
Nicholas, at this moment, sees a lot more of Aidan than Aidan would want him to (ever) see. He can see straight to the weary and frustrated hurt, informing some of his barbs; shaping them up, because why should he always be the last to know? He can see straight to the heart of Aidan, intuit, see, just how much he adores his older sister, and how protective of her he is, and how some of (not all of) that protectiveness is filling dead man's shoes, is trying to be somebody he is not. He can intuit this from what he knows; he can intuit this from what he knows of the human heart; there's something about Aidan's mannerisms, see.
He knows when Aidan begins to lie. Aidan is a liar, and a good one, much better than Pen. Aidan lies by mixing lies with the truth all the time, and adeptly: he is going to ask Nicholas something that he wonders, truly, but only as he asks it; he is going to ask Nicholas something that is a springboard for an observation about Nicholas's character, and it isn't going to be flattering, and it is going to be mean.
Aidan doesn't think Nicholas has much of a spine; or rather, that the spine Nicholas has is the kind that lamprey guys have, the ones who latch onto somebody right before they try to control them and change their lives completely. Aidan thinks Nicholas is a heathen jackass, though he reluctantly can see why his sister would like him. Reluctance just makes him angry.
And he's furious at Pen, for moving in with this guy and not bothering to say anything; he's planning on taking a lot of that fury out on Nicholas.
He's also genuinely worried that Nick has pulled the wool over her eyes, has lied to her (he seems untrustworthy, Aidan thinks: shifty; can't stick to his guns; doesn't have a spine; really seems to like her but what does that mean, not that much).
It's not that he doesn't believe Nick, when Nick tells Aidan that he loves Pen. It's just that Aidan is pretty sure Nick loving Pen won't keep him from using her up or holding her back.
He's hoping to lull Nick with the way he is phrasing his innocent OH SO INNOCENT beginning question, to play upon what seems to be a natural sympathy/desire to elicit confessions from somebody other than himself, then bam chicka plow. TRAP.
Nicholas
Here's the thing: Nick has met men like Aidan before. There were things he perhaps suspected even before this moment of insight, this moment in which he notes this casually phrased question and the way Aidan covers up someone he used to like and he connects segments, assembles something of Aidan's core or perhaps that which is surrounding his core, trying to protect it.
He drains the last of his bottle and then reaches over to set it, with a hollow clink, on the end table. "That depends," he says. "You were going to tell me a story about you and her as kids, weren't you?"
Aidan
"Oh yeah, that's what I said I'd do." Aidan eyes Nicholas. "When we were kids huh. You want a certain kind of story, or just any story that has Elaine in it. You have siblings?"
Nicholas
"I have two sisters," he says, and his manner is not quite dismissive but: brief. Often when he speaks of his sisters if he mentions being a triplet, many people are immediately fascinated with that alone. "One lives in New York now and the other lives back in Arizona."
"I'd like any story about the two of you," he says. "I want to know more about how the two of you grew up. What it was like, and what you were like together."
Aidan
[Hmm... Charisma + PERFORMANCE, woo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Aidan
"All right," Aidan says, with a deep sigh, something he seems to have pulled up from the soles of his boots, release like it's the last hope for humanity, dove from the arc. Then he slaps his hands on his thighs and gets up, all energy. Plants his boots on the coffee table hauls himself up stands on it like a stage faces Nicholas directly and says, with Real Presence, in a quicksilver conjuring voice (a touch of sardonicism shines like sugar), "ATTEND CLOSELY, GENTLE AUDIENCE, BE PREPARED FOR THIS, a story of ELAINE SIDDAL and AIDAN SIDDAL, circa A LONG TIME AGO."
He stomps on the coffee table; it rattles. He drops into a crouch; rests one forearm against his knee; his other hand on his thigh; leans forward, precarious, so he is an awful lot closer to Nicholas, eyes fixed and hypnotic.
"Seven days that's longer than the Lord took to create the world since on the seventh day he rested. Seven days to come back round again according to the week we've decided should be our yoke. Seven days is a long time, seven days can't even fill up our hand. Seven days is how long I skipped school, not counting the weekend 'course, before Elaine found out. She comes to me and says, Aidan, you have to go to school."
"Why? I wanna know. I have a secret, though. I know why I have to go to school but I can't do it. If I go to school, something bad's going to happen. I don't tell her.
"Because, she tells me, if you don't go to school, you'll lose your place in life you'll trip and you'll stumble and besides Jeff will find out."
"Jeff's our step dad."
"He's an ogre at this point with a tongue made of eels dipped in silver who wears a crown and fucks our mom way too loudly, so we can hear it, then insists on hugging everybody really tightly."
"He never was in the marines but he likes to pretend he was. That means whippings. I say, let him find out. I hate school now."
"She says, I'm going to find out why you're not going."
"I don't want her to."
Pause. Pause. Pause. Aidan lofts his eyebrows. "The very next day," Aidan says, his voice gone quiet, "She comes back to me, and she says, Aidan I know what happened. You come with me."
"Don't tell Heath, I say. I can't imagine anything worse. He was our older brother."
"I'm not going to, she says, and she gives me a look that goes right through me so I take her hand and she walks me out of our neighborhood and far and away and to the train station where we sit. The train station looks like old glory but the old glory's all faded. We feel like that too."
"Eventually we get onto a train, right, and it takes us all the way to New York City, and Elaine, she takes me to the best place I ever been: guarded by dinosaurs, encased in light - it's snowing outside at this point, it's hard-packed and frozen - and inside there's a dome that has the whole of the fucking universe in it, right."
"Why the fuck are we here? I wanna know."
"I'm loud; she's not. She says: because you and me we're pretty big, even with all these stars doing their starry things. Listen to the story of the universe and then think about how we're sitting in the middle of it and we're big."
He claps his hands three times, still staring: mad-raptor.
"End of story."
Nicholas
End of story.
And Nick, he slow claps, THREE four five, the last one trailing off at the end, and he does it with grace and he does it to give credit where credit is due: this is Real Presence. He'd held Aidan's eyes, because in order to be hypnotized one has to be willing, one has to believe it's going to work, and he is, and does. He has unslung his legs from the arm of the chair, planted his bare feet firmly on the ground, has turned more fully to face Aidan while he speaks because this is how one shows proper respect to a performer.
Notice: this mention of Jeff, this glint at the alluded to what happened (and yes, he wants to know what happened, but he does not ask.) He says, "Thank you for telling me." This, too, gracious. He will leave some silence there, to give the moment its due, to give Aidan time to get down off of the coffee table and resume his seat of he likes.
Notice now, too, how his gaze is hooded, how he is thoughtful, how his eyes wander away from Aidan before he brings them back to bear. "Are you worried that I'm a Jeff?"
Aidan
"Naw," Aidan says, eyes gone hooded. He has indeed decided to get back on the couch; flops on it heavily. Has left shoe prints on the coffee table. "I don't worry you'll fuck my sister," vein goes flick-flick in his temple, "so loud we'll all hear. I mean: you snaked into her life so quietly we never even knew it happened. And I don't think you're gonna try and hug me," a grin, like they're sharing a joke; it could be a real joke. Maybe it even is. "I told you, I just liked that other guy she was with. Bet you don't even think about Penny's family any more than she does." He sighs, again: he meant it to be abrasive, but it came out melancholic.
Nicholas
Maybe it is a joke; Nick smiles as though it's a joke. (Maybe neither of them really know whether it is or not. Who can say, when their lies contain a little bit of truth?) It fades though, because there's this twinge in Nicholas at that tone, there, that undercurrent that he'd known was there but see it's different to hear it, and he cannot help but feel it too. "I think she does think about you. I would have liked to have known you before now," he says, quietly. "Maybe she wasn't ready. I don't know."
Except maybe he does know; maybe between what he knows of Heath and what he knows of Jonas and Miles and what he knows now, from Aidan, there is something approaching understanding here, something more whole. But who can say, really. "What did you like about the other guy?" This, genuinely curious.
Aidan
"Rob was cool. He had his shit together; you could just tell. Nothing much would phase him. He was solid. You seem like you can't wait to finish turning into moonlight or what the fuck ever." Brief pause. "And he was pretty rich too. Who doesn't want their sister to land some rich guy."
"Why don't you tell me a story about you and your sisters, while we're fucking bonding and all."
Nicholas
Nick can't remember where exactly he learned that Pen and Rob were together once: some comment by someone else or some allusion to what was (or maybe Liz: probably Liz.) He has been unfazed by this thus far, because it's abstract and Nicholas is typically not the jealous type, he doesn't run hot. But God help him: something in what Aidan says sluices through his guts like icemelt, and maybe for just a moment
he hates him.
But just a moment. Rob is his friend; Pen is with Nick now, and he had asked because Aidan's impression would tell him more about Aidan than about Nick himself: this is still true. "Rob is a strong guy, in his way, that's true," he says, because he must say something like this.
"What kind of story do you want?"
Aidan
[Oh! But I'm a dick! Can I tell that I got to you? :D :D :D :D]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[Nope. Hopefully.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[Cmon. I totally can, right.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Ughhhhh you are the worst]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[THE WORST]
Aidan
[o/]
Nicholas
[Aidan can tell that something in what he said struck Nick, just so. Something at around the point that he said had his shit together, at around the point when he said solid. Some embedded insecurity, perhaps. It doesn't even have to be true; Nicholas doesn't even have to believe it's true, necessarily. Sometimes fear is enough.
He is also entirely conscious of his own response.]
Aidan
Aidan looks at Nicholas through the veil of his eyelashes, for his eyes have gone hooded as Nicholas concedes that Rob is a 'strong' guy, and see; he smiles again. Nicholas and Aidan are absolutely bonding, in a way.
"A story from when you were a teenager."
Nicholas
Bonding doesn't always look pleasant, and not all relationships are meant to be harmonious. Nick cannot quite hide his discomfort when Aidan asks after a story from when he was a teenager: not from Aidan, and not tonight. Aidan is more practiced (or perhaps just better) at Nick's sort of deception than Nick is, at least right now, and maybe it lends him insight.
"That involves my sisters? Hm." There is this fleeting wish that he had not finished his beer, evidenced by the glance he flicks toward it; at the very least it is something to occupy his hands and mouth.
"I'm not much of a storyteller," he says, as though Aidan couldn't tell from the past story he just told about himself and Pen not so long ago. His voice holds traces of apology. "The three of us are triplets: Anna, April and myself."
"Our mother kept to her room so often when she wasn't working that she never remarried. The three of us would pretend that we were on a quest, or an adventure, or that we lived in an old cottage at the end of the world and the other people we knew were all people who would come by asking us for favors or wanting something from us. Anna, she started that. She'd say, they're here again and she'd name the favor they'd come to ask. April would say, they don't matter. Do your homework and could you run this up to Mom? And I...wouldn't say anything."
"There was an abandoned old house a couple of blocks over, where the neighborhood got bad, and we used to hide stuff there. Anna would hide paintings by doing them on the walls and the floors, and April drafted these rules for what we could and couldn't do in the house. April kicked walls and doors there when she got angry and took half the house apart." A beat. "I suppose I'd...hide myself."
"So eventually we started planning our secession, like it was our house and only we could say who could come and go. Like Mom could just work, and our uncle wouldn't be allowed over, and Anna said she'd curse children's services if they tried to come find us. We'd come in sometimes and find things other people had left."
"The city set the house up to be demolished, not too long after, because they were trying to clear out blighted buildings. And we..." This little trace of a smile here. "We thought we were being rebellious, ripping up markers and tearing down signs the demo crew left. It didn't stop anything though. The house was falling apart. We came back one day and it was just a bunch of rocks and a fenced off basement. So Anna started planning our next adventure."
A wave of hand. End of story, perhaps, as much as these stories have an ending.
Aidan
Aidan doesn't interrupt or try to make the telling any harder for Nicholas than it already is. He's curious about the kind of man who is living with his sister, curious about the kind of story he might tell about his. He does crunch the chips, and chips crunch loudly. But beyond that, he's just quiet and intent and perhaps more like Elaine than he has otherwise been.
Nicholas hand waves. Aidan cocks an eyebrow.
"Did they boss you around because you were the only boy?"
Nicholas
Nick reaches for one of the chips, crunches it in against the inside of his cheek, flattens it with his back molars. "No." He stops chewing, but only to think, because he has to think before he adds, "I did always feel like they shared something together that I couldn't understand, though."
Aidan
"Huh. So Nicholas tell me - "
and Aidan sits forward, elbows planted on his knees.
" - the people you've been with in the past, hooked up with dated whatever, were they usually happy once you moved on or what?"
Nicholas
Ah. This. This is the personal question.
It is the personal question that has no correct answer. Nick's eyelashes flutter, only briefly, as he glances Aidan's direction and blinks.
"I think some were, and some probably weren't. I don't know if I can generalize it in that way. But I have almost always parted with people on good terms."
Aidan
"You think if Elaine dumped your ass tonight - I know she's not gonna, she's gotta like you - you'd part on good terms?"
Aidan: certainly tries to ask this, and, in asking this, seem just a bit brusque, just a bit clueless, tries to present it like a thought exercise instead of what it is:
a prodding, a poking, a peeling away at what he thinks of as Nicholas's (well, creepy guy's) mask.
Nicholas
Nick's eyes often wander during conversation. There are indeed times where he doesn't seem as though he's fully present, where he might seem as though his thoughts are twisting back and forward on themselves and constantly weaving in new threads. It might make the way he is looking at Aidan now all the more disconcerting, because it is steady, and unwavering, and too intense about it, as though he'd flay Aidan's layers away too if he could just to understand what's beneath them.
It cannot last, because his answer is honest, and talking about Pen in any way necessarily softens him. "I think I would make them good terms, if it would make it easier on her."
Nicholas
[Perception + Alertness?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[Me too.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
"Bull."
Aidan might have said more; unfortunately (or, well, fortunately?) his full response to Nicholas's remark has to, necessarily, fall by the wayside. Nicholas notices first; sound on the stairs, in the hall; scrape of a key in the lock. Aidan notices when the doorknob turns; he glances toward the door, then back at Nicholas. He sinks deeper into the couch.
They both have a moment before Pen comes in. The lock sticks, sometimes.
Nicholas
Bull, says Aidan, and Nicholas only raises his eyebrows in a pair of smooth arcs, mirrored in the furrowing of his forehead. Aidan could tell when Nick noted the footsteps coming up the stairs; they normally wouldn't have given him a second thought because he knows their rhythm, but there's this flicker of relief in his expression.
He eyes Aidan for a moment as though daring him to say more. And he waits.
Aidan
The door opens by degrees because Pen is holding three bags, one which is her sword bag, full of clinking metal and awkwardness; two of which contain Chinese food, and one of which wants to give her nose a paper-cut. She juggles them as best she can, along with the key.
"I am returned home, Nicholas!" she calls, sing-song, "And I have brought us such a feast that even - "
Beat. Pen freezes; her eyes are gone wide. "Aidan!"
"Surprise," Aidan says, sardonically. He drags himself to his feet and, shooting Nicholas a look which is serpent-subtle and gives nothing away of his feelings at all (perhaps [we'll see]), then he lopes across the apartment floor to unburden Pen of her bags, setting them down - where-ever. The coffee table, probably. "Speaking of just met your boyfriend."
[Aidan is such a good poker player. He neutral-to-likes Nick.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Aidan
[Pen: *squint*]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[This has definitely gone so well!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Nicholas
Nick can't hide, or doesn't, the way a smile leaps to his face at her sing-song, though his face too freezes as Pen stops and says her brother's name. Aidan beats him to Pen, takes the bags and sets them where-ever (does he notice that clattering of the swords, and does it surprise him?)
"We've just been talking while you were gone," he says to her. "Aidan caught me a little off guard too and I lost track of time. I'm sorry, I should have texted to let you know."
There is this glance of apology, and that is all. His expression is subtle too, though it is hedged in by warmth, by affection for Pen and by this general sense of well-being he is exuding.
Aidan
[Pen: *squint at you, too*]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Aidan
"I lost my phone or I would have texted you," Aidan says, soulfully. The clattering of swords do not surprise him. There are swords on Pen's walls. Her family thinks of her as a bohemian artist: strange, another species. Another species by choice. That's an important distinction: an important undercurrent to the resentment and affection which will well up, at odd moments. Nicholas may one day become used to it. Now, though. Aidan is being soulful, and after he sets the bags down (food on the coffee table, swords on the ground beside the couch), he hugs Pen. Bear-hug. His arms are very well-defined.
Penelope is not a good poker player (although she is a reckless one). Her eyes have gone wide, yes, and perhaps both Nicholas and Aidan can detect the frisson of tension after Aidan says he met her boyfriend, throughout Nicholas saying they've just been talking, but they both put her at her ease. Their lying lying masks, this sense although she gives them both a sluice of a clear-eyed look that Aidan doesn't hate Nicholas and Nicholas is pleased with the way his conversation with Aidan has gone so far. The tension eases; she hugs Aidan back. Aidan is taller.
"It's quite all right. I wasn't checking my phone anyway. Aidan, you look good. Is it just you?"
"Uh huh," Aidan says, somewhat meaningfully.
Pen is: feeling wrong-footed, or wrong. She does not flush and she does not make any nervous gestures, but she tucks one strand of hair back behind her ear and does not immdiately collapse across Nicholas's lap and kiss him. "Then you should stay for dinner," she says.
"I'd like that," Aidan replies, all earnest (and soulful, the very soul of innocence - as far as his sister knows). He flicks a glance toward Nicholas; will meet his eyes if Nick is looking at him and blink once twice rapidly. "Your boyfriend was telling me about how good most people he hooked up with felt afterward. Not all of them, but some of them. And he was talking about his job, a little."
Nicholas
Just you, and that meaningful acknowledgement, and Nick absorbs this interaction and the body language and the way the invitation to dinner is made and he knows: something else is up. It, as much as the way Aidan has responded to him so far, keeps him from crossing the room to Pen and folding his arms around her and kissing her, even though he might want to (he most assuredly wants to.)
He plucks instead at the hem of his T-shirt, straightening it around his waist, and then leans over to open the bags to lend them a little privacy. Thus he is not looking over at Aidan, when Aidan looks at him, and the look he flicks up to Pen's brother has this look of surprise, maybe of betrayal, Caesar when the first knife found him. "That's not what - "
Nick stops himself. Pen knows: this was a weight for him, and maybe he's told her more since then or maybe not, but regardless, maybe she knows that this threw him maybe in a way Aidan didn't even guess at beforehand. He is more composed now, though. "Aidan just wanted to know about me. He told me a story about the two of you, when you were kids."
Aidan
Pen's gaze: turns inward, at Aidan's description of his conversation with Nicholas; turns reflective, in a way that strives to be opaque. She is taken aback but being taken aback does not stop her, see. That's not what -
Both Siddals look at Nicholas. The way they hold their head is the same.
Different, though. Different connotation, different subtext.
Pen's gray eyes are warm; Aidan's May blue eyes are as cold as a rock.
"Which one?" Pen asks, giving Aidan a little push toward the couch. Rather than join him there, she stops by Nicholas's hair, and rests her hand on the back of it, close enough that when he is not bent over the food she'll at least be able to feel the warmth come up from him.
"When we went to the Natural History Museum," Aidan says.
"Ah. What a kind memory."
"One of the best ditch days of my life," Aidan says, with a charming sizzle devil may care grin, pushing his fingers through his bangs (such as they are), and it might even be true. "Figured it'd do your boy there to think about how he is in relation to the universe too."
"Did you?" Pen sounds a mixture of wary and amused.
"Sure did," Aidan says. "He's gonna go boxing with me."
[Statement of fact roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
[Aidan, pshaw, I can lie better than that! LIE OR BOTCH!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Aidan
[Pen: -_-]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
[Pen: *rage-flip*
Aidan: :D :D :D]
Nicholas
He is removing containers from the bags, though when the warmth of Pen's hand settles on his curls, maybe just brushes them. The ridge of his shoulders soften when she does this, as a charcoal sketch will when smudged with a thumb, as the tension smooths out of them. "I am absolutely not going boxing," he says: and this is a mellow thing, calm.
"Win any duels today, Pen?"
Aidan
[Yet another manipulation roll!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[>.<]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
[Cmon man.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[Come ooooooon]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
Perhaps Nicholas can appreciate how Aidan, at his quicksilveriest, at his most mercurial, does hold a pose; commits to it. Perhaps Nicholas can appreciate this, even as, last minute, he manages to see through it: the way Aidan opens his mouth; suspends his answer, as if disappointed or confused; even the wry curl of his mouth, self-deprecating self-blaming rather than blaming of someone else. Lies, all. All that vulnerability, lies. He says, "Oh. Oh man. I'm sorry, I fucking thought you'd implied you wanted to, with the hobbies, I dunno, shit."
But see, Nicholas can see the edge -- it's a knife's blade edge -- surfacing there; in the way he looks at Nick. Like he'd like to just slice him.
He is absolutely trying to make him look bad.
"I did not, but it was just a day of exercises," Pen says, and then: she is stung into guilt; says to Aidan, "I'll go boxing with you."
"Enh," Aidan says. "You kinda suck at boxing though."
"So does Nicholas," Pen says.
Aidan grins. "I was gonna offer to teach him, but it's all right."
Nicholas
Sometimes secrets are a burden, and get this: they only become a burden when there's someone you would very much like to tell the secret to, someone you care deeply about enough that it matters more than the keeping. Unvoiced love and unrequited longing and deep hatreds and the things that shame us: often the silence is more of a pang than the feeling itself.
This is all to say that Nick is regretting that he pretended that things were all right, when Pen first came in the door. He knows she's unlikely to see through Aidan. He lied to spare her, and a part of him wishes he had not, because now he is left alone with it.
"I don't think I'd be much of a challenge, so it probably wouldn't be much fun," he says easily. "We could always find something else to do, though."
Aidan
"Like what?" Aidan wants to know.
Pen has rested her hip against Nicholas's chair; now she straightens; now she goes to the kitchen area, pulling out a plate. Two plates, if Nicholas is in the habit of wanting one with his Chinese takeout. Pen likes to eat out of the cartons.
Nicholas
"You could come rock climbing with me and Thane, maybe," Nick says, and if he debates his answer, if he had for a half-a-second considered suggesting something Aidan could never be good at and would never be good at, they will not know.
He, too, prefers to eat out of the carton. It has the added benefit of producing fewer dishes. There is this fond glance that follows Pen as she wanders into the kitchen, though his attention returns to Aidan before long.
Aidan
[Or will I know? *squint* -- Aidan.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Nope!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Aidan
[But wait, can -I- see through you? *squint!* -- Pen.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Can you?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[O_O?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nicholas
[There are undercurrents here, Ms. Mercury.
Pen can tell this from Nick, who is maybe less okay with how the conversation has gone than he has let on. His perception of the situation - perhaps it is true and perhaps not, Aidan has been difficult to read after all - is that Aidan has been hostile to him. Aidan has poked often and deeply enough tonight that Nick wants to poke back, and this is an urge he is resisting because he could be cruel, and he doesn't want to be cruel. More than that, he loves loves loves Pen and wants to get along with her family, and wants her to feel good about him being around her family.]
Aidan
[Aidan: I'm also totally gonna be Manipulative again, quelle shock!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Jerk.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
[Psht.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[Nope I can see through it! Probably.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
Pen glances over her shoulder as Nicholas suggests rock-climbing: her gaze settles on Nicholas as evening will settle on the horizon after twilight, just at the moment of bat-song and moon-rise; she turns quickly to the cabinet just after. She looks at the plate she has pulled out; holds it in both hands.
Aidan flicks a quick glance toward Pen. Who knows what it means? Not Nicholas; not Pen, who isn't looking at him. He leans back; rests his elbow against the back of the couch and says, "Naw, man, naw naw. If we're gonna hang out I'd rather just you. I mean as long as you want to make things easy while you're around and stuff. I like easy shit. Elaine never did though. She used to ask for extra homework."
Pen hands Aidan the plate; has brought a fork, too, the better to -- witness now -- dump a great deal of noodles on Aidan's plate, and then some kung pao chicken, some vegetables, some white rice.
Her smile is slight; a tenuous gleam. "Untrue."
"Do you think Nick was probly a nerd in high school?" Aidan asks Pen.
"Nope," Pen says. "I think he was probably the hot - " (you asked, Aidan) " - loner. I would have fallen for him like a meteor."
"Huh." Aidan says. "So what about that bonding, Nick. Since Elaine seems to like you so much."
Aidan
[Pen, also: it is MY turn to hide something!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Nicholas
[Pen...]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
[Yeah sis?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Aidan
Pen is: tensing up, dreading some Thing; anxious; is steeling herself, see.
Nicholas
"Extra homework?" Nick flicks a glance up toward Pen as she returns to them the way the sun makes its full circle at night's end, back around, and he smiles.
He reaches into the bag and finds one of the pairs of packaged chopsticks and pulls at a corner to open it at the top, breaks them apart with a little matchstick snap. "I was a lot nerdier in college than in high school. I was just a little bit of an academic late bloomer, I guess. What were you like, Aidan?"
One of his hands reaches for a carton, though as Aidan stops talking this next time, there is a look to Pen that lingers a split second longer than it might otherwise have, and the hand makes a half-circuit to smooth against the small of her back instead. He lets it rest there, runs his fingertips over the hollow dip of her spine. "Sure, we can. I think you'd like Thane though, he's pretty easygoing. Everybody likes Thane."
And Thane talks. A lot. Bless him.
Aidan
[Mmm... a Pen WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Aidan
"I didn't go to school that much. I didn't like it." That's what he was like.
Aidan considers Nicholas. He has something he wants to say, but he still wants Pen to think he might have neutral to good feelings about Nick, and if he says what he wants to say it will be pretty obvious. The knife's gleam in his cold eyes (eyes that grow colder, cold front, killing front) stays. He just decides to try for poisonous innocence and damned the consequences when Pen saves him and Nicholas (sort of).
She saves them by:
okay, Pen closes her eyes (a sweet expression, a listening expression [shadowed by ardence], is there: expressed in the curve of her mouth, the movement of her eyelids) when Nicholas touches her back. Then, gracelessly, she sits on the floor in front of his chair, across from Aidan, between Nicholas's feet, reaches for a carton which has sweet pork buns. "Listen, Aidan…"
"I wasn't going to tell anybody yet, but Nick and I live together."
Which Aidan is already aware of, but telling him: has Pen
very tense.
Aidan
[Aidan: doo dee doo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Nicholas
[I totally did not already tell him this.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Also, Aidan, you are a liar.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
[Pen: Nick, you totally did not tell him this. No eyesight bonus!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[Pen: Aidan, what up.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[Pen: DAMN IT, why do you guys keep successfully lying to me.]
Aidan
Aidan is a lying liar. He is very good at it. He is gearing up for a lie: but Nicholas, he probably gets the idea that the lie is meant to continue to foster this lie that Nick and Aidan are, together, spinning; that they do not dislike one another; that everything is all right; that they certainly didn't talk about Pen in a way she probably wouldn't like.
He's going to turn this, somehow.
Nicholas
"That's actually kind of a surprise. You seem like a smart guy," Nick says, as Pen lacking her usual grace falls between his feet. He doesn't reach for a carton yet, instead reaching out and pulling a few strands of hair out of her face, back behind her ear, where he smooths his hand over it and the back of her neck. He watches the ripple, as though it were sunlight trapped in metal, in a red blade.
The pork buns she is bringing back are a distraction, and he reaches for one too after she has taken one first.
Pen tenses, and Pen: tells Aidan something that Nicholas told him very early on in their conversation. Nick falls quiet, and he fills his mouth with pork and bun, and chews quietly. One of his legs slants in so that his knee can rest lightly against her shoulder. He's nonchalant.
At least, until he catches that glint in Aidan's eye, at which point he draws in a breath and he says, "I might have already told Aidan that, Pen. I wasn't sure who he was at first and I didn't...think. I'm sorry."
Aidan
[Aidan: Fine, I'll just make this very awkward. I think this would be Manipulation + Expression.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
Pen does not move when Nicholas smooths her hair back, smooths his fingers down her nape; she holds herself very still (this is when the tension is there, ratcheting up; when she tries to hide it, keep it sheathed). When Nicholas's knee touches her shoulder, she leans (and this is subtle, this is infinitesimally small) into that nonchalance, and then -
oh. He already - ? He -
Pen tilts her head back so it rests against the seat's edge; looks up (and upside down) at Nicholas. Aidan can see: the slant of her jaw, the exposed length of her white throat, and something searching but affectionate in the (stricken) look she gives Nicholas.
Aidan has shoveled some food in his mouth; swallowed. There's sauce at the corners of his mouth now, a daub of it on his chin. He licks his chops, and - yes. There's a scowl when Nicholas gives up the game.
Pen wraps a hand around Nick's ankle. "Oh," she says.
Aidan, then: "Yeah. He told me all about how you stayed at each other's places all the time," his voice is heavy; heavy with innuendo, with this distant and hurt thing; he makes it sound like Nick brought the topic up, that it wasn't entirely appropriate. Aidan has a certain skill set. "So he figured why not just fucking make it official already."
Nicholas
Heavy, heavy innuendo, and Nick occupies his mouth for a moment with more of the bun. At the rate he'll have to go it's going to be gone before long.
After Aidan has said this, he finishes chewing and swallowing, and then he lowers his hand, gives Aidan his full attention. If Aidan is looking in his direction, their eyes will meet, will lock. And he says, "I regret that that's how you heard what I said. I'd thought at the time that you might be family and I really didn't think about how it might be for you to hear that. I'm sorry."
His voice is quiet, laced with contrition and still, also, with this easy sort of warmth and understanding: or, attempts at it. It's searching.
Aidan
[Seems like it's time to try The Look on one's little brother.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Aidan
[Pft]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
Their eyes do lock. Aidan bites into an egg roll, which explodes against his teeth. The golden crust flakes and explodes, bean-sprouts and cabbage escaping and other vegetables escaping, because it's a messy prospect: biting like that into a very crispy egg roll. The crunching is quite loud, rolling over Nicholas's gracious text book perfect apology. Aidan bats a lash, rolls his tongue over his teeth, sucking vegetables away, and then he says, "Jesus Christ, you don't gotta be so fucking careful all the time. This Curly Sue, Elaine? Really?"
"Aidan," Elaine says, and Nicholas cannot see the Look she gives Aidan, although he can hear how level her tone is. A Look that he is well familiar with, which just now, when he is being brazen and brash, confers on him a sort of immunity, because he is after all the righteous one tonight. He didn't do anything wrong, Elaine did.
Aidan shrugs, expansively. "What? Sorry, I'm just not that interested in your boyfriend's apologies. Doesn't it get on your nerves how he talks?"
"How you talk is getting on my nerves," Pen says, this white heat creeping into her tone, in spite of how level it stays. Two passionate people aren't always good around one another. "You know you're being an asshole, so stop it."
"Sure," Aidan says. "I do know I'm being an asshole. Sorry, Nick."
Nicholas
It's true: Nick could probably be less careful. It might even be good for him, being less careful, acting based only on what he feels at the time. It might be good for him, and yet there are some things that are so intrinsic to a person that trying not to do it would feel like cutting off a finger, or a toe, or choosing to cover one eye indefinitely.
He takes another bite from his bun while the two of them back-and-forth.
"Don't worry about it," he says, and pops the rest into his mouth. It's too large a bite, and so for a while his mouth is going to be occupied with chewing, which is fine because he didn't plan to say anything more anyway.
Aidan
"I'll try not to," Aidan says, with glib crust-of-sugar blitheness. He crams another egg roll into his mouth, and look his mouth is also too occupied to say anything.
Which leaves Pen, reaching up to bury her fingers in her hair, rest her elbow on Nick's knee, rest her cheek on her upper arm, knead the muscles of her neck: a sluice-away-of-this gesture, away, away.
"You're the first one I'd have asked to meet Nicholas," Pen says, gravely. "You have good eyes, when you want to use them fairly."
Aidan's ears turn pink and he half-scowls, but shrugs again. He starts to say something, but his mouth is very full of food and it is unintelligible. He swallows, then chokes because he swallowed too much.
"Let's not get fucking sappy Penny, I'm sure Nick doesn't want to see that and besides I'm just looking forward to MM's reaction," a blissed out grin: it is absolutely evil, and it includes Nicholas, this impish little flicker (cold at its heart). "So you were uh dueling people? For that club you're in?"
"No duels, just practice, as I said; but yes. I'm learning how to use an ax."
"Badass, but kinda useless unless you wanna chop down trees I think. Hey Nick do you know how to chop down trees or do any manly type useful shit?"
Nicholas
Nick, while they are talking, is debating reaching for more food, but keeps his hand resting on his knee for the moment. Aidan's ears turn pink, and Pen is digging her fingertips into the back of her neck, and so he instead reaches over to Pen, the ball of his thumb finding the spot where her fingertips are kneading and pressing in carefully. Eventually it finds its way up to the base of her skull.
"A broad axe?" he asks Pen, because he is curious.
Then, to Aidan, "I know how to shoot a gun." His voice is dispassionate, flat. It may actually be the only manly thing he knows how to do. "My uncle taught me."
Aidan
"Mm." A broad axe. "And a tabar," as Nicholas's thumb finds the spot her fingers are pressing on, replaces her fingers which curl away to let Nicholas work her instead. There is a stitch comes between her brows, concentration. She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them and continues to (clear-eyed, bright-eyed) watch her younger brother. There is a reserve; it is natural; it is leashed. Now that the heat has left her. "My teacher - " and she doesn't use names in front of Aidan; perhaps Nicholas will notice. " - thinks it useful for there to be a hands-on component for all manner of weights, so we're going to try throwing tomahawks next."
"Sounds like a cool and weird summer camp," Aidan says, around more food. He casts a long look at his empty beer bottle, and then says with a laugh, "What, man? A gun? That's what you think manly useful type shit is, shooting things up?"
He raises his voice to hurry on cut Pen off, because he can feel her about to say something:
"I guess there are always fucking hunters in the woods, one clipped our brother Charles once because he forgot to wear blaze orange. I meant more like can you start a fire or box. You sure you don't wanna come boxing with me?"
Soulful is Aidan, soulful and innocent.
[SRSLY SO INNOCENT!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nicholas
[Liar.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Nicholas
A tabar. Nicholas is entirely sure he is going to be Googling 'tabar' later to find out what she is talking about; if Aidan weren't here he'd be on his phone doing it already. His thumb moves down to the base of her neck, where it meets her shoulders, pressing in where it finds knots and moving in careful circles. "Where does he even find his tomahawks?"
Perhaps he shouldn't ask this. He imagines there are all kinds of Hermetic smiths and metalworkers and stoneworkers who excel in this very thing, creating weapons solely for the purpose of allowing their apprentices and initiates to practice.
Aidan's laugh draws Nick's eyes over to him, and in spite of their amber hue they are cool, they just manage to be so. This is only for a moment, before his mouth quirks and, with humor, "No thanks, I like my face as it is." A beat. "You seem very invested in my manliness, Aidan. What's up with that?"
Aidan
"He might make them," Pen murmurs, quiet. Mm, a pork bun: cheek still against her arm her arm still resting on Nick's knee she chews neatly on the treasure; the steam feeds her as much as the bread and meat.
Nicholas and Aidan.
Pen is watchful of Aidan; observant, or trying to be:
Aidan, who is smiling at Nicholas, and sets his plate down on the coffee table, hovering here and there before he finds enough blank surface. He takes a chunk of sticky rice in his fingers and means to glob it in his mouth that-a-way, like a pig. Or a savage. Or a person who eschews utensils.
Before he does, though, he says, "I dunno. I like the underdog?"
Aidan
[Yes, I am watchful of you Aidan. What's up.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 4, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Aidan
[Nothin', gawd.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
Aidan
[!!!]
Nicholas
[Something is most assuredly up.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
Aidan
What Nicholas will be able to deduce:
Aidan is at the point where he wants to stop focusing his 'make you uncomfortable' powers on Nicholas, and focus them on Elaine: she's too nonchalant, considering the fact that she has basically been lying to him and everybody for who knows how long. Aidan is definitely somebody who lashes out in this way, or can if he lets himself. He wants something, some reaction, from his sister that he isn't getting.
He feels left out; he always feels left out. His feelings are actually quite hurt, and there's likely nothing that can be said at this point to unhurt them: it has to run its course.
He was starving, too. And now he is feeling a bit nauseated from eating so quickly.
He also feels like Nick is just not the guy, but Aidan seems to think that his sister isn't going to listen to anything he says about him; it's in the resigned way he doesn't say anything more overt than he has, and that usually in a handwave-away way. He watches them together and he dislikes it.
He came by for a specific purpose, but he's also thinking about leaving that for another day, since he doesn't wanna talk in front of Nick.
Nicholas
Nick pauses in the one-handed kneading of the back of Pen's neck only long enough to lean over her to pick up one of the egg rolls. It helps hide the pity, and perhaps some of the weariness that is setting in since he has to be in a conversation with someone who is deliberately trying to provoke him for longer than an hour span of time.
There is an affectionate squeeze of the back of Pen's neck before he lifts his hand to cup it under his mouth as he takes a bite from the egg roll, necessary to keep flakes of wrapper from falling in Pen's hair.
He chews and swallows before he says, "I do too. So, out of curiosity, did you ever do any writing or artwork yourself, Aidan? You were a pretty talented storyteller earlier. I bet Pen would like to hear you retell it sometime."
Aidan
"I told you, I work," Aidan says. "I don't got time to do any writing or artwork really. I can play music okay though. Used to sing in Church, before my balls dropped and I lost my pretty soprano," and he flashes a grin, one dimple coming to the fore.
"You ever read your rambly journal thoughts out loud to Penny?"
Nicholas
Aidan says he doesn't have time, and Nick gently bumps his knee against Pen's shoulder again. He might've chosen that moment to resume rubbing the back of her neck, but his mouth is full of egg roll and his hand is full of pastry flakes.
"No," he says, "but that's because it's not especially eloquent. I would if you wanted me to, though, Pen."
Aidan
Pen glances over her shoulder; smiles faintly, and says, "Caw," when he bumps her shoulder.
Then she straightens so she is not leaning against Nicholas's leg any longer, just his chair, one leg tucked beneath her the other one beneath the coffee table. She unwraps a pair of chopsticks, snaps them apart, then clicks them in the air before reaching for some other dumpling from some other carton, steaming still. The stitch is still between her eyebrows; the tension is still knotting her shoulders.
"Thank you."
"We could go to a barber shop together," AIdan says. "Get shaves and hair cuts."
"Nick doesn't need a hair cut," Pen says. "He has Bacchus-curls right now."
Aidan smirks in an ah hah sort of way, but says, "It's nice to have some other dude shave your face it's all fucking decadent. Can you make anything, Nick? Or fix things?"
Nicholas
Nick finishes the egg roll, and still chewing leans over Pen to brush the crumbs from his hands and into one of the discarded cartons. There'd been this moment, see, when Aidan suggested shaves and hair cuts at a barber shop and Pen jumped in when he'd almost flatly refused; and fortunately, Pen did step in.
It leaves him time to chew and swallow before he answers. "No, not really, other than cooking and fixing things around the house sometimes. Is it important to you that I can?"
There is another flash of humor. "I'm starting to feel a little like you should be shining a light in my face, and I feel like we've been talking a lot about me. What do you do for fun?"
Aidan
"Interrogate people," Aidan deadpans. "It gives me a sense of control over a chaotic world."
Pen: had just wrapped her hands around Nicholas's calves and glanced back at him again; inquisitive, watchful, a questant creature.
[Empathy roll from Pen, bc!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
[Aww. Sorry, Pen, I'm not trying to mask at you, but...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
Aidan deadpans, and Nick smiles, all innocence. All obliviousness. "It's big of you to admit that." A beat, and then, helpful: "I'm sure other people would like it if you put yourself out there more, though."
Pen knows he absolutely did not miss the implication. Pen also knows: he is tiring, and is somewhat resigned to Aidan just being angry, and waiting for it to run its course the way one would when a child is throwing a tantrum.
He takes his chopsticks back up, and reaches for some other steamed something or other.
Aidan
"You mean I should interrogate people more," Aidan says.
Nick reaches for some steamed something or other. Pen studies his face (such an odd angle, but she is an artist. She finds all the angles interesting) for a scant moment, then she takes up her chopsticks and quicksilver (Mercury) steals the food from Nick's chopsticks and pops the steamed something or other into her own mouth.
"Speaking of interrogation, Aidan," Pen says, and Aidan loses whatever traces of a smug smirk he'd had. He looks at her seriously, his blue eyes cautious. "Do you want to go for a walk with me? Since you didn't know about Nick you can't have meant to come over and hang with him." Slender pause. "Everything's okay?"
Before Aidan answers, he flicks a glance Nick-ward.
[And an empathy roll from Aidan!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Nope nope nope!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nicholas
There is a flicker of dismay as Pen so quickly steals the food from his chopsticks, like some bird of prey plucking a fish from water. "Not fair, you're still warmed up from dueling," he says, and then leans down to place a kiss on the crown of her head. He leans over her again to get another piece of steamed something or other, this time with a wary glance and a wide berth.
There is this look from Pen to Aidan as she suggests that Aidan go walking with her. He doesn't argue; he has known after all, and suspected earlier than that, that there is some unspoken dynamic here, something that isn't being said.
He is still unflapped though, or appears to be so; he exudes this peaceful calm that Aidan has seen him strive after all evening, and perhaps he has finally reached it. "I can go out for a bit too, if you would both rather have the apartment to talk."
Aidan
The wary glance is deserved; Pen's chopsticks are ready to steal, once more, from Nicholas's, and no kiss on the crown of her head is enough to stop them!
Chopstick click, click-click, stab-dive.
"Don't be silly; I'm not kicking you out of our home," Penelope says, and she sounds amused, although there's a solemn undercurrent, a bright and lively (livid) edge, more for Aidan than for Nicholas.
Aidan says, "I feel like shit anyway. Should probably go before I baptize your bathroom," and he is being deliberately gross, in a rather hopeful way. He is annoyed that Nick has become serene. He hauls himself up to his feet, hands finding his pockets. He's waiting for Pen to get up, too.
Nicholas
Nick tries to get his chopsticks out of the way in time, but Pen is much quicker than he is; the stab-dive is fruitful, graceful and delicate even, as it must be to seize the food without either dropping it or splitting it in two. There is a mournful glance back at the carton. Dare he try again?
And Pen, see, she's amused, and Nick feels a swell of affection; it inflates him like a sail. "I'll wait back here for you, then," he says, and quite deliberately ignores Aidan's comments regarding his unholy baptism.
"It was nice meeting you, Aidan. Let me know when you're ready to go climbing."
Aidan
Pen offers Aidan a hand, so he'll have to haul her up. He looks at it for a second, looks at Nicholas, looks at Pen, looks at Nicholas, looks at Pen and takes a hand from his pocket reaches out to take her hand and pull and of course she gets up smoothly, even easily, especially with the help.
Pen tweaks one of Nicholas's curls between her index and middle finger, turning in a after-you sort of way to Aidan. She touches Aidan's shoulder as he nears her, then flicks a look (is it unreadable? It could be unreadable; Pen is quite Mysterious, sometimes) toward Nicholas.
"I'll be back soon!" she promises. Lets her chopsticks rest upright in a carton of rice.
Aidan says, "Not big into climbing shit, but I'm sure we can come up with something," lifting his chin as he says so. "Thanks for the beer. Sorry you surprised me so much."
As they leave, Nicholas can hear Aidan (of course he can) say, "You're still friends with Rob though right?"
And then: exit, Siddals.
Nicholas
Pen is quite mysterious. Is the look unreadable? Well, perhaps: there is no context here, and there are a lot of unknowns. This is the first time he has met Aidan, and having insight into others doesn't allow him to know everything, automatically; he'd need Mind for that. It doesn't allow him to know what is informing Aidan's actions, or whether or not this is unusual behavior for him. (He guesses not, but this is not the same as knowing.)
The Siddals exit.
He hears the door latch after them, and Nick lets out a slow exhale, and begins a descent to the floor in front of the coffee table. He rakes a hand back through his hair, his Bacchus curls which are wild and overgrown and entirely his to do with as he will, and for a few moments it's just this: breathe in, breathe out, until the dark knot coiling through his guts has grown diffuse and been reabsorbed.
That's when he picks his chopsticks back up, takes a carton, and eats the food Pen brought home for the two of them in the encroaching silence.
