Colorado Springs Politics

Nicholas Hyde
A few weeks ago, Nick was able to obtain Angela Avella's number from Grace.  The Mercurial Elite has been in town for years and commands an almost terrifying amount of information: if anyone was likely to know anyone, it was her, and his supposition was a correct one.

Texting first is for people who are five to ten years younger than Nick.  Now that her number is in his phone, he simply calls her.  If necessary, he leaves a voice message first: that he is Nicholas Hyde, that he is Chakravanti and that he would like to meet if she is agreeable.  He mentions Grant.  He mentions that they probably ought to get acquainted, anyway.

Then he offers to meet her wherever she'd like in order to talk face to face.  He'll have someone with him: a Hermetic, his wife, and she is welcome to bring her Chorister friend if she would like.

A cast of thousands
It was a little offputting to know precisely how much information Grace could weild at any given time. If people understood the sheer volume of it, the sheer risk involved with knowing the loads of details logged away in her brain, they would be terrified. By all means, if the city had or needed a leader one would look to Grace.

But, like an encyclopedia, Grace Evans holds no allegiances or ambitions to be someone's rock. Just a source of information, perhaps. Or perhaps she does, but the nature of Grace was not there to be debated. No, insterad, they were put in contact with a Euthanatos who, it would seem, was more than ha[py to text Nicholas about the various and sundry things that they may discuss-

Those sundries, it would seem, involved tea at her partner's apartment. The Hermetic and the Chakravanti came to meet another with her own personal Chorister in tow. Angela looked forward to speaking with him in person, and gave good instructions on how to get to where they needed to go. Not supernatural instructions, but rather, the kinds of instructions that come from giving them so regularly that they are as natural as sighing at a tired joke.

Nicholas Hyde
And so, having gotten directions, Nick arrives at the Chorister's apartment with Pen.  (It is entirely possible that this visit was precluded by a scolding about giving his Tradition out on someone's voice mail.  Nevertheless: here they are.)

The two of them arrive at the apartment very nearly on time, and as Nick reaches it he first texts Angela to let them know that they have arrived.  He takes inventory of the outside of the building first, but he doesn't look too closely.  When it comes to this sort of thing, any tactical thinking, he generally leaves that to his wife.  He's not very good at it.

Penelope Mars
They take the car so Nick can drive. Pen wants her hands free during the ride over and she spends much of it drawing in a little hand-sewn journal of no particular loveliness or resting her temple against the window, gazing out beyond the pale omen of her reflection.

Because Pen is Pen she has indeed already put her mind to what her husband would call 'tactical thinking,' which is to say she has looked the building up on google earth and examined city maps, just to get a feel for space in the mundane way; it will serve her, just in case.

Because Pen is Pen, Nick did indeed receive a scolding. Imagine this: Nick leaving a message just prior to receiving a text back; Pen walking by the open door of his study; a stray word catches her attention; she reappears framed, at the threshold, leaning with her shoulder against the wood; he hangs up. She says, Did you just leave a voice mail in which you identified your Tradition by name? With your full name?

Because Pen is Pen, she looks like a painting.

The name of the painting, and its exact measure of moody loveliness, to be determined at a later date; something with smolder, of course.

"What was the apartment number?"

She buzzes for entry, or knocks on the door, or Nick's texts summon the buzzer or Angela herself before either willworker gets to it. Either way: no delay; there is elegance in action.

A cast of thousands
There was elegance in action, yes, and the grounds for the complex are neat if not a little mundane. Two story buildings connected by paths among a series of two story buildings and a set of trash cans at the four corners of the complex. They do not recycle here. The laundromat and the pool appear to be in the middle of the complex. The apartment in question is right across from the pool and conspicuously far away from the leasing office.

The person who opens the door is neither tall nor short with square shoulders and a straight posture. Her hair is back in a ponytail- held high but with the curl to it that suggests it had previously been in a bun earlier and she had not actually shaken it out. She's wearing basketball shorts and a tank top/sports bra combination. Comfy clothes, or clothes that you wear right before you're going to work out in.

"Nicholas Hyde, right?" she says when she looks at him. Offers a hand and eye contact. She talks like a cop. Talks like a detective, but the kind of detective that's used to being the good cop in the equasion. "Angela Avella."

She steps aside to let people in The room is set up like there was a twelve step meeting here. A reasonable sleeper sofa, an abundance of fold out chairs. A dining room table pushed back to the wall filled with coffee pots and plastic cups and sugar in one of those pour out containers that only come in diners because nobody actually uses them at home unless they need to pour large volumes of sugar into something but not enough of a volume to warrant a quarter cup measure. The faucet is running in the bathroom- clearly, the other person expected is here.

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas notices that they do not recycle at the complex, in his sweeping glance to the area around him.  Nicholas perhaps judges, a little bit.  (He and Pen, meanwhile, have been talking about keeping bees.)

He is not as picturesque as his wife by nature, or at least not in the same manner: Nick is a dark sonnet, some swirling charcoal sketch given shape in a particularly somber mood.  He wasn't sure how to dress to meet Angela and so he has come in a pair of grey corduroys and a pale pink shirt.  His hair was tamed today, at least in moderation.

"Yeah," he says, and he reaches to shake her hand once it is offered to him.  "Nice to meet you.  This is Penelope."  He gives Pen space to offer her full name, as she would like: he suspects she would like to.

As he steps inside, Nick takes inventory of the space.  "Is your place where you all usually gather out here?"

Penelope Mars
Pen offers her hand, too. And part of her craft name, see, without missing a beat " - Penelope Sylvia Mercury Mars bani Flambeau ordo Hermes. I go by Pen; how good to meet you. We brought cookies."

They did, too. A bag of chocolate chip and early grey cookies, which she hands off.

Her sleeves cuff at the elbows and are diaphanous, voluminous; they suggest the shape of her arms beneath, and see, around her wrist a silver bracelet and a large semi-precious stone (a strike of midnight's blue). The sleeves belong to a blouse of interesting, artsy cut; a V neckline which plunges down and down again to the cage of her ribs, of some fragile and iridescent fabric which seems like the river; it should be fire. It is pale silver; her eyes are a purer color. Her trousers are cut dashingly, very Romantic poet, with double buttons and embroidery down the leg, disappearing into her boots.

The boots are oxblood, much-scuffed, and painted on: a design of occult significance, though it only looks like a flower garden. Over her other arm she has her coat, which is the same midnight blue as the stone at her wrist; as the pin in her hair, which has been braided, fashioned into a bright coronet.

A cast of thousands
It's about the time when someone small and severe is coming out of the bathroom. She's dressed comfortably, but professionally. Jeans, yes, but still wearing shoes and it's her apartment. Button down shirt. Hair still in a bun and some kind of necklace stuffed deep within her shirt. It's a two bedroom. There's a small cabinet in the corner that is closed. There's a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall.

Betwixt the two HIspanic women in the room, there is a very distinct feeling of the fanaticism that comes with pledging one's life to a cause and the hope that comes when you believe that it will end well. The determination that things Will Be.

The small woman is severe, but lights up immediately when she sees cookies.

"Oh! Let me take those," she looks pleased. Delighted

"This is Isolde Martinez-" of the Celestial Chorus, she calls from the kitchen. She's getting plates and raiding the pantry. "You and I share a tradition, Mister Hyde, but... I think you alreqady knew that."

She steps into the room.

"You can take a seat wherever. Get comfortable before we get to business?"

Nicholas Hyde
When invited, Nick moves to take a seat at one of the ends of the couch, and wedges himself back into the cushion.  He'd paused a moment to shake Isolde's hand as well ("Good to meet you too, Isolde,") and leave the handing of the cookies over to Pen.

Nick flings an ankle over his knee in a way that almost appears haphazard.  His eyes flick, once, to the picture of Our Lady on the wall.

"That sounds good to me," he says, of getting comfortable.  "Sera told me both of your Traditions back when she told me about Grant and asked me to speak with him.  She said you both initially made contact with her."

Penelope Mars
Isolde lights up when she sees cookies; Pen, who is reserved, self-possessed, and clearly passionately invested in the present (Big Personalities), smiles; it touches her eyes. "I hope you like them." When Isolde disappears back into the kitchen, "Can I help?"

And if it seems like she can help, the next paragraph is a lie, because Pen will follow into the kitchen and make herself useful carrying milk and honey and tea or platters or what-the-heck ever she can.

Nick takes the couch. Pen sits on one of the folding chairs; kitty corner to the couch, leaving it or some other folding chair for the hosts. Her posture is languid; she rests her elbow on the back of her chair, simply being aware and attentive.

A cast of thousands
"I know I talked to her," Isolde called back, pokes her head back into the living room, "and yes, I would love help."

She meanders to the middle of the room, trying to get things together as best she could for guests. She has tea cups down, but no saucers. Isolde looks at Pen desperately as she gives a quick look up to the top shelf.

"Well," Angela said to Nick. She meanders over to one of the folding chairs and takes a seat comfortably there, "we had originally tried to contact Annie about all of this- the woman who runs the chantry in Morrison? If I understood Isolde correctly, she went to talk to Annie, ended up talking to Sera, and they made arrangements to come here.

"We would have loved for him to stay but... well... the powers that be in this city aren't very understanding."
"They would have used him as a scapegoat at the first opportunity," Isolde snorted from the kitchen.

It's not a large apartment, you see.

Nicholas Hyde
It's not a large apartment, which allows their hosts to banter back and forth and also keeps Pen within sight of Nick, which is as he prefers around strangers.  If there ever were any hostilities, Pen is likely all standing between him and untimely death, save whatever clever trick he could produce on the spot.

"I've actually never met Annie," he says, and then falls quiet to listen to the rest of what the two of them have to say.  He glances back, once, toward Isolde as she cuts in.  "Sera told me you both didn't think you really had the means to keep him safe," he says.  "He's doing all right, at this point.  He's safe up in Sera's cabin.  He and I have been talking pretty regularly."

A beat.  "I'm not sure how involved you'd both like to stay with him at this point, but I'd like to have him released into my care once we've assured his safety from his father.  It'll be easier for me to help him have a life he actually wants if he lives in the city."

Penelope Mars
The look of desperation is eloquent enough. Pen, who is taller than Isolde, goes on her tiptoes and brings down whatever is to be found there.

She has an ear on the conversation in the other room just as Isolde does and she says, "Pardon me, but safe from who or what? Which 'powers that be' do you mean? A scapegoat for what sort of thing?"

A cast of thousands
[Isolde: I. Am. Not. Angry]

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

A cast of thousands
"Evelyn Murray," Isolde all but spits. It's about as much as Angela can do to wince and stay completely impartial, or at least stay informative but the inhalation of breath and the careful tension says that they've had conversations about this.

"The heads of our current chantry, Evelyn and Landon, are pretty wary of outsiders. There was... an incident a couple years back that ended with our previous leaders, Melissa and James Ivy, dying in a technocratic ambush. It was before my time," she says apologetically, "but since then Evelyn and Landon have ben really wary of newcomers in the city. We have a few now and then- maybe more than our fair share, but they never seem to stay long."

"I just don't want to see a kid with as much riding against him as Grant did getting thrown under the bus, that's all," Isolde clarifies. She presses the pedal on the electric tea kettle. Down.

"We'd love to stay in contact if he wants to keep in touch," Angela replies.

Nicholas Hyde
[I'm sensing some layers here.  Perception + Empathy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

A cast of thousands
Oh no. Evelyn is not a topic that Isolde likes. Nope. Nope nope.

Penelope Mars
[:D Do Iiii get to be more full of empathy here? -2 'coz eyesight and I'm lookin' at you IS-OL-DE.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 3, 3, 10) ( success x 1 )

Penelope Mars
[Damn it!]

Nicholas Hyde
[Oh Pen.  You had your chance.]

Penelope Mars
[Pen: I'll have it again. :< ]

Nicholas Hyde
A few days ago, Grace told Nicholas about Evelyn too: he was drunk or well on his way to it, and drawing information out of Grace is a long process that requires untangling all the information she presents, but he knows enough to let it inform Isolde's reaction.  There is a smooth arch to his brows which appears as Isolde says her name.

"He doesn't know very many people so he'd probably be happy to stay in contact with you," Nick says.

There is a look cast from his Traditionmate back toward the Chorister in the kitchen, a thoughtful thing.  "Another Denverite told me you both have had some trouble with disappearing apprentices," he says.  "Was that what your concern was for, regarding his safety?"

Penelope Mars
"Your current chantry?" Pen asks, with subtle (curious) emphasis on 'current.' Is there a refrigerator, and in that refrigerator, milk? Let us say there is. Is there a ubiquitous cow creamer? Perhaps; Pen handles the milk. It's the ballad thing to handle. "Do you mean to say you might leave it; or it is rather newer, built on the foundations of some other?"

That plus Nick's question re: apprentices is enough for now; Pen is attentive! She is so (ardently) attentive. Mr. Darcy has nothing on Penelope Mars.

A cast of thousands
"When Melissa and James went, most of the actual resources we have went with it," Angela clarifies.

Sure enough, there is cow creamer. Cow creamer and an actual glass bottle of milk. She probably bought it from an actual dairy farmer, too. Isolde Martinez doesn't seem to mess around when it comes to produce and dairy.

"Until we can figure out precisely what is doing it and why the newest of us are being picked off, we tried to keep people in different places. I have someone sleeping on my couch right now that apparently survived the shit show of an experience that was going on in Montana-"

"Wyoming?" Isolde called back, like she wasn't sure which it was.

"One of those. I get them mixed up. Big place, lots of space... anyway, since Grant and Lydiahave something in common we weren't sure if they should meet each other or if they should be in the same city... She asked about him, but..." Angela looked confused, uncertain. She gave a raise of her shoulders, eaches back to tighten her ponytail. "It's... I feel like I'm floudering. I don't know what to do for both of them at the same time so Isolde and I decided to figuratively divide and consquer."

She makes a face, knows it isn't the right word.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick watches the tea and milk as they emerge from the kitchen, glancing from time to time toward Angela as she speaks.  "What happened with Lydia?  If she knew about Grant, did they have some sort of connection to each other beforehand?"

He is biting the inside of his lower lip; a little divet has appeared there below where it swells.  His gaze wanders out and back toward: the room, the picture of the Virgin, the kitchen.  Wherever it goes.  "Is there anyone else at the chantry who is doing much about the missing apprentices, or is it mainly just the two of you who seem concerned?"

Penelope Mars
Pen does not add anything after Nick's questions. Pen helps bring tea out, not for Nicholas, Isolde can give Nicholas his tea, but for herself and for Angela.

"Montana?" The state's name finds an echo; Pen's eyebrows have drawn together, sharp, but other than that implicit question (what the fuck happened in - Wyoming?), she doesn't pile any questions on top of Nicholas's, for now.

She drinks her tea with a tiny, tiny bit of sugar, and a tiny, tiny bit of milk; fortify.

A cast of thousands
"Lydia... there is- or rather, was, a video of Lydia floating around the internet of her awakening which, had she not done so, she would have been the next moneymaking star on the Mortis Cafe website," Angela says. Honest and direct and to-the-point, "she said that she had a few meals with a kid named Grant. She was worried about him."

"Grant said he had a few friends online, it turns out he and Lydia's boyfriend did a few hacking endeavors online together," Isolde shrugged and carried the cup over to Nick. It's a small cup with a smaller chip inlaid with gold across the rim. There are flowers in the cup, on the cup, flowers at the base inside like roses but not quite. Not real roses. Not real anything, those flowers.

Isolde takes a seat on the couch, doesn't prop her feet up there.

"Mostly, we're a two woman team. Since Angela and I are on the force we're the missing person's unit, usually... not that anyone really gives a care."

Nicholas Hyde
"Ah," Nick says, and up until now he had not known the name of the website.  "Thank you," he says as he accepts the cup of tea from Isolde.

Nick then leans forward to take up a spoon so that he can add to his tea a liberal amount of sugar and milk.  Not to the point of making it cloying, but: evident that he likes it sweeter than Pen does.  "Now that I've talked to Grant more he seems a lot less interested in doing hacking-type stuff anymore," he offers.

"Gives a care?  Have you not seen a lot of help?"

Penelope Mars
Pen listens, see, is a good listener, even, with her air of reserve, her self-possession: as if where ever she is, she is home; even though the world doesn't quite suit; she suits the world. See? Pen does sit in one of the folding chairs; fills out the square so they're as neat as red diamonds at the corners of a playing card.

"You said Melissa and James were killed in an attack made by the Union? Were Evelyn and Landon caballed with Melissa and James? Do either of you share Tradition with them?"

A cast of thousands
"Good," Isolde says, a little like an irritable mother, "that boy needs to go outside more. He's like a ghost, sunshine is a blessing. I was lucky to get him to come out on the porch, though."

"James was Isolde's mentor," the taller woman informs them, "his wife Melissa was an Ecstatic. It was James and Melissa in a cabal with a Hermetic named Odhrain along with Evelyn and Landon. They... it was a big divide in the city. Evelyn and Landon said it was Odhrain's fault-"
"But Odhrain wouldn't do that because I knew him and he wouldn't betray his cabal-" Isolde spoke quickly, exasperated at what seemed like a raw nerve. A fresh memory.
"Whatever the case, Evelyn and Landon had a lot of evidence on their side. Odhrain's gone, Evelyn and Landon are holding the city together now..."

Isolde took a moment after listening to what it was Angela said. They were both quiet for a moment. Both women measured but one of them visibly shaken, visibly passionate. It was Isolde, though, the chorister with the bright and devoted and final feeling about her that was so invested here.

"You have to understand, you have to- people? People have a lot of bias against the Chorus, the fact that James was able to lead the city at all was a big deal. In order to gain trust you have to be beyond reproach and... well, you get it-" she gestured to Pen, Penelope the Hermetic. Penelope who shared a tradition with the man who sounds like he got run out of town on a rail.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick furrows his brow as he listens.  Part of the appeal of Denver to Nick has been that the community is smaller, more intimate, less structured than the one they left; in New England there had been a sprawling community and the Hermetics and Choristers had a tight hold on many of the chantries.  This is the other side of having a small community: the divide, the infighting, the pick-your-sides.

"I understand that," he says to Isolde.  "So it sounds like neither of you trust Evelyn and Landon very much, especially not after this happened."

Penelope Mars
"Odhrain, hmm? What was the rest of his name?"

A cast of thousands
[1-2-3: Tytalus, 4-5-6: Fortunae, 7-8-9: Bonisagus, 10: Flambeau)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

A cast of thousands
"My vote is still out on them," Angela informed Nick, "the data doesn't make her look good, but I don't have anything solid. You can't act on a feeling, especially when it could be wrong and you uproot a whole city."

Though, there was the question of Odhrain's name, and Isolde looks like she really has to think of it, "Odhrain Arthur Reinhardt, house Flambeau."

Dance Ninja

Pen
[Let's see... Wits (Specialty) + Enigmas for starters.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5) ( fail ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[TEMPER.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Pen
When Nick finally gets to the 1-Up at Colfax he finds the most dashing, the most elegant Penelope Mercury Mars in the back of the arcade room, beyond the long bar with its dim atmosphere enlivened by luminous colored neon, with its deep and water-color shadowy lacquer, its very cheap beer. Marvel at the wood ceiling which looks like it should be the floor, exposed brick walls, stone arches leading toward a patio. Ooh and ahh over the smell of something frying, onions maybe, a simmer-sizzle which snakes through the air like a trick of a brush-stroke, like that shivery shaky feeling that comes of hunger. Listen close to the sound of people, mostly adult people (definitely only adult people), playing games.

Nick has been treated to a number of recent texts -- he was driving, so perhaps he did not check them -- on the theme of:

This game, Nick, is trying my patience!
I know I could, in theory, do certain things which would make certain balls only do what I wished them to do, but should I do that???
It would be good practice
It would not be good practice
I am practicing patience
I am so very patient. Don't you think I am? I think I failing at patience. I wish that I knew already whether I'd been patient or not!
I want to
Wait ignore that
Nick, why must you be so important to your work? I miss your eyes!
I would never blow up a pinball machine. It is a work of miniature art.
Repeat, repeat, ad infinitum.
Someone just attempted to show me up at this game, Nicholas!!
I am going to drink more beer!

She has attracted a friend. A female around their age with dark hair and a lumberjack flannel and a very green tshirt for some kickstartered boardgame, who is drunkenly and subtly trying to flirt and also get some quarters from Pen.

Pen has the air of a cat watching a red laser, her gray eyes wide; from a profile, they'd be a pale and luminous gray instead of the dark they sometimes come - a light-shot gray, illumined by the arcade. Toggle-jerk toggle-yank full-body-leeeeean and, "Hell and the Devil's gilded acorns on a silver stick carved by Houdini's shoemaker," Pen swears.

Nick
When Nicholas arrives in Colfax, he is already pulling at his tie and at the buttons on his button-down shirt to loosen them.  He arrives in the parking lot and pulls his shirt off, tugging a T-shirt on as he makes his way to the bar, bare chested in the parking lot and disregarding: men can do these things.

He arrives and Pen will find her husband weary today (a Monday) but dressed in an orange T-shirt with a sun and happy chicken printed across the front, topping the chinos and somewhat fashionable sneakers he wore to work.  He had taken a moment to read her texts, not without amusement, before entering the 1-Up.

Nicholas spies his wife and her new friend and walks over toward the two of them.  Held between his hands are three glasses of beer: Pen's preference, and a Corona for himself, and whatever he had managed to get out of the bartender for the third.  He steps up behind Pen, who seems so intent that he does not want to disturb her as she leans over the console.  Nevertheless, "Hello.  Are you laying waste to your enemies?"

Pen
"I am not." Pen drops (flash of silver) one quarter and then another into the coin slot. She answers easily enough but gaze does not lift from the pinball machine: the canvas of her battle-field, her game. Her concentration is undiluted; her focus is total. "There are no enemies. Only - "

Start. And the ball drops, and Pen -

We'll revisit.

Meanwhile, Pen's new friend examines Nick and then smiles at him. "You shoulda heard her swear though. I think I shoulda copied some of those swears down for later. Hey, I'm Roscoe."

Pen
[And Wits again, c'mon!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[And follow up.... Dex + ... eh, Athletics, I suppose.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nick
Nick watches Pen add another quarter into the machine.  His eyes are hooded, and amusement is pulling at one corner of his mouth as he sets the three beers down on a nearby table.  "Only what?"

This is before the ball has dropped and Pen is lost again in a whirl of spinning metal bits and flapping paddles.

And so Nick turns his attention to Roscoe, recently introduced as Roscoe, and he wipes a streak of beer off of the muscle bunched between thumb and forefinger on his pants and extends a hand to her.  "Hi. I'm Nick," he says.  "I brought you a beer, the bartender said it was your last one."  A glance toward Pen.  "She gets very into ga...everything."

Pen
"I do not get very into everything. Only interesting things, worth getting into," Pen says, because of course, in one of those obnoxious 'unfair' twists of fate, she is very good at multi-tasking in this way: paying attention, or half attention, to a conversation and slipping in a remark at just the right  moment. She is very into the game of pinball, though, and fast this time; as fast as she needs to be, as quick as, but not too quick, the right balance of - and by the end, she is smiling this neat pleased-with-herself smile that threatens to dredge out her dimples but isn't quite doing it.

"Yeah, it was. Thanks, man." Roscoe, who has a streak in her hair of that trendy silver storm cloud gray, very obviously an affectation rather than a natural streak of gray, flips said gray-streaked lock of hair out of her face and takes the beer and is still figuring Nick and Pen out a little but in a quiet and watchful way. "What's your deal?"

Nick
Nick is watching over his shoulder as the light above the pinball machine flashes quickly enough to send anyone epileptic into a seizure, as the chime sounds several times and the ball bounces around between the rubber barriers.  His smile is still there; Pen is good at multitasking but is very obviously focused and pleased with herself.

He is standing so that he includes Pen's new friend, and with his beer in hand he glances back at her and meets her eyes once.  There is a furrowing of his brows at her question.  "My deal?  She and I are just here to hang out for the evening."  He takes a swallow from his glass. "She's going to probably kick my ass at pinball though.  Why?"

Pen
[Dex + Stealth!]

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

Nick
[Perception + Alertness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pen
"I was trying to be cooler than 'what do you do?'" Roscoe says. "You bought me a beer so, uh, yeah, friendliness, mayhem, whatever," and there's a wave of her hand; the one with the beer. "Yeh-hah there you go," because Pen has won! As much as one wins at pin ball!

Tickets slip out of the ticket slot, an inviting snake of fuschia, and Pen turns around to look at Nicholas for a moment. Not to smile at Nicholas, mind you, only to look. Her smile remains the same, but is the look in her eyes brighter does it reflect (hallowed) light or shadow back. She very sneakily slips one hand behind her back and makes some gesture there; Nick can spy it reflected in the pinball's glass.

"His deal is modesty, and a certain frustrating ability to speak of himself as if he is smoke and mirrors; five seconds ago I'd have said he'd beat me handily at pinball, but now - his deal is probably also that I am going to win him a super soaker. After I win you that frisbee!"

[I AM DOING MAGICK, YAY. Time, blah, things, diff 3 in the end, wee.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Nick
"I'm a hospice counselor at the hospital," Nick says, and though it does not show in his face he is steeling himself for the inevitable questions and comments: How did you get interested in that work, doesn't it depress you, I don't think I could do that, you are a special person.  He has privately made a game of guessing who will respond with which comment or question when he tells other people.  "What about y - "  And he stops, glancing back over his shoulder at Pen as Roscoe cheers.

He can see her hand in the glass, and there is a flicker of ardor there in the depths of his eyes (which Pen has missed) which she can readily see.  "It's no fun to only have one super soaker," he says.

[Awareness?  What are you doing, Pen?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Pen
"Agreed," Roscoe says. And then to carry on the polite part of the conversation, "Is that a nine-to-five job or an on-call-whenever job? It sounds dull for someone who self-describes as 'smoke and mirrors' however, uh, unintentionally?" A half-glance at Pen. And then, "I should get back to my friends, but you guys are welcome to join us when you've had your fill of arcade games."

Pen doesn't stop looking at Nick. But she holds a couple quarters out to Roscoe, who takes them with a grin. Pen is still pleased with herself; the dimples are still threatening; her eyes are such a color. But here she is multitasking again: "One super soaker can work just fine. Swell. Dandy! I hope we can play again later, Roscoe. It was very nice to meet you."

"Yeah," Roscoe says, pocketing the quarters. And Pen offers another pair of quarters to Nick and sliiiiiiiiiiiides dramatically to the side, a showman's sense of a crowd, and with one hand gestures sweepingly toward the machine. All the machines.

Nick is very attuned, just now, to anything uncanny; anything which tickles the senses, prick prick pricks at them; and he can tell that Pen is doing some Work; it tastes like the ardor (speaking of) behind a kiss; it tastes like fervency, like passion wedded to resplendence something shivering bright on clouds Monet's water lilies copper something; it tastes of a Dare You To. Dare Me To? This measurement of Time, the conjuring up scraping into being of another sense--or at least something involving that Art.

Nick
"Nine-to-five," is Nick's answer, and there is a half smile when Roscoe comments that it sounds dull: he, after all, does not describe himself as smoke and mirrors; that was all his wife.  She offers to let them drop by her friends and he smiles.  "Thanks.  Maybe we will."

Pen gives Roscoe some quarters, and Nick holds out his hand as the quarters clink into his palm.  There is a flash of a smile as he meets her eyes again, as her dimples are threatening.  "You seem like your timing is on point today, Pen."

He clinks the quarters in his palm and looks between the other games laid out before them and throughout the arcade.

Pen
Exit Roscoe, pursued by a bear.

You seem like your timing is on point today, Pen, does this to her smile: turns up the corners of her mouth just a little more, warms her eyes; there are the dimples, long and unaffected. "Do I? But how can you know for certain, Crow?"

Nick
Pen's dimples appear, and Nick ducks his head forward so he can place his lips over one of them, and he lets it linger there warm against her cheek.  "I suppose I could work on my own," he says, extending an arm so that he can set his beer down.

A moment later it becomes evident that he has done this because he is reaching beneath his collar with that hand for one of the bags that hangs there.  He comes free a moment later with a fingerful of ash, which he smudges across his forehead with a thumb, with such grace that it appears almost careless.  So he looks.

[Time 1, -1 for instrument!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pen
Pen tips her head to the side when Nick kisses her cheek. Nick sets his beer down and Pen picks her beer up and sips it, coy but without guile. Nick reaches beneath his collar for one of the bags which hangs there, Pen sets her beer down again, lips shining like sugar, and her eyebrows quiver together, strikes a knowing light look how much they know, how clear they are, and Nick has a fingerful of ash he draws across his forehead as if it were nothing, and as the line of ash is drawn Pen is drawn to, too cup his cheeks in both her hands and bump her forehead against his and not kiss him no not right now but to at least share the same breath for a moment and another and just make out already kids - " - that is one way to know. What would it look like, if I were? How would you know? Tell me about it," and a solemn tint to this, because Nick is the one who has taught her this Art, and she does not know how to wield it quite yet, though she finally has found the shape of it in her hand (so to speak).

"But we're here for games, Crow, I want to beat you. Or I want you to beat me," she adds this part, generously, and it is the truth.

And he is looking -

Nick
"I can tell that you're connected to the flow of it," he says.  "That you know what moment is going to come after this one because you know what's come before, and those things are cyclic and come back around."  Though perhaps Pen will interpret it differently; his own eyes when he looks back into hers know, there is this gleam to them.

He smells like beer, and there is a flash of teeth as she suggests games.  "What would you like to play next, then?"

Pen
"I am measuring," Pen says, and falls to musing, with a little crinkle of her forehead. "Learning the room with a measuring tape. It's interesting, isn't it, how an hour glass isn't an hour glass unless it can be turned. Even when it isn't turned and the sand's still, it can be turned or it has been turned. The verb's the thing. Verb you big much, thou riddle-scout." Pen's hands drop from Nick's jaw; they seem reluctant even though they fill up with a beer next. Instead, Pen stares at Nick and considers. Then, all generosity, "Fresh meat's choice."

Nick
Nick makes a thoughtful sound at what Pen says, as she offers her own perspective on a Sphere that came rather naturally to him upon Awakening.  "So what follows, if you can't measure without the turn?"

She takes her hands away from his jaw, and there is this slight tipping forward of his head, as though he too is reluctant to part.  At what she says next, there is a sudden laugh, one of the ones that rings: surprised and amused.  "So I'm fresh meat now?"  And his head was already leaned forward, so he doesn't have to lean much farther at all to kiss her.

They are in public and Nick is not quite as shameless as Pen, so it's a brief thing.  "I saw Soul Calibur over there.  I bet I can take you."

Pen
"Then you don't have an hour glass. You just have a glass - that'd be something different, wouldn't it? The turn is the hour. The turning." This strike of a clear and cool grey look - lambent; light shivering on a storm cloud; autumn, coming; except the way Pen looks at Nicholas there's always warmth in it. Verb in it. She doesn't at this moment in time try to lure Nick into acts which might get them talked about if not arrested. She closes her eyes and then opens them to glance in whatever direction his body language indicated Soul Caliber awaits, resting her brow against his to do so. Her eyes flick back; she says, "I bet you can't. What are you putting on the table?"

Nick
"So are you planning to learn to turn it, next?"  He meets her eyes, and there are hearthfires there in his, in their depths.  He reaches over her shoulder for his beer, hooks his chin over her collar so that he can take a swallow from the glass.  There is another laugh, a quieter one this time.  "If I win best three of five, then...hm.  We sleep in, peacefully, both days this weekend.  No waking at dawn."

Pen
"Are you implying 'no waking at dawn' is foreign to your policy?" Pen rests her cheek (lightly; just skimming) on Nick's crown when he leans over her shoulder. "Very well. If I win, then you will wake up before dawn and watch the sun rise over the city from the top of a hill we have just jogged up. Deal?"

Nick
"Not quite foreign, but you usually don't stay in bed with me," Nick says, and she can feel the pull of his cheek muscles against the side of her neck when he smiles.  He takes another swallow of beer and straightens, then takes her hand so that he can lead her over to the console.  "Your deal doesn't sound completely equitable, Mrs. Mars."

Pen
"I usually come back for you."

To the Soulcalibur arcade game they go. The console with its industrial silver control pad and its bright red and bright blue cartoon colors slick as slick is slick buttons and joystick its inviting coin slots the tinny music ready to burst into an atmospheric cheer just for them. While he's maligning her deal, Pen takes another swig of beer, and then says, "What will you do about it, Mr. Mars?"

"Would you rather be Mr. Mars or Mr. Mercury?" Here, this half-light smile; self-contained, self-possessed; deeply felt - vibrant.

Nick
There is a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat and Nick tilts his head as he considers her question.  "I think Mr. Mercury.  I can't see Mr. Mars suiting me," he says, and his fingers thread through hers even as they arrive at the machine.  They tighten briefly, because they will soon have to part in the name of button mashing.

"I think instead we should sleep in and then we can stay in bed and you can tell me three stories you haven't told me before," he says.

Pen
"Why not?" The half-light smile is in her eyes, though it leaves her mouth. Pen is fishing in her satchel for another scoopful of quarters, but not before Nick's fingers tighten and hers tighten too in echo hello.

"Hmmmmmm." She lets the mm go on longer than she might if she hadn't been drinking before Nick arrived, but she isn't tipsy yet quite. Still: early signs. "I think it sounds like the deal isn't very equitable in the other direction, Nicholas. You'd get to keep those stories forever, or until you lost them, as well as the memory of staying in bed. What would I get to keep? Add two stories, I'm generous, you haven't told me to my pile of wants, and you've got yourself a deal."

Nick
"I'm not very Mars-like," he says, with a sidelong glance in her direction.  There is the telltale narrowing there at the corners, even though he is not smiling precisely.  "But being quick and clever I can get behind."

He releases her hand and sets his beer down on a nearby table, after he has taken another swallow.  "You get to keep the memory of the sunrise, and the memory of having me there with you.  And you get the satisfaction of having me run up the hill with you," he says.  "One story I haven't told you, though, I'll agree to."

Pen
He's not very Mars-like. Pen hmms again, quite reflective, and raises an eyebrow, arch in the way of a knowing literary so-and-so of the early 21st century, and she also sets her beer down and nods toward the coin slots. Fresh meat's choice translates to fresh meat first, too.

"The memory of the sunrise and you there with me are the same memory; the satisfaction is another. And one story. Inequitable, if you're getting bed, memory of bed, then three stories. One story and a favor to be redeemed the next time we're in bed together."

Nick
"All right," Nick says, quite readily: though perhaps it will occur to him after that favor is a vague term, after all.

He steps over toward the coin slots and flicks a few quarters in with his thumb, then takes her hand once more and draws her over to the other side of the console.  A series of characters and faces present themselves for selection.  "Ready?"

Nick
[Wits!]

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

Nick
[Dex + Alertness!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Pen
[Ugh.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[Ughugh.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN2 (1, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[Round 1, Nick!

Commencing round 2...]

Nick
[Wits, go!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Nick
[Dex + Alertness, go!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Pen
[Aaaack.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[Aaaaack.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (1, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[Damn it, Nick. 2 for the trickster!]

Nick
[Wits?]

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

Nick
[Annnnnnnnd again...]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[Nooo]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[oooo...]

Dice: 4 d10 TN1 (6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nick
[Catching up, Pen.  Nick 2, Pen 1!]

Nick
[Wits!]

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

Nick
[And button mashing!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[Niiiiick nooo you want to get up at dawn it is true stop being good at the gaaame]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[Before dawn to see dawn it's so good]

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )

Pen
[2 to 2. Dice, c'mon.]

Nick
[Wits! Come on, dice...]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5) ( botch x 2 )

Nick
[Noooo]

Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Pen
[:D :D :D]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[:D :D :D :D :D]

Dice: 4 d10 TN1 (6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Pen
As Pen's many brothers might have occasion to tell Nick, Pen is good at predicting their moves, or ruining their moves by being just in the wrong place when they're ready to deploy those moves and win whatever game of the video they were playing together. Charles may have bemoaned. The younger ones, the half-siblings and step-siblings, may also have bemoaned. It isn't that Pen's great at these sorts of games; she's just quick.

So is Nick. Mercury, indeed. Clever, cunning, and on top of it. He defeats Pen so handily the first time that she freezes for an instant the hour glass unturned and rests her forearm on his shoulder and hides her face in it. But then she's ready to go again and mashmashmashbuttonhitpushtwist close but Nick is still:

clever

quick.

"Good job, Crow," Pen says, and she sounds impressed.

He's a Wheel Turner. He's used to reversals of fortune, right? The next game is close - very close - and long too, minute after minute after minute, dragging on and on, but Pen just manages to get the kill shot in. Rather than any vocal expression of triumph, for in truth she is not competitive in a way that glories in victory in any serious way, she casts Nick a sidelong look from underneath her lashes. Pause. Coins go in.

Fall of silver, click, are you ready?

Again. This time the battle is more quickly won; to Pen, again.

She doesn't give Nick a sidelong look this time, but lifts her hands up over her head, then presses both of her hands into her back, arcing her spine and stretching, followed up by reaching her hands forward lacing the fingers together and stretching and stretching. She bites the inside of her lip, a gesture she is not at all aware of, and...

The game starts before Nick knows it. Maybe something else caught his eye. He got distracted. It took a moment. Another. And by then he was just off his game. Defeat is quick.

Game over, bro.

Nick
Nicholas is indeed used to reversals of fortune.  He kisses the top of her head after the first round when he beats her handily, a gesture that somehow manages to communicate affection and amusement and sympathy all at once.  The second round: this he also wins, and as he begins the third he is certain that he is about to get three stories he hasn't heard before.

But, oh, this game goes on for a while, and when Pen gives him that sidelong look he grins.  He lost: he was still having fun.  Then she wins again, and she stretches, and:

The game starts before Nick knows it.  Nick was not watching the game; he was watching Pen bite the inside of her lip, the deep concentration on her face as she went back to the console.  It took a moment, and another.  Defeat is quick.

There is a long groan of despair that ends in laughter as he lets his head fall down to the console, against the buttons.  Already his vision of a weekend in bed is dissipating, is dissolving like sugar in coffee except that is far too pleasant a simile for what it will actually be like to wake up before dawn and run uphill.  "Well done, Pen," he says.  His face is still against the console, his hair flopped out before him.

Pen
One of the staff whisks by. "Sir you can't put your face on the console."

And whisks toward the kitchens.

Pen, her face alight, her hand having crept up the line of Nick's spine tracing it through his hideous orange tshirt up to the base of his neck says, "Ooooo somebody's in trouble," all sing-song, votaress, 'chantress, conjuring steeds out of the foam and turning men into pigs.

"What shall we play next? And for what?"

Nick
Nicholas obediently lifts his face away from the console, and takes a consolatory drink of his beer.  "Victor gets to pick," he says.  "And you can name your terms."

Pen
Pen loops an arm through Nick's and tugs him back toward the pinball machines. "Lord of the Rings pinball it is, Crow. Whoever scores the most tickets wins. Best out of three. And if I win, you take a day off work to do an errand of my choosing, and you tell me a secret you got from a spirit."

Nick
Nick follows her back toward the pinball machines, though he reaches behind him before they wander away for his glass of beer, which he drains and sets back on the table.  "All right.  If I win, we go to the shelter to look at puppies."

Pen
[Charisma and Expression for Melodrama!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Pen
Pen cannot restrain the deep from the tips of her toes to the chamber of her heart deep did we mention deep sigh at the thought of going to the shelter to look at puppies with Nicholas.

"As you wish," she says, sounding quite depressed, though the corners of her mouth lift after and she takes another sip of her beer.

Nick
Pen cannot restrain her sigh, and Nick looks sidelong toward her and: he places a kiss on the upturned corner of her mouth, at that hint of a smile.  "All right.  Want to trade off, or should I heckle you while you play three times?"

Pen
"Crow," Pen says, a rake of a thing, fondness welling up like blood might well in the silence left behind; she slips her hand into Nick's back pocket. "Caa. Caa." And her eyes half-close, hood; only this moon-sliver glint, mercury glass, molten, of the water-gray lake-light of her eyes, the pupils dark as a well. "We'll trade off; that's much more fun. But you're welcome to try and heckle me; it only means I'll," wickedness, wickedness in the smile, the generous curve of her eyebrows, "heckle you right back."

Nick
There's her hand in his back pocket, there's his arm around her as they reach the pinball machine.  The machine's backsplash is pure pulp fantasy, close ups of hobbit faces and a grey-bearded Gandalf, accompanied inexplicably by lightning and the eye of Sauron behind it.  Nick hands Pen one of the quarters she gave him earlier.  "What makes Lord of the Rings pinball different from other pinball?" he asks, as he leans over the glass to peer down into the machine's innards.

"Clearly what I should have done is brought you some whiskey.  Throw off your reflexes."

Pen
Pen laughs. "Whisky does not imperil my reflexes; nothing can do that except for - " A beat. Pen: she drops a quarter in, and lets her fingers hover over the game button. Lights gleam. The innards of the machine are all on a theme: a complicated, complex theme. Lights flash. "Well perhaps you can get it out of me if you win some other game - "

zip zip goes the ball and Pen

hitsthebuttonhitsthebutton

upupupnointothathole

notthat

thatotheroneohnonotyetack

plays the game.

Pen
[Moosh, moosh, pinball, moosh!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nick
[Hitting buttons!  Go!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Pen
[Nonono. No sheltervisit no.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Nick
[Whaaaaaat.]

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

Pen
[:(]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Must win!]

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

Nick
The two of them seem evenly matched, tonight.  It helps that these games are partially luck: not much to be done when the ball launches straight out and down into the center between the paddles, as happens from time to time.  The truth is that Pen, with her quick reflexes and her warrior's instinct and eyes, is better suited to this sort of game than Nick is.

Luck isn't on her side though, at least today.  The heavens seem to be conspiring to bring her to the shelter to look at puppies with Nicholas.  The first game he wins handily, keeps the ball bouncing for quite some time and gleefully.  And so she redoubles her efforts, and the ringing noises resound for even longer than they did in Nick's last round.

In the end, though, Nick is the one to ultimately win the most points between the three games: and so when the ball finally falls between the paddles at the end and his final score flashes up on the screen below Gandalf's beard, he glances Pen's way and brushes his hands off.  He looks very much like the cat that ate the canary.

Or the puppy that stole the roast off the counter moments before it is scolded.  As might happen to them one day in the near future.

Pen
Pen leans on the pinball machine one over from the Lord of the Rings pinball game, bracing herself against its sides, her balance dependent and her head bowed. She inhales slow, see, as she slides her hands down the pinball machine's edge, tracing its shape until she is standing upright again instead of leaning, and then she flicks her bangs out of her face. Nicholas looks so pleased with herself that after she has inhaled so slow, she smiles like a flicker of radiance in the clouds; lightning; Venus in the clouds, or Mercury, or Icarus. And she wraps one arm around his waist, and she rests her chin on his shoulder as she catches one of his hands with her other, lacing her fingers through his and pulling his hand over to her heart. "I guess we're going to look, with our eyes, at some puppies," Pen says. "Now what game do you want to play with me next?"

Nick
His fingers curl just slightly over her heart as she places his palm there, and his smile widens here.  There are times when the smile he wears blooms into something without reserve, becomes something clear and radiant: her influence, perhaps.  His other hand walks up the length of her spine and to her shoulderblades.  "We could play one of the dancing games," he says, and his tone has an air of fairness here: she has a definite advantage on him in games like that.

Pen
Pen doesn't quite laugh, but the promise of laughter is in her breathing: another slow exhale, after a quick inhale. Her mouth curls up; it is not against her will, but it is independent of its attention; this smile is what happens when her heart gets to operate independent of her mind; this smile is what happens when possessed she falls in love; or love possesses her; decides it wants her to be aware of its edge. This gleaming, this bright awareness: except not for the smile; all her attention is absorbed in the watching.

"Is that a pity pick?" Pen asks, while her thumb traces light the back of his middle finger, first knuckle to third. "Because I don't need your pity, Hyde."

Nick
"That's Mr. Mercury, to you," he says, and he leans his head over her shoulder to take inventory of the other games that there are around the arcade.  "You might need the pity pick, or next time I might make you come look at kittens, too."

Pen
"I'll look at all the 'cute' baby animals you want... provided I must because I lost a bet," here, curl of a grin; mischief surfacing in her eyes, see, like some luminous thing rising from the depths of a still pond. "Dance Ninja Battlefield Earth it is."

Nick
"They'll be sad and in need of homes," Nick says: clearly this evil plan had a fragment or two of thought included, even if founded on the incorrect premise that sad puppies and kittens will make his wife cave.  He pulls a few inches away from her so that he can begin to walk them near Dance Ninja Battlefield Earth, with twin platforms that lie in wait for them.

As they reach it, Nick springs up onto one of the platforms: evidence, if she needed it, that his feet have finally healed.

Pen
Pen finishes off her beer, and hands it to a passing staffer. How convenient, these passing staffers. When Nick disengages to spring, so agile, up onto one of the platforms, there's a needle of pleasure tucked away in her expression, not secret but small and sharp and keenly felt, to see him so well again. Pen does not spring; Pen affects a graceful languor, and strolls up onto the platform. "When I win this one, you need to give me your tongue for an entire three days, and you must tell me the most outrageous lie you ever have, and then get up early enough to wake me up. With breakfast, if you please."

Nick
Nick leans back against the railing on one side of the platform so that he can look across it and over at her.  He looks very devil-may-care that way, as though he were leaning on a ship overlooking the ocean.  "How good would you want the breakfast to be?" he asks, and there is another smile that curls there at the corner of his mouth.

"If I win, I don't want to do dishes for a week, Sunday to Sunday, and you'll owe me a new story or poem every day of that week."

Pen
"The breakfast must be a culinary delight, a wonder of breakfasts."

Duh, Nick. Pen: she bites the inside of her lip, subtle, subtle, for half-a-second, sweeping Nick with a look of the less easy to read than usual variety; complex; lake-light mystery. Then she flashes an audacious dimple and says, "You're going down, Nicholas. Not getting down."

Coins go clink clink clink, and on that bad 80s movie one-liner which she is very pleased with, the game begins!

Go go go! Ninja Dance Battlefield Earth! Save Earth from the aliens by dancing the dance of ninjas! Ninjas who can hip, hop, and groove, baby, groove.

Nick
[Dance dance ninja!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Stamina!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[-_-]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[-_-]

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

Nick
[Hahahahaha]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Nick
[Stamina!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[omg, what is this crazy mirror world]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[where Nick is better at physical things than me!]

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

Nick
[Do not jinx yourself Hyde]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4) ( botch x 3 )

Nick
Luck is on Nick's side tonight.  While no one would look at him askance when he is in the middle of some physical undertaking, Pen definitely has the advantage on him there: has, ever since they met.  (Nick's athletic abilities deteriorated somewhat back in college, when reading and sitting in a counselor's seat took up most of his day.)  Still, he is giving a good accounting of himself.  His feet are quick and though his breaths are coming hard and fast, he is not showing any signs that he will flag or slow down.

He's doing so well, see, that maybe he's getting a little overconfident.  It works in his favor at first: he is jumping from side to side, moving his feet rapidly between the pads on the platform, and things are looking grim for Penelope Mercury Mars.

Nick is so focused that he hasn't yet noticed that loosening the belt on his pants might have been a mistake.  They have been finding their way lower and lower around his hips with each jump and spring and wiggle.  By the time he notices, it is too late to slow down; by the time he notices, they have slid down just far enough that -

And then they are down far enough to tangle his legs, haven't quite fallen down off his hips but -

His foot catches behind his knee because he cannot quite extend his leg far enough with them down that far.  It catches, and he goes spinning, overcompensates, tangles his legs in his already twisted pants which have fallen far enough that the mouth of one leg threatens to engulf a shoe -

Smack.  Against the ground, flat on his chest.  Hard.  The culprit thankfully left his underwear in place.

Pen
Pen does not see the peril Nick is in. After all: their are lights to pay mind to, patterns to follow, aliens to defeat with the power of dance.

The sound he makes when he hits the ground earns a negligent and quick glance; then her focus is back on - but no, then her gaze snaps back and she stops playing the game, both hands cupped over her mouth.

G A M E  O V E R. Earth has been overrun!

Pen swings down from her platform on over to Nick's.

"Are you all right?"

Nick
Nick is taking a moment to soak in the defeat; he leaves his face against the floor for a moment more before lifting a hand and giving Pen a thumbs up.  His hand wanders back to grip at the back of his waistband, perhaps fearing that along the way he'll find that he has ripped his underwear or something that would compound upon the humiliation and snatched victory.

Fortunately he has not.  He gives his pants a tug, though they have worked their way so far down that he might have to unbuckle his belt and unbutton them in order to get them back up to where they should sit.  He lifts himself on his elbows.  "I'm fine," he says.  There is a wry smile in her direction.  "I guess I'm making you breakfast."

Pen
Pen stays crouched near Nick while he regathers his dignity, concern only dissolving as Nick proves he is okay by being okay. Another sweep of a glance, measured, as the pants return to their rightful place at his hips; see, her lashes are low, a dark fringe, the gray of her eyes obscured by the shadow they sweep. The particular observer might notice this: how the shadow her eyelashes cast is spiky; how it only makes the gray clearer; brighter.

And then, irrepressible, Pen says, "I didn't think you'd take my threat so to heart, Crow. You didn't have to go this down. How about I get you another beer and we play giant Jenga?"

Beat. "Are you certain you're okay?"

Does his pride smart? Maybe no one saw!

Oh, people saw. Somebody calls out some encouragement. Another person comments on his derriere and another some comment about men's rights. Pen gives them a look like a fish-hook through an open eye;

Nick
Nick has arched his hips so that he can unwork his belt buckle and button more subtly than if he had to do it while standing up, and manages to wiggle his pants back up and around his hips.  He buttons and rebuckles and pushes himself back to his feet, with only a slight wince as he does so.  He might have a good bruise or two later tonight.

"Let's do beer and Jenga," he says, with a sidelong look toward her.  A moment later, her comment earns her a gentle pinch or two in the ribs, in the sensitive spot just below her armpit.  "I'm all right."

Nick is very pointedly not looking toward the commentators, either his admirers or his detractors.

Pen
And so the evening goes, until eventually they arrive back home, each with multiple prizes under their belt (and some belts better than others). They are prizes ephemeral until they resolve into shape over the next few weeks and they are prizes physical because Pen used her tickets to buy Nicholas a silly stuffed anthropomorphic corn on the cob keychain, as scarecrows keep crows away from corn, and this way he can be either, the crow too smart for a scarecrow, or the scarecrow itself!

And after they have been home for a while, and after they are even wearier, after the constellations move, Pen - with this secret smile lifting the corners of her mouth, this pleased-with-herself yearning curve, this aloof air which is really the opposite of 'aloof,' this Pen - tells Nick a number. A high number. Clarifies it into minutes. Minutes become seconds. These are the seconds spent, tonight, in physical contact; this is how long their longest kiss was; this is how long she gazed at him; this is exactly how long the happiest part of her day was; this is how long she had the pleasure of being in his company. She tells him she likes it because she feels less lonely; she'll remember tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

These aren't abstractions; she seems pleased reciting them for him, as if they're some kind of poem, as if they're a secret he could turn into some solid thing, a comb, a shell, a ring. Pen traces Nick's wedding ring and asks him if he's proud.

I'm timing your answer, she says, and she's laughing - see.

A Measure of Cleverness

Nick
By the time they leave the bar, Nick is still drunk.  It's been illegal to smoke inside for years, but the dive bar they were in is a relic of other times, and somehow his clothes smell faintly of old cigarettes (it may also have been from the time he spent in proximity to Andrés.)

He had come close to dozing off in her lap when they had all been there together in the bar.  It's a shame, really: he has been talking about wanting to talk shop with Kiara for some time.  He has missed his chance.

When they wander out of the bar he is bleary eyed and regretting every last tequila shot.  It is dark, has been dark for some time.  He is leaning against Pen, though this is more out of a desire for closeness than any particular need for support.  He isn't that drunk.  So: they need to make their way across the parking lot, down the street where Nick parked the car.  Pen of course will be driving them home.

Mercury
"We need to make a stop," Pen tells Nicholas. She drank the rest of his beer, and they all chatted amicably, those three Disciples of (very) different world views and paradigms, and the world did not end, and Andrés and Kiara were close to one another, and Nicholas lolled in Pen's lap, and perhaps Pen had designs on tempting Nick into a bathroom or the cellar store-room to fuck around depending on just how given over to drunk he is and whatever happened is written somewhere in a book the Norns read (or do they weave? Some Triple-bard) called the resplendent book of hallowed and ardent and daring and steadfast (and augurual and cold and rejuvenating and pulsing - it is a very long name; it is a name so long it goes on for longer than can be read). And it is dark, by the time they leave. It gets darker sooner these nights.

In the car, "And I may need you to rouse yourself and lend me a measure of your strength."

They stop outside a pawn shop of disreputable mien, the windows smoked with darkness and the look of it decidedly closed. Pen pounds on the door until someone opens up, a cranky looking man with a shock of hair and a tiny pair of spectacles. Nicholas is pressganged into helping carry Pen's treasure from the shop into the car: a hammered dulcimer, to go with whatever is in the black instrument case (a lap harp).

Nick
It was easy to tempt Nick into a bathroom or the store room: he is precisely the right mix of drunk, it would appear, for such escapades.  As they approach the car his eyes slide to her sidelong when she tells him they need to make a stop, and to that he only nods, and as they enter the car he says, "All right.  I think I can muster some," and there is a little smile here for her.

Then here, they are at a shady looking pawn shop, perhaps with neon lights on the windows which are dark just now, perhaps locked and barred with iron.  He smiles at the cranky looking man.  He helps Pen carry the hammered dulcimer and the black case to their car without complaint, though there is a little sweat that springs up on his brow: the instruments are heavy.

"Planning to learn to play?" he asks her, when they stop halfway to the car to set it down and catch their breath.

Mercury
"You are, aren't you?" Pen says, with a solemn and side-long glance, only the way her lashes have lowered, only their shadow on her cheekbones and the tarnished gray of her gray eyes beneath an indication that she is trying to pull one over on Nicholas. Unfortunately, or fortunately, she becomes more mischievous when Nicholas has had some to drink, and though there is no malice she does wonder if Nick might remember suddenly a thing that never happened. "Look at them closely, or wait until we're home, and I will show you what I mean to do with them."

Nick
"I'll look when we're home," he says, and his eyes blink-blink at her and the shadow her lashes cast over her cheekbones.  His eyes are hazy; he is not thinking just now as he looks at her of whatever she plans to do with the instruments.  "Ready?"

And, heave.  They can get to the car, after a few minutes, though they have to pause and rest and also circle around to lower the seats before they can fit the dulcimer and the case into the little Civic.

Mercury
And Pen pets the dulcimer and the case and pillows them both with blankets left over from picnicing and she swipes her hand down Nick's side and flank and hooks a finger through his belt loop to tug him and says, "Thank you, Crow," and then it is into the driver's seat, the skirt of her gauzy rose-pink gown whisking out with Austen delicacy around the fitted autumn boots, and then the door slams shut, and once Nick is in and they're driving again Pen says kindly, "You can control the radio, love," and thus he is distracted hopefully when she begins to drive with her reckless sense of abandon and a liberatarian's respect of the laws.

Nick
Reckless abandon might have been dangerous were he any more drunk than he is; she might risk making him carsick.  As it is, he fiddles a few times with the radio, switching through channels, lingering on the classic rock station and then dissatisfied switching to R&B only to switch back to the indie station.  His head flops to the side across the center console and toward her: he is leaning, boneless, longing again for her lap though that is a terrible idea since she is driving.  "Andrés seems really happy with Kiara," he says.

Mercury
"Do you think so? He does seem a tad freer, less constrained by a shadow," Pen says, and if Nick does lean too far, she will push him so he lists in the other direction. Sir, she is driving, and driving is serious business. "Differently salt-rimed."

Nick
"I think the shadow is still there, the shape is just changing," Nick says.  "But he seems more comfortable.  It's good to see him happy."  He lists a little too far and she has to give him a push, and he sways now in the opposite direction; the noise that escapes him can best be described as a giggle, and while that is typically a word our narrator loathes sometimes it is indeed the most appropriate.

He leans his head against the window.  "Are you going to start a band all by yourself?  I want to listen to you play all the instruments."

Mercury
"I cannot play any instruments, so listening to me play all the instruments would be an exercise in fantasy," Pen tells Nick, though Nick giggling causes her to flash a glance his way; it is light, bending from a sword lake-wet and gleaming; it is pale radiance, and sharp, and amused.

Drive, drive, drive, pay attention to the road, drive drive speed oh shit a red light VROOM no police around good. The dulcimer is slightly jostled and Pen casts a quick contrite glance backward.

"It is good to see people happy. Especially when they are happy because of somebody else's presence, when they are easy." This is when she is thought-struck, but they are not home yet, and so: drive drive.

Nick
They are not home yet, and Nick knows that Pen cannot play any instruments but perhaps he imagines anyway.  "You're so good at things," he says.  "What instrument would you play if you could play an instrument?  What is that one we picked up?  How do you play it?"

Mercury
Pen likes it when Nick thinks she is good at things but she feels all queer strange funny when he says it like that and it is both a pleased queer strange funny and a retiring queer strange funny and she gives him a flick of a look side-long again but only briefly it turns into a quick full-glance she is too direct for side-long glances to be her normal measure and she knows she has an instinct to not quite look at him now and so she does and anyway the look was brief and one of her dimples is just visible and then gone and she says, "It is a hammered dulcimer; you play it with little sticks. If I could play any instrument, I would play the - uh - the, humm, I don't know if I can choose. The flute maybe. Then I'd be kissing breath into song. But maybe I'd get tired of that. The harpsichord would be cool, or the cello, or the guitar. What would you play if you could play anything?"

Nick
"Maybe the piano.  It makes so many different kinds of sounds," Nick says, and he missed her look because he is staring up and out the window, at the stars that are just beginning to wink and smile down on them.  "I wanted to play the drums when I was little but we didn't have the money for me to join band."  A beat.  "Fuck, I always drink too much whenever I'm with Andrés."

Mercury
"I harbored unfair resentment toward the piano when I was young," Pen says. "Church, and also rich kids at school, conspired to inspire it in me. I would have liked to play the drums - do you still want to learn how to play the drums? We could buy a set." Because they can buy whatever they want now: they are magick, and not in poverty, and no artificial shortages, and if he wants it she will get it for him. Here, soft laugh: ash-fall, silk-pull; "Why do you think you do?"

Nick
"Maybe," Nick says, to learning the drums.  He sways a little lower against the window, is almost looking up through it now and into the sky.  The skies are open out here once they have passed out of the shadow of the skyscrapers; there are few trees, and the stars are hemmed in by the mountains.  "Maybe we can both learn."  A beat.  "I don't know why.  He just puts it in front of me and then I drink it.  He reminds me a little bit of being younger."

Mercury
"In what way, handsome Crow, pret-ty fellow?" Pen sounds curious; she can guess, so the question is not as intent as it might be otherwise, Pen being who she is.

Nick
"Oh, just...doing things even though I know it's a bad idea.  It's weird to be the sober one when someone else is getting really drunk."  Nick is beginning to sway back toward the center, back toward her.  His head flops to the side so he can look up at her, now, instead of the open sky.  "Where are we going to put the dulcimer?"

Mercury
"I think the living room for now," Pen says. "You would look very fetching playing the hammered dulcimer." A beat, and then, "I like the weirdness of being the sober one when someone else is getting really drunk; it is interesting to have twinned perspectives - because of course you must, if they are your friend, think of things as they see them too. I also like to be drunk on the mead of poetry etcetera and given over to abandon, but not with everyone." This might well be a difference in upbringing: Nick is a man, Pen is a woman; it is safer for him to be drunk to abandon than it is for her to be so. "Are you very smashed?" She sounds amused. "You don't regret it, do you?"

Nick
"Not very," he says.  "But I had four...five tequilas and a couple of beers.  I don't think I regret it, though."  He is watching her profile now, his eyes steady.  "I like when you get drunk on the mead of poetry," he says.  "With me and Ari.  It was always fun when we all used to drink together."

Mercury
"It hasn't been so long," Pen says, and yes: not only does she sound amused; she is amused. "We'll drink together again. I think you want to beat Andrés, or you like it when I come and get you," and see - she is teasing him; and here they are, home. There is violence done to the Kidds' front yard, and they both know who the perps are. Pen kills the engine; the car lights wash away; she lets her head flop back, and she looks over at Nicholas, a moment of transition - suspended - this moment: now.

Nick
"Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have to testify in court after the election," Nick says, noting the chaos in the Kidds' front yard, noting the Clinton-Kaine signs that have been lined up across the street in neat rows like battle standards.  Before he opens the car door his head flops, once more, across the center console and toward her lap.  "I do like it when you come pick me up," he says.  "It means I get to see you a little sooner."

Mercury
"Romantic flatterer," Pen says, with this quick smile. "I feel quite wooed," and though the words are flippant, the way her fingers creep into his hair is solemn, thoughtful, sensualist-Hermetic, intent, and she strokes from brow to nape of neck, and then unbuckles her seatbelt, and now it is time to haul the dulcimer inside, to use strength and care and care of the one step with the loose brick whoops loose brick attack.

Nick
Nick is perhaps better suited to being on the bottom as they take the dulcimer up the steps; it keeps him from being attacked by the loose brick and anyway they are equally capable of hauling the thing.  His hair is still in slight disarray from her fingers, a smile still lingering there around his eyes.  "What were you going to show me about the dulcimer?"

Mercury
"You need to look at it," Pen says, smiling - this slow smile, almost languorous, honey-slow smile see. "Once we set it down, when I hit one of the strings; look at it with your sixth sense, tracing the movement of quintessence."

Nick
"Oh," Nick says, and tilts his head as he looks down at the dulcimer.  There is a tense moment when he almost stumbles over the loose brick but, see, his foot rights itself at the last moment and then they are up and through the door with it.  Into the living room.

He helps her to set it against the wall, and walks over to light one of the candles on the end table nearby, leaning down to study the dulcimer before she strikes the strings.

[Prime 1, diff 4, -1 for instrument.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 6) ( success x 1 )

Mercury
The tense moment dredges up a gasp, wire-taut, wire-sharp; it catches in Pen's throat, and she gives Nick a wide-eyed look; and then the dulcimer is safe, and settled, and she takes its hammers out and she strikes it, and Nick can just see the glimmer of some quintessence (melodious, piercing) hang in the air, very faint, conjured up by the sound; it is gone when there are no notes playing. It does not appear every time she strikes a string with the hammer. There is no pattern; and she really does not know how to play this instrument.

Nick
There is no pattern, but Nick looks up at her from where he is leaned down near the instrument and there is a crinkle at the corners of his eyes.  "I wonder what it does," he says.  "If it does anything specific.  Do you think someone used to use it in their magick?"

Mercury
"I don't know. Here, you play with it," Pen says, offering Nick the hammers, only to - as soon as he takes them - go flop across the couch, as if she'd been suspended by a string, see, and the string was just cut.

Nick
Nick takes the hammers from her and very carefully strikes the strings, as though concerned that he might snap them with a fall of the hammer.  There is a gentle note, two, and then once reassured the next strikes are a little more firm.  He, too, has no idea how to play it but seems to be taking pleasure in hearing the notes and in making them ring just so.

He leaves off after a few notes more, wandering over to the couch.  He rests a hand on the armrest and looks down at Pen for only a moment before he kicks his shoes off and goes to slide down beside her, wiggling into a comfortable position.

Mercury
Nick is a cat sometimes and he must be one now to find a comfortable position beside Pen, the way she is sprawled; face-down, arms curled under her head, her cheek on her forearms, her head just-turned, one leg hanging off the couch the other stretched across it. She adjusts her position to allow for Nick, though must pull her skirt; he's sitting on it.

Nick
Nick is a cat sometimes and, catlike, he curls himself around and fits his body up against her.  He lies on his side and curls an arm beneath his head so that he can look over at her, the way her head is angled.  He rests a hand over the small of her back, its weight like a warm stone.  After a moment it turns to kneading the muscles bunched below her shoulderblades.  "Are you tired?"

Mercury
"No, though you can keep doing that, and I will love you more than the moon loves dark," Pen says, after a pleasure-filled hum, responsive, responding.

Nick
There is a moment's pause before Nick pushes himself back up into a sitting position.  He sways, catches his bearings: the room still spins, however briefly.  He leans over her so that he can press in with his thumbs and fingertips, can more readily wring tension out of her muscles.  He is quiet for a few moments, pressing his thumb in at the base of her neck, smoothing a palm over the back of her shoulder.  After a moment he makes an inquiring little hum.

Mercury
"Grace," Pen says, her eyes half-closed. "She frustrates me."

Pen is still wearing her green jacket but, in order to fully enjoy Nick's hands, she is willing to bestir herself and take it off, fling it carelessly to the floor, and see there the back of her dress dips low is not actually zipped all the way up needs another inch to be fully closed and there's the band of her bra just above where the dress would close if it were to close. It's a low-thing.

Nick
Nick shifts his weight back, sways his spine to allow her to rise in order to take her jacket off.  The movement takes only a moment's hesitation; the alcohol has made him somewhat slower to react.  Once Pen has settled again one of his thumbs comes to press in at the base of her neck before he makes a thoughtful noise and then unzips her dress the rest of the way down her back.  His thumbprint leaves her but only so he can fiddle with the clasp of her bra.  This, too, takes a bit longer than it ordinarily might but eventually comes free.

And then he resumes.  It's a good thing, to be loved more than the moon loves dark.  "Grace does?"  She can almost imagine him slow-blinking, if she tries; she can hear it in his voice.  "She was at the bar earlier, before you came.  She asked if you were still mad and then she got mad at me when I told her I couldn't tell you how you were supposed to feel."

Mercury
Nick is drunk, so perhaps he is not as alert, as attuned, as astute, as he might normally be to feel the whisper of tension as her muscles go taut again, braced and bracing, and Pen having resettled continues to gaze through the veil of her long lashes at their floor or a cabinet perhaps an interesting candle stick or piece of sculpture and she says, "All right. I don't think she was mad at you. After all you didn't punch her friend when he was down, aka when he was rambling at a near-stranger whose ideology he has just shat all over and continues to shit on with every sentence, by politely asking him to leave," seeth. Sharp inhale, Pen buries her face in the pillow of her arms, and then having tamped down on the urge to fly into a passion, she says, "I just don't get it."

Nick
Nick only feels the tautness in her muscles when he moves his hands down to her shoulders to work out a knot and finds that the knot is in fact her body readying itself.  His hands still, and his palms begin to smooth over her skin instead.  One finds its way to cup around the back of her neck.  "I don't really get it either," he says.  "I think she's just really protective of him.  I think she probably also doesn't see the irony in starting fights while talking about the importance of unity."  A gentle squeeze of her muscles.  "Are you okay?"

Mercury
"I was straight with her; I didn't backpedal or try to say it was all okay - I have an ill-taste in my mouth, that she'd even seek to have me ...apologize or admit to wrong-doing. I don't care how protective she is; I'm vey protective of my people, too, but if you stepped away from your oaths to the Chakravanti, I wouldn't expect or ask other Chakravanti to be okay with that." Pen falls silent, but only for a moment.

"I don't like how she acts about my Tradition: as if she understands anything about it. Elliot was a poor example; frankly, I'm shocked his mentor ever initiated him or that he passed any of the tests to attain rank; the only thing that shocks me more is that the Chorus would have him, faithless as he is."

Nick
Nick only shakes his head as she speaks, and does not attempt to interrupt her.  "The Chorus can be very forgiving," he says.  "But I don't really get it any more than you do, Pen.  I don't think you've done anything you need to apologize for."

Mercury
"They do have that reputation," Pen says, coolly, of the Chorus, and she glances over her shoulder at Nick. "I would find it less frustrating if she weren't so, I don't know, I think genuinely blind -- and unhappy about it; stoically resolved? But it still pisses me off. What do you think, Nicholas?" They've already discussed Elliot at length, after the picnic; this is something else and again.

Nick
"I think sometimes a Tradition isn't a good fit and people should be permitted to leave," he says, and smooths a hand between her shoulder blades lest she think his words might carry some sting.  "A lot of people are very young when they choose a Tradition.  But I don't think that means you need to trust him, or think well of him or the oaths he broke."

He leans down and kisses the back of her shoulder.  "I think she's not very aware of other people, in general," he says.  "And I also think she doesn't handle change well and isn't very emotionally mature.  Neither of us see her very often, so I'm just planning to continue that and be polite whenever I come across her."

Mercury
"Most Traditions seem to have a less rigorous initiation than the Order does," Pen says, a touch sulkily; she knows she sounds a touch sulky, she knows she is sulking, and that only compounds to tempest-brood silver-tarnished quality of her reply; she takes a deep breath; the air could taste of ozone. "But yes, sometimes one should become forsworn and seek out something else, but his reasons - it is just all so unbelievable. But leave that aside. Do you trust him? Do you trust her?"

Nick
"I don't really trust him, but I barely know him," he says.  "His reasons for leaving didn't seem very solid, but I...some people just aren't very introspective.  They know something's wrong but they don't know how how to describe what."  He runs his fingers back through her hair, forehead to nape of her neck, gently trailing his fingertips along her scalp.

"I don't know if I trust her much, either, at the moment.  She seems pretty pissed.  But we...I mean, we don't see that much of her, anyway.  At least, I don't."

Mercury
"Whether or not we see much of her isn't imporant to the question," Pen says, but after a pause. Nick's fingers through her hair still her, silence her for a moment, and she bows her head again when his fingers reach her nape. She'd had to shift up to look over her shoulder, but now she rests her forehead on her clasped hands.

Nick
"I don't think she'd actively try to hurt either of us," Nick says.  "Or do something to cause me to distrust her."  He presses his thumbs into the back of her neck at the base of her skull, kneading carefully.  "So if we're not seeing her much anyway, it's just a matter of knowing what to disclose and when, or taking care how we work with her if there's some kind of large crisis."

Mercury
"You're kinder than I am," Pen says, after a spell of silence because what Nick's doing feels good and if she doesn't say anything maybe he'll keep doing it and his hands will travel and that will feel good too and her rings are cold and hard one against the other with her hand clasped like that, and when she finally does speak she sounds regretful.

Nick
He can hear that note of regret in her voice and so there is a pause, one thumb finally ceasing its rotation as the other hand moves off of her and onto the couch cushion beside her head.  This is to support him as he leans down and kisses the back of her neck, the side of her ear.  "You're very kind, Pen," he says.  "I'm sure you were as kind to her as anyone can be to anyone who is yelling at them."

He pushes himself back up, and the kneading resumes, closer to the base of her neck.  "Do you think we ought to react differently?"

Mercury
"I think it is vital that we can voice dissent and still be friendly, that we can follow a course of independent thought and study, and it - that she doesn't seem to understand that I - it is only frustrating; how do you think we are reacting now? I don't want to cut her off or to cease behaving in a friendly fashion toward her, I only ... she is so fat on rhetoric, I find it difficult. It makes me want to be brisk."

Pen rolls onto her back, slipping her arms out of her dress' sleeves, and her bra joins her jacket on the floor, carelessly tossed that-a-way; she straightens her necklace over her collar her breastbone and she lets her knees drift into Nick's side, maybe curving behind him. Two can be cats.

Nick
"I think it's also important that we can disagree with each others' friends without it turning into all out rivalry," Nick says, and there is a little sigh here.  His hand trails against her side as she turns onto her back, and he leans his shoulder into the back of the couch so he can curl to the side and lean over her.

"I also find it difficult," he says, and there is a little smile here, something rue-touched.  "Limiting time is what helps me stay kind."

Mercury
Pen traces the shape of Nick's smile with her index and middle fingers, smiling herself, albeit privately, distantly see, "You are also better at staying silent than I am," and listen: she sounds fond and admiring, because she would like to be secret in some ways that she is not; she knows the ways in which she is secret and they are not the ways of saying nothing, not usually; "but - " and she lofts her chin " - I think I have improved, haven't I? It's been a long time since my last duel."

Nick
"It has been a very long time since your last duel," Nick says, and his smile too is fond, is admiring, because he too would sometimes like to be things that he is not.  He rests his arm along her side, brushes his thumb along her cheekbone in lieu of her back which has been turned away from him.  "I don't know if this is a situation where it's better to be silent, though.  Sometimes people come around after you've spoken your mind.  You give them a chance to think differently."

Mercury
"Didn't you know, Nicholas Crow Mercury Hyde," Pen says, glancing down at her necklace again, the milk and honey glimmer of it, the silver drowned city glamour in it. "We don't give people a chance to think differently; we only oppress their spirits and their creativity," and Pen, see, on the tail-edge of this remark, she flicks a (beguiling [winsome]) mischief-edged glance up from under her lashes, like to see whether or not he bought it. "You're very handsome. Can you guess five things I like about you?"

Nick
"That's you, the great oppressor."  Nick's eyes meet hers from under his own lashes, see, like they are sharing a secret.

This clever sharp thing melts away rapidly as her question catches him off guard, makes him laugh in this effusive way that her manner of showing affection sometimes does.  He flattens his palm over her stomach, thoughtfully brushes her skin, and his smile is tinged with embarrassment: but pleased, too.  "Let's see.  My eyes, and my hair, and my cleverness, and that I...that I'm thoughtful with other people.  That's four.  You like when I tell you stories," and the mischief is back, his smile knife-quick.

Mercury
"I do like those five things about you. You get a prize," Pen says, with an ardent look, which is to say an intense one, very emotive and eloquent; and as she does not immediately ask him to tell her a story, perhaps that is what the prize is; a moment to gather his resources.

Nick
She is rewarded with another laugh, if that was one of her goals, and Nick wiggles himself up farther onto the couch, shifting his legs back into a more comfortable position.  He'll be pressed in against the back and alongside her or on top of her soon enough.  "What is the prize?"

Mercury
"My eyes, or a lock of my hair, or a measure of my cleverness, or a thought about other people, or a story," Penelope says, unwilling to cede a measure of the cushions, though perhaps beginning to be amused by the half-off dress, the skirt drifting up to catch M. Hyde's legs as he shifts.

Nick
Nick is not as wary of the dress as he ought to be: the alcohol is still in full effect.  He cannot quite wedge himself into the small space between her and the back of the couch and so he is beginning to end up somewhere in between, leaned over top of her and against the back of it, his legs well tangled.  "Hm.  What if I want all of them?"  He leans his head against the couch cushion, his eyes hooded, amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth.  "What does a measure of your cleverness look like today?"

Mercury
"Is that the one you're choosing, Crow?" Pen is restrained, see? Restrained laughter; his drunk tanglement does indeed amuse her; we have moved past beginning to be to full-on inhabiting amusement.

Nick
"Maybe.  I'd like to know what it is before I choose it."  He wiggles a foot; it does not quite free his foot from the grasp of her skirt.

Mercury
"Perhaps once you have it, you'll be clever enough to know what it is." Her dimples are in evidence, although Nick's foot wiggle has her warily watching the voluminous twist of pink fabric, 'lest there be a tear.

Nick
Nick gives up the moment his foot encounters real resistance, so there is no risk of tear; instead he settles his weight more fully against her, giving up on his legs for the time being.  He is not still for long though, and begins to pluck at the buttons on his shirt.  "I'll take a measure of your cleverness, then, since you have a lot to spare."

Mercury
"Mmmmm. Very well. You know if it were a measure of cleverness at the bottom of the cleverness pile, then all the other measures would be disturbed, and that is why you should always say first or last top or bottom when giving away apples and bottles and things that are packed away carefully," Pen says, and perhaps in a past life (perhaps a past life they both shared, together; they've spoken of those in passing, haven't they? Touched on them, though touched on Nick's more in general; he's so much closer to it, so much more strongly affected by) she bargained with fairies like this. She was a more deliberate beguiler and trickster. When her skirt is no longer in danger, she watches Nick's fingers work at his buttons instead, then decides to help. Through the loop again again.

Nick
"Ah.  So should I have specified and asked for you to give me the first bit of cleverness you had to offer, or the last?"  And, his shirt freed, he squirms his way out of it, somehow tangling his legs further in the fabric as he twists around to extricate his arms.  The bit of purple cloth flutters away to the ground, and this was all so that Nick can settle himself again.

Mercury
[Doo-de-doo Wits Enigmas.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Mercury
"Mmhmm." Pen's ribs are a casualty of Nick squirming, and then her legs are a casualty of how tangled he is; when she tries to shift, she finds that her legs have become tightly bound; she wriggles too, directing Nick to no, ack, no roll that, and her voice gets tight, roll that way, and lower, and okay now, and, freedom! or maybe she should shimmy the dress the rest of the way off her hips and kick it to freedom; she likes lounging around in little but jewelry. She begins to do that, but then stops looping an arm around Nick's shoulder so that she can take off one of her rings: thumb ring, set with blue. Then, letting her shoulders hit the couch again, she reaches for Nick's hand and tries the thumb ring on his thumb and then his index finger and then and so on until she finds a finger it fits.

Nick
Nick shifts and moves where she directs him, albeit clumsily, and at last she is free and his legs are no longer atangle either.  He offers her a hand for her ring, and it fits snugly around not his index finger but his middle finger when she tries that one.  He raises his hand and holds it in front of his face with his fingers splayed so that she can admire it there alongside his wedding band.

Were Nick less drunk he might be aware that this is the bit of cleverness that she meant to offer, that he has used it up: but he is drunk.  "So what is your last bit of cleverness, then?"

Mercury
"To be used only in case of emergencies, in that dark crack before dawn, after Ragnarok," Pen says, and she kisses the back of Nick's hand; peers at him through his own fingers; then pulls his hand down so she can kiss him instead. And Pen does not take pity on people because they are drunk when it comes to being clever, though because she is in love with Nicholas, besotted and so on and so forth, she does tell him a riddle. It's a difficult riddle, but not impossible. And after she tells him the riddle, she says, "That is a password key, and it is hidden inside its answer."

Nick
Nick makes a thoughtful noise as she tells him the purpose of the last bits, his eyes wandering away from her and perhaps he wonders what this sort of knowledge would be.  They are drawn back when she kisses his hand, and then she kisses him instead.  He is closer to her after that, his head resting against her shoulder, and full of the sort of wisdom he himself would save for the dark crack before dawn, for after Ragnarok.

He raises his head only to blink at her when she tells him one riddle and then gives him another.  "Hidden inside its answer?  So...what..."  She could almost see the words turning over in his mind, were she to look.

Mercury
"What indeed," Pen says, and she sounds very pleased with herself, or pleased with Nicholas, very pleased anyway, and she'll be more pleased with him soon. "Now I want something from you. Something good. Something someone with a measure of my cleverness, his own cleverness, eyes like the heath in autumn or the sea at storm, hair like the night always wanted, a thoughtful heart and a storytellng tongue might give."

Nick
"Hm."  Nick places a kiss on her bare shoulder, wedges his arm in between her and the couch so that he can rest his head in a palm and regard her more easily.  "A crow told me that a coyote told him that he fell in love with a star once.  There was a light, a great bonfire or something more ethereal depending on who you ask, that was supposed to guide the dead back to a great house in which their bodies were kept so they'd be resurrected.  He gave that light away to the star and that's why the dead wander."  A beat.  "But both of them lie so I have no idea whether it's true."

Mercury
"That is good," Pen says, "Ari would like it. I like that the star's light unmade the map, instead of making the map like usual," and they are both clever people, Nicholas Hyde and Elaine Siddal, and they can wile away a Sunday evening with nothing planned but time spent in one another's company, and what they talk about and what they do is theirs and theirs alone, and you'd need to bargain very well with the house's shadow to learn so much as who fell off the couch first or whose was the first sip, and the house's shadow does not bargain.