radiant

The colorful chalkboard outside dripdenver promises LOCAL ORGANIC IN HOUSE APPLE CIDER in addition to the daily brew: Mexican Chiapas, the offering on the aeropress and the chemex.

Outside, the sun is starting to set.  One of those strangely lovely winter sunsets, not quite arctic but still somehow bright and sharp, such clear, clear colors, dampening into darkness.  As if the sky were slowly bleeding out its light.

The streetlights have come on, it's dinnertime.  The place isn't as crowded now.

Or, the crowd's smaller, changing, different.  More first-dates, fewer first-scripts that sort of thing.  The rich scent of coffee in the air, TV on the Radio on the soundsystem.  Local art on the walls.  That kind of vibe.

Ian

For some people, coffee houses were more of a rest stop than a destination unto themselves. Ian spent a lot of time downtown, which sometimes left him migrating between spaces while he waited for an event to start or for someone to come by and meet him. Denver Drip was a quintessentially Denver coffee joint. When he stepped inside, the air was full of the scent of coffee beans accented with notes of milk and spices. The place wasn't as full as it might be later (as it might have been earlier.) Which was fine, really, because it meant less noise and fewer distractions. He had a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, the strap pressed to his chest over his leather jacket. When he stepped up to the counter, he ignored the extensive drink menu and ordered a cup of black tea.

He probably ought to order something else. A danish or something (it would have been more polite,) but he didn't. He did, however, drop a pretty decent tip in the jar on the counter. And he smiled at the barista - relaxed and charming - before collecting his drink and migrating over to one of the empty tables. He picked one near the window, so that he could watch the sun set while he waited for time to pass, and once seated he pulled his tablet out of his bag.

radiant

(Awareness)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Kalen Holliday

[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[Oh, right, let's do this awareness thing]

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

radiant

Resonance in the air.  Another mage is somehow - god, this is one of those moments when the sense of it is naggingly at the edge of his perception and therefore hard to pin down.  Like a radio signal half-obscured by static.  He has this sense of: strength, though it is hard to tell whether that is the intonation of the resonance (even an apprentice could feel: strong), or its depth.  Or some combination of the two.

Kalen Holliday

[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]

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

Kalen Holliday

Kalen, as he often tends to be, has embarked on a quest for coffee.  He's been getting his coffee in places with less colored light, but those are also less likely to be painstakingly brewed or crazily flavored.  Unless you count 'scorched' as a flavor.  Whether or not scorched qualifies as a flavor, it isn't the one Kalen wants at the moment.  So, this lovely coffee shop it is.

This coffee shop also may have one of his favorite people in it.  Against...the better judgment of a few people.  But not his.  Not even for a damned second his.

Ian gets a quick wave, but that is all, before Kalen surveys the drink menu.  Despite reading through the entire thing, he orders black coffee.  Plain.  No frothed milk or whipped cream or raspberry hazelnut madness.

And then, after a glance to be sure that no one has materialized to join Ian, because people joining Ian seems like a thing that people would do, he starts in his direction.

radiant

Ian walks in.  There's no line just now, just one tattooed barista behind the bar, rearranging the pastries in the case.  Consolidating them from a number of half-empty platters to a few full platters.  Late enough on a weekday that they are starting to mark down the remaining items that sell best in the morning hours.

The tea isn't slow-poured, but it is properly infused, loose-leaf tea.  Ian has a choice of Darjeeling, Keemum, Assam and Lapsang Souchan tonight.  He does not receive simply a mug, but a single pot, clear glass, the infuser in the center, filled with enough hot water for perhaps two servings.

The barista gives Ian a quick, sure smile through his rather full beard - acknowledging that tip with a "Thanks, man.  Have a great night."

That sense that Ian has is present, but without focus here and now.  Maybe it was a stranger passing through.  Maybe someone on the street.  Sometimes the world brushes up against you, oddly, passing and never again.

The clear pot is perfect.  He doesn't need to pour out a soupcon to see when the tea is ready, just watch the color develop.  The mug's already warm, too.  The barista tempered the interior with a hot-water rinse so it would keep Ian's tea hotter, longer.

The couple at the next table are clearly on a first date.  Rise together and share a bloody awkward goodbye right in front of the doors.  He wants to hug her, she wants to shake hands.  Bet they won't see each other again.

Upstairs, someone rises.  Starts to descend.

Here is an impression: the first tread of boot visible on the open stairs.  Handmade, handstitched leather if one has an eye for it.  The finest sort of work.  Custom made.

Ian

There was a hint of something on the air. This edge of strength that whispered frustratingly at the edge of Ian's senses. He glanced up when he felt it, eyes traveling the room in search of the source. But whatever (whoever) it was, there were no immediate clues. And then... there was Kalen, whose presence was enough of a distraction to shift Ian's focus away from the space at large. Kalen waved. Ian smiled softly, a light quirk at one edge of his mouth. While Kalen ordered his coffee, Ian poured a careful serving of tea. The steam curling off of the Keemun had subtle notes of malt and chocolate. Ian lifted the mug and breathed it in while he waited for Kalen to join him (assuming he wished to.)

Someone was on the stairs. The tread of a boot caught Ian's attention, and he lifted his eyes, the tea in his hand and the tablet on the table momentarily ignored. His attention was a passing thing. A brief spot of curiosity (still searching for wherever that unknown resonance was coming from.)

Kalen Holliday

Kalen does come to join Ian.  His eyes travel slowly over the room, but he has become somewhat accustomed to Denver being a place to encounter a new Resonance and merely assume that it is a day upon which the sun has risen.  Or will rise, though mostly Kalen isn't out at those hours encountering other Magi these days.  He sets his coffee down and settles across from Ian with a smile.  And, even now, alert for a new and interesting companion or enemy, that smile is real.

His eyes track Ian's to that boot, linger a second, and then return to Ian.  He leans across the table to murmur, "Company we know?"  His eyes do ease back to the stairs, not just to the boots but to the source of that new Resonance.  Unless someone, or something, comes melting through the floor, if they are to appear it will be from those stairs.

radiant

Down the steps: not precisely a run but with a clipped precision that feels both sure and swift although in truth he is moving no faster than any other man of his height and his general build.  Tall, yes, though not towering.  He is spare enough, lanky enough that from a distance he seems taller than he is, but as one of those two handmade boots touches the ground at the bottom of the stairs he resolves into a man of a height with Kalen and Ian.

Blond hair, this messy wave of it.  Pale hazel eye beneath blond brows, a crisp hint of scruff, this bit of a goatee.  Strong shoulders in a dark, collared coat right down to the knees.  Button-down shirt, crisp and white beneath, unbuttoned at the collar, the thread of a tie or perhaps a cravat hinted at as well: and left, undone.

He pauses at the foot of the stairs, surveys the first floor of the cafe and it is clear that he is precise, and it is clear that he is taking his time.

And it is clear that he is seeking them out.

Because when his gaze settles on them, he walks directly towards them.  Drops a hand, open on the table between them, leans over, this tension in the fine muscles framing his eyes, which reads as: intensity.

(For Ian, at last, that vague sensation of strength resolves itself into resonance then.  The stranger is molten, and - more than that - he is potent.)

"Brothers.  I require your assistance."

His voice is low.  There is an urgency to it.

Ian

Ian shook his head - a subtle, distracted motion. "Don't think so. I can't really tell."

Kalen's senses were more open tonight, more acutely aware of whatever it was that Ian was looking for. He likely had a better sense of it, but if so, it didn't seem to phase him. Ian glanced away from the stairs to meet Kalen's eyes. Focusing on him for a moment. He took a sip of his tea, mindful of the hot water on his tongue.

"You look nice."

There was time enough for that brief flicker of warmth between them before... ah. There it was. Clearer now and hotly potent in its intensity. Ian set his tea down and swung his gaze back toward the man with the boots in time to watch him approach those last few steps. He was silent as he waited, but there was a slight shift in his posture. Dawning alertness. (Readiness, maybe, but if so he hid the tension well.)

The man flattened his palm on the table. Ian glanced at it briefly before returning to his eyes. "With what, exactly?"

Kalen Holliday

Ian captures his attention during one of those glances back.  There is a flickering of something.  Embers.  Kalen can practically taste them, hot smoke and cedar and sage.  He takes a breath, and it isn't until he is breathing out that he entirely registers that the sense of being engulfed in something searing and endless isn't just a response to that.

He looks away, toward the stranger.

Kalen does not rise, but the instinct to be on his feet is there.  Of all of the Mages in Denver, it may be best that this stranger has set his hand between Kalen and Ian.  Kalen trusts Ian not to need him.  He's fought alongside Ian before - in event of rescuing, it is not generally Kalen doing it.

Ian speaks first.  That is hardly occasion for comment between them.  Kalen continues to regard the stranger curiously.  Being greeted with 'brothers' catches his attention in entirely different ways than Ian had a moment before.

radiant

"I am looking for someone."  The stranger flashes a quick smile: all heat, no depth.  Behind his fine mouth, the teeth are perfect.

One imagines he tolerates nothing less.

"A girl, perhaps so - " and he leans back then, lifts a hand to some middling height.  " - tall.  Dark hair, dark eyes.  A certain quickness to her.  She would seem out of place, and you would feel her were you close to her.

"Like a door, opening.

"I don't suppose - "

Ian

[Subterfuge]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

Perhaps in another world, the two of them (Ian and this man) would have been cut from similar cloth. All find tailored clothes and confident precision. Here though, Ian greeted the stranger's arrival not as though he were a friend (another Awakened soul in a sleeping world) but rather as an unknown entity - possibly deserving of suspicion.

The hand on the table did not earn him any favors.

Ian raised his eyebrows lightly, as though in interest, but shook his head. "Don't think I know her."

radiant

Perception + Subterfuge: Ian.

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

Kalen Holliday

The stranger is looking for a girl.  His description reminds Kalen of a girl he meant to find again, but he does not know what she looked like behind her mask.  He remembers the taste of quick spring rain and mist heavy with presence.  Another girl, longer ago, drowned.  The ghost of a drowned girl, also possessed of a certain quickness and dark hair and dark eyes.

So much memory.  He could drown in it.  He could burn in it.  Molten.  Of course.  It is no less true for that.

"Start perhaps," he says quietly, "With who you are and why you're searching.  We can move if we must.  But if not-"  Kalen waves lazily at a chair.  "Sit."

radiant

Ian is too spare.  The casual admission, no further questions: who is she.  What is she to you.  Nothing more.  The stranger's pale eyes fix on Ian for a long moment, this attention that feels like rearing back and can be nothing more than a closely scrutinized assessment.

"Hmm."

Then, the sparest of smiles brings his attention right over to Kalen.  A different kind of scrutiny: a different weight to it.

A certain flicker that strikes one as -

"Names are power and I'll not share mine with strangers of uncertain intent.  Call me what you will and see if I answer.  As for the girl, she is in danger, and I am her Guardian.

"If you find her, you should not approach.  You should notify me.  I presume you have the means.

"And if you do not, I am certain that I can find you."

Then, a glance at the empty chair. 

"The invitation is appreciated, but I will take my leave.  Goodnight, brothers."

And he turns.

And he walks out the door.

Kalen Holliday

[Perception+Empathy | WP because reasons]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian

At Kalen's proposal, Ian eyed the space around them as though he felt it were... inadequate for the sort of conversation they were likely to have. And there was a brief glance thrown Kalen's way, cool and unreadable but nonetheless lingering.

As it happened, the stranger chose not to take them up on the invitation. Would not even leave his name. Only a request... and a warning. Ian watched him go, but did not attempt to slow his passage.

"Good luck," he offered, casually enough that it might have been sincere.

[Per+Subterfuge - what are you hiding, hmm?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

radiant

Ian has a sense from the stranger of: urgency and concern.  He does not seem to have any precise animosity towards her.  He does absolutely see himself as a Guardian.  Here is a supple, subtle shift though: she is a danger.  His concern is not precisely for her so much as it is about her.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen watches the stranger leave.  His attention rests on the door a few seconds, then returns to Ian.

"Psychic messenger pigeons?"  He mutters.  "Damn."  And then a smile, real if perhaps a bit more distracted than the one Ian got by way of greeting.  "Tuesdays in Denver, no?"

Ian

Ian smirked and shook his head, but there was a lingering trace of heaviness about it. Some nagging suspicion that wouldn't quite let him relax. He waited a few seconds, sipping his tea in silence (perhaps to give the stranger further time to put distance between them.)

"I think his concern is genuine. Less sure about his motives though." There was another pause before he continued, dropping his voice to a softer register. "If you see him again, tell me?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen nods.  "His concern, yes," he says quietly.  "But who they are...."  He shakes his head slightly.  "I could not say."

Ian's softened tone gets another smile, amused but also warm.  "Of course."  Kalen takes a sip of his coffee and settles a little.  They are in public and they just met most likely another Mage, he doesn't really relax so much as drops to a minimal guard.

"Thank you, for all that that moment has passed."  Judging by the tone he probably means the moment that just got interrupted, rather than some broader allusion to anything they may once have been.  Have almost been.

Ian

Ian had nearly forgotten he'd said it, in truth. Nearly, but not quite. The juxtaposition was a little surreal. Between the blond stranger and his dire urgency and that passing moment of flirtation? admiration? friendship? Whatever it was, between himself and Kalen. He smiled a little over the lip of his mug.

"How've you been?"

Kalen Holliday

"A bit tired maybe, but alright."  There is an easy dismissal of his general state of exhaustion, but, at least right now, Ian still seems to get real answers from him.  Of course, he's hardly asking difficult questions.  "But I have coffee now, so that's already better.

"You?"

Ian

"Mm... debatable, I guess. Mostly alright. I keep feeling like spring is coming early." For most people, a comment like that might sound hopeful. Like a light at the end of a frozen wasteland. The way Ian said it, it sounded more ambiguous. Like an upset in the natural order of things. (Or maybe he just didn't like spring.) "But then I look up and realize it's still February."

(Not for much longer.)

Ian took a few more sips of his tea. The last was deeper, as though he meant to consume a reasonable portion before he abandoned it. Finally he gathered up his things, sliding the unused tablet back into his bag.

"Want to take a walk with me? I don't really feel like staying here."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen nods and takes a real drink of his coffee.  "Yeah.  That sounds good." 

Ian

The ambient temperature in Denver was just slightly above freezing. Cold enough to still feel like winter (or at least, the end of it,) but warm enough that the mass of dark clouds overhead was just as likely to mean rain as snow. When Ian arrived at Washington Park earlier in the evening, the air was still dry. But the threat of precipitation loomed over the city like a blanket. He was running, like he often did on this particular trail. It was becoming a habit.

The path took him on a loop around the park before he cut inward toward the lake, loping past a handful of slower runners on his way toward the gazebo (where the girl with the odd resonance had been two days earlier.) That, of course, was when the rain hit. Slow at first. Delicate pin-prick droplets that left specks of wetness on the ground. Soon it built into a light drizzle. When a drop of it managed to hit the back of his neck and crawl icily down his spine, he exhaled irritably and jogged into the cover of the open gazebo. Once there, he stopped to catch his breath, hands on his hips as he looked out at the darkened sky.

Light rain tended to come in sporadic shifts. Possibly, if he waited a few minutes, it might let up.

(Possibly he'd be running back to his car in the freezing rain.)

Alexander

[Because he's been trying stuff out, and because he had time to kill...  Sensing heat, Arete 1.  TN 4, -1 for taking time, 2 succs to last.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Alexander

[Extending,

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

There were a lot of reasons why people were in the park, and a lot of them tended to be shared.  To exercise, running along the trails through the park.  To meet, the occasional couple walking closely together through the early evening light.  To walk the dog.  Or just to pass through.

One figure, sat near the lake, is waiting for a friend.  There are no plans to meet, no exchange of text messages or voicemails or phone calls.  It’s just that this is the spot where they had met twice before, and it seemed like the most likely place for it to happen again.  It had been months since that last time with no signs of a certain scarecrow appearing again.  But, then, there hadn’t been any warning before.  So he comes and he watches and he waits for his friend.

As he waits, he plays with a lighter.  It flicks open, lights, close.  Flicks open, lights closes.  At one point, Alexander stops to feel the heat radiating off the flame before the same cycle restarts.  Only afterwards he’s looking at more than just the lake.  His vision glows with the sensation of heat – or the lack of it.  So he sees the slight cooling in the air just before the rain starts and it suddenly seems like a good time to find cover.  The single drops multiply into rain and he runs to the nearby gazebo.  He’s not as prepared for weather today as usual – rain hadn’t been on the forecast – and so a little cover while the rain (hopefully) blows itself out seems to be a good idea.  There was that gazebo not so far away.

So head ducked down, he runs under cover.  And then he notices that he’s not alone.  “Oh!  Ian.  Hi.”  Awkward?  Quite possibly.

Ian

[Awareness]

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

Ian

How long had it been since the last time they'd seen each other? Not since that night when Ian had played Kiara on the basketball court. He hadn't spoken to Alex then - nothing beyond a brief greeting. The truth is, they'd seldom spoken to each other at all. At least not about anything that wasn't some immediate threat that they were in the process of eliminating. They'd played soccer once. There hadn't been a lot of conversation then either.

But that was probably just as well, as far as Alexander was concerned. They hadn't exactly started things off on the right foot.

Ian hadn't really expected to see him. But then, it was a public park. And with the rain, there were bound to be other people heading for shelter. He didn't notice Alex's resonance right away. At first it was just this quiet note of winter lingering in the background. But when he caught the sound of approaching footsteps, he glanced over his shoulder toward the sensation and matched it with Alex's face. It took slightly longer for Alex to notice that he wasn't alone. Ian's mouth twitched with amusement at the sudden greeting.

"Hey."

He'd clearly been out for a run, judging by his clothes. Drawstring sweats and a sleek black windbreaker. His hair was a bit damp from the rain. Absently he ran a hand through it, pushing the wet strands off his forehead.

"Enjoying the weather?"

Alexander

[Awareness too]

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

Serafíne

AWARENESS!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )

Alexander

Alexander glances around the gazebo quickly, seeing if there was anyone else unexpected there, before returning his gaze to Ian.  Their first meeting hadn’t been the best on record – Alexander coming away with an impression that he was being being played with in some kind of game that only Ian knew the rules to.  But then there had been other times that they had encountered each other.  Almost half of which involved fighting and shooting and, oh yes, someone getting decapitated.

It’s the little things that can make it hard to relate to someone, although the tide of chance had been remarkably reluctant in bringing the two of them together anyway.  Who knows, maybe if they had gotten off on a better foot, maybe managed to be sociable a little more than the time stargazing outside the Chantry with Sera, maybe maybe maybe.

But that wasn’t the case, and Alexander still doesn’t quite get the other man.  And so he steps back to lean against one of the rails running around the edge of the gazebo and crosses his arms across his chest.  Maybe he’s cold?  Or maybe it’s out of some unconscious statement of the barrier between them.  But, then, our Alex isn’t all that metaphorical.

“It was better dryer.  Cold I can handle.  Wet when you’re not expecting it is just nasty.  How about you?  You don’t really look like you were expecting it either.”

He looks out into the darkening park, towards its closest edge, and nods in that direction.  “Shame the sky isn’t clearer.  The three of us could have looked tried to find those nuns on a carousel again.”

Ian

Ian made a low sound of agreement, following Alex's gaze across the landscape of the park. "I was hoping it'd be cold enough for snow."

Alex's posture was distant and protective. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the company. Either way, Ian let his eyes settle on him again, seemingly thoughtful for a moment. His own posture felt more relaxed, shoulders moving with the steady rise and fall of deep breaths. His pulse was still coming down from the run, beating a quick rhythm within his veins. He wet his lips as he settled next to Alex, leaning back against the railing with his palms propped up on either side. There was enough space left between them so as not to make Alex feel intruded upon.

He did smile though, tentatively, when Alex mentioned the night they'd spent stargazing.

"You left out the orgy." After a beat he asked, "How've you been?"

(Did he actually care, or was he just making conversation?)

Serafíne

The three of us?

Yeah, Sera's out there.  She's not jogging in the park and she's not looking for the sending of a long-dead Archmage of the Celestial Chorus and she's not actually dashing to get in out of the rain and they can feel her: Alexander vaguely and Ian a little more sharply though neither can feel her as well as she can feel them.  They are burning bright on the periphery of her senses, distinct enough that she shivers when her attention slips toward Alexander's chilly resonance, that the muscles flanking her spine tense when her heightened awareness slides to the sense of Ian in the air - bracing against the sensation of something - well, at the edge of the predatory.

--

See, there she is.  Cresting this little knoll, which curves gently against the horizon, framing the view of the boathouse from the gazebo.  The spare frame engulfed by a too-large leather jacket, cigarette a signal-flare in the gathering gloom,  face turned up toward the sky as that light rain - that drove them both to seek shelter - continues to fall.

She's not really beelining in their direction, thought she is sort of wandering that way.

Alexander

“Maybe it will be, once the sun finishes setting.”  Ahh, the weather.  The nice, safe conversation topic used the whole world over when it’s not really clear what else should be discussed.  Next up, so, any holidays planned this year? 

Alex snorts, amused, when Ian reminds him about the missing orgy.  “How could I have forgotten about the orgy?  It would be a whole other constellation without that.”  He looks Ian over, taking in the running gear and the slightly heavy breathing, and turns, still leaning on the railing but looking out – and up at the clouds and falling rain– instead of in.  “I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any of that tonight though.”

How’ve you been?  Now there’s a dangerous question.  The answer starts, “I’ve been fine,” and is followed by a pause.  Maybe a moment to consider whether to stick with that safe, stock phrase that lets the questioner gloss over things?  He glances back to Ian, turning his head to do so.  “I wasn’t.  Now I’m ok.  You?”  His gaze returns to the park, looking to where a faint red glow – of the cigarette, or of Sera’s body heat – slowly comes into view.

“How’s Sky?”

Ian

I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any of that tonight though.

"Oh, speak for yourself." There was a wry lift to his tone, a cant of his head as he regarded Alex. And maybe he was being serious (it was Ian, after all - who the hell knew what he got up to on Friday evenings,) or maybe he was just playing to the obvious joke. He could feel the visceral pull of Sera's resonance moving steadily closer at his back, but he didn't turn to watch her approach. Waited instead for her to either pass them by or join them beneath the sheltering roof of the gazebo. For a moment the rain picked up, pattering more insistently against the wooden boards above their heads. It wasn't long before it lightened up again.

Alex answered his question with short, honest words. When he turned the question around by asking about Sky, Ian looked at him with what might have been surprise. He didn't immediately respond.

"I wouldn't know. Haven't seen him in a while."

(After all that? Interesting.)

"I'm doing fine though. Except when I'm not. I think that's true for all of us." After a beat he added, "Haven't had anyone try to kill me recently."

(Implied but not spoken: I haven't had to kill anyone either.)

Serafíne

I can intuit things about emotional states in this very gazebo!

Awareness-as-empathy?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Ian

[We shall see (subterfuge)]

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

Serafíne

The rain is light enough that it never endangers her cigarette.  The odd droplet hits the dark blue paper and the splashback is enough to make the cherry hiss sometimes, but never comes close to putting it out.  Makes her smile, the sound, this smile that is somehow both contained and outflung, open-armed, tinged with -

- well, what the fuck would they know what it is tinged with, two dozen yards away in the gloomy, cloud-banked twilight.

--

By the time Sera reaches the gazebo, her face is wet.  The scattered spatter of raindrops streaks down her sharply drawn features.  The high cheekbones, angular nose, the fine jaw - even her elfin ears.  And smiling like she's remembering someone or something she loves.  Her hair is a damp, tangled mass of curls that she has pulled away from her face, twisted over her left shoulder.  She's allowed some of the shaved fringe to grow in a bit - so the usual fine dark fringe has a bit more texture, the beginnings of a bit of a pincurl, which makes her look softer even though she isn't - ever - soft.

Sleeves of her leather jacket are pushed a bit up her forearms, revealing the leading edge of the tattoo on her right forearm - the angular crow's skull - and all the dark ink on her hands.

She smells (more than) a little bit like pot.  Beneath the leather jacket, a damp white t-shirt clings to her torso - this hint of a black lace bra so clear beneath.  She's paired that with a crushed red velvet micromini thigh-high lace stockings, seamed up the back, garters and combat boots, as you do.

Gives Alexander a little finger-wave and Ian a much more contained smile.

Doesn't interrupt.  Does put out the cigarette before she joins them beneath the shelter of the gazebo.

She smells so fragrantly of cloves.

Alexander

The awkwardness that Alexander’s been feeling is still there, but it does seem to be less than it was a few minutes ago.  So far he’s not feeling like something to be toyed with by the man with the air of the feline around him.

Alexander smiles and gives another amused snort, looking over to Ian again as he does.  “Oh?  You’re off to the planetarium later?”  He knows what Ian was suggesting – and it wasn’t stargazing – but he tries to keep the joke going a little longer anyway.

The moments stretch out before Ian answers the question about Sky.  Alex studies his face but can’t read anything more into the words than their own, simple meaning.  “Oh.  Ok.”  The reaction – after the effort than Ian had gone through to find Sky, and to free him – was indeed interesting.  “I got the impression you guys were close?” Their precise relationship had never been discussed – it hadn’t really been any of Alex’s business at the time anyway.

I think that’s true for all of us.  Alex nods, looking back into the rain again.  Then his smile fades as Ian adds on the part about nobody trying to kill him.  There’s a moment followed by a breath.  “I have.  It wasn’t personal though.  Just some bastard who thought he should have some peace to beat up his wife objecting to being interrupted.”  There’s another snort, without the amusement behind it this time.  “He’s learning the error of his ways.”

He turns, leaning back on the railing again, as Sera arrives.  She gets a smile, warm if restrained.  “Hey.  We were wondering if we’d get to see nuns having orgies again tonight.”

Ian

"Closeness is a fluctuating state," Ian replied, somewhat cryptically. "He was just a guy I slept with a few times. I didn't want him to die, and I'm glad he didn't. But we have different lives." It was an honest, if overly simplistic explanation. Probably more than he would have given Alex (or Sera) a few months ago.

Had anyone ever mentioned to Ian that Alex was a cop? Surely someone did, at some point. Maybe he saw something. Recognized the gun that Alex carried. Maybe not. Alex himself had never mentioned it. As he related his story, Ian watched him - taking in the way that he spoke. The details of the circumstances. He made a soft sound in his throat. Ambiguous enough that it could have meant a lot of things.

"Lucky you were there."

(Lucky that the man didn't succeed.)

And there was Sera. Softer and quieter than Ian often saw her. His gaze turned to survey her for a while, returning her contained smile with one of his own. "Rain suits you."

And then, to Alex, "I'm pretty sure that's the title of at least one porn film."

Serafíne

Sera isn't precisely keyed in to the memory Alexander and Ian had been riffing on - the night stargazing, her one-off comment about nuns and orgies.  Maybe she was high then.  Maybe she's high now.  Maybe she's always high,

always fucked up,

always celebrating something, somehow, somewhere, somewhen.

And she's wandered into the middle of a conversation to which she was not wholly privy, the details are lost in her current haze and that's okay.  She's lets the cold drizzle and its dampening noise swallow them.  The air feels close and strange.

"If someone's still a nun in this day and age she probably takes her vows pretty fucking serious.  Or she had the world's shittiest home life."  This near little shrug, strung through with the tension she forces into her shoulders to keep herself from shivering.  "I could probably find you something, though.  An approximation, at least.  If all you wanna do is watch."

Then Ian tells her that rain suits her and she flashes him another glance.  This one is rather more seeking than the last, and just as easily deflected.  Sera smiles, to herself this time, and closes her eyes.

He's right.  The rain does suit her.  Paints a damp, gilded light over her sharp angles, folds her back into her skin.  "I'm just stoned," she counters, or perhaps demures.  Which is also true.  She is just stoned.  "I have another joint if you want some."

Alexander

“Tides.”  Alex pushes himself up so that he’s say on the railing rather than leaning against it, leaning forwards so that his elbows are resting on his knees, before continuing his own rather cryptic statement.  “We’re pushed together, then we’re drawn apart until we’re push together again.”  He shrugs.  “I’m glad he’s ok though.  If you do happen to bump into him, tell him I said hi.”

Lucky you were there.  Alex shrugs.  “The neighbour called.  Turns out the noise was drowning out America’s Next Top Model and they wanted it stopping.  I get there with my partner, no answer at the door and the fight still going on.  One broken door, one broken arm and a fair bit of bruising later and suddenly trying to assault officers doesn’t seem like such a great idea.”  There’s another shrug and he meets Ian’s gaze. “Shit happens.”

But then he’s cringing at the thought of a porn movie about…  “That has got to be the biggest turn-off ever.  Or clowns.  Are nun clowns a thing?  Drifting around silently in their big shoes and red noses, just waiting to pounce on the sinners?”

He smiles, laughing quietly and looking at Sera after her offer of a joint.  “You think I need a joint if I’m coming up with ideas like this?“

Ian

"Sure, if you're offering."

He probably shouldn't be smoking anything so soon after running. When his body was humming with endorphins and his lungs still pulled in breath at a slightly elevated rate. But it was Friday, and he didn't have anywhere to be except here: in a fucking gazebo at twilight in February with two people whose feelings about him were ambivalent at best.

It could have been romantic, in a slightly different set of circumstances. Instead it was cold and wet and a bit awkward. But that was alright. Sometimes cold and wet and a bit awkward wasn't the worst thing.

"You know I was on that once. Not as a contestant. Just... in the background. But I remember them shooting while I was doing a thing in Shanghai."

Apparently Alex found nuns to be about the opposite of attractive, and Ian glanced at him with a laugh. "I'd totally fuck a nun. If she was hot. Hell, I'd probably do it for the story alone."

(Of course he would.)

Serafíne

Sera gives Ian this lovely, vague smile when he accepts, if she's offering.  Of course, she's offering, she's always offering, she has a bag slung beneath her leather jacket and over her t-shirt and slings that around and digs inside and pulls out a pack of Kreteks and finds within the kreteks a single joint, tightly and expertly rolled.  Taps it out and offers Ian both: the joint and her lighter unearthed not from the little bag, but from the right pocket of her leather jacket.

Glances back at Alex as he cringes over the thought of a porn movie about... and gives him a neat little shrug.  Sera doesn't really watch porn.  It's way to impersonal.

Then Ian announces that he would fuck a nun.  If she was hot.  Or just for the story, and Sera gives him a sharper glance, sidelong.  "That's a shitty thing to say.  Is it true?"

Glances back at Alex, then.  "Who's Sky?"  Quietly, and still unexpected.

Alexander

Alex doesn’t make any move when the joint comes out and if it does happen to head in his direction he’ll just pass it on.

“A thing?  A dancing thing?”  He’s not really expecting much detail, even if there is an answer.  It’s something to ask, something to talk about.  Something to… if not draw them together, maybe not keep them apart.

Ian talks about sleeping with a nun for the story.  Sera’s not sounding happy about it, and Alex?  He stays quiet and looks back down at the floor of the gazebo.  He agrees with Sera, but isn’t quite sure whether Ian is cracking a tasteless joke or not.  The guy is pretty hard to read, after all.   So he lets it slide and doesn’t comment.

Who’s Sky?  Alex takes a breath and looks up at Ian, wondering who should answer.  He can, at least, start the story.  The short version, at least.  He looks down at the ground again as he starts.  “You remember the thing with the spirit down at the reservoir last year?  Sky was caught up in the whole thing.  We – and Alyssa – got him out.”

Alex looks back up at Sera – not even glancing at Ian now – as the last part goes unsaid.  The first time I saw Ian behead someone.

Ian

"I've done worse things," he offered in reply to Sera, though to his credit, he didn't sound especially proud of it. He took the joint and the lighter from her hand, putting the former to his lips. There was a low gust of wind that swept past, and he used his hands to shelter the small flame of the lighter. When he was done he handed it back to her, pulling in a slow, shallow drag of smoke. It'd been awhile since the last time he'd gotten even remotely high, and for a moment the taste of it distracted him.

"I probably wouldn't tell, if I did," he admitted. "At least, not like that." He didn't know if that was the part Sera was objecting to, but it was the part he personally found the most distasteful (the idea of violating someone's privacy.) "But would I sleep with a nun if she offered? Yes. Theoretically."

He let Alex relate the beginning of the story about Sky, going quiet for a while. He took another drag off the joint and offered it to first Alex (who passed,) then Sera, if she wanted it.

"He's a Verbena I used to know. Someone we helped once."

Serafíne

"I don't remember that," Sera tells Alexander quietly, and it's true.  She doesn't remember the thing with the spirit down a tthe reservoir last year.  Maybe she wasn't involved.  Maybe she was never told the story.  Strange how the things that are absolutely central to our lives can be so peripheral to those we are close to or at least tied in to.  She's watching Alexander when he looks back up at her, something significant beneath the weight of his gaze that she cannot quiet absorb, which makes her want to go and kiss him on the temple and murmur to him that yes, yes, he'll be okay, except that she does remember his reaction to her touch so she swallows down that impulse.  It is just a momentary tension in her left temple: the urge and its erasure, or at least its burial.

Ian takes a drag of the joint and offers it to Alexander and then to Sera.  By now she's leaning back agains the railing, one hand wrapped around its frame, head tipped back so she can see the leading edge of the twilight sky and she takes  a hit from the joint and hands it back.  Neither of them understand why she thinks that Ian was pretty awful just now, but that's okay.  Sera hardly understands.  It was just a reaction she had: visceral, gut-formed.

"What's worse?"  she asks Ian.  Some things, a person just needs to know.

Ian

"It was a modeling gig. The thing in Shanghai. I used to be a model."

Alexander

The joint moves and Alex just passes it between the other two, if it makes the movement easier.  Drugs aren’t his thing – even this – so it’s all theirs.

At least, not like that.  Alex watches Ian again at that point in his reply.  Whether the privacy violation or the thought that the woman would be used simply for the amusement value of the story is worse isn’t quite clear in Alex’s mind, but does it really matter.  In Sera’s words, both are particularly shitty things to do to a person.  But then it seems that Ian may well have just been telling a particularly tasteless joke.

Alex meets Sera’s gaze for a few seconds.  He’s not a particularly hard person to read most of the time.  There was a time that he wasn’t ok.  But then everything he’d been holding in had exploded when Grace and Eleanor had tried introducing him to the existence of Ginger.  And didn’t that go well.  But now?  He is alright about what happened.  “Not everyone survived.”  He shrugged, water under the bridge.  They had their peace now.

His gaze moves from Sera back to Ian again.  “Thank you, by the way.  For the advice.”

Next time, don’t hesitate.  He hadn’t.

Ian

Ian's eyes cut to Alex when he thanked him for the advice. His eyes had a distant expression. Remembering, maybe. (Or maybe it was just the pot.) And then he made this soft sound, and for a moment he almost looked... pensive? Sad?

"It's a shitty lesson to have to learn. I didn't want you to die. I don't want any of us to die."

When his attention traveled back to Sera, his mouth quirked into a slight grin. There was an edge to it that didn't feel entirely humorous, though perhaps that was a holdover from the other parts of their conversation.

"Would you like a list? Because I think that would take all night." After a moment he slid down to sit with his back against the gazebo wall.

"I cheated on my first girlfriend with my foster sister. That's a pretty shitty one."

Serafíne

"Alexander," Sera murmurs, voice quiet, her body language still and contained but away.   There is a rhythm to the way she smokes the joint, the puff, puff pass is familiar and meaningful if one imbues it with meaning, like communion.   Believe giving gravity to the ordinary.

The thought passes through her stoned head like a zipper and makes her smile.  Her eyes close and threads her fine fingers through the slats of the railing framing the gazebo, leaning back and back and back until the rain hits her face again.   Long coils of damp blonde hair spill backwards. 

When Ian offers her a list she straightens - stands upright, the end the elegant curl of her arched spine - and looks at him, this damp and quiet flicker of her eyes, dark in the rainsoft evening.

"When did you decide monogamy wasn't for you?"

Alexander

“We didn’t.”  It seems a little strange to Alex being the one telling someone else the equivalent of it’ll be ok, but it was true.  If he’d hesitated, maybe Victoria would have been able to hurt or kill her hostage, or any of the others who had been there to stop her.  Much like the unknown Hermetics who had made their attempt not so long before theirs.  “We’re all alive.”  Had they known each other better – had Alex known whether Ian would appreciate touch or not – Alex might have moved to make contact.

But they don’t, and he doesn’t, so it ends with the words.

Something there may have been more of, except for a buzzing coming from one of his pockets as his phone springs into life.  Mouth open, just on the brink of speaking again, it closes again as he pulls the phone out and checks the screen.  “Excuse me, I need to take this.”  With that, he steps out of the gazebo – resting a hand on Sera’s shoulder for a moment in passing – and finds cover behind one of the supports of the gazebo, under the overhanging roof, where he would keep relatively dry.

[And fades into the dark, as it’s early and I think I need to sleep.]

Serafíne

WAIT.  IAN ARE YOU MAUDLIN!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 6 ) [WP]

Ian

[Subterfuge +2 cause high and also depressing conversation topics]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ian

There was so much more to that story that he'd left out. So much that would have made it sound... different. Sadder. Less callous. Sera, perceptive as she was, felt the weight of it hanging in the air. All of those things that he hadn't said.

Maybe he wanted to sound callous, though. Maybe that was why he said things like I'd fuck a nun if she was hot. Which had not been a joke at all, actually.

There was a heaviness to him that tried to settle in. This deep, abyssal thing that he could not have opened up at that juncture even if he'd wanted to. He didn't have the stamina for it. But Sera noticed the way it pulled at him. The way it threatened to engulf him for a moment, the way that old memories sometimes do. The way it just made him so fucking sad. There was a stark note of guilt there, making his chest tight. (Making him want to say more callous things.) But he was high, and the mood didn't quite settle. Slid off of him a little - the way the rain beaded up and slid off of his jacket.

When did you decide monogamy wasn't for you?

Something about that question - maybe the way she'd phrased it, maybe the fact that it came so close on the heels of his last revelation, maybe just the fact that the pot was slowly starting to sink into his system - struck him as suddenly, strangely funny, and he uttered this odd little laugh. For a moment, it almost sounded like he was about to fucking unravel. But then the laugh mellowed - became this warm, amused thing. And he looked at her with softer eyes.

"I don't know, high school? I think relationships in general aren't for me."

Alex bid his goodbye. Offered that simple point of reassurance, which Ian accepted silently. If they'd known each other better, maybe a lot of things would have been different. But... they didn't. So Alex left to go answer his phone, leaving Ian and Sera to their own devices. Ian passed her the joint and leaned back against wooden beams again, resting his head as he listened to the sound of the rain on the roof.

"What about you?"

Serafíne

Sera makes this noise behind her mouth, beneath her tongue.  Wrapped up in her throat and it isn't anything, precisely, just a noise, like a click, like a lock, like a key.  She's watching Ian through half-slitted eyes (he's below her now) but lifts her chin, tilts her head backwards as Alexander has to take a call and has to take his leave, offering Ian reassurances she really does not understand either the eight or the gist of.

Strange how that happens.  Strange strange strange.

The joint.  She takes a hit, passes it back, and bends down briefly to offer Ian this drunken benediction, kissing him on the crown of his head.  There's magic in the air: her own.  Her awareness of place and heartbeats, of moving minds and the way they tangle.  Nothing sharper,  nothing directed at him no.  Strange how someone who feels the way she feels can be so thoroughly, entirely tender: her hand curved behind his skull, her mouth tangled in his hair before she lets him go again.

Sets him free.  Straightens and takes the joint and leans back, bracing the palms of her hands on the railings.

"I think relationships in general are absolutely for me.  Just not way other people inhabit them, you know?  I guess I think -

"I don't know what I think?  I've never really had a boyfriend though.  Or a girlfriend.  Not like that."

Ian

Sera bent over to kiss the crown of his head, tender and reverent. Ian closed his eyes and exhaled a long cloud of smoke. It dissipated into the cold air, curling up to wind its scent into the damp tendrils of Sera's hair. When she pulled back, he turned his head to look at her, neck craned at a slight angle.

"What would your version of a relationship be?"

Serafíne

"I dunno," she returns, with this quick, darting little smile that makes her cheeks curve, sure.  She's feeling bright and flushed and open and that I dunno comes from the place in her that refuses definitions and refuses labels and perhaps even refuses language in favor of -

of -

of -

everything else there is.

"Mmmm."  She inhales.  She's stoned, the world's lovely.  The rain falls, attuned, syncopated.  Cars rush passed, all those strangers, all those kindled lives, all those living flames, each one blood and bone and muscle wrapped around a beating heart.  "I have alot of them.  Friends, who are lovers, who are family.  Strangers who aren't strangers for a night.  I don't like when it changes, sometimes -

"But it's gonna change. Sometimes that hurts.

"But I'd rather hurt than - " Stops.  Arrests herself there.  " - never open myself up in the first place."

Pause, quiet as she hands the joint back to Ian.

"Did your girlfriend ever find out?"

Serafíne

Manipulation + Subterfuge, also. (To conceal tears.)

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

Ian

"Yeah."

He didn't elaborate. Didn't say if she found out because someone told her or because she caught him or just because she was perceptive enough to know that something was wrong.

"I think that's a good way to be. Letting relationships just be these... organic things. People come and go. You relate differently to each. Everyone has something different to offer. And it's all constantly evolving. Trying to box it all up in these predefined categories... and all of the fucking rules and expectations that leads to... is so self-defeating. It's just a lot of people walking around trying to conjure up their dreams in another person and inevitably being disappointed."

Ian handed Sera the last of the joint, passing it off in a way that felt like he was done with it. "I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about though."

After all, he hadn't been in an official relationship since high school.

Serafíne

"That's not really what I mean, Ian."

Sera takes the joint back.

Pinches off the cherry and glances at the bit of pot left in the roach and decides to leave it somewhere, in some nice dry ashtray, a present for whoever combs through looking for half-smoked cigarettes to augment whatever they manage to bum or the loosiest they buy for a quarter.

She manages to hum, thoughtful, stoned, the words alive in her and the park too.  Open, and it is gentle the way she corrects him.  She's smiling around the words,  though he cannot really see that.  It's dusk maybe, or dark, and he's below her and she's standing, leaning back, rain on her face, in her lashes.  That smile is rather immoderately sad.

"There are always expectations.  And dreams, and disappointments.  I wouldn't wanna be closed to any of those things.

"That's where love comes in."

Sera looks away.  The rain hasn't lightened, it has intensified.

"I'm gonna go.  It was nice getting high with you."

Ian

Ian hummed gently. This low, thoughtful sound. His eyes slid away from Sera to take in the exposed beams of the gazebo's roof. Briefly caught up in the way they fit together. The pattern of the wood. Noting the places where cobwebs formed.

"I don't know shit about love."

Because that was all he could say, really. It came out sounding gentler than usual - maybe just because he was stoned. But he didn't try to debate the matter, whether or not he agreed.

"Try to keep warm. You don't take care of yourself enough."

That part sounded gentle too. This flicker of worried affection that might not have showed if he'd been paying more attention to how he spoke. He watched her go with a little nod of goodbye. And after a while, he gave up on waiting out the rain and jogged back to his car.

Ian

It was after sundown, but not yet late enough that Washington Park had cleared of visitors. Joggers ran in staggered numbers down the winding trails. A group of teenagers occupied one of the fields for a game of soccer, shouting rambunctiously over the muted din of passing cars. A few couples were playing doubles in the tennis court.

Ian wasn't running tonight, as he often did. Instead he occupied a patch of ground beneath a couple of tall, overhanging trees. The grass beneath his feet was cold and brittle from winter, but the unseasonably warm temperatures had melted the last snowfall. It'd been like that for months, snowing and melting in sporadic bursts.

He was rehearsing something. Or at least, it looked it. Testing out how certain moves flowed and letting them settle into his muscle memory. Dancing alone in the park at night without music. Stopping and starting periodically with slow, measured movements. His expression was focused and withdrawn. With the temperature in the 40's, he had on only a sleek black windbreaker over his athletic clothes (the lower half of which consisted of running shoes and a pair of 3/4 length sweats with cargo pockets.)

Grace

The park holds a special place in Grace's heart. She knows she's not alone in coming to see the lake, just for the prospect of getting to talk to The Message again. But today has her wondering why...

Why did she decide to step out of the nice warm Inside and go to the Big Room? It's a refrigerator in here. Colder than a refrigerator, even. At least she had the presence of mind to bundle up in her coat, gloves, and that scarf Kalen bought her for Christmas. His gifts are practically the only vehicle through which Grace manages to show a sense of fashion. Underneath all that, she's got jeans and old sneakers on. It's a strange mix of upscale cashmere, wool, and grubby. Whatever, eh? It's not like she cares.

There's a trail of crushed crunchy grass behind her that meanders, because this free spirit does not enjoy being constrained by sidewalks. And then, she sees Ian. It's hard to mistake him, even at a distance. Few other people in the city are such graceful dancers. The meandering stops, and instead, she shuffles over to him in a straight line, hands in her pockets to keep warm.

Arionna de la Babin

[feeelsins the feels]

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

Arionna de la Babin

Arionna was not jogging. She was not playing soccer. She was not dancing or engaging in any form of physical activity. Instead she does what she often does, and she simply walks. Spring is coming, a season her mother would rejoice in, being her own embodiment of it. Odd how Ari took to winter; the season of death and slumber. With the last throes of winter so near, it seemed only right that she should walk and enjoy what little remained.

The moon would be peeking over soon, and she would feel the pull of it. But for now... she only walked.

The others slid into her perception soon enough, though the true intensity of it was deeply muted compared to their previous encounters. It might be her own ties with the moon, or perhaps...she was merely preoccupied in her thoughts. The cup of coffee in her hand expelled steam through the small hole, and Arionna took a moment to sip from it. Did she dare it? T hat was often the million dollar question. Was it worth it?

Ultimately, she decided on a small, and almost insignificant 'yes.' Her steps deviated, moving slowly towards the sensation.

Ian

[oh look, resonance]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Ian

Temperature could be such a subjective thing. For someone from a warm climate, 40-odd degrees might seem like scarf weather. For someone used to the cold, it felt like spring.

He didn't look up at first when he felt Grace drawing near, keeping his focus on what he was doing. His awareness of her was an instinctive thing - the way he was aware of the trees and the wind. He heard the shuffle of her feet behind him. Felt her resonance shift and soar. She was something familiar. He never seemed to mind when she watched him.

Arionna was... less familiar. But her approach was slow and distant. Ian waited until she was within easy earshot before he stopped dancing and turned to regard first Grace and then her. Grace got a small, knowing smile. (It always seemed like he was keeping some kind of secret.)

"What, no basketball tonight?"

Grace

[Magedar!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace

"I don't basketball," Grace says, in a complete lie. "I just sometimes crash other people's games when they beg me to. You must have me confused with someone who owns..." balls? No. That would be bad. Don't say that. "Sporting equipment."

She skips up, breathing in the cold. And she is cold, this southern desert creature. Phoenix is not known for its freezing temperatures, after all. She almost doesn't tie it to Arionna, but then... oh yes. Her.

Oh well. You shouldn't let people get to you, any more than you should the cold. Arionna is her Arionna's problem to deal with, as we all are. Still, one of Grace's hands pokes out of her coat, gives Ari a wave. It's a brief thing. Hopefully, it won't be seen as too fucking altruistic.

Arionna de la Babin

If Ari had felt supremely comfortable with the situation, and the people, she might have found Grace's demeanor amusing; in some way she still did. They both seemed to lack social capabilities, though in amazingly different ways. Perhaps that's (part of) the reason why they don't get along quite so well. The others were...self evident to those in the know of her person.

She pauses nearby, close enough to talk, far enough to give them all space from her, more for her than them. "You're doing better." Better from last they met, when he left rather quickly. Grace's small wave casts a glance her way and Ari....sips her coffee. Not an overly active individual.

Ian

Arionna surmised that Ian was doing better than he had been upon their last encounter, to which Ian offered her a look that felt blandly cryptic (almost dismissive.) He didn't humor the assumption with a verbal response. Instead, his attention slid back to Grace.

"Oh I see. That was a different Grace I played last time. Your more fun twin. Does that make you the evil one?" His aloof expression melted in a subtle grin. "You should give me her number." He trotted back a few steps, glancing at the tree overhead. There was a hint of animal energy in the way he moved. The ready way he rested his weight on the balls of his feet, like any moment he might spring into motion. And sure enough, a moment later he jumped up and grabbed the overhanging branch, hanging there experimentally to be sure the tree would hold his weight before he swung and landed closer to Arionna.

"Arionna, right? From the pho place?"

Grace

"I have to grow a goatee before I can be considered the evil one. Duh. I thought everyone knew that," Grace says, totally dry.

She watches him do his little jumps and swings, and rolls her eyebrows. But there's a little smirk there too. She's only slightly mocking his showing off. After all, if you've got it, flaunt it, right?

"Arionna and I, uh... at least share one thing in common. We both have an appreciation for noodle shops."

Arionna de la Babin

"They also cackle. Villains cackle. Terribly. Sometimes they have a mustache that they twirl. A sort of Dali-esque, though hardly as grandiose. " She cast a glance towards Grace. "I think the mustache would suit you. But now the usual goatee. Far too tame and boring." Though Grace wasn't on her list of most entertaining people. She only seemed less of a mundane, and more of the sort of person who might twirl their mustache, if given one.

Maybe Ian was showing off. That was typical of men, was it not? A youthful male, in his reproductive prime meets a youthful girl in her reproductive prime, and naturally one must woo the other. So does the dance go. So when he hangs, and jumps, Arionna takes a step back and gives a small cant of her head. Mostly his actions are interesting (though it didn't help that he did have a very nice figure and face).

"Yes. I enjoy food. Culturally different. Noodles are part of that. "

Cala

Doors open for her.

They always have.

Small doors and large doors, locked doors, every door she has ever encountered.  Some of the doors are more metaphorical than others, but even the most literal ones - they click.

Open.

--

Here's one of the arts a refugee learns: how to disappear in plain sight.  How to slip beneath the ordinary radar.  How to seem like part of the room.  How to drift with but not of the crowd.  How to settle for a time - to alight - against a bench, on one's own haunches, meditative as the light sky darkens and the strangers start to desert the park.  Time to go, which she knows with a glance at the sky and something else - something (distant) - that pulls her upright from the energy-conserving reverie, the slip-through-the-spaces determination with which she lives this life.

Across the lake, just on the other side of the boathouse, someone looks up.

Senses the skim of energy in the air.  Closes her eyes to feel the beat of it against her senses.

And: gets up.

Walks the other way.

Cala

Too far away for Arionna to sense her, but both Ian and Grace feel the brief brush of a stranger's resonance against their senses.  Distant, then gone.  It feels like a key sliding into a lock.  Simple, slight.

Ian

"I would genuinely like to see Grace grow a Dali mustache," Ian mused, eyeing Grace's features in this sharply appraising way - as though he were painting the picture in his mind. "She wouldn't be the cackling type though. She'd be the kind who sneaks up on people."

Maybe he was showing off, a little. Maybe he was just finding ways to keep his body warmed up. Arionna was a good 6 years younger than he was, which... was not an insignificant number. (Though Elijah had been the same age, hadn't he?) Either way, the gesture was more playful than luring. And when Arionna stepped back to widen the space between them, he didn't follow.

"I prefer sushi, but pho will do in a pinch..."

His voice paused and trailed off in a beat of silence, and he glanced over his shoulder as though he'd heard (or felt) something that distracted him. A brief skim of his eyes across the lake. Hunting. But whatever he was looking for, he turned away a moment later.

"You go to school?" (This to Arionna.)

Grace

Holy shit. Arionna made a joke. Grace actually smiles, and fake-twirls an invisible mustache. She catches Ian painting the 'stache on with his eyes, and laughs when he says she'd sneak up on people. "I totally would. You would know."

 It's then that a... slightly familiar resonance slips across her perception. She looks in that direction too, suddenly a look of intense focus comes over her, like the bird is seeking prey.

"I think... I've felt that before. That... opening."

Arionna de la Babin

"...and ties them up on the railroad tracks? Grace would be an old western villain? Fascinating." The more she looks at Grace, the more she can see it. Yes, maybe Grace would have a Dali mustache, and tie up people while she cackles behind her teeth. Grace was becoming more like a cartoon villain.

They perk up, sense it. It's on the edge of Ari's senses. There, but not there. She doesn't know it, though Grace has. Another magi, and likely just as sickeningly joyful as the rest.

"Yes. Sushi is enjoyable. Not octopi. A dwindling species with a large level of intelligence. Squid, however, are delicious." There's another slow sip of the coffee as her attention fully centers on Ian. "I do. I study biology."

Ian

"I don't eat octopus meat either." Though he didn't bother to explain why. His eyes seemed more considering when they lingered on Arionna, and he uttered a soft, subvocal hum. Quiet interest. (At her area of study? He'd never really expressed much interest in science before.)

Grace drew further attention to whatever had caused that brief stir across the lake, and Ian's focus shifted to her a moment. "Think it's something worth checking out?"

Grace

"I don't know. I don't think so. There was this person at a bookstore Elijah and I went to. Felt like that. A little. And then she fled like we were trying to chase her instead of just saying hi. I tried to send a text, you know? But it wouldn't go through. Like she didn't have a phone. Ever. I don't think running her down would do any good. I imagine someone like that really does not want to be cornered."

Grace keeps looking in that direction, but the sensation passes over again, and then... apparently we are talking about octopus now. Grace does not know quite how that happened, but okay. Squid and stuff.

"I like squid. It's chewy. And yeah, it would make sense that I would be chased down by Dudley Do-Right. I'm just despicable like that. Hey, maybe that could be Alex's new nickname?" She laughs. Apparently the strange woman across the lake has already been forgotten.

Arionna de la Babin

"Most of you don't give off a particularly inviting sensation. I wouldn't give fault to her for keeping her distance. One human may be worthwhile, but a cat knows better than to take the chance unless the benefits exceed the costs. Though, it takes a particular personality to attract an animal with the good sense to keep away."

A brow slowly lifts as she glances back at Ian, though her attention is sliding between them both a little. "You'll need a top hat if you're going to tie people up. It's classic. "

Ian

"She didn't feel like a cat to me."

(More like a key.)

Ian took Grace and Arionna's assessments and added them to his own. But in the end, the girl was just that - another new face in a very big city. Someone who may or may not prove worthy of interest. Someone who may or may not be dangerous. If she wanted to avoid them, then he'd let her be. (For now.)

"As for tying people up, I think a dominatrix outfit would be more suitable than a top-hat. Lots of black leather." A beat. "Come to think of it, Grace might be good at that."

His gaze slid from Grace to Arionna. "Why biology?"

Grace

Ian says the words 'dominatrix outfit' and Grace's eyes widen. When he goes on to say she might be good at that, her brain goes 'poink' and refuses to budge for a bit.

That, and she turns a bright red. Thank goodness it's dark.

"Uhhhh."

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

"Yeah, Ari. Why biology?"

Arionna de la Babin

Her brows furrow a little at Ian, almost a sort of puzzlement. "It was a metaphor. One doesn't need to feel as such, to be associated if the association fits the behavior. Cats never liked to be cornered, and move away from strange individuals. If she follows the same, then a cat she is like. Even if she lacks the hunting instinct." There's a small quirk of the corner of her lips at Ian. "Grace as a dominatrix?" Ari focused her attention solely on Grace and her figure. "In a comedy, perhaps. She lacks the demeanor. "

And turn the conversation away from Grace and her Dominatrix tendencies... or Ian's fantasy of the sort...right to her own personal interests. "Why not?"  She lifted a hand to pop the top of her coffee from the cup. "Someone has to defend the world from humans. Never seems to be enough of them."

Ian

Ian's laugh was a quiet thing. A breath of air and a slight upturn of his lips. "I got the metaphor." There had to be some kind of irony in debating the nature of felines with Ian, of all people, but if he had any further feelings on the matter, he kept them to himself.

"Thinking of going into environmental science? I have a friend who does that. It's... not a bad use of one's time." Though he wouldn't have phrased it the way she did. As though humans were not a part of the world.

"I was dance major. Which is not at all useful." His smile there was self-deprecating, though it was a fair bet that he did not, in fact, think that dancing was useless. (Certainly not the way that he did it.)

Grace

Grace, recovering from core dump, gives Arionna a confused look. How can anyone be so... so...

Ugh. Let it go. Make a snowman. Or whatever the fuck that Disney movie says. The cold never bothered me anyway?

"I was a CS major. Who would have guessed, huh?"

Arionna de la Babin

"Ecology and Biodiversity. Conservation."

"Dance is art. Art is useful. Art encourages creativity and appreciation for form, color, and motion. A society without art, is a society that is not worth living. Scientific innovation can't occur without art, and so the opposite is true. " Maybe she missed some cue to tell her that she really didn't need to go on her own little speech. But there it was.

Her head had tilted a little to Ian, but now she was looking to Grace momentarily. "Hm. Strange. I might have placed you in Fashion Design."

Ian

She didn't need to, no. But all the same, Arionna's response got a long, meaningful look from Ian. Enigmatic and subtle in the way it warmed his dark eyes. "Apparently we agree on something."

If he'd known her better, he probably would have done something else. But they didn't, so he left it there.

As for Grace...

"I never did ask you about that, did I? Guess I kind of assumed." (More than likely, for someone like Ian, Virtual Adept was basically synonymous with computer nerd.)

Grace

And Grace might have placed you in Mass Murder, Arionna but hey... Grace gives her a strange little circular nod of the head. A yes-no.

Fashion design.

"I'm not anymore. I had to skip class too much for silly little things like catching Awakened Ebola and later, for having all my tech spontaneously crash whenever I touched it. Hard to explain to your profs that you can't be in class because if you so much as look at the projector wrong it'll start noping out at you."

She sighs, remembering. But then...

"I was advancing anyway. Not much to learn anymore when the universe teaches you so much more."

Arionna de la Babin

It's not lost on her that her own humor is rarely delivered well. Social interactions were never her area. If it had been a school subject, she would have failed it...miserably. Ah but she tries.

Her attention sits on Ian, taking in the look and lifting her brows in response. "Surprising. Isn't it? I'd be interested to know what form of dance you specialize in, if any. I admit a fondness for tribal forms."

Grace and Arionna will never see eye to eye; she knows that. When Grace speaks, it's good Arionna knows how to hide her own emotions, else she might have rolled her eyes. But...Grace might have done the same for her own perspectives. "Yes, it would be hard to say that. They'd likely sent you to a psychiatrist."

She takes in a bit of air and lets it out slowly, pausing to slide the buzzing phone from her pocket. "Was good to actually meet you." She threw out to Ian, then lifted her hand just a little, much like Grace's tiny wave from earlier. "And seeing you again. Try not to look at electronics funny. If they have half the temperament that their designers do, they'll likely take offense quite easily."

Arionna turned on the ball of her foot and began to head the way she had come prior. No more walking for tonight. There was much to do at 'home.'

Ian

Arionna took her leave of them, and Ian watched her go. Perhaps another day he might have cause to answer her question, but for now the hour was getting late. She needed to head home, and so did he. He stayed for a few moments longer though, standing beside Grace with his breath making little wisps of steam in the air.

"I'm sorry that happened to you." His voice was noticeably more weighty than it had been earlier. Maybe he understood what it was like to have your life thrown into disarray. What it was like to give up something you loved because of something else that you had no control over. Maybe it wasn't like that for her. As she'd said, she was already evolving beyond her courses. But still, it had to be a hard thing to do at the time. Maybe it still was.

"Life can be fucking bullshit sometimes."

He let out a breath, allowing the muscles in his body to relax. To wind down. "I should get going too."

Grace

"I did. Go to a psychiatrist. Once. It sucked," Grace says, stumbles over her words a bit. As much as Arionna puts her on edge, at least she's not Garrett Franklin. At least it took Ari more than a few minutes to get on her bad side. Garrett made her want to scream in pure rage. Arionna just gets... pity. And confusion.

And again, Ari gets that utterly confused look as she leaves. Grace is pretty laid back, or at least she thinks so. If anyone has a temperament issue, it isn't her. Right? Surely.

Ian says he's sorry that happened to her, and she looks to him instead of Arionna's retreating back. "Well, it can be, sometimes. But I have to think, if I never had any obstacles to overcome, I would never have found out how capable I am at overcoming. Sometimes the bullshit, while yeah, it's total bullshit -- still gives you the opportunity to teach yourself who you are."

She gives him the smile that Arionna didn't receive, because she was being unfathomable. "Walk you back to the parking lot?"

Ian

"How very enlightened of you," Ian teased, though he didn't necessarily disagree.

Walk you back to the parking lot?

"Sure. You can protect me from roving hoards of teenage girls."

(He was joking. Right?)

Ian grinned and tapped Grace lightly on the shoulder, turning in the direction of the lot. "Let's go."

Grace

"Well, apparently, I do like to tie them up a lot. So..."

Ian

They hadn't seen each other since the night when Ian had walked out of Pho 95. And when a text finally showed up on Kiara's phone, there was no acknowledgment of the conversation they'd had on the sidewalk. Instead there was simply this:

Feel like dancing tonight?

The text came in the afternoon, just as the short winter hours were beginning to dip towards early evening. If Kiara felt like taking him up on it, he'd send her an address for an underground club in LoDo. Some place that had only recently opened up. The nondescript entrance was located in a long brick building that also housed a book store and a couple of restaurants. No sign was immediately visible to mark the location, but the dark glass door had the words Echo Chamber painted on it.

Ian was already inside when Kiara arrived, waiting at the bar with a glass of bourbon in his hand. The entrance of the club led down a set of stairs and a short hallway (which contained a coat check) before opening up to a single, spacious room. The decor was minimalistic. Black floors. Open ceiling. Brick walls. Most of the place was standing room only, but there were seats at the bar and a couple of dark, velvet sofas in one corner which were presently occupied by a boisterous group of college students who seemed to be playing some kind of drinking game.

It was impossible to avoid the music in this place. (Maybe that was why they'd called it Echo Chamber.) The majority of the club's floorspace was devoted to the dance area, where a fairly sizable crowd was currently moving in time to a rolling electronic beat.

Kiara

She's late.

Not by any ridiculous degree and certainly not enough to warrant a text asking where she was but - late. Later than they agreed on. When she does slip inside though; sans coat; she sparkles. The weather in Denver warm enough for once to invite lighter layers beneath the heavier precautions for winter. So: pale pink sequins that glitter under the turning club lights. Bare shoulders; dark hair swept up in some deliberately messy affair; long black skirt; heels.

The picture of the club-goer, Kiara. But there's always those tells with the Verbena that she's not quite - that there's more going on beneath the surface. The bold color of her mouth; adorned tonight to match her shirt; the dark liner around darker eyes; the way her shirt hooks around her neck and leaves a swath of bare skin visible on her back; the telltale lines of a tattoo barely peeking from where the material gathers at the small of her back.

She's always noticeable, the brunette, as much for the fact she intends to be as she simply - draws the eye. It's in the way she bears herself across the crowded space of the dance floor when she catches sight of Ian at the bar; the way she moves with a confidence that isn't assured (alone) from grace or prowess but simple awareness of self; of her body in relation to the world. She swans up to her partner for the night with a heavy, glittering black bracelet on one wrist; with bare skin everywhere and the hint of a smile curling at the edge of her mouth.

"Hey." She doesn't apologize for being late, but all said, she may well assume he doesn't mind. That in a place like Echo Chamber, he'll have had sufficient scenery to keep him occupied. "Starting without me?" A nod to his glass as she sets an elbow on the counter and leans into it.

Ian

"If I was starting without you, I'd be dancing." There was enough whiskey in his system to make his eyes glisten when he smiled, all smooth-as-silk and so very at home in this environment. At home, perhaps, in a different way than he had been while sitting atop a snow-capped mountain with Elijah last week. But still. At home. There were different kinds of wild places.

Still, he wasn't tipsy the way that Sera might have been. Just softer. Shinier.

Kiara wasn't the only one of them with skin showing. Ian had on a pair of jeans that were fitted in all the right places for dancing. Dark blue with a subtle, lustrous coating. On top he wore a black suit vest with nothing underneath. It hugged his torso tightly and left bare a section of skin on his lower back when he leaned over the bar. In the light of the club, the exposed skin on his arms and chest seemed as though it was dusted with something shimmery.

"Can I get you something?" He had to lean in to be heard over the pulse of the music, brushing his lips against the edge of Kiara's ear. He smelled like citrus, sandalwood and amber.

Kiara

There's always a lot of unspokens between the two of them. There has been from the moment they met. Things glimpsed in the turn of a head; the side glance; the lingering look but never articulated aloud. Last time she'd seen Ian it had been chasing after the ghost of his footsteps out the door; it had been reaching for his hand to halt him; to turn him back to ask - to glimpse - whatever it was.

And she'd known, was what made it hard. Somewhere housed in Kiara's expression had lain the answer. That she did know, that she was familiar. But it's another unspoken; sunk down beneath the surface and the surface; their dance; the easy banter; is so much easier to deal with. He doesn't mention their last encounter and neither does she. Ian doesn't imbibe alcohol the way Serafine did; Kiara's never spent a moment with the Cultist not in another state; altered; distant; distorted and somehow infinitely more beautiful for it. It's possible Kiara envies Sera it, that easy shedding of perception.

It's possible she'd never be capable of letting go so entirely of what was real. Pain was, to Kiara at least, as important as the rest of life.

(Pleasure, for example).

If he was starting without her he'd be dancing and there's a tilt of her head toward the dancefloor; a contemplative study of the rolling sea of bodies; the press and flex and seduction of it all. That smile curls a little more around her mouth and she lifts one thin, bare shoulder in a careless little shrug. Turns around to face the bar; bracing her weight on both elbows.

He leans in and she bends toward the motion.

"Vodka tonic with lime." She twists a little; a hand brushing the edge of the vest he's wearing; testing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. "Is this the proper dancing uniform?" Her eyes dip over the rest of his outfit; lingering; smiling as she does, flicking them back to meet his gaze. "I approve, if so."

Ian

The fabric of the vest was soft beneath Kiara's fingers. Something with a high thread count. Virgin wool with silk accents. Ian laughed when she used the phrase dancing uniform, as though dressing for nightclubs required a particular expertise. "Yours isn't bad either." His eyes carried over the slope of her skin, tracing a line to the place where her pulse-point beat above the apex of her collar bones. Briefly, he let his hand trace the edge of her top, where the material tied around her neck - following it down past her shoulder as his fingers danced over the sequins.

His eyes lifted. He leaned in again, speaking in a warm breath against her ear. "I like your hair."

He always liked her hair. He'd had a habit of playing with it, in more intimate moments. Winding strands of it between his fingers. Memorizing the way it felt when it dragged across his chest.

"You smell good."

He pulled away to flag down one of the bartenders - a girl in her mid-twenties who looked as though she'd probably been doing this for a while. She had a perky kind of efficiency about her, sliding neatly between customers with sparkling eyes and a flashing smile. When she approached them, Ian repeated Kiara's order and watched while the bartender poured the drink and set it neatly before them. He'd already started a tab, so she darted off a moment later.

"I'm sorry about what happened last time. I shouldn't have let it get to me."

Ah. And there it was.

Kiara

For all that she's a woman of the cities; a cosmopolitan darling by birth and inclination Kiara Woolfe did forever have that touch of the wilderness to her. Whether or not it had always been there in her; in the way her presence invoked the sense of nature's cycling; the destruction and devouring; the regeneration after the fact; it was stronger now. Growing so, the more she adapted; the further she evolved. Opened up, to the person she was now. To what she was, now.

It's reflected even in the way her hair grows; wild and thick; refusing in many ways to be tamed by product or Kiara's own inclination. Ian likes it; the quantity of it; the way it moves when unbound. It's there in her scent; vague impressions of incense, vanilla and spice; the sweetness of whatever lotion it was she rubbed into her skin. Sweet, but not all the way through. Perhaps that accounted for her, too. The Verbena were creatures of the earth, after all.

Capable of great change - and stubborn resistance to it. At once yielding and immovable.

She smells good, though and there's a noise at that; her hand loosening and sliding over his chest; pressing with some brief intent over his stomach before she draws it back; leans into the cradle formed by his torso when he presses closer to whisper against her ear to be heard over the din. "So do you," she offers easily in return with a flashing grin; a wide baring of teeth and her fingers are on his neck for a moment when she says it. A palm sliding over the pulse at the base; dragging down to the v formed by his vest; dropping away as the bartender appears.

Kiara has her fingers around her glass; has the first taste of vodka and lime on her lips when he mentions - she takes a sip with measured contemplation; her brows drawing together briefly. Sets the glass down. It's already beginning to sweat in the club; droplets forming where she'd held it.

"She does that." There's a moment, Kiara doesn't expand but her tongue chases the edge of lime on her lower lip, then: "Arionna. She talks a lot of shit." She turns a little to face him; eyes ghosting over his face with that same searching expression she'd worn then, on the night in question. "I mean we all do at times but she has a world of opinions on a lot of things she doesn't let herself close enough to even experience. She talks about it with the disconnection of someone who hasn't seen - " Kiara hesitates; looks away; her frame constricts with a sharp exhale.

"I don't blame you for it getting to you. I think she's - " A smile surfaces; tugs and persists into shape across the supple shape of her mouth. Humor re-inserting itself into her voice. " - she doesn't approve of me. I don't care that she doesn't but - sometimes it gets under your skin. People talking like it's nothing. To see that. To know it."

There's a beat. The baseline of music thrums around them; Kiara's face lit by the bar beside them; the refraction and gleam of her shirt. Her honesty is a sharp thing; honed but not necessarily, cruel for it.

"I used to get a lot more angry about it."

Ian

It was an odd thing to hear coming from Ian's lips. He didn't seem the type to apologize. Or to regret. Kiara tasted her drink, and Ian lifted his in turn, finishing off most of what remained in the glass.

She spoke about Arionna - whom Ian had only really met once. His impression of the girl was barely more than a sketch, but Kiara's assessment was hardly surprising. He made a sound low in his throat. The resonance of it got lost somewhere in the electric pulse of sound that washed over them.

"She's a kid." If the statement felt dismissive, it wasn't intended to be. "Sooner or later the world will get more real for her. Either that, or it'll eat her alive."

And didn't they all know what that felt like.

He didn't ask Kiara why she'd understood how he'd felt that night. On a certain level, he didn't have to. Perhaps later, when they were alone. When they weren't surrounded by the press of bodies and the pounding swell of music. Later, when there wasn't the promise of a dance. (Because Ian did not forget things like that.)

"Anyway, approval is overrated. But if it helps..." He let his lips brush over the edge of her jaw, grazing lightly with his teeth as he slid down to kiss her neck. "I approve of you immensely."

(Though Kiara hardly needed it.)

He let the last measure of his bourbon flow past his tongue, tipping back his head to drain the glass when he pulled away. "I think we should dance."

Kiara

They were both such physical creatures. Touch conveyed a world of things words frequently fell short of - at least, for Kiara. Ian kisses the edge of her jaw; neck and she slides a hand along his shoulder; gripping briefly when he grazes her skin with his teeth. He can feel her pulse beating wildly under her skin; the hint of some encouraging, tiny noise rising in the back of her throat.

It was a noted thing about the Verbena, one thing she rarely held back, her pleasure, the openness of enjoying the moment.

"Oh, believe me," this, a breath of laughter as she slips the tips of her fingers beneath the edge of his vest; idly stroking his skin at the shoulder. "I stopped asking for it a long time ago." Kiara's head tips back; she finds Ian's gaze and her eyes drop to his mouth for a considering moment; tracing the shape of it. "It made my life infinitely more enjoyable. But thank you, regardless." Her fingers slide away from him to reclaim her drink as he does his own.

The pleasant burn of vodka warming her throat as he attests they should dance and she twists; smiling in that vaguely challenging way of hers; stepping back from the bar and beckoning him with her. "I couldn't agree more. Come and show me what you've got, buddy." This as she allows her footsteps to draw her back; to allow herself to be engulfed by the dancing swarm of bodies. It's hot, on the dance-floor; a space heated by too many bodies pressing too close together.

There's something almost erotic about the fact; about the writhe and blend of people, moving together; the capacity for conversation overwritten by the heavy presence of the beat instead. Kiara's no dancer, she doesn't have the training or the background he does but she does possess an understanding of the body; the way it behaves; the shift and play of muscle beneath skin.

She draws Ian into the crowd; lights flashing overhead; picking out the tiny sequined beads of her shirt and lets the rhythm have its way with her. Lets him dictate his own initiation into the music as she finds her own.

Ian
 
[Life 1 / Forces 1 custom rote "Bodies in Motion", diff 4 -1 (practiced, etc)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian

[Dex+Performance -2 diff (ability aptitude + that rote)]

Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

Ian

Perhaps some day they might talk about this. The way that bodies communicated. Ian would call it a language. Perhaps that was why he became a dancer in the first place. What is art if not communication? And what is dance if not the most primordial form of art?

Ian was not an unskilled speaker. He could, when motivated, use words to great effect. But there was not a spoken language on earth that would ever be fully satisfying for him. That would ever feel like anything more than a crude translation of the nuance and honesty he found in the physical. (Perhaps that was part of the reason why everyone seemed to find him so unfathomable.)

His skin was warm where Kiara touched him - the pulse of his blood beating close beneath the surface. A few heady seconds of contact before they broke apart. Before Kiara answered his suggestion by beckoning him to follow her onto the dance floor. Then they were surrounded by the press of bodies and the hard beat of the music. Life and Sound, all mixed up into one perfect, interwoven pulse.

Ian's senses opened up as he began to move. As he breathed in the heady mix of sweat and pheromones and focused on the way the music drove his heartbeat. Focused on the way his body moved. The interplay of gravity and kinetic motion on his pattern. How the air flowed around them. How the beat flowed through them. Until the people in the club became primal and vivid and alive. All pulsing patterns and elegant motion.

Ian and Kiara - they were also primal and vivid and alive. And the moment Ian got comfortable on the dance floor - the moment they stopped moving through the crowd and carved out a small space for themselves, he started to move like dancing was as much a part of him as breathing. Instinctive, following the flow of the music with his body, and keeping close within Kiara's space. Focused enough to move with her instead of just beside her. The muscles in his arms and torso looked fluid in the deep glow of blue light that painted over them.

Briefly, he pulled her close and settled his hand on the small of her back, pushing up beneath the hem of her sequined shirt to feel the skin beneath. He let their hips meet when he did it. Let their bodies form together the way so many others around them were doing. And he kissed her again - on the shoulder. Then the throat. Then the outer edge of her ear. Because she was beautiful and alive and he wanted to touch her.

Kiara

She'd told him at the Chantry when he'd found her there, alone, attuning herself to the heartbeat of the Node that she'd intended to be a doctor, once. The details had been loose at best, a subtle shaking apart of the layers that made up who Kiara Woolfe was. Who she had been, before she'd Awakened. Who she might have become. There's a great many things they still don't know about the other; secrets buried; truths unknown and while she offered herself freely in many respects to those she met; those she shared a bed; her body with there were a great many more she held in check.

It was easier, in so many ways, to keep those elements caged away from the light.

Still, she cannot always keep her appreciation for the way the human body operated; the shift and play and motion behind it censored from all awareness. There's muscle memory of a sort, there. The desire to feel and deduce - the want to heal, what needed it. Because different she may have been but Kiara was, at her core, a healer. A practitioner of arts to soothe; to repair and hone. Ian was beautiful to watch in motion and she did - watch him - keep her eyes fixed on the fluidity of his body; drop her lashes to half mast to study the way their bodies lined up; to remember and keep the sensation of heat between them when he drew near.

The beads of perspiration on her skin; the burn of his palm where it pushed under the thin fabric of her shirt.

She wrapped her arms around his neck as he pressed his lips to her shoulder; throat; could probably taste the sweat on her skin; the lingering sweetness of perfume. She keeps him close, Kiara, a hand fisting into his hair before she twists in his embrace and they're dancing with his chest to her back; her body snug against the cradle of his hips.

They don't talk but there's a conversation in the way she drags his hands around her body; links their fingers and puts his hands on her hip; on her stomach. There's an unspoken invitation to the way she tilts her head back and gives him leeway to put his lips back against the shining column of her throat.

Bodies communicated and theirs had always had a particular chemistry for it; on the dancefloor; tonight; it's stronger and more blatant than ever.

Ian

Ian's movement slowed when they drew together - when Kiara turned and wrapped his arms around her body. The invitation elicited a low sound from Ian, resonant in a way that was more felt than heard. This too was a dance - a conversation (touch me, yes, I want you.) There was surrender there (though not submission.) Surrender to each other, and to the inexorable force that drew them together.

They barely knew each other. Still. After all these weeks. Funny the way people discover each other (in increments, as friends or lovers or colleagues.)

Ian answered Kiara's invitation without a second thought. His mouth found her neck, open and tasting, tongue pressed to the pulse of an artery. One of his arms wrapped tightly around her torso just beneath her breasts, as though to hold her to him. The other was gentler - exploring and teasing, tracing fingers down the length of her stomach to play at the waistline of her skirt.

How long had they been dancing? Long enough to see beads of sweat on their skin. Long enough for the music to take on a trance-like quality. But not as late as Ian usually stayed out. The night was still (relatively) young.

And yet...

"Let me know when you want to leave."

There was a slow smile at that, and Kiara would feel the way his lips moved against her throat.

Kiara

She likes the build up. Enjoys the chase. She'd probably be the first to admit it. To say she's guilty of throwing herself headlong into experiences without ever really stopping to contemplate if it was the wisest move; the smartest, well considered action. Ever since that first moment - awakening - feeling so much as seeing her mentor at her side there had been that bone deep thrum to move. The drive for momentum.

Change was a necessity, was it not? Kiara had become so very good at eliciting it; pulling and tugging at the strands in her world to rearrange them as she wished. Never looking back - that too, had become a rule for survival. You never, ever looked behind you.

(Her dreams chased her, though, she had never quite been able to outrun those).

Still, in the here and now - there's reason enough to chance a look over her shoulder; to let her mouth bend and curve into a heated little smile and to stroke her fingers over his arm. To tilt her face up so that it presses her nose up; the point of her chin under his jawline; lets her reciprocate the attention he's been paying to her neck all night.

Lets her murmur against it, "You know I think," punctuated by her body moving back against his in a sinuous little motion; a roll of her hips just so, "You should take me home about now." She finds his eyes, then; traces the edge of his jaw with a finger.

"But first you should kiss me." Her hair's become wilder for the physical activity; strands loosening around her face; clinging to her nape of her neck; her mouth is quite as bright as ever though; wide and supple and expressive - it's her eyes, though, with the Verbena, that forever offer the challenge. Playful and competitive.

There's a dare in them somewhere; a push for Ian to meet her on the precipice - or maybe to jump off it alongside her.

Ian

This was one of Ian's many contradictions: he looked backwards all the fucking time. You wouldn't expect it, maybe, from someone so driven. So focused on the here and now. But memory was a deep thing for him. It went down and down and on forever. He remembered every single person he'd ever slept with. (Maybe not all at once. Maybe not always easily. But given the right key, the doors would open and there they'd be - taste, touch, sound and smell.) He would remember Kiara long after they'd gone their separate ways.

Sometimes to survive, one needed to forget. But to evolve, you have to remember.

Right now though? Ian wasn't looking anywhere but here.

But first you should kiss me.

The pressure of his arms pulled Kiara into a half-turn, loosening his hold on her so that he could catch her mouth in a hard kiss. A little bit claiming and insistent. More than a little hungry. And for a few moments he actually stopped dancing.

Then he grabbed her hand and led them both off the floor and out of the club.