[Lara Wrathburn] The chantry was as convenient place as any for now to Lara to inhabit, she wasnt a particular fan of it, but it was better then living on the street, better then sleeping on a park bench, or in some dingy motel that is infested with fleas, mites, or roaches. She might not mind these things, in fact she's slept in worse, but for now it would be nice to have a hot shower, and a bed that conforms to you, and not you conforming to the bed.
The sounds of falling water, pattering down into the basin of the shower can be heard by those below, and the feeling of moisture for any who goes near the door to the upstairs washroom, the woman is taking a steaming hot shower the tell tale signs given off by tendrils of vapor that twist and rise only to disperse in the cooler air from beyond the door.
This was something she had needed, something in relative security, something she could use....for now.
[Emily Littleton] The rain is coming. Emily could already hear the call of its tattoo, beating down on the roof of her building, pressing into the sidewalks, tapping against windowsills, brusquely pushing aside leaves, sweeping clean everything, everything, even the air that they breathe. It's coming, it's almost here now, it's a smear of ugly orange-red-yellow ringed with green on the doppler; it's the scent of ozone in the air. It's coming.
It's coming.
Just like the doom that hangs over them, ominous like storm clouds, thick and heavy and grey. It follows, just over their shoulders; makes her stop on street corners and look both ways, twice, just in case this time, this time she isn't imagining it.
It's hard not to feel paranoid with all of this foreshadowing going on. A girl could drown in days like these. Could get lost in these days' nights. Emily finds herself before the white fence house again, but longs to be deeper into the woods, where the rain and the wind and the wet earth were everything. But she's here, and not in Tekakwitha. She's here, and the Verdana isn't that far away.
There's only a few steps up to the Chantry porch. Only a few paces across the porch to the door. The door never seems to be locked, and she (supposedly) belongs here now. She pushes it open, lets in the hot humid air to swirl about her ankles -- muggy, it's sticky-warm; thick -- as she steps into the front room.
She does not call Hello, the House, for this is not that House and she doesn't quite belong that much. She does close the door behind her, move toward the message board, listen for voices from one room or another. This is not a happy House, no, but it is a meeting House. There is water (wonder) in the Well; it is enough to gather them near.
[S. Ashton Winters] There is no child here today.
The living room smells like water and feels like who-knows-what. A handgun is strewn into pieces. she has taken it apart. Carefully, lovingly, like she would with any other tool, and has painstakingly started to put it back together.she watches as she does it, assembles the pieces once everything is cleaned. Maybe this was cathartic in its own way.
It was all motions. All meditative motions.
There's stormclouds overhead, and despite the fact that it was insanely hot, Ashton seemed.... serene. Attire is comfortable. Union blue scrubs, a messy ponytail, and no shoes.
This place needs a new radio.
[Emily Littleton] It's cold in the living room. Not AC on full blast cold, either. It's Ashton cold, when Emily walks into the room. Winter in the middle of June, cold. Christmas in July cold.
"Hi, Ashton," she says, lending her voice to help place the quiet sound of approaching foosteps. Emily's accent was unmistakable. Unique. Her hands are wrapped around the strap of her messenger bag. She's wearing a lavender tee and jeans. Flip flops. Hair unbound. It's summer, and the sun has kissed her skin just so much more browned than before. Not bronzed, but not moonpale white either.
Emily comes a bit more into the room, finds a seat to occupy. Watches while the Wheel-Turner works. Watches attentively. Studies.
[K. R. J.] There is a shower on somewhere in the house -- some part of the house she isn't (allowed [cleared]) to go. Water, running; water, falling. There are rainclouds outside: above, around, a net; a cathedral's sky, a ceiling, a border, a boundary. Water, running; water, falling. The sink is on in the kitchen. Water, running; water, falling. Water, collected in a teakettle that is a dark green: the colour of the undersides of North Atlantic waves. The teakettle: put on the stove, water, still, contained, sloshes, nowhere to run, still, kept. Heat: begins to work its fingers through the kettle and into the water. Nowhere to run, see. Nowhere to go but: transformation [change], and up.
When the water is on, when it boils itself into a shriek, a piercing note, all done, all done, Kage takes the kettle off the stove, pours it into the cheap teapot she found in the back of a cupboard, where there is some Good Tea now Stocked Just In Case, House-Warming Gift, Let's Call It That. As soon as all the water she can pour [water, running; water, falling] is in the pot, she casts about for the lid -- Kage isn't one of those cooks with a lot of forethought, and she put it somewhere, somewhere convenient, only alas, right now, the convenience of it is a mystery because where the fuck is the fucking lid, ah, there -- and then pops that on.
And when that's done, Kage re-joins the Euthanatos in the living room, a timer in hand. She's pleased to see that she has been joined by Emily.
"All right, Ashes. The tea is on -- you're welcome to some, Em -- and I have a timer. Let's see how fast you can do this."
[Lara Wrathburn] The water upstairs cuts off abruptly, the obvious indication that its occupant is either done of her own accord, or has drained the hot water tank dry. Foot steps are heard for a few moments, the person getting dressed, or doing whatever it was she was doing in that sauna like room. So different from Ashton's preferences, the polar opposite infact, and one could wonder what the reaction will be moving from tropically hot, almost frigid.
The sound of feet on the staircase, pattering down quickly but softly brings the redheaded cultist into view, she has apparently made herself RIGHT at home, as she is dressed in a light blue tanktop, and a pair of black boy cut panties. She gasps as she steps down into the cool air of the living room and looks about wide eyed at the two women sitting there, her green eyes wide with surprise.
"How are you not frozen solid?" She asks in surprise as she looks between the three women.
[S. Ashton Winters] "Hey Emily," is the greetng she gets.
She sounds serene. She feels serene. She is serene. The house is cold and that little bit of solace is all she needs to remind her that summer is not permanent. She starts to roll her shoulders back, and her head cocks to the side. Her neck pops, and the woman winces from the sound.
She needs to stretch more.
"How come you haven't melted?" she asks Lara. Quick retort, and a grin at Kage. Rise to the challenge.
[Emily Littleton] There is a pull here, in two different directions, and it tugs impatiently on her attention. There is pantslessness here, in one corner, wearing a thin shirt that leaves nothing to the imagination; here is Cold Fire Hair, an Other, a friend, in another with a timer and a tea kettle tasked to whistle at the appointed time. Pantslessness, then: a raised eyebrow, surprised, a polite look away from long legs that give not even a nod to propriety (this is a Meeting House [a place of doom and portents!]). Rowan-haired: a smile, widening, an understanding Oh!
"Tea sounds lovely, cheers," she says, her voice mellifluous and warm enough. It is riddled through with places not here and not now, but the predominant note is British. "And what's the time-to-beat? Do you have a personal record?"
A beat. Just a little hesitation. "I'd like to learn; if you'll teach me." That's all, moving along. Glossing over. The. End.
Oh, and now, a small smile -- and eye contact, for Emily's not letting her gaze roam, not now -- for the pantsless one. "It's rather a nice change from out of doors," she says. Wry curl, left side of her mouth; dark blue eyes, dancingly bright. Shod through with slate chips, stormy. Amused.
"I didn't know you'd moved in," she says, which is a round-about qay of getting at And who are you?
[K. R. J.] "Warm hearts," Kage says, deadpan, "And clothing." Her mouth quirks; something kin to mischief; amusement, tucked away like an ungettable kiss. "Hi, Lara. Have you met Ashes or Emily yet?"
Then: Kage is settling herself on the floor in front of Ashton. Her eyebrows are well-raised; she's ready to start the timer. First, though - "What was your record, Ashes? Last I remember it was, what, sixty-two seconds?"
[S. Ashton Winters] "Sixty one point seven three, thank you," because she would remember the miliseconds.
The woman stops for a second. Muses over this. And she's ready to start the timer. Ashton looks at Kage, and she lets her hands rest, calmly, on the tops of her thighs.
"... you know, last time, I wasn't sober when I did this, so this should be interesting."
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara's eyes track from the woman and her gun, to Kage, the one she had met on a patio for a bistro that was far, far to expensive for her wallet but certainly not her tastes, and then finally over to Emily who all made quips about her suddenly being overly cold. She smiles ruefully at the women gathered here and spoke.
"For what I've tasted of desire I hold for those who favor fire." She says in a rhyming tune as if that should settle the matter entirely. "And no...I haven't." She says stepping forward into the room, regardless of the cold, even as goosebumps briefly flared on her skin, causing hairs to stand on end.
[Emily Littleton] It's possible that the other women are just more accustomed to this particularly localized weather effect. Or maybe they secretly lust after snow on balmy summer nights. Emily has goosebumps, too, but it's not enough to send her reaching for a sweater or complaining about the sudden chill. It's just Ashton; and if a toddler can tolerate it without whining, she can as well.
"Wow," she says, as if this number means something to her. She surmises, from its precision, that it is impressive. Really, Emily doesn't know much about firearms or their skill-based timed trials.
She raises a hand, waves, and offers Lara a less wry and dismissive smile. It's polite, enough. Almost warm enough to touch her eyes. Reserved. Falls short of truly friendly.
"Hey." Beat. "I'm Emily. A pleasure to meet you."
[K. R. J.] "If you'd like to learn, Em, I know a good firing range. And if you'd like some tea to help you warm up, Lara, it's in the kitchen; probably ready by now."
Now that poem is going to be in Kage's head all day: I think I know enough of hate, she thinks, but does not say, not aloud. Her gaze goes briefly upward; touches the ceiling, studies it, tracks toward a place in the House she remembers. Then: back to now, the present. Here.
"You can tell it to the twenty you're going to owe me in your goodbye speech," Kage says, when Ashton mentions sobriety or the lack there of, and that quirk of her mouth becomes a brief, easy smile. Lines around her mouth; lines around her eyes. Kage's bone-structure is delicate, and so, it would seem, is her skin. "Let's see you go. Count've three. One two three."
Timer: started.
[Lara Wrathburn] "Lara." Her full pouty lips stretch into a smile that also reaches her eyes, friendly as can be it would seem. She saunters over to look down at the gun on the table, and at the competition that was now underway. She chuckles lightly and moved towards the kitchen, headed for the subtle aroma that was the tea that was now ready and waiting.
She gathers for herself a nice big mug of steaming hot liquid and moves comes back, setting it down on whatever surface is not currently occupied by deadly firearms, before moving off once more, heading for the stairs that lead up. "I'll be right back..." She says as she mounts the stairs casually, not in any hurry at all.
[S. Ashton Winters] "Ashton Winters," she offers. The woman gets an upward nod, though she doesn't seem one to touch.
The woman inspects Lara, and that's what it is, genuinely, an inspection. She looks over her finer details, over her cheekbones and her green eyes and her legs that seem to trail onward. It's a problem, because she is watching people and listening when Kage says she's got to start on the count of three.
"And I can teach you if you'd like, Em," one two three.
Go.
She starts assembling the thing. It's like watching a zen master at work. It's all careful and practiced and effortless and strenuous and a world of contraditions. It is what it is. Ashton moves with her gun, the one that's hers and no one else's, and can reassemble it with little problem. She's talking the whole time.
"It's not really hard to shoot. If you ever played X-box or Duck Hunt when you were little-" pieces are clicking and being put into place and soon enough, her firearm is assembled "-then you shouldn't have any problem."
The pieces come apart again with little problem. It's all the same. Just like surgery, and they come apart. And just like surgery, it all goes back together.
"there are a few who are twenty-four hours, too."
Fifty-nine-sixty-
Reassembled again. Twice.
[Emily Littleton] This Orphan (mind you, not that Orphan) has a remarkably keen sense of technological things, how they fit into spaces, how their pieces fit together, lock step, rock, move, interconnect, clip together -- Oh! So that's how -- this is all to say, she's adept at understanding the way things work. All this before magic comes into play. She gets it; she gets this, even if she couldn't replicate the movements just yet.
Moreover, she gets that this is damned impressive.
"I'd like that," she says, looking between Kage and Ashton with an appreciative smile. "I've shot a gun once; it didn't go horribly. I'd just prefer to know what I'm doing, how to take care of them, all of that."
Emily took good care of her tools. A gun was a tool. It was something to empower her against all the things that went bump in the night -- mundane and magical -- to leave her a little less helpless, less vulnerable.
"I'm going to get some tea," she says, rising from her seat and slipping the messenger bag's strap over her head. The bag falls into the seat cushion of where she'd been before, with a little thump. Its strap trails to the floor, forlornly. "I'll be right back."
[K. R. J.] "It's not really hard to shoot," Kage echoes, watching Ashton Winters be an extension of the gun: constructing, de-constructing and re-constructing so fluidly [water runs, water falls] that it looks far more effortless than it must be. Looks as if Ashton exhales, and the machine comes apart in her hands; she inhales, and it comes together. "But it's not easy to shoot well. Especially when you're trying to hit something moving."
When Ashton has finished, Kage reaches into her backpocket, pulls out a sleek and slender wallet, opens it, pulls out a couple of bills, and drops them on the table. Her expression isn't one of rue, although maybe there's a touch of that at the corner of her mouth: "I concur. You are faster than the Gunslinger now."
I'll be right back, Lara says.
I'll be right back, Emily says.
Kage offers both a faint smile, a nod; acknowledgment is a thing expressed in a glance, not so much in words.
[Lara Wrathburn] Footsteps are heard overhead once more as Lara moves about, looking through her for a few moments as the initial scores are tallied on who has the fastest reassembly in the mid west.
It didn't take long for Lara to come back downstairs, in her hand a bottle of tequila and a deck of cards. Her intention was clear, if the women wanted to play at games of skill and dexterity, why not play a game everyone could get into.
"So have we figured out just who is the fastest hmmm?" She asks as she walks back into the room. "Why don't we put away the gun for a bit...and try something a little more group friendly?" She suggests as she arrives at the table they are all crowded around, the tequila set down, and the cards held in hand, which she flicks to the side to emphasize the idea. She smiles, and could look for all the world like some kind of model for a poker tournament.
[S. Ashton Winters] Ashton mouthes something to Kage.
It looks like Blue's O.B. Peach.
The cultist comes back with tequila and cards, and Ashton, for her part, perks up a little. This seemed to be what she did when she left the toddler with someone other than a mage. Ashton came to the chantry and did strange, strange things, that may or may not involve alcohol.
"Either game seems like it would result in losing a finger," she says, "but yours involves tequila."
Doc Winters approves.
[Emily Littleton] ((Per+Aware: Do you solemnly swear you are up to no good? Or is you just being friendly...))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Lara Wrathburn
[Lara Wrathburn] [Manip+Subt I'm being good...honest]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Emily Littleton
[Emily Littleton] ((Clearly you are! Carry on!))
to Lara Wrathburn
[Emily Littleton] It doesn't take but a moment, and then Emily is back. She's carrying a mug of tea in one hand, blowing over its still-steaming surface, padding her way across the floors that used to be carpeted but now did not squish-squick beneath her soles.
So many memories. So many memories for only half a year's time.
Now the Cultist has booze, cards, and remains pantsless. Emily studies her for a moment, that easy flick of cards, the way the Tequila lands as its set down. The cant of her head, or her hips, or -- suspicious, this Orphan is, of the good natured fun at hand.
But apparently, that's all it is. Whatever test she's administering with the rake of her dark eyes, Lara passes. Emily shrugs away the concern, tables it so to speak, and reclaims her chair with a slightly lazier slouch than usual. She sips at her tea and considers cards.
"What do you have in mind?" she queries, open-endedly. Apparently not all Cultists are harbingers of doom, like a certain Mr. Spriggs.
[K. R. J.] "You have found her weakness," Kage says, of Ashton and tequila. Says it easily, the way one says things that aren't really true, but also aren't really untrue. Doesn't add her question to Emily's; it's implied. Leans her weight back on her arms, bracing her up, torso at an angle, a casual creature, just as if the White Fence House really were safe and sanctuary.
[Lara Wrathburn] "Just a fun game between girls, say...twenty dollar buy in, with the added fun of whoever win's each hand gets to make everybody else drink?" She says as she sets the cards down slowly on the table, meaningfully, they notice now that there is twenty dollars set ontop, Lara's buy in it would appear.
She smiles as she looks from person to person now much more comfortable it would seem, in her element, ready to have a good time and bring others along with her, who knows maybe after this they would all be good friends, or at least drinking friends.
"I'm not to picky on the game...but I figure poker or black jack would be the most user friendly, I mean we could try drinking asshole, but I really only have the one deck, and thats not all that fun."
[S. Ashton Winters] (skip me, mom call-eth)
[Emily Littleton] Twenty dollars is a lot of money in your early twenties, when the end-of-semester budget leaves most college kids eating Ramen and pretending they like it. Pretending it's a choice, dressing it up with an egg stirred in and calling it added protein like it's healthy. Emily considers the buy in for a long moment, feels the pinch of it in her pocketbook (or seems to). There's a little purse to her mouth, pinched in, thoughtful, and it mirrors the consideration painted across her brow as she sips at her tea and thinks. Thinks.
"You'll have to teach me these games," she says, as if she's never heard of poker or blackjack before. She certainly doesn't like the sound of drinking asshole -- even knowing that -ing's an adjective not a verb. "I'm woefully undereducated in card games."
It's a stall, this. If Kage buys in, and Ashton, then she'll play. If it's a night of polite no thank yous, she doesn't want to get stuck losing her money alone.
[K. R. J.] "Ashes just cleaned me out; if she's willing to put me back into her debt, I'm game," Kage says, like debt was a fluid thing: like it meant nothing. Child of the times, maybe; or perhaps these kinds of debts are toys. They don't matter. A game of cards.
[S. Ashton Winters] "I'll buy us in," she retorts, finally. Debt, so fluid, so easily transferred from place to place, "I'm up for playing... hmmn... Texas Hold 'em's pretty fun with groups."
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara's grin widens as Ashton buys in, which mean's Kage is in, and while it isn't verbalized, mean's that Emily's in as well. Her eyes twinkled as she moved quickly to the kitchen, retrieving four glasses, enough for each of them to drink from when they were going to inevitably lose.
"Alright, bonding time ladies." She says with a chuckle as she put one glass on each side of the table, obviously denoting four different playing points one for each lady."Its always great to establish a new chapter of WDCP.." She says as she lowers herself languidly to the floor with a shiver, why they didn't have carpeting here was beyond her, but whatever.
She looks over at Emily with a friendly wink and a light laugh. "Oh your going to learn...and I promise it won't be too much of the hardway...hopefully." She says teasingly, all in good fun it would seem.
[Emily Littleton] There's a wink; oh yes, cardinal sign of trickery, mischief and thieves. A wink and a smile and then you're in trouble. Emily arches an eyebrow: I see your mischief, I raise you disbelief. She, too, lowers herself to the plane of the floor, pays great attention to the lessons being doled out here. The mysteries revealed; the legerdemain at play.
"I'm a quick study," she says, ever so slightly uncertain of this endeavour. It's not cockiness, no, but an apologetic turn of phrase. "Hopefully that will save me something."
Ah, yes, time to ante up. She sets her tea aside to dig in her messenger bag for something. Her wallet. A crisp, neatly folded twenty is produced from therein, but there are far too many colors living beside it in that purse for the whole of her paper monies to be American.
Emily lays the money down on the table, settles herself, looks a little bookish and uncertain. But not entirely ill at ease. There's a smile, still, on those young features of hers. (Like lambs to the ... [a wolf in sheep's ...]).
[K. R. J.] [Ack, skip me! Kage is down - Lara, take us away!]
[Lara Wrathburn] "If not Em I'm sure we can work out a loan payment program." Lara says with a bat of eyelashes as she draws up to her a sack of coins, full of dollars, quarters, and other options and begins counting out twenty dollars for each woman in various denominations. By the speed of her its obvious she's at least dealt or set up these sort of games many many times.
Emily is handed her money, and then Ashton then Kage, and finally Lara deals money for herself. She leaves the small pile of twenties near Ashton, so as to not seem suspicious about the whole thing. The last little bit of preparation involved filling each of their glasses with a shot worth of tequila.
She looked about at the set up and smiled, and thumped the bottle down on the table top. "I hearby call this session of women playing drunken card games to order." She laughs a little before going to deal out the cards.
[K. R. J.] "What we need is some music. Something slangy, something with slink; some pretty waiters to make certain we're not bothered." Kage raises her eyebrows, a question that isn't quite clear, at Emily. And she says: "You know, Lara. The card game isn't drunken until we've all at least christened it by taking a swig to fortune's favor, and all." Oh, no: Kage, for a moment, her eyes go distant: some memory half-dredged up, something from when she was younger, far more reckless, and watching Guys and Dolls.
[Emily Littleton] "Ah, no, no thank you," she says, sipping again at her tea and just a little wide-eyed at the thought of taking on something as permanent and tangible as a payment plan. There's warmth beneath it, though, and it's canted toward amusement.
Lara thumps the bottle on the table ceremoniously and Emily chuckles a little, despite herself. Kage raises her eyebrows and the other Orphan flirts with momentary confusion. Then there's a slight spread to her smile, warm and fluid, melted butter sliding over -- oh yes, a drink to start them off. She lifts her glass along with the others.
"I may have something appropriate on my iPod," she offers, oh-so-helpfully to Kage. Something singer-songwriter smoky-voiced and bluesy instrumental. Something a little more jazz and a little less rock and roll. Oh yes, there'd be something appropriate.
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara was in the midst of dealing when Kage had made her oh so appropriate suggestion and she finishes dealing, just to ensure that everything is square, it wouldn't be right to pause midway afterall. Once the cards are face down on the table and the women each have their glasses raised Lara pipes up. "Life of Riley girls.." She says before downing her first shot, and then moves to refill each glass in turn, before moving to pick up her cards.
"So what do you all do for fun around here anyways?" She asks as she looks over her cards, starting up casual conversation as she feels the last of the warmth of the tequila slide down her throat, making her smile just a little bit more lazy.
[Emily Littleton] "Fight zombies," Emily says, deadpan, just as everyone else drinks. Then she drinks.
[K. R. J.] "Yeah? Do you think this Mad Men set has a computer hook-up for your ipod?" Kage asks, of Emily. If there is one, she should know about it already, unless it's been recently added; she doesn't act as if she does. And: They drink. Each of them: four girls, four seasons, four suits; four is the number of death, four is a square, a building, a sign. "Now, see - I don't find fighting zombies very fun: something about their hunger for brains, hearts, flesh, things I find it difficult to live without. I don't know, maybe I don't need my brains, not really."
But: Lara wants to know what people do for fun. Really. And Kage, more gentled, says: "Have you met Nathan Spriggs yet?"
[K. R. J.] ooc: You know, strike the 'Spriggs.' I don't know if she knows his last name.
[Emily Littleton] "Well, no, you're right, that's not precisely fun," she says, setting her glass down to be refilled. She says this with a lilt, as if she were recanting somehow on the solemnity of her earlier statment. She's also arranging those coins, bills, whatever into neat stacks, divided by denomination. It's not OCD, it's called being organized. And if she's gonna get tipsy, a little forethought goes a long way!
"We had a cook out for Memorial Day," she says, as if she didn't realize how Leave it to Beaver that sounded. Which Emily likely didn't. "Played some football."
"And yeah, it probably does," she says to Kage, pushes herself up to standing and goes to look for an AUX in adapter. If she finds it (the geek girl does) then Emily's got the right wire in her bag, too.
And there is music! There is booze; there are friends and cards and small talk.
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara blinks and coughs at the mention of zombies, a hand pushed to her lips as she coughs and laughs at the same time. "Seriously? Zombies? You guys are fighting the living dead around here?" She shakes her head and laughs a bit. "Well at least my stay won't be boring.." She comments as she listens to the women talk, about music, about memorial day and some form of cookout, and then finally she registers Kage talking about a man named nathan.
"No I haven't, is he the head honcho around here?" She asks honestly, looking between the women gathered there, looking for their impressions of this man that she obviously should know, otherwise they wouldn't have brought it up. Her cards are kept close to her chest, safe from the prying eyes of her new friends/opponents/marks if shes really lucky.
[K. R. J.] [Now, Kage...]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Now that's an interesting thought ... ))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[K. R. J.] Seriously, Lara Wants to know, Zombies? And Kage, well; her gaze takes on a grave cadence, something shaded. She doesn't ask Lara if she Felt It when the bridge fell, but she thinks the question.
"No," she says, after she glances down at her own hand. No, because Nathan is not Head Honcho; no indeed. Her voice is even; easy. "He's just your Tradition mate; he's been in the city for a little while now. Owns a bar. I like to call him T.H. He's all over the place."
[Emily Littleton] Kage is fielding this question, so the other Orphan has a chance to pick up her hand, examine the cards, imagine what might separate a good hand from a bad one. It's a guess, of course, as she doesn't know how to play.
Looking down at her cards is an excellent cover for the thoughts that cross her mind at the suggestion that Nathan is in charge. Or the head anything. Or, you know, a point of authority. Oh look, a two. Are twos good? Are two twos good? Hmmm. She glances up over her cards and chimes in, "But he usually shows to meetings, so you'll meet him sooner or later."
Smile.
[Lara Wrathburn] [Per+Emp, whats going on here...whats this about a cultist?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Manip + Subterfuge: Awesome. Cards have red and black shapes on them, and numbers. I like numbers. What about Nathan?))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[K. R. J.] [Nothin' to see here. >.> Same.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara looks from Emily to Kage, as they're the ones currently taking to her, Ashton seems occupied, or at the very least, intent on her cards. She glances around reading faces, a friendly smile on her own, though her eyes betray a sly demeanor, but she reads nothing, nothing about the cards or her fellow cultist.
"Ok well what does T.H mean? and more importantly, how all over the place is all over the place?" She asks as she runs a finger over the edge of her glass, still looking at her hand. She then looks to Emily, as she was sitting to the left and nodded slightly. "Ok Em, heres how we do this, your to my left, so you get to make the first bet, we go around in a circle till we've all bet, and then I will deal out three more cards, basically you wanna combine what you have in your hand there...with whatever is put down on the table to make a good hand..ok?"
She says it slowly, she really isn't trying to confuse the girl, and then she remembers something and reaches inside the box the cards came in and pulled out one more card. "Here...for the beginner, on the house." She slid a small card over to Em which displayed all the different winning hands, in descending order from the best...to the worst.
[K. R. J.] [Perception+Awareness-as-Empathy, Do You Really Think Emily Is Innocent, Lara?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Lara Wrathburn] [Manip+Subt Maybe...maybe not]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Emily Littleton] "Oooookay," she says, drawing the first syllable out thoughtfully. Emily chews on the corner of her lip for a moment, seemingly distracted by considering her hand. When Lara hands over the cheat sheet of rules she is, genuinely, appreciative.
"Oh! Cheers. This will help," she says, eyeing the card carefully and comparing it to her hand. "Okay, is there a limit of how low you can bid first?" She doesn't say open or ante or any other card-words. "Could I start with, say, a quarter?"
So, not an excellent hand, or a conservative player.
[cricket] [I want one more suuuuuxx]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 4 (Failure at target 7)
to Emily Littleton
[cricket] [Owen, stop being a jerk and focus you big jerk.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 7)
to Emily Littleton
[K. R. J.] "All over the place," Kage says, a pause: then: "He's often in the thick of it. And when he's not, well, he's a thickening agent, sometimes in spite of himself, I'd say." She also eyes the other red-haired woman closely, consideringly: does she really think Emily doesn't know how to? Kage, she doesn't seem to be paying much attention to her cards; she looked at them once. Once is enough.
[K. R. J.] [An academic test. Kahseeno, you are a JERK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[K. R. J.] [Kahseeno, I really love you. I love the way your numbers are so number-y.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[S. Ashton Winters] "No... no, she does that... yes I'm sure.... Of course I'm sure, I'm her mother... tell her mommy said no.... no, tell her mommy said... put her on the phone" she says.
Ashton had excused herself, briefly. She's pacing the living room, off on her own little tirade. She sighs, and the next things out of her mouth are... not.... in English. Not at all. Not even close to English.
[Owen] [Am I making noise coming up the stairs?]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Lara Wrathburn] "A thickening agent....right. You make sound like hes about as smart as molasses and just as fast." She says with a slight giggle before looking over to Emily, if she thought Emily was that innocent, or that simple, it doesn't show, but then nothing shows other then that slightly devious smile and that sparkle in those bright green eyes.
"We'll set the minimum bet at a quarter sure." She says as she shifts her position so that shes now sitting on her thighs, her legs out from under her body as she sits up a little straighter.
She spares a glance over to Ashton, and doesn't have a clue whats shes saying, she cocks a brow wondering before shrugging and turning away, it had something to do with...children.
[Emily Littleton] Kage and Lara are talking about Nathan, which doesn't hold Emily's attention very well. It's like holding water in a sieve. Slips right through. What were you saying? Oh, Nathan. Slips right through again. Can't hold; won't hold. She tries not to listen too carefully, at least, because it usually ends with her grinding her teeth.
Which means the other likely place for her attention to fall is on the pacing Winters, the mommy-over-the-telephone-line act. Emily had been on the receiving end of this game, as a child, too many times to count. Emily's mother had not been like Ashton. If she had, well, then little Ms. Littleton would have been far far better behaved.
She winces at the words: put her on the phone. At the non-English that follows. That, too, is familiar in function if not form.
So back to her cards, back to the giggle and assumptions (or not) of her innocence and simpleness. In truth, she was simple. Emily was horribly simple. Everything about her was simple. It was the layering of all those simple things, the way they built up into something more, that was the complication, but nothing about her was inherently intricate.
"A quarter then," she says, sliding it out across the table. She really isn't certain about this, at all, and it shows, but it's a start. A quarter. Just a start. And maybe, this time, this sort of social gathering would prove to be a good idea. Or not calamitous. No calamity would be an improvement.
[K. R. J.] [Skip me, yo! Kage is, uh, a not-so-cagy player, so do with that as you will. *grin*]
[S. Ashton Winters] Aahton Winters came back to the table after a long conversation. She plops herself down to go sit. She's dealt in. Each hand, as it seems, is a quarter. The rather unremarkable, but athletic woman sits crosslegged at the table. She's a tequila fiend. She's a lot of things, and for now? She watches this hand.
The woman looks comfortable, says nothing, and watches.
[K. R. J.] [And with that, I gotta run! Uhmuhmuhm. I give Kage NPC-rights to Em. Have her lose like whoa! then take a call. was fun playing with y'all!]
[Owen] He'd never been down so far in the Chantry before. As a matter of fact, he'd never, until quite recently, set foot within the house with its pretty windows and wrap around porch. But then, that was before he'd been spotted, and called upon by the Node itself to aid it and been [would he honestly call it befriending? such a word seemed too strong] acknowledged by other Awakened.
He was known, now.
There was little point in going back. Still, approaching the top of the staircase, the Singer gave some pause when voices trickled down to him. They hadn't been present when he'd first arrived at -- he slid his sleeve back, glanced at the glowing hands of his watch -- Huh. Had he really been downstairs that long?
...tell her Mommy said no!
...about as smart as molasses
The top stair creaked, it was about as much warning as anyone got about a certain Initiate of the Celestial Chorus before he was there, leaning with arms folded over his chest against the door-frame to the living area, looking in on a table full of woman playing poker. The Singer in question was tall, with dark hair spiked upward in apparent careless disarray and a lean, athletic build that gave the suggestion whatever he did for a living involved a large amount of physical work. There were faint traces of a bruise marring one eye, and his movements [when he did move] were careful enough to suggest perhaps there was more bruising beneath his clothing.
For all this, though, the face that impassively studies the table was handsome, with a jawline covered in a day or so's worth of stubble, and dark midnight blue eyes that shifted to another as she re-entered the room. A hand emerged from a pocket to salute Ashton.
[Lara Wrathburn] "A thickening agent....right. You make sound like hes about as smart as molasses and just as fast." She says with a slight giggle before looking over to Emily, if she thought Emily was that innocent, or that simple, it doesn't show, but then nothing shows other then that slightly devious smile and that sparkle in those bright green eyes.
"We'll set the minimum bet at a quarter sure." She says as she shifts her position so that shes now sitting on her thighs, her legs out from under her body as she sits up a little straighter.
She spares a glance over to Ashton, and doesn't have a clue whats shes saying, she cocks a brow wondering before shrugging and turning away, it had something to do with...children.
[Lara Wrathburn] The group had fallen remarkably silent and after such promising conversational pieces as well, a few rounds of betting and card placing had taken place, the game progressing slowly. Lara was happy to take her time, and when final call came at last, she smiled, laying down a pair of kings and a pair of fives.
"Well lets see who can beat that ladies, I have a feeling I won't be the first one taking any drinks tonight." She says with a playful smugness, just as she hears the door creak open from the basement, and out stepped a fine example of the male side of the species. Lara turned to regard the man, her smile spreading slightly as she lay her head to the side, bright red hair falling to the side as green eyes drink the man in. This woman is wearing so very little at the moment, obviously having become quite comfortable here in the Chantry, a pair of black boy cut panties were all that covered her lower half, long pristine legs were curled beneath her, ontop she wore a light blue tank top...and nothing else.
"Well well it looks like this is no longer just a meeting of women playing drunken card games." She says languidly as she watches Owen intently.
[Lara Wrathburn] [Ignore first post....my browser messed up >_
[S. Ashton Winters] "... is it sad that my natural reaction is to cheat?" she asks with a grin.
[Emily Littleton] It was just yesterday that they'd played basketball again in Lincoln Park, but that was before the dischordant energy, the children playing-not-playing, the lies she told to the Sleeper Man who thought they were all performers studying parts for a movie. That was before the crash (literal) of sound knocked out her hearing; before Israel (lying, upstairs) had her eyes eaten out.
That was before she'd found herself in the middle of (another bad idea) a drinking and poker night at the House of Ill Portents, with a handful of other Awakened. She hadn't even realized that Owen had been here, so it would be some great surprise when she realized the creaking stair presaged his arrival. Emily's messenger bag is in a chair. Emily is sitting on the floor, presiding over what is presumably not an excellent hand.
She notices the cold before she notes Owen. It's been like this, lately. Her head's not quite in the game. Emily looks up as Ashton comes back: "Is Marcelle giving her sitter a hard time?" she asks, with a bit of empathy underlying those words. She knows about the toddlers.
Then Lara... Emily's gaze follows the Cultists to the man leaning in the doorframe. It tracks back to Lara, then back to Owen. Emily lays her cards down, since the bet's been called. It is not a winning hand. Neither is Kage's.
Emily looks to Kage, but Kage's phone rings and the other Orphan wanders away with polite Excuse Mes.
Emily looks to Ashton. Then to Lara. Then to Owen. (Hi, Owen.) And back to Kage's empty seat.
[S. Ashton Winters] [I'm empathic!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Manip+Subterfuge: This is me. Having nothing to share. Nothing, nothing at all. Move. Along.))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Owen] [EH? Why is everyone looking at everyone else? Per + Alert -2 Acute Senses]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 7, 7 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[Owen] Owen doesn't know Lara from a bar of soap. He knows she's Awakened, otherwise she wouldn't be inside the Chantry at present. He knows that she's looking at him in a certain way, but then, he's looking at Emily parked down there on the floor, firstly and casting her a brief little smile that reads as much for hello as anything else. Then he's glancing at Lara again and taking stock of her - uh, oh - attire, or rather the distinct lack thereof and a streak of red appears to wash across the Singer's cheeks.
He cuts his eyes away and clears his throat, straightening from the wall and tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. It was black, leather and worn around the cuff and collar. "Hey," he manages, not lifting his eyes for a full minute or so. It's not embarrassment, but rather than sense that Owen Page does not enjoy, nor is accustomed to such intense scrutiny being directed at him.
"Sorry, if I'm interrupting."
The reddening in his cheeks and neck fades, gradually, but its clear that the Singer isn't sure what to do with all this attention, cast on him. When he returns his eyes to Lara, they are kept firmly above her shoulders. "We haven't met, I'm Owen." There's some hesitation as he says this, some residual flustering.
[Lara Wrathburn] She notes that the man looks at Emily first and foremost, a curious glance given over to Emily as she wondered at the connections that were between these two magi. But then the man started...to blush. Lara can't help herself, she grins ear to ear before she laughs a little. Turning to pick up her shot, as it was Ashton who held the winning hand. "Bottom's up girls." She says laughing a little more before she downs the firey liquid and clinks her glass down on the table.
She then turned back towards Owen that smile still on his lips as she watched him. "No...no we haven't Owen, you know you've just barged in on very official buisness...thats a problem for boys.." She says with a wickedly devious look upon her face. "I'm Lara by the way." She then looked back to Emily, Ashton and Kage and asked them. "So...what should we do with the interloper hmm?"
[Emily Littleton] This is not awkward at all, she tells herself. Feels the fingers of her right hand close around the glass, bring it closer. Feels the fire slide down her throat. Emily doesn't wince at the burn, doesn't cough. She's been taking shots longer than she's known how to drive. But there's something wrong about how this goes down, and her glass doesn't clink as convincingly against the table as Lara's does. There's no good-natured fervor behind it.
It's just two shots, so far. It shouldn't be brightening her eyes just yet. Maybe he can't tell, just yet. Won't pair it with the handful of things they said to one another. (I'm struggling.) Her head's a little fuzzy, already, and her smile's a bit broader than it ought to be.
"Kage put the kettle on for tea," she says, to Owen. It had to be for Owen, everyone else had known about the tea. "If you want to make coffee, the water's probably still rather warm."
But then there was Lara's question. Emily planted her hands on the floor behind her, leaned back and bit and pretended to consider the mischief and mayhem that could be done with (to) Owen in this situation, when really, part of her was wishing she could will away the bottle of tequila just about now, and the two shots she'd already taken down into her belly (fire [see also: playing with]).
[S. Ashton Winters] Owen gets a salute back. He is the subject of attention, who gets a look for a moment... which flickers to Emily, and makes the older woman (oldest woman in the room, possibly) smile a little and take her shot to tequila. Ashton adjusts her necklace and perks up.
"Eh, let him be. He hasn't figured out our secret ritual of awesome card-related doom yet, so we don't have to sacrifice him to anything," she shrugs. It's a deal, and even if it is just a game of cards.
"Kage makes some amazing tea, though," she offers. Back to reality. She tries to pull it it all back, "now c'mon, I have disposable income and a need to part with it."
[Owen] They're drinking, and playing cards. The former seems to unsettle the young man [from the looks of him he was no older than twenty-three] more than the latter. He glances at Emily as she slugs back a shot and there's the vague notion of longing there in his gaze [but which was it for, is the question] before he looks over at Kage, casts her a small smile and jerks his chin in the kitchen's direction.
"Yeah, sounds good. I'll go make a cup."
Chorister on the move, shrugging off his jacket as he goes; Owen hooks it over the back of a sofa, or a chair, the shirt beneath was black, a v-neck of no exciting design. Clearly a worker's uniform, if one wear to exist would surmise for his wardrobe. Owen wore jeans nearly always, boots with them and a variety of gray and blacks; he owned two collared shirts. He was either unimaginative, or on a limited income, the latter seemed to fit with the general demeanor of the man as he passed through into the kitchen and the sounds of tea being made filtered through.
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara sighed as Ashton passed judgment and allowed the man to go without even a moment's harassment. She turned back to the women she was sitting with and gave them a shake of her head. "Could have had some fun there girls....but alright, lets blow some money alright?" She asks as she goes to first refill their shots, and then deal once more.
She does follow Owen with her eyes as she deals, but once the man is out of sight, its like she'd forgotten him entirely, her eyes caste to her fellow players and drinkers now. "So is there anyone else of real note around this city I should watch out for?" She asks, digging for dirty maybe? Or just interested in who in the city is worth knowing.
[S. Ashton Winters] [wp: do not, for the love of God, say what you thought about saying]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Emily Littleton] She watches Owen for a moment, until he disappears around the corner and into the kitchen. It's easier, now, to balance whatever is warring within her, though Emily has a very strong urge to pick up the recently refilled glass and drink it down. To hasten the dizzy-light-headedness and the slightly broader words. It'd be easier to take this all in if she wasn't all here.
That's the problem with having an acute mind and a usually keen sense of awareness is that not enough slips by. Lara is watching Owen leave the room, and Emily is running her fingertips along the rim of her glass. It's an easy idle gesture. Looser, by a long shot, than she was when they first convened this ritual.
She picks up her cards, studies them a bit less intently, now.
"Well, there's a couple key cabals. They'll do all the talking at meetings, and usually make the phone calls when things are going south. You're apparently clear with them, though, or you wouldn't have free reign of the house."
Blunt. Slightly tipsy Emily is a little more blunt that politely reserved Emily. This, this is a problem, but her brain hasn't caught up with that just yet.
[S. Ashton Winters] "Me," she says idly. It's the best thing the Euthanatos has in terms of a witty retort.
She takes a second and straightens up. Woman has to stay sober- she has to drive home and relieve a babysitter. Deal with a toddler who will want nothing more than to sleep in mommy's room [cus her babysitter made her sleep in the baby bed and she sleeps in a big girl bed, because she's a big girl... but in less words] Her gun is discarded.
"But only in December."
[Owen] He comes back into the room after a few minutes with a cup in one hand, steam wafting from the rim. The side of the blue ceramic reads I'm +1! in bold black lettering. Perhaps it was the only one Owen could find, or he just didn't bother to check if it had anything written on it. Either way, he doesn't appear bothered by it, or the game at hand when he re-emerges from the kitchen.
He's still favoring his left side a touch when he walks, but for the most part he seems more at ease, or at the very least, capable of taking up a vantage spot against the wall and observing the game in play without blushing a deep red at the sight of a young woman in her underwear in front of him. When he raises the cup to his lips, the sleeve of his shirt rises, and the bare traces of the tattoo on his right arm are bared, just the blues and blacks of the lowest petals before they vanish back beneath the material.
"Have you met Solomon Ward and Israel Cohen?" He had a quiet voice, Owen, pleasing in its own way. You could imagine it might be comforting, under the right circumstances. Alarming, when roughened to anger. "There's also Ashley McGowen."
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara laughed at Ashton's words and nodded as if it was indeed impressive advice. "I can tell Ashton you are a savant among us." She says as she ante's again, they are nearing the end of this hand, and Lara seems quite content with this.
When Owen returns, and speaks of other people she turns her gaze towards the man and shakes his head. "Ease dropping are you, well that shows what sort of man you are doesn't it?" She says with a wink to the man before nodding. "I've met Ashley, she was the one helped me get a place here...well, at least upstairs, I can't go downstairs yet. Not until I find a few people to hang out with."
She says as she plays the last card of the hand down and frowns, her great scheme apparently coming to nothing. "I fold." She says tossing her cards in.
[Emily Littleton] "You should be careful of Owen, too," Emily says, offering Lara and warmer smile. The girl seemed to be opening up a bit more, now, between the tequila and the infectiously easy-going personality. (They both know this is a a trap, though, so it's not quite what it seems from either side.)
"He's very good at sneaking up on people." This said, with a bit of a nod, as if she had been the recipient of such behavior. Time, and again. In Good Will, it had resulted in a bump on her head for the better part of a week. But the way Emily said it, and the smirk-smile she offered Owen, might make it seem like levity instead of an earnest warning.
"I fold, too," she says, laying her cards down with a shrug. It's not that her hand was bad, just that the greater game at play here interested her more. And the tequila. That was going to be paramount to her surviving the evening. Unless somebody put their pants on.
[S. Ashton Winters] "Israel and Solomon have been here almost as long as I have," she says, "they make me feel less old. Solomon's tightly wound, Israel tempers him. And come on where is your sense of adventure?"
She is either getting really good hands, or Ashton's good at bluffing. Who knows, really. She could very well be cheating; one can't trust a Euthanatos when matters of luck are on the line. The Wheel Turner nods once and muses over it, "people tend to cycle through here... it's nice to see more people."
It rings of something. Communication is easier, for now. It's effort, or maybe it's tequila. Who knows.
[Owen] Lara calls him out on eaves-dropping, Emily notes he should be watched out for. The Chorister cants his head to look down at his almost-Apprentice and there's a touch of humor to his eyes as he studies her flushed face. "I can see your hand," he notes, in what must pass for teasing from Owen.
Then, he shrugs off the wall: "I can't promise I'm any good, but I'll play you Ashton."
[Lara Wrathburn] Lara raises her glass once more a look at Owen and Emily before tilting the glass back and letting the liquid burn and slide down her throat, feeling its warmth coat the inside of her body, she blinks lazily a few times now, feeling the alcohol seep into her blood stream and loosen..everything. She ends up passing the card deck to her right now, to Ashton, as was proper as she reaches for the bottle and refills her glass once more.
"Soo..." She says trailing off, as she gently licks her lips clean of any residual tequila as she leans forward and supports her body on the table, thoroughly relaxed it would seem. "You want in do you Owen? Well, i suppose we can bend the rules a bit...but you need to drink up first." She says offering her glass to Owen with a smile. "Come on..drink up."
She keeps the glass in the air before looking over at Ashton... "Oh its there, I just know when to go alone..and when to take some friends with me on the adventure."
[Emily Littleton] ((......... dif 7, because tequila))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Owen] [WP: keep it together, man.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] She's raised her glass again, and it's sliding down her throat. It's burning away memories for right this fucking moment of something that happened the night before. It's three shots, and that's one too many. It's over the limit she set for herself awhile ago, when life was just that much simpler. It's burning on the way down and...
... Lara holds the shot out for Owen. Emily's glass slams down on the table a bit harder than it needs to. She coughs, once, hard enough to bring her hand reflexively up to cover her mouth. There's a mumbled Excuse me but it's not in English.
Something flickers across the youngest player's face. It's not entirely hidden, but enough is kept back that it's not immediately evident what has caused her start.
[Lara Wrathburn] [Per+Empathy What crawled up in emily and died?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[S. Ashton Winters] [I'm observant! +1 (Tequila is my friend)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Owen] There are things that Owen can handle.
The smell of alcohol for one, is not in and of itself a trigger for him. Nor is being in a bar surrounded by other intoxicated people. With a level of control expended, he could handle those events, those situations with some degree of self control. But even the most iron-clad teetotaler had their moments where the glass, the shot, the bottle looks entirely too tempting to resist.
That is something like what happens to Owen Page when he reaches the table, sits his teacup down and is offered over a shot of Tequila. He doesn't return Lara's smile, as a matter of fact he seems to have forgotten clear how to breathe. His jaw snaps shut so hard its audible, his eyes darken and his chest rises and falls.
And rises and falls.
Just like the other night in the bar with Nico, it's as if there's another person present in the room, standing beside him and urging him on. Only this time she's not trying to stay his hand, she's bloodied and broken and she's looking from Owen to the shot glass and curling her body in against his, whispering like a snake in the grass.
Why are you even pretending you don't want it? Do it. Drink.
"I'm --," his face drains of color, and he knocks the chair aside as he backs away from the table. "I can't. I'm -- sorry, I can't."
He bolts. They can hear his footsteps headed for the front door.
[Emily Littleton] Emily, who had been tentative at best about this game when first it began, is most definitely not comfortable with extending its circle to encompass Owen. For whatever reason. And that was okay, that was fine, but she's even less able to play it off now that she's had three (count them [1, 2, 3]) shots. Which is, most likely, significantly more tequila than someone with her mass needs at any given time.
Which she should have known. And yet she drank them anyway. Even knowing Owen was around.
... And there Owen goes, which may explain even more of it.
to Lara Wrathburn, S. Ashton Winters
[Emily Littleton] Owen bolts. He's away from the table before Emily can shape words in her head to try and smooth things over. (Fucking tequila). And this? This is why drinking's bad. Because it keeps you from being smart when being smart matters.
Emily mutters something particularly impolite in a foreign language. She's slurred it, somewhat, but it's clearly Asian. It's Mandarin, for those who know, and not the sort of thing she ought to be saying. Not saying like she means it, and right now? She means it.
The Orphan pushes herself up to standing, with a wobble. All of this is wobbledy. The room, it's not quite as willing to stay put as she wanted. "Be right back," she says, more to Ashton than Lara. But also to Lara. The worry on Emily's face is not safe-guarded, now. It's not closed off or kept from them.
It's not too far from the table to the door, but she can't cross it with Owen's sure-footed long strides. She does pull the door open, though, and push herself across the threshold and into the warm, heavy night. Emily's out on the porch, feeling the press of hot air against her skin, feeling it suck the coolness away from her center. It's oppressive. She looks around for Owen. If he's not on the porch, she'll take the few stairs down to the yard and keep looking.
[Lara Wrathburn] Even in the hazy grip of the tequila Lara watches everything from behind that beatific smile of hers. She watches the action take place almost instantly, the trigger being the alcohol, it didn't take much effort to realize that the man was a recovering alcoholic, and that Em, well Emily has some other issues, some very, very personal issues about the man.
She rises from the floor and turns as both Emily and Owen move towards the door, neither of them quite gone yet. "Hold on now campers, you never get anywhere by running away from the problem...so, why don't you both just come back in here, sit down, talk...and Ashton and I will keep this bottle FIRMLY out of either of your reach hmmm?" Her voice is antagonistic, but at the same time, it sounds so right, like they really should listen to her even if they dislike the idea. Running never did solve anything afterall.
Lara took a few hazy steps forward, ensuring that both of them could hear her, but her voice was clear and potent eitherway, she would make them do what was right for themselves.
[Manip+Expression Come back now...talk, don't drink, but don't run from the situation.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 1
[Emily Littleton] ((WP: dif +1 because Tequila is not your friend, contrary to popular rhetoric))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 6 (Failure at target 7)
[Owen] Lara, pants-less but persuasive is attempting to sway Owen and Emily back inside the house -- more specifically the Initiate, who Emily finds easily enough once she reaches the door and sways onto the porch. He's over at one end of it, hands braced against the white rail, body bent slightly forward like he's just finished running in a marathon.
He's not throwing up, or crying but rather more shaking, and murmuring to himself.
The closer she, or anyone following gets, the clearer the words become. He's not talking, he's praying, softly. Eyes closed, skin clammy and covered in a cold sweat of abject panic. Its unclear if Owen could even hear Lara at present, he seems to be suffering from some kind of induced hysteria.
[-1 WP to Resist.]
[S. Ashton Winters] Ashton Winters is a crisis negotiator of a different kind. Owen's saved her life before, and has also watched her put her guts back in where they belonged. Shoes forgotten, gun forgotten, tequila forgotten, all of these things are unimportant.
The world has moved faster than she has means to communicate.
She waits, and the air is silent.
The woman inhales, deeply, and brings with her that ever-present cold as she exhales.
[Emily Littleton] She almost made it. Emily almost made it out the door, to where she could see him. She'd told him, just the night before, you can come to me. She'd told him, that she'd be there. She was right here, almost close enough to touch. And there's Lara, Lara with the bottle of tequila, Lara who swayed a little in Emily's sight. Lara with her no-pants, and ther tank top. Lara, or Owen. Owen who was hurting.
Clearly, the answer is Lara. Lara and her bottle of (we'll keep it away from you) booze. That's clearly where Emily needed to go. So the college-aged girl sways a bit on her feet, looks over to the Chorister, and unsteadily makes her way back inside.
Because the siren call was too hard to turn away from. Emily's reaching up with one hand to rake her curls out of her face, up over the crown of her head. That hand comes to rest on the back of her neck. It's cool, compared to the outside air. Everything's cool, compared with the summer night.
[S. Ashton Winters] "... Emily didn't drive here, did she?"
[Lara Wrathburn] Emily stops, comes back, Owen on the other hand stays outside, apparently he had not heard the womans 'suggestions' Lara moves towards Emily, the bottle left on the table behind her as she walks up to the woman and briefly cups her face in soft, supple hands, long slender fingers gently enclosing her so that she looks at Lara and only Lara.
"This is going to be alright Emily...this is all part of the passions, part of the ecstasy itself, you both simply have to look past the fear, understand them...and then transcend them..alright?" She speaks slowly and softly her smokey voice reassuring and in a way, coercing. "Go...sit down...I'll bring him back to you." She says running a hand over the woman's cheek one last moment, a reassuring, if unduly familiar gesture, before she is stepping out the door, and moving towards Owen.
"Owen...silly man, come on now...everything is going to be ok." She says as she walks towards the man slowly, and somewhat unsteadily, but still she seems to know what shes doing.
[Emily Littleton] She feels Lara's fingers against her the sides of her face, feels the fingerprints slide over her skin. It is not entirely okay, this feeling, the way her head is turned so that she looks into Lara's green eyes. And once she looks into them, how she cannot look away. They are field green, shamrock and soft moss green, emerald and shallow sea green. Mesmerizing, intoxicating. They're brilliant; she's known that sort of brilliance before, but of a different hue.
Those eyes had been all but impossible to look away from, too.
And Emily's own are none too mundane. They're dark blue, deep currents, still waters, shod through with flecks of slate grey: stormy, conflicted, expressive. She's not hiding, just now, behind her accent and her otherness. They're too close for that; close enough for the smoke and whispers to fill Emily's lungs, for the fears and close-kept secrets to spill over into Lara's. They cold breathe each other in, breathe something entirely new out.
It's not a thing she shares with many (anyone), so when Lara tells her it will be alright there is skepticism writ all over her reaction. This is no ecstasy she has sought or know. It is an intimacy too close (let go of me) to share with a perfect stranger.
And then, thank God, she turns her attention away from the Orphan. Emily stands there for a moment, shaken but not shaking. Shell-shocked and uncertain. As if Lara's leaving was at once a rush of relief, and unsteadying in its own way. The couch, then? Yes. Sit down, she'd said. Emily obeys. (It will irk her, later, that she followed these directions.)
And she waits, leaning forward with her arms braced on her knees. Curled slightly inward. Contemplating polite goodbyes and the best way out of this House, this House of Ill Portents, Possessions and now... Passions?
[Owen] If Lara is expecting a warm welcome, for the Chorister to swing around, face wild with joy or passion or -- well, there is passion in Owen, but its not the same kind -- anything, she is sadly mistaken. Or let down, or any of the above. If ever a back was unwelcoming in its broad breadth, it's the Initate's. He's still hunched forward, those bruised knuckles of his gripping the banister in white-clad ferocity.
"Leave me alone." It's ground out between grit teeth, his face, if she comes up close enough to read its countenance in profile, is stony, and closed off. He's still pale, but evidently the panic and trembling has given way to self directed hatred. Ah, he's brooding.
A beat, he concedes a polite rejection: "Please."
[S. Ashton Winters] There are so many words that she could say, but there she is, standing tall and proud, with her shoulders back and her head high and with a kind of composure that was hard to really put a finger on. She inhales slowly, and looks at Emily, and there is that stony countenance. And there is that composure that it takes so very, very long for her to reacquire. She was far flung form her element.
She is not the woman she was a lifetime ago, or even the man she was decades prior. She has lived since then. [She needs to remember spring. Why is it so far away?]
"I'll explain later," she offers the apprentice, "it's... well, it's complicated."
Ashton Winters is a singularly unremarkable woman. Who was tall and athletic and built for something else. She inhaled slowly, and there is calm in her countenance. She does not follow Owen.
[Lara Wrathburn] The man's reaction is infact expected, embarrassment and anger were common in such circumstances, and she kept moving towards him regardless of his request. But unlike Emily she does not reach out to touch the man. His problem was of a different nature, and it did not warrant touch.
"Come Owen....a moment such as this should not be spent alone, it should be shared, with someone who matters...and that someone is here, isn't she?" She says as she stops just on the edge of his vision, almost like an apparition, a spectre that might, or might not be within his mind.
"Maybe not forever, maybe not for any longer then ten minutes..but right now Owen...the two of you need each other. You will only prolong the pain, if you do not share in each other's healing."
[Arete, Mind 2 base diff 4, empathic projection rote -1. Delivered emotion: Calming]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 6 (Success x 2 at target 3) [WP]
[Owen] [Don't you put your Cultist fingers in mah head!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]
[Owen] [Perception + Awareness, -2 Acute Senses, are you working magic on me, girl? Cuz that ain't cool, I'm all freaked out and shit.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[Emily Littleton] I'll explain later, Ashton says, and Emily nods, somewhat numbly. The more time that passes, the more she wants to grab her messenger bag, check for her house keys, and try to catch the next El Train homeward. The Orphan slips one hand down to toy with the chain around her neck. Long finger tease free the silver oval that usually hands just above her sternum.
It's been a long time since she brought this forward, called the little heartbeat that lives inside it out to cry: Home, home, home. It brings with it a sense of belonging, of calm, a surety she cannot find in herself just now. It wraps around her, while Owen and Lara and having their battle of wills on the verdana. It covers her, while Ashton is drawing herself up tall and composed.
It cannot leech the alcohol from her system, but it can give her the footing, the borrowed quiet, to gather her things to her and leave. If she could get past the Lorelei at the gate, that is. Maybe with a cooler head, she'd make it homeward after all.
[S. Ashton Winters] She is almost ready to do something, when her phone goes off. It's a different sort of ring tone, and the woman turns a different shade of pale. She doesn't do much, she doesn't say anything. she even leaves her gun where it is. Fuck wearing shoes, while you're at it.
She's made her way out the door with her phone, and it's damn fast.
"Yeah?" and it's the only thing people hear before she opens the car door and makes a break for home. She even left her wallet there. Must've been important.
[S. Ashton Winters] (I had fun, sorry for leaving so soon!)
[Owen] Lara means well. She's trying to smooth over ruffled feathers, she coaxes Emily back inside the house and she begins to weave a comforting, calming Rote over the troubled Initiate who is refusing to budge out on the porch. The thing of it is -- Owen is a student of Prime, and of Mind. So his instincts are attuned enough, especially this close to the Node, to the delicate nudging of threads of the tapestry as they are beginning to be reworked and his shoulders tense.
He swings around, and looks at the Disciple, there is no avoiding her gaze now. Rather he stares hard at her as he battles against the calming influence of her magic.
Tonight, whether its out of sheer stubbornness or luck, he wins and the working does not hold. Either, for the matter, does Owen's temper. "I don't know you, and you don't know me well, so I'm going to forgive you that intrusion into my head." He takes a step closer to her, his eyes almost black in the moonlight, his figure imposing.
There's menace to him, but he makes no clear move to touch her, the threat, rather, is implied in his words.
"But don't do it again." A beat, he breathes out, forcing himself to calm. "You understand?"
[Lara Wrathburn] Her magic fails her, and against an initiate no less, she's glad these people arn't her real enemies, or she'd be in deep trouble with results like this. The man turns and takes a step towards her, his eyes darkened with anger. Even these emotions are a rush for the Cultist, who thrives on, and lives for the power of human emotion...but this, here and now, would not do.
"You are not a petulant child Owen, accept the help of those who extend it, because there are so few in this world who do. I am simply guiding you to the right path Owen because this reaction, and the reaction you had...will only damage you, defile you, and shut you down to a point from which you will never recover."
She smiles and gestures towards the house, and more specifically to a woman within it. "I will never do it ever again Owen, never without your permission..IF." She says, pausing for one moment. "If you go in there right now and take Em into your arm's and heal each other. Do that, and you will never feel my emotions upon you again."
She offers up a reasonable suggestion, comfort, real and wholesome rather then her own magic. Again her voice whispers to the man, like it is the best thing he could do, the right thing, the thing that would help make it all better.
[Manip+Exp Fine..you dont like magic...how about natural talent?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Owen] [Owen, seriously. Stop making me roll dice for you. WP to resist, -2.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] Alright then. She picks herself back up off the couch. Emily is not particularly stealthy, but she could count on Owen to be stubborn. Owen was excellent at stubborn. Emily eases her messenger bag's strap over her head, checks a pocket in it for her house keys. The room swims, and she extends her hands a little to steady herself.
Right, then. On through the house to the patio out back. And from there, down into the yard. Because this is just a house, and American houses were not like the row homes with garden walls of stone. Somewhere on one of the side yards there would be a gate, and that gate would lead outward. Back into the yard but not through Lara. No siren's call. No wax to seal her ears against it.
And from there? Well? Damn, she wasn't quite sure. Beyond being sure that she didn't want to be here. Moving, then. Carefully, not quickly. Carefully, not particularly quietly. Just moving.
[Owen] Being called a petulant child has his jaw clenching, a muscle ticking wildly there for a beat. Something about Lara's words clearly has an affect on the man because his muscles loosen a touch; the sense of incoming malice lessens drastically as she keeps on speaking in gentle, soothing tones, almost the way one imagines you would try and calm an agitated mare.
His nostrils flare, then he shifts his weight, steps away from her, meaning to move around her.
"Don't talk about my problems like you know shit about them." He says lowly, but with a touch of resignation threaded throughout. My, someone had touched a sore spot. "Or hers." That must be the Orphan he's suddenly bent on retrieving from the inside of the house. He sees her, wobbling her way toward another exit. "Emily," he's catching her with long, even strides not afflicted by alcohol.
"Wait."
[Emily Littleton] There's the back door. It's right there. Right fucking there. In Emily's mind, that back door represents escape. It's a nice boundary to throw between her head and the Cultist intent on messing with it. She had every intention of pulling open the back door, steeping out into the unreasonably thick (hot, humid) night and being done with this Chantry-based madness.
But it's Owen that catches up with her, not Lara. Emily's eyes close, and she presses one hand against the nearest wall for balance. She doesn't turn to face him, just yet. Her fingers curl, drag her nails along the texture of the wall. Lightly. They don't press hard, or gouge. Then her hand falls away from the all, and she does turn.
Wait, he'd said. And so she waits. They can both be fantastically stubborn at times. Her hands find the strap of her messenger bag, wrap around it. That silver locket sits above her tee, now. It calls out, in quietly decaying echoes, but she is not Home, home, home just now.
[Walton] Lara may have noticed the new body that moved into the house this afternoon. Or she may have just noticed that someone is there now, that someone had been heard moving around one of the bedrooms on the second floor, at the front of the house. Whoever lives in there now doesn't have many belongings, or they have more things on the way. No movers arrived with boxes of belongings to herald their arrival, after all.
And they haven't managed to run into each other, the newest tenants of the house. Who knows what might have happened if they had, what words might have been said, what looks and glances.
The new guy shows up now, though. It's hard to say how long he's been outside, but it had to have been a while if no one inside drinking (or not) were around to see a tall, muscular, scarred man go down the stairs and out into the back. They notice him now, though.
The door to the back patio opens behind Emily, and through it steps Carter Walton, known to only one of those standing in that room. He's dressed in nothing but a pair of ordinary khaki cargo shorts, not exactly perfect for swimming. That's obviously what he was doing, though, as the shorts are soaking wet, and he's running a towel over his short brown hair. With nothing else on, the mess of his torso is noticeable. The man is covered in scars, where things have pierced or stabbed into his flesh, where he's been cut, where he's been shot. There are more scars on his legs, evidence of where a bone may have been broken, more damage.
Some farm boy.
For a moment he just stands there in the door, looking from face to face to face. He finds himself walking into tension, an argument probably. Seeing the redhead, though, he doesn't look all that surprised.
"Miss Lara," he says, not quite drawling. "Hello."
[percept + aware!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Lara Wrathburn] She'd come through the front door just as Carter had come through the back. It was almost synchronized, almost disturbing that ti happened so smoothly and almost purposefully. She notes the man's appearance, his gaze drawing up along the man's body, flitting over scar's and muscle. Its quite the sight, and it might have been far more impressive if she had not been so focused on other things, like the two magi between them.
Lara smiles to Carter but remains silent, instead she points towards the kitchen, and then she moves the long way towards it, if Carter does the same...it will leave Owen and Em alone, at least as far as they would be able to see, as she had intended.
When she gets there, she leans against the wall, her legs crossed infront of her, and her arms folded just beneath her chest, a soft deep breath exhaled as she waited.
[Owen] If Owen is aware that what might possibly be a private moment between himself and Emily is on public broadcast for the other two Magi present, he does well to pretend otherwise. He reaches the young Orphan about the time she's pressing a hand against the wall for balance.
His arm goes around her waist to help prop her up, and he's leaning over her, his free hand hovering somewhere beneath her chin without actually putting touch to her. He has no knowledge that Lara had done something similar to her just moments ago -- but there's a stark difference between the Cultist's style and the Chorister's. Owen speaks to her in low, private tones meant only for her ears.
"You can't walk home alone like that." He splays a hand at the base of her back, his actions strangely gentle after the anger he'd displayed outside. When Carter Walton throws open the back patio door, this is the trio he discovers. Owen and Emily, the latter appearing somewhat intoxicated, and Lara behind both, overseeing it.
"Hey," is the greeting the newcomer receives from Owen.
[Emily Littleton] The door opens, and Carter steps in. Like Lara, he is new and unfamiliar. Like with Lara, that newness makes him somewhat suspect. Thankfully, that is not the driving force behind whatever expression finds him.
Emily is tall, though between these two men she feels somewhat dwarfed. She is only five-foot-nine to their six-somethings. Her eyes are too bright to be sober, her cheeks are somewhat flushed and there's a measure of detachment to her expression: disconnectedness, escape. Threaded around her is the misplaced resonance of Belonging, of Home. It's kept close to her skin, but not of her.
Carter catches a glance of this, of her light purple tee and her jeans, of the way she steadies herself in the walkway. Just a moment, before Owen's arm reaches around to steady her and Emily's attention (what little of it she can marshall about with any direct influence) is solely for Owen.
You can't walk home like that, he says. It's low, kept close between them. He can see the flicker-play of emotion across her features. Can't: that word brings up something sharp and it takes a moment for her to push it down again. She stops herself short of don't tell me... and who says I can't? Instead he gets a vaguely indignant, "It's not that far," even though it was far enough to require walking, and a late night trip on the El Train.
Fooling Owen wouldn't happen. They lives a handful of blocks apart. Fooling Owen wouldn't happen, but she was tipsy enough to try.
[Owen] He's been burning through his willpower tonight, it's not quite as enduring as it ought to have been, though it's not yet low enough that he is acting out of character [more so than his outburst of moments ago on the porch, or his reaction to being offered alcohol prior to this] more that he seems, if anything, a little strung out, a little more on edge than normal.
He hasn't reclaimed his jacket quite yet, so he's still dressed in his short sleeved shirt and jeans. His arms, one of which was wrapped around the Orphan's waist were lightly tanned from large periods of his day spent out in the sunshine. Owen Page was a lean young man with an intensity harbored around him that led to most labeling him as quiet, insular, wound up tighter than an oil-drum -- you got the picture.
Presently, he's not doing much to discredit those views, though he seems to treat the girl he's with, with some degree of care. There's a clear connection between them, though its nigh to impossible to read much other than that. He lowers his face toward Emily's, close enough that he can see the glassy quality of her eyes, and feel as much as see the heat still coming from her cheeks from drinking.
"I'm calling a Cab." He instructs, quiet but resolute. He glances at Lara, then away. It's a look that's both wary, and conflicted. He doesn't know what to think. Of her. Of tonight.
[Walton] Carter opens that patio door and walks into the scene completely out of the loop. He doesn't know what's happened between this trio, doesn't know that Lara has had a hand in forcing two people into closeness. He doesn't know their history, doesn't know their names. All he knows is what he picks up with his eyes, and with his senses. A swirl of intense corrosion, unrelenting reverence, and intoxicating corrosion.
The Verbena walks in from his late night swim and can only make assumptions about what he finds among the three of them. A man trying to convince his inebriated lover that she can't go home alone like that. That actually wins the stranger points. The woman loses them (not many, she's drunk after all) for attempting to argue. And then there's Lara, nodding toward the kitchen. Brow quirked, he gives the Cultist an upward nod. Then he's sidestepping the couple and moving to follow her.
She's leaning against the counter, legs crossed before her. Carter's pale eyes travel from her face, down over the flimsy tank top she wears and the boy-cut panties she wears, continuing down her legs. The return trip to her face is even lazier than the trail down. He smiles at her, the grin spreading slowly.
"Miss Lara," he greets all over again, mocking this time. He sets his damp towel atop another counter, leans back against the wall opposite her. His arms cross over his broad chest, and he crosses one ankle over the other, mimicking her posture. A jerk of his head back the way he'd come, back toward Emily and Owen. "What'd you do?"
[Emily Littleton] She hadn't come to the Chantry looking to take part in a bad idea. For once, this was largely accidental. Not stopping it at one or two drinks, well, that had been a capital idea. Really. Right now, having to borrow on Owen's stability (or the wall), she wasn't entirely sure why she'd taken that third shot. Or what she'd been thinking.
She was sure that Owen's face was really, really, reaaaaaally close to hers. The sort of close that got measured in centimeters. Very close. So close that it didn't make sense to her to speak above a whisper.
He tells her he's calling a cab. That makes sense. Owen made sense. It was one of the things she liked about him. Emily blinked; it was a languid thing that took just a little too long.
"I'm sorry," she said, whispered into the space between them. Of all the things her slightly-pickled brain could come up with, apologies were in the least problematic category. Emily's brow furrowed and she swallowed down some other, unspoken thing that threatened to surface, either due to Lara's meddling or her less inhibited state.
[Owen] He seems slightly amused now, he's not quite as close to her, but he doesn't stop supporting her for fear she might topple over. Rather, he leads her toward -- well, wherever -- the nearest land-line is and picks up the receiver one handed, dialing a cab company with the receiver in hand. The call is brief, clipped. To the point.
Owen recites the address, the details -- Cab for two -- and then hangs up, twisting a little so he can peer down at Emily.
"You don't have to be sorry." He clarifies, squeezing her arm lightly. The Chorister's chest expands and contracts, and he shakes his head a little, still paler than usual, still a little rankled. He lets go of her with one hand to send it back through his hair, hopelessly disheveling it. "You were having fun, I just lost it in there. I don't," he sighs. "I'm not usually that bad it's just that woman and her --"
He purses his lips.
"It doesn't matter, let's just get you home. C'mon, we'll wait out front for the Cab." He grabs his jacket off the back of the sofa on the way, perhaps quite slowly.
[Emily Littleton] "I don't really think Lara's that much fun," she says to him, in a highly confidential loud whisper. She even shakes her head a bit, with a far more open (easily read) expression of displeasure on her features. Emily slips an arm around him as the walk. It fits her in more neatly against him. It lets them move together more comfortably; Emily can read the cues off his posture, can place herself a little better. She's still clumsy, but she's not as physically inept as she often presents herself.
She's not as reserved and quiet and uncommunicative either. Her expressions are easier to read, her tone of voice and inflections are easier to read. There's some muddling, yes, but it's not occluded and kept close the way she often is when she's sober.
While they're waiting on the cab, Emily's brazen enough to rest her head on his shoulder. Wrap her other arm around him, too. Owen will find himself being hugged, without proper warning this time. "It's been a long time since I pulled something like this," she mused idly, out in the stillness of the street in the small hours of the morning. Away from Lara. "Probably since I was sixteen; usually I can get myself home again."
Home. The word fell from her lips so freely. Easily. Like it wasn't something guarded and kept separate. Like she didn't have to jealously guard it. Home... was her flat home? Was Owen home? This city? The collection of boxes? The IKEA table, or her futon, or Owen's rocking chair in her living room?
[Owen] Well, if it's any consolation to drunk Emily, or eventually sober and reflecting with horror Emily later on -- he doesn't seem to mind too much that she uses him as something of a resting place while they wait outside the Chantry on its rolling green lawn and its neat and tidy hedges and whatever else was used to present the perfect facade to the unsuspecting mortal world. Rather, he just adjusts his stance so that she isn't putting pressure on his still faintly bruised ribcage and leaves his arm around her waist lightly, his jacket in his free hand.
There's a quirk forming on his lips as she murmurs about pulling things like this when she was sixteen, perhaps he can relate, certainly the laughter in his voice suggests so, as he speaks. She can feel the rumble of his voice through his shoulder as he keeps her talking, waiting for their ride home. She's sleepy, alcohol did that to you -- it hadn't been so long that he didn't remember what it was like.
He felt a faint pulse of longing, a burn in his veins.
He'd been close tonight.
Too close.
He could still smell the Tequila.
"I shouldn't have lost my temper at her," he says, now that there is nobody here but the both of them. "But she tried to get inside my head," he breathes out carefully. "And I pulled worse than this at sixteen," he turns his face a little, trying to see if she was still awake.
"Don't worry about it."
[Emily Littleton] She was sleepy, and maybe that would be the saving grace of all of this. Maybe tonight, for the first time in a long time, Emily could pass out for the requisite eight-plus hours. Give her body some time to rest. Maybe it would be dreamless, too, and her mind could heal a little as well. She'd been doing better, for the last week or so, but she had a lot of ground left to cover.
Strange things occurred to Emily when she was tipsy. It was a lot like turning the analytical side of her brain off, and letting the rest of it drive. She'd been tipsy, almost this far beyond tipsy, once in the last several months. She found herself revisiting things she'd said, to someone else, someone who was not Owen. Things that were equally true, now, but probably not the best thing to say.
Emily shifted, lifted her head up off of his shoulder and glanced around a little. Not finding what she'd wanted, she set it back down on his shoulder again with a quiet, inarticulate sound. Thoughtful, resonant, pleased about something.
"I do not want her in my head, either," she said, and her frame tensed a bit, as if she was remembering something unpleasant. Which was was odd, because just the previous afternoon, she had seemed fairly level about letting Ashley go digging again.
Their cab showed up, and Emily did her level best to slide into the seat without any unnecessary drama. It wasn't as complicated as climbing down the patios steps might have been. She manages well enough. They're soon sitting side by side in the seat, with the city streaming past as a series of dark houses and intermittent streetlights. The roads were largely empty at this hour, and the residential streets were quiet. It's less eventful than finding one's way back from the Mile. More monotonous. Steady.
[Owen] The Cab comes and Owen guides her into the backseat, sliding in after her. He gives the driver the rough details of where they needed to go, and secures his seat-belt. It's the first thing he does, every time he gets into a car these days. He checks hers, too, perhaps with even more insistence. Once they are off, however, and as the Chantry falls away behind them, he too relaxes against the seat and against her.
Perhaps she's still leaning against his side, perhaps not any longer, but the closeness remains in more than one way and Owen cannot help but reflect on what he'd said to her, months ago, about what exactly the nature of their relationship would be and exactly why certain lines had to be drawn, then and there. True, he might have been acting out of fear, out of some sense of self preservation but he still believed the sentiments he'd expressed then to be true.
He did not ever want Emily to believe she was indebted to him because of some clashing over where one line ended and another began. Still, times like now, when she was soft and pliant near him, when he knew he felt comfortable with her, perhaps even comforted by her, buoyed up with her beside him -- it began to seem ridiculous to deny himself the comfort he could take in her.
With her.
He reached for the window, and wound it down a crack; cold air blasted his face and deterred his brain from more dangerous thought processes. Being that the roads are mostly empty at the hour, it does not take so long for them to reach Emily's apartment, for Owen to help her out of the Cab, and pay the driver. He insists on helping her to the door, he is emphatic that he might as well take her all the way up.
"This is why Tequila is evil," he notes, as they navigate her stairs.
[Emily Littleton] The seatbelt keeps her from leaning against him in the cab. It pulls her to one side of the rear seat; his pulls him to the other. There could be a third person between them, were they all cozy and crammed in together. In this extra-space, that's where her hand finds his. Where her fingers seek and tangle with his. She's looking out the window, staring at everything and nothing, watching the world go by just a little bit more softly.
He can see her face in profile, while he is reflecting. See the shapes that light and shadow cut across it. The dark of her hair that blots out passing lights for a moment, the line of her nose, of her mouth, of her throat. She's remembering too, something said to someone. It's her own voice in her ears saying: ...what is any of this about if it isn't about taking a chance on someone and hoping...
Emily swallows. Her eyes close for a moment, and her fingers tighten on his.
Because we're human.
And honestly, I expect that some day, in some way, someone is going to get hurt.
The downstairs door is still broken. It yields under the barest pressure. It keeps nothing out but the wind. Owen can easy push it aside without even asking Emily for her keys. She's pulling them out of her messenger bag, of course, holding them in half-numb fingers. They have to take the stairs, because the lift only works when it feels like it. And it doesn't feel like it this early morning.
This is why Tequila is evil.
"I agree; Vodka is much better behaved," she quips, in reply. Easily. Warmly.
She doesn't argue when he insists on walking her to her door. She may have quirked an eyebrow (I can... oh, alright) but it never makes to a full rebuttal. So he's there, when she reaches her door, head down and flipping through a small collection of keys. He'll notice the blood-red envelope before she does, wedged between the door and the jamb. She'll see it when she looks up, pluck it out of the casement with her long fingers and regard it quizzically.
Because she is not used to these things on this continent, Emily stands a little straighter. It's a shift she can't hide from him on a good day, doesn't try to tonight. She doesn't recognize the penmanship, can't place the particular shaping of the letters, does not know anything about who sent it to her. She offers it to Owen for inspection, or possibly just to hold while she works on this wily thing called the front door lock.
Emily fits her key into her lock, turns open the latch. The door swings free and Owen can see her collection of boxes (still) in the living room. The only thing there that seems remotely lived in is his rocking chair, with a throw blanket draped across it, a book in its seat, and the stone rosary beads beside it.
[Owen] When she passes him the crimson red envelope, all prior [nicer] thoughts flee his mind. He's frowning as she passes him the card and turning it over in his hands. Given the current climate in the city, it's no real wonder that his first notion in regards to it is suspicion.
"It looks like an invitation."
He notes, as Emily fits the key in the lock and argues with it until it swings open and her apartment is revealed, appearing every bit as spartan [perhaps more so than he remembers] within. He can see his rocking chair, and that it, at least, appears to have been getting some use and it draws a brief, distracted half-smile from the Initiate. He holds the envelope up to her, eyebrows drawing together.
"Are you expecting something like this?"
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