I'm sorry, he did what?

[Emily] Saturday, early afternoon. It's a typical quiet weekend, mid-summer, hot and humid. The windows of Emily's flat are open, letting the breeze blow through. And when the breeze is not enough, she adds a couple box fans to the mix. And when that is not enough? Too bad, she's out of options. The AC's less than effective and she doesn't have the time to fix it with her mundane skills or the experience to tinker with it magically.

Sometime in the middle of the day, she's sent Riley a text message. It runs something like home-made salsa, chips and fruit smoothies. will share if you help me pick out a dress for tonight. They're finding their way back to good after the Spring, reaching out to one another more again. It's not an easy thing, but it's proven less horribly awkward than Emily had worried.

Her flat is the same empty expanse it was before, but now there are sunflowers on her dining table and a dark blue table cloth with yellow tooling at the margins. It's very Provence-pretty, without being fussy. The bowl of pico de gallo is bright red, juicy and inviting. It's there for nibbling. These days are too hot for big meals, so she eats little things throughout the days. Mostly fruits, salads, anything light and full of water.

There's a place on the living room floor marked out in painter's tape as well. It's about the size and shape of a sofa's footprint. Clearly one died here, and Emily is preserving its last known position for later inspection of the crime scene -- or she's going through the wholly unnecessary step of blocking out potential furniture placement in an utterly empty room.

Not utterly empty. Owen's rocking chair is still in her living room, looking lonely and a little forlorn. The throw blanket is gone, now, as it's hot even into the late evening, but there's a book in its seat and a single pillow resting beside it (small, square, covered in a rough-shod burgundy-red silk case).

[Riley] They're doing better than they did before June. The bouts of silence are not fraught with tension on Riley's end. When her mind wanders in Emily's direction, she doesn't wonder if approaching her will only push the girl further away, or if this time one of them will say something to offend the other irreparably.

Now the silence between them is just the fact that there's no time. Riley's been busy with work mostly. When she's not at the Best Buy she's been holed up in her room, tinkering away with parts, or squirreled away in a park somewhere, 'borrowing' someone's wi-fi for other projects. And her personal life has picked up a bit, too. In the spring, Emily used to get updates occasionally on the dating life of her fellow apprentice. This guy was too handsy, that guy was alright, this other person told her she was too tall that asshole like she has any control over that. Then there was the quiet time between them, when Riley waited in the shadows, ready to pounce on Emily when she felt ready to get near enough to work things out. Since then, the updates have been sparse.

But Emily knows something's up. She knew something was up outside the Best Buy even if Riley didn't. She knew something was up when they were in Nico's place, and Riley repeatedly killed the gaming avatar of a certain Euthanatos.

And now, hanging out in Emily's flat in a t-shirt and shorts, her sandals left by the door, her hair braided elaborately around her head, she's lounging against a wall near Emily, a perspiring glass of water in hand, the other placed between the wall and her backside.

"So what kind of message are you wanting to send this guy?" she asks, the corners of her mouth lifted in a grin.

[Emily] Emily knows something is up, but not necessarily the something Riley's actually up to. She knows that Declan brought the Vdpet flowers, which were well received and fawned over. She knows that a certain Euthanatos (of Chantry message board infamy) has made eyes at her cabalmate. She knows that Riley is lovable, and beautiful and engaging, and that it's summer. Summer is the season for flings and long, late evening strolls and beautiful strangers and...

So what kind of message are you wanting to send this guy?

... regretful expressions and somewhat brooding dark blue eyes. (Hey, wasn't that the purview of another Singer in their cabal?)

"How about don't hate me, but my life is more complicated than I expected and dancing is fun but I'll understand if you want to bail?" Emily's holding up a navy blue dress with white trim, a little on the reserved side. Somewhat retro. It's a look that would either be sweet or mousey, depending on the person. With Emily, it probably reads as pleasantly anachronistic.

It's also not quite the right style for latin dancing, which is what she said Quentin had suggested. Emily holds the dress against her jeans-and-a-tee attire. It should come just to her knees.

Emily tosses Riley a little look, and her mouth is twisted into a wry smile, and it might be difficult for the other girl, at first, to figure out that she isn't evading or teasing. For all of a split-second. Maybe less. It's Riley after all.

[Riley] Riley is usually a pretty perceptive woman. Except, apparently, when attention is focused on her specifically. She reads her friends better than she reads strangers making eyes at her. It was a look from Chuck that told her a certain Cultist wasn't just overly friendly by nature. And now, two men have had to take the Virtual Adept by the shoulders and make their intentions known.

But Emily is a different matter entirely. She's going out for Latin dancing and she's picking out something sedate. Riley has no doubt the dress will look lovely on her friend, but if that's really the message she wants to send, that's probably the way to go.

"You know, there's this thing that was invented about a hundred years ago, you might've heard about it. It's called the telephone? I think it's just a fad, but it's pretty good for the delivery of messages like that." She takes a sip of her water. "It'll save you some cab fare, at least."

[Emily] "I think I've heard of that," Emily says and her smirk broadens a bit as she hangs the dress back up in the closet for now. Emily shrugs, and it's an easy enough gesture. "But he's a little more old school, Ri'."

Riley gets a nickname. Riley gets an affectionately shorter name. Emily does not do this with everyone. It's rare, if not particularly remarkable. She says he's old school in a tone of voice that approves of such things, elevates them a little over modern mannerisms. Emily was raised far away and not here, and the culture clash occasionally overwhelms her.

"And things were really awkward last night. I ran into him, and Daiyu, and Owen in the park and everything got tense." She shook her head a bit, pursed her lips. "I think Quentin might be Awake, too, but I'm not sure so I asked Ashley to check into it. Either way, it feels like something to say in person. Not over the phone. It wasn't like I intended things to get muddled."

And that's the problem. She never intends to tangle things up quite the as badly as she does. It just happens. By virtue of being an early-twenties-something or just Emily, things get messy in her personal life and sorting them out again isn't always easy.

[Riley] Riley doesn't mind the nicknames she gets from her cabalmates, though certain ones are more broadly acceptable than others. No one but Chuck is allowed to call her Riles for one thing, but that's what she gets for calling him Chuckles. Those names from each other's lips are spoken with all the affection one would expect from siblings, even siblings-in-spirit.

Emily calls her Ri, Riley calls her Em. It's a give and take, though certainly not on purpose. And if anyone called her by the name her dad gave her, Riley would lose herself to a berserk frenzy.

"Awkward?" Daiyu, Riley is finding, is becoming synonymous with buzzkill in her book. "Tense how?" She doesn't even immediately consider Owen to have been a party to the tension and the awkwardness. She knows that the initiate and the apprentice care about each other, but so far it hasn't manifested in a way that would make her think they were anything but close friends.

And she understands what it's like to be an early twenty-something woman, causing or falling into trouble on accident. Though Riley may want to tell Emily that it can get better, that the world looks completely different on this side of twenty-five, some things need to be discovered on one's own.

[Emily] Emily tucks her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans and takes up a lean against a wall across from Riley. The box fan pushes her curls around a little, where they've escaped from the loose bun at the back of her head. The Orphan catches her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, worries it, releases it. Her brow knits, then smooths. All of this is paired with a thoughtful look in her deeply blue eyes; pensive, considering.

"Apparently Owen and I have some talking to do," is what she says, and it's mused. It's not warm and celebratory. It's thoughtful, a little hurt, a little hopeful. She doesn't say he was a jerk last night, but she comes close to it.

"He was jealous. Honestly, Riley, it surprised me. He's the one that set down the never will I ever rules about the two of us, so long as I'm his apprentice. We argued on the El platform, later."

She leaves out the bit where Owen horribly maligned a trash can. Where she lost her patience and was unreasonably blunt with him.

"It was pretty... intense."

[Riley] One of the main differences between Riley and Emily is that one of them is used to being tactful. She's used to stepping delicately around a topic in an effort to keep tempers from fraying. This is why she's their cabal's emissary. The other is blunt to a fault, prefers to dive right for the problem, expose it, let everyone deal with it and get on with their lives.

Emily tells Riley that she and Owen have some talking to do. Sounds serious. It sounds like the tension was not because of the Akashic killjoy, that it doesn't even have anything directly to do with Quentin.

It has to do with Owen. Owen who is Emily's friend and mentor, who has been adorable but shy in Riley's opinion, quiet and brooding. Monopoly went a long way in raising him in Riley's esteem. Never will I ever while Emily's his apprentice goes a fair way to raise him up a little more. But that elevation is halted for the moment. It's hard to tell what she would think, with Emily only supplying tiny tidbits of information.

"Well," she says with a slightly strained smile, "setting down rules means there was something to set down rules against, right? What did he say?"

[Emily] Emily shakes her head a little, but the seriousness doesn't leave her expression.

"Never will I ever came about when he asked me about Jarod, just after my seeking." She sighs a little, and shifts enough so that she can bring one of her hands up to pinch the bridge of her nose. The mystery Verbena gets a name, now. Emily has avoided talking about him for all of these months. She's set all of that aside, and tried to put it behind her. "I was still light-headed and a little starry-eyed, not quite grounded and I didn't field the question well."

Her hand falls away, down to her side. It's still now. And Emily, who hasn't said much of anything about Jarod, is capable of giving Riley a much better synopsis now. Would that she had been so eloquent many months ago with Owen!

"We were involved, intimately. That was the primary basis of our relationship, not his mentoring me. That came about later, because he felt some resposibility for me, or saw some potential, I'm not really sure. Things were just beginning to get bad last Winter. There's plenty of reasons for it. He taught me Life, and answered some questions. There was nothing formalized about it. We weren't even dating, perse." Emily doesn't seem troubled by this lack of linguistic specificity, but it did make things harder to explain in retrospect. The fondness she felt for the Verbena does not surface, now. It doesn't muddle this further.

"When I told Owen that Jarod had been more than a mentor to me, he got flustered. We weren't very close then, so I doubt it was anything more than professional." She's sure of this, because she has no idea how long Owen has harbored these feelings for her. And the argument they'd had all those months ago was not quite as heated, as hostile, and the one from last night. "He just said it wouldn't happen. It was very abrupt, kind of awkward and unprecipitated. I left not long after -- that's what I was irritated about at that crappy coffee shop forever ago. With Anna? God, that feels like forever ago."

[Riley] The mystery Verbena had a name before today.

Jarod left. Chuck dug this up and put it on a thumb drive. Riley worries.

They haven't talked about it. That elephant is still in the room somewhere, waiting. It's hard to express concern when it's been put on a level with abandonment and invasion of privacy. Trying to keep it in check makes Riley awkward, and more easily frustrated.

But now, at least, she connects the name with the former mentor-type.

"It might not've been strictly professional," she says, watching Emily now. "From what I've seen, Owen's a pretty stand-up guy. And he cares about you. I think he was trying to do right by you."

[Emily] "Yeah," Emily said, with a dry wryness that didn't quite warm to joking or affable. "Hindsight's 20/20, eh?"

"We've been closer, lately, but I just thought--" She shrugs, shifts the cant of her shoulders by pushing her hands into her front pockets. Emily is not pacing. She's too agitated to pace, just now. (And keeping still is harder than keeping quiet.) "I thought that was because of everything with Edom. Stuff like that will screw you up for awhile, but it can also bring people closer."

Emily whets her lips a little, considers what she will say next for awhile. It's an odd quiet, a fricative silence. It is not still; her mind is not still. "I was thinking of bringing it up with him after I make Initiate, when we're on more even footing. If it even seemed relevant then. I wasn't going to push it now, but it came up last night. And he got snippy. And I pushed back."

She's not looking at Riley just now, because Emily's not all that carefully guarded just yet today. She hasn't pulled back and pushed up all the walls she tends so neatly.

"So I think the whole boundaries thing is a bit buggered." A pause. Before Riley could ask just why she thought that, Emily tells her: "He kissed me."

[Riley] [lawlWHUT?!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Riley] At first, Riley just nods. Yeah, something like Edom would bring people closer together, and she knows that Owen was more involved in it than she was. But she knows that a threat of that magnitude makes people reevaluate their priorities, makes them take a look at the people around them and go

Hey. It'd really suck if you died and I never said ____.

So it doesn't surprise her if something like that drew Owen closer to Emily. It doesn't surprise her that it would spur him on to express what he feels.

Still.

When Emily says I think the whole boundaries thing is a bit buggered. He kissed me, Riley blinks at her. Her head gives a little shake, and she closes her eyes like a swimmer trying to clear the water from her ears.

"I'm sorry, he did what?" Surely she misheard that. Owen knows better.

[Emily] [Scale of 1-10, how red is my face just now?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[Emily] Riley shakes her head a bit, as if she's trying to clear something out of her ear. She asks Emily to repeat whatever she just said. Clearly Riley has misheard her.

The positively scarlet flush that rises to Emily's cheeks and neck is unmistakable confirmation that Riley has not misheard anything. Even her ears turn pink. The Singer-to-be presses her eyes firmly shut, takes a deep breath, tries to will down the embarrassment.

She's still pink, but at least it's not threatening toward purple.

"He kissed me," she repeats. "We kissed." She stumbles, flustered by Riley's reaction as much as the oddity of last night. Her hands come forward and gesture, worriedly, as if she's waving off other suspicions the Vdept might amass after hearing this. "But that's all! I... "

Emily folds her mouth into a thin line. So much for composure. So much for the Diplomat's Daughter's best behavior and social graces. There's a polite thing to say here (Oh, bother) or a word in a foreign language they don't share. Emily doesn't swear, in English, very often, which makes the last syllable all the more resonant.

"Fuck."

[Riley] [Oh, bother]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Riley] The blush, really, is all the answer that she needs to know that no, her ears did not deceive her. She did in fact hear that correctly.

Owen, who became momentarily angered when he heard about Riley and Jon, kissed Emily.

She can feel her blood pressure rising now. And she tries to remind herself that they're just kids. That maybe they don't know better, or they're thinking things will be different for them. If they've even gotten to a point of seriously considering anything more.

From the sounds of things, they're still at the precipice, but they're so close to falling over.

"Emily," she says, and she stops. Instead of saying anything more, she takes a drink of her water. She chugs it down, ice clinking against the glass, droplets of condensation dropping onto her shirt. When the glass is empty, she looks at her young friend, who is standing there expecting...something.

What Riley does instead of completing whatever she was going to say, is go to the kitchen to put her glass in the sink.

[Emily] Emily, Riley says, and then lets it hang. It's all the Vdept says before she wanders into the kitchenette. Emily sighs, because that's really all Riley needed to say, given the circumstances.

"So, yeah," Emily says, sounding a little frustrated (and somewhat disappointed [or maybe that was hurt]). "I need to apologize to Quentin, because I apparently have things to deal with and right-the-fuck-now, too. And I need to talk to Owen, and get this sorted."

Get this sorted, she says, like it's a linguistic disagreement, or a poorly filed paper. Like it isn't something deeper, heartfelt and resonant. But it is, and she's not fooling Riley. There are rules at play, and they're binding, whether that makes Emily happy or makes sense to her at all.

The flush is falling away, now. Emily reaches up and tucks a curl behind her ear. She doesn't follow Riley into the confined space of the kitchen, or even watch the other girl intently.

[Riley] [need more than 4 suxx!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Riley] [you know what this is]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[Riley] Emily doesn't have to look closely at Riley to see that she's still standing at the sink, hands gripping the edge. One leg is straight behind her, the other bent. Her head is bent toward the metal, the glass resting within in.

What she might not be able to tell if she's not looking at her intently, or even passively, is that Riley appears to be holding an inner debate with herself. She's still listening to Emily go on about Quentin and getting things with Owen sorted.

"Well," she says, pushing herself upright and heading over to lean her hip against the counter leading out of the kitchenette. She crosses her arms over her stomach, not quite as closed off and imposing as it would be if she crossed them over her chest. And she smiles a smile that is charm and kindness and warmth.

"You sound like you know what you're doing. I guess all I can really say is good luck."

[Emily] [Wow. Riley is really convincing today. (Empathy)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily] [Really, dice? ... I mean, okay, if you say so.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Emily] Emily doesn't have to look too closely to tell that there's something off between them, but regardless of how carefully she does look, that something eludes her. Riley's smiling, she's warm and charming. Riley is her usual awesomeness.

Em's smile twists a little, wryly and rueful all in one. There's a bit of self-deprecating laughter behind her words. (Unhappy [resigned]). "Well, if you think so then maybe I do," Emily says. It's a little like the way she told Daiyu the night before that she was finally listening to her elders and taking Israel's advice.

She watches Riley for a moment longer, but still can't find anything amiss. So Emily nods, and exhales a bit. "Cheers. I have a feeling I'll need it," she says, and offers a more genuine smile now. It's smaller, but warmer in many ways.

[Riley] Before June, Emily and Riley were peas in a pod. They have similar decorating tastes, and similar tastes in clothing sometimes. They agreed on things, they disagreed on others. They got along like sisters.

In some ways, those were happier times. Back when the girls were closer. Now, there's a chasm between them and they just won't cross it. They haven't even found a way around it.

So they miss each other. There's dissonance where once there was harmony. Riley holds back advice, hides the fact that she even has it waiting in her sleeve. This is one mistake that Emily will have to go through with on her own. Without even knowing that Riley's concerned in the slightest.

"I think you'll be alright," she says now, and that's genuine. Her smile there is genuine as well. Stepping off from the kitchenette, Riley approaches Emily and puts her arm around her shoulders, guiding her back to the closet and the dresses there. "Hey, if things with Quentin fall through, give me a call anyway. I'll come out dancing with you."

[Emily] [I am so handling this. It is not bugging me. I am composed and awesome. .... Please?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Emily] A lot of things were different before June. Riley wraps her arm around Emily's shoulder, comes up with a backup plan for dancing. Riley's genuine and warm and confident. Emily borrows on it, and tucks the darker feelings and worries that all of this has brought up that much further below the surface. She wards it away, at the bottom of that Chasm they're not quite ready to cross. She fills the gap up, so that it might not feel so steep-sided and imposing.

"Will do," Emily promises, and that part of this is not false. "But I've learned my lesson! I'm wearing flats," she declares, as if that would have saved her from the tumble she took at their last dancing attempt.

The older woman gets a hug, and it's a little tighter than it absolutely needs to be. There's gratitude to it, and the sense that Riley is steadying her, somehow, just by being here.

[Riley] [reading your FACE]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Riley] They hide things from each other, and maybe for now that's for the best. Emily's getting ready for a not-date. She and Riley are still recovering from the spring and their estrangement. There's still tension between them, even if it largely goes unacknowledged. For now, being in the same room together is an improvement over June.

And right now, maybe that's good enough.

Riley gets a hug that's a little tighter than it needs to be, and she returns it gladly.

"Flats are a definite must for you, m'dear," she says, grinning. "Though I guess a broken ankle would do a good job of killing the awkward when you let this guy down."

[Emily] "Killing one awkward, creating another." Emily makes a little weighing motion with her hands as they go back to perusing the sparse contents of her closet. There are more promising offerings than the dress Emily showed Riley, but none of them have the vaguely apologetic I'm going to ruin your evening plans restraint to them.

"I love explaining why my emergency contacts are all on other continents," Emily says, with a sidelong smirk. It's easier than thinking about the rest of their conversation. Or the night before. Or the coming evening.

[Emily] [... Fade out! ...]