Kiara
[I'm just gonna roll Awareness up in here.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Delilah
It is cold cold outside cold as a witch's tit not quite that cold and how (how! declare it!) does one measure the precise frigidity of a witch's tit and does the heartlessness tip the temperature one way or another and it is cold in Denver.
It is as cold as a November evening in Denver, feels colder than it is, but so people are out in their winter coats, not their thickest winter coats oh no not yet, but coats for warmth, scarves, hats or hoods, because hail might strike or sleet or snow or some mingling of all three there is a gleam icicle pure on the hard ground it is winter wintering shh shh and here in Washington Park there is a young woman who is in a pair of rather worn rip-wrenched jeans and through the rips and rents she is wearing mustard yellow tights unless her skin has turned that barbaric gold (which seems almost possible: but wait for it wait for it). Her jacket is long and shades of blue and stitched in at the sleeves and stitched on the back embroidered swans or flowers but subtle not emblazoned and her hair is braided tightly around her head, barbaric gold that, too, but it feels brighter, feels as if it's been damped deliberately, feels as if look away and it'll be a creeping radiance from the corner of one's eye because --
Because, to the preternatural sense, the intuitive sense, this young woman is a threading radiance of a thing, and to anybody with eyes that see or ears that hear, she's familiar, she's just so obviously, she can't be anything except --
Dawn, dawn, dawn
[Dawn]
(in disguise)
(Listen up, this is a story)
And she's walking along with in that slow, meandery way people have when they've got nowhere they're hurrying to, and she's keeping an eye on the fleethound all pale-dappled creams who's exploring ahead of her on the path investigating the roots of a tree before lifting his leg, pausing after to look ahead and then --
a slow deliberate look. Not for a stick thrown, not December, but for something, some sign, some --
December wants to run. "Go on," Delilah says.
[Also Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
It's cold in Denver. Not even the sort that's shrugged off with a scarf or sweater but the sort that burrows deep. That infiltrates and turns noses red, cheeks pink and brings about the stamping of feet at doorways, the rubbing together and blowing on palms. Washington Park is an example of seasonal change; the grass is less inhabited by lazing couples, the pathways that weave throughout find themselves devoid of joggers, more frequented by bundled commuters, traversing between point A and B on their travels; hastened by the licking wind; the clever wind that tickled necks and brushed skin to invoke shivers.
The wind has been, mercifully (though nature was never truly merciful, mercurial, yes, changeable and alien, always) busy elsewhere for most of the afternoon. Though the figure that's taking her leisure in the winding pathways of the park (with familiarity, there's no hesitation when she reaches crossroads, merely the polite contemplation of a known traveller stopping at two different roads) isn't taking chances with the weather's tendency toward two mindedness. She's bundled in a white coat that hits her legs mid thigh, accompanied with knitted gloves and a white cap that obscures but can't quite hide the spill of dark hair from beneath it; falling in waves around her shoulders.
She's a striking figure, the young woman, in so much as she's a vibrant white shape amidst the shadowy nooks and crevices of the park's winding pathways; the spill of light from lampposts high above but also because where Delilah feels like dawn and warmth and something radiant and becoming -- she feels like something potent; vital and visceral and devouring. But not just that, no, on the other hand, tied in to it, an oscillating cycle (life and death of course) comes the sense of rebirth; rejuvenation. The first shoots of the spring.
The hound knows it - December looks for the source because it's not right - and there's something about her (it, that presence) that upsets; startles; looks for a way to avoid (and what is it they say about witches - animals know the scent).
Kiara steps on a branch, it snaps and she's suddenly right there. Dawn, meet Nature.
Delilah
December likes to run. December, running, is as sharp and swift as the cold going through too-thin cloth when the wind blows just so, December, running, is -- oh, is not, is not, is looking around, is a quiet creature December, long-tufted ears longish coat (as longish as ever it gets; which isn't very, except at the chest and belly where the fur is glass-rippled all of it this insinuating drift-movement of snow) on end because December's hackles are rising and December arrows back to Delilah shying short of death and
The hound knows a witch is around and shifts restively uneasily and shows his teeth a suggestive rumble in his chest if Kiara gets too too close though otherwise silent silence and watchfulness watchfulness and
Delilah doesn't look startled, per se, though her blue eyes are wide with the memory of surprise from that first second she became aware of the oroborus circle cycle down and up and down again swallow and devour and heal again fresh unmarred and December came warily back to her and she remembered recent events with devourers and dogs and ghosts and
but those recent events are a story with the book shut-closed tight-fast and when here is Kiara here is Delilah and her eyes are no longer startled, but she unwinds some of the purple leash in the palm of her left hand and takes Kiara in for a second (the swan-line of her drawn sharper; drawn up, poised for- nothing; curiousity) and she says, "Oh!"
"Hey," in a tone that is ready to be pleased, as if running into an aquaintance she doesn't know well enough or a good aquaintance whose name she's just misplaced.
"Are you any good with riddles?"
Kiara
Kiara knows these pathways, she runs them often enough. Though of the last few days (weeks, perhaps), as the chill settled in, that's been less frequent. She comes to it often that being said. Comes and stands (or sits) amongst the old, old trees with their deep roots and long buried secrets and listens to them. Listens to the patterns of the earth and the sky and everything in between --
(and sometimes, there are other things too, things that are lost, things that need to be told, like that evening with a man who'd just lost his dog, caught between two worlds)
-- grounding, you see. It's important, for a creature as tied to nature (and everything between) as Ms Woolfe.
Hey, says Delilah as December seeks the safety of her legs and stares out at Kiara like he knows precisely what she is thank you and doesn't welcome the reminder and Kiara stops; a hand flying to her face to drag wayward strands of dark hair from her cheek. Her lips are painted a glossy red; dark eyes decorated to emphasise long eyelashes and when she recovers, a breathless moment, there's a smile for the stranger.
It's curling and warm, that smile. It brightens her face; even cold-bitten as it is, even as her eyes flick down to the elegant hound wrapped behind her legs. "Hey yourself," comes a voice just as ready to be pleased, if not already on the cusp. Contained and confident, that voice. Appealing, in a dark eyed, stranger in the park way. As if there were a qualifier for what sort of individual you'd prefer to meet that startled your dog in the dim illumination of Washington Park.
Are you any good with riddles?
The smile widens, hitches into the impression of dimples in at least one cheek. "I suppose that depends, do I have to answer correctly to pass?"
Monday, November 17, 2014
Thursday, November 13, 2014
what would make you stay? [alexander, kalen, lucy]
Alexander
Denver has a reputation, for those who look past the city’s marketing, for a somewhat changeable climate. It may boast a huge number of ‘days of sun’, but that doesn’t account for the other states of the weather that share those days. Wind, rain, hail, snow: none are exactly rare occurrences. So the residents of the city adapt, check the forecasts, and often leave the house prepared.
Somewhere downtown is a coffee shop which stays open late into the night and sometimes doesn’t even close. It’s independent, and serves decent coffee and a reasonable choice of food. It’s also well located for the pre-and post- club/theatre/pub/cinema crowds, so it tends to be pretty busy through most of the night. It’s not that late yet, though, but it’s no longer that early either. Somewhere between nine and ten – the sky is dark and clouded over, but the light generated by the city mask the sky out anyway.
Outside the coffee shop, sat at a table and indulging in the age-old pastime of people-watching is Alexander. There’s a partially-drunk and still-warm long black coffee on the table and a half-eaten croissant. He’s dressed like he has plans for the night which may well involve flashing lights, deep bass, and getting lost in a crowd. Black combats and boots are topped with what looks like a black t-shirt. It is, until it gets under a UV light and then the wings appear on the back. Under his chair is a small rucksack with a decent, warm, waterproof coat and a few other bits and pieces. Alexander left home prepared.
Alexander
[And Awareness, because you never know who's coming.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
[awareness yuss]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
(Can I crash the party? :D )
Lucy
[DO EET]
Alexander
[Sure, the more the merrier.]
Kiara
[Mage Spidy Senses Rollin'.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lucy
Most of the city has been bundled up for days. Heavy sweaters, heavier coats, gloves, scarves, hats, the works. The ordinary citizens of Denver need to layer up if they don't want the dry air to slice the warmth from their skin.
And then there are the extraordinary citizens. A few transplants from even colder climates who bear up well enough in minimal layers, maybe even mere hoodies.
And then there's Lucy. She was born in a place known for harsh and bitter winters, but that's not why she bears up under the chill better than most. She bears up because she is frost-touched, cold seeped, frozen from the inside out. Even on a warm summer day her skin feels like the cold bite of winter's frost. Her (as she would put it) blessing does not mean that she's immune to terribly low temperatures, but it does mean that she can wander the city for hours in considerably less clothing than the normals.
From a distance Alexander can feel her coming, just a cold tingle at the edge of his senses that brings to mind the threading creep of frost coming closer. Maybe it's just coincidence that has Lucy stepping through the door of the coffee shop, squeezing through a small crowd of others in their mid-twenties standing with coffee cups in hand as they discuss their options.
Lucy doesn't believe in coincidence. She enters the shop because as she roamed in search of something or on her way from somewhere else, she sensed someone familiar, someone else who is cold. The last time she saw Alexander things were not so awesome. Death lay all around them, and Lucy herself was so preoccupied with comforting Elijah she didn't speak to the others before she eventually left. This coffee shop is so far removed from a madwoman's slaughterhouse, all warm and cozy with the smell of coffee and sweet pastries filling up her nostrils.
She did not come in for a drink. Once she's through the little crowd she looks around, running the fingers of one hand through her long, maroon-pink hair. She does not look like she's dressed for the weather. No ordinary person would be dressed as she is when temperatures are in the single digits, and yet there she is. In a black hoodie with pink plaid accents at her hips, black denim cutoffs over a pair of fishnets and her knee-high black boots. When she finds Alexander at his seat she smiles broadly and lifts her hand in a wave before threading through the other patrons to get to him.
"Hi," she says when she's there. And then as an afterthought (because look at him, dressed all in black like he's got somewhere to be), "Are you waiting for someone?"
Kiara
A bundled up wave of post cinema-goers are trekking closer to the café as Lucy greets Alexander. He's people watching, perhaps paying attention enough to feel that (not so unfamiliar) stirring of a particular resonance as voices grow nearer, the crowds breaking apart before they quite reach the doors with their inviting aromas, the blend of coffee and baked goods.
On a night like tonight, it's no wonder the store is overflowing with patrons.
Spilling into view from the rear of the crowd is a brunette. Cloaked in white, from the knitted cap to the trenchcoat cinched tight around her waist, Kiara Woolfe is a resplendent sight. Dark waves of hair spill from beneath the cap she's wearing, the touch of the cold present in her pink cheeks, the haste in her footsteps. She's moving with the fluid momentum of the city-goer who wants to be out of the chill.
Are you waiting for someone, the Dreamspeaker wants to know, as the woman who feels like she'll tear you apart only to piece you back together slips through the steady flow of passersby en route for the doors to their café.
Alexander
Certain things are supposed to occur in a particular order. Heat is supposed to lead to things melting, for example. So it may seem strange to some nearby that the feeling of being frozen and caught in a sliver of ice or a shard of time precedes that approaching thread of winter. The drop in temperature should come before the freezing, like the calm before the storm. And the storm coming before the strangely, deathly quiet that follows.
After that night at the house, Alexander has been pretty scarce around the Awakened scene. A few messages had been swapped with Kalen, to reassure him that Alex was still alive and doing ok, but other than that he’s been quiet. If anyone had been interested to follow him, they’ll have found that he disappeared from the city limits and into the mountains for a couple of days with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing and a heft rucksack of camping gear. It was time away to gather his thoughts, to gather himself again, and to try to work stuff out. He’s back now, though. And between the time alone and the time spent with Kalen not so long ago, he’s not doing all that badly. The aura of coolness that waxes and wanes with his mood isn’t too noticeable. He’s doing ok.
The problem with going away, though, is working out how to get back in sync with others. Each of them that night had their own wounds to tend to, and Lucy had been helping Elijah with his.
Bumping into Ian had felt awkward, because how do you even begin to talk with someone when nearly half the occasions where they had met involved fighting and death. At least there had been more time shared between Alexander and Lucy. Enough to make re-breaking that ice easier.
Alexander picks up the mug and sips the coffee as Lucy approaches. He swallows as she greets him, and offers his own in return. “Hey. No, just me. I’m killing time before the clubs get going. How are you?” He nudges the chair opposite away from the table with his foot.
Somewhere in the crowd comes that feeling of consumption and rebirth. A hunger, but under control. Even though, tension creeps into Alexander’s shoulders before he realises that it’s the same feeling that he’d felt in the park not so long ago. He looks around for the source, somewhere in the people.
Lucy
Lucy does not believe in coincidences. It is therefore no coincidence that she happened along this particular street at this particular time and sensed Alexander. And it is no coincidence that the woman from the park is not far behind her. And if others come after that? It will of course be for some purpose, even if Lucy can't put her finger on what that purpose is until some later time.
It's not that later time, but the present, and they are here and they are coming here. The winter children and the living embodiment of the turning of the cycle of death and rebirth. Since that night at the house Lucy has been doing her own things in her own way, spending her spare time mostly with her sister, but sometimes contacting Elijah. The Dreamspeakers are not known for being cohesive with others, either in their Tradition or outside of it.
That doesn't mean she lets the ice between them stay solid for long. Her smile for Alexander is just about as friendly and as kind as ever. There is a darkness shadowing her spring green eyes, dampening the upward curl of her mouth, tempering it. Lucy is Dusk's child, an oracle of the guardian of the dead who may take up that mantle herself one day. Death is no stranger to her, nor is dying. But the horror of the things she's seen and the things she's Seen lingers on her still, making her seem older, or maybe just a little wiser.
"I'm okay," she says, settling into the seat, shifting her slouching canvas bag into her lap before unzipping her jacket. Beneath it she's wearing a fitted dark grey shirt with an embroidered skull of white flowers. "It's funny, whenever someone says they're killing time it reminds me of this cartoon I saw when I was a kid. There was a dog with a," she waves her hand at her torso like the gesture might help jog her flagging memory, "a clock in his chest, a watch dog!" she says, brightening all a hah I remembered! "He had this whole song about how you shouldn't talk about killing time, but I can't remember how it goes."
Alexander looks around, searching, but Lucy's eyes shift toward the entrance, looking through the windows to the outside. She is expectant.
Kiara
The first (and last) occasion Kiara had to see Lucy had been in Washington Park, retching after being subjected to the horrifying last moments of a young man's life. Since then, the pagan's encounters with the Awakened of the city had begun to increase. A group on the college quad here, casual encounters at an art gallery there. If she was prone to consideration of such things, she might just theorize she was being slowly drawn down into another city's chaos; an animal sucked deeper into quicksand the harder it fought the inevitable.
Day by day, night by night.
She doesn't know the history. Bare glimpses, sidelong looks or awkward pauses, it's all the epilogues to stories she has no beginnings for. The closer Kiara draws to the café, the stronger comes the impression of something frozen. Of chill that sets deeper into the bones than mere weather can afford; it's tinged with something other, that sense and she emerges into the relative comfort of the café with searching eyes. Uncurling the length of a scarf from her neck and slipping gloves from her fingers into a pocket.
For all that she's sheathed herself in the color of the encroaching season, there are hints, the slip of colored necklaces buried beneath the folds of her coat; the catch and refraction of silver around her wrists when she moves. Dark eyes painted with dramatic flair and lipstick that delivers her mouth a striking crimson red.
She doesn't place the two Awakened directly until she's returned from the counter with a cup of coffee steaming in her hand. Once she sights them, there's a hesitation for a moment. A slight inclination of thin brows upward, vanishing into the bangs beneath her cap before her path deviates to take her closer. "Hello again," this, with a curling smile and dark eyes resting on Alexander's face a beat. Placing him, no doubt.
Kiara's eyes shift to Lucy. "Times two."
Alexander
There are those who believe in fate – that certain things are just bound to happen, in some way or in some form. This meeting may be one of those things. But there are others who don’t believe in fate – believe that it takes away the freedom to choose and the responsibility for consequences, passes them onto some unknown, unseen entity who may not even be there. No, their movements through the fluid form of reality creates ripples which interact and pull each other together, like a strange form of gravity. It’s simple a matter of probability that brings them all here.
Alexander wraps both hands around his mug and relaxes back on the chair as Lucy talks about the cartoon from her childhood. He cocks his head as he tries to remember, rolling the idea around to see if it’s familiar in any way. “About the only dog I remember was Scooby, and I don’t remember him having a clock.” He shrugs. “Maybe I should say that I’m waiting for something to happen, then. Or watching the crowds? Or just drinking coffee.” He raises the mug in salute. “You not having anything?”
Kiara approaches, and spots her. Watches her approach, although the earlier tension – most of it, at least – has faded away. He didn’t get a particularly close look at Kiara as she battled Ian for the ball that evening, but the view he had along with that feeling announcing her presence confirmed that she was the woman from the park. “Evening. Who won?”
Lucy
"Huh." Lucy turns thoughtful. "I don't think he did, either."
The night in Wash Park was not a good one for Lucy. She was better when she was talking to Oliver in the alley, and she was better even when she was guiding a flock of dead to exact their revenge against the woman responsible for their murders. But that night in the park she had seen the very worst of humanity and so Kiara had managed to see the very worst state Lucy had been in since...since Lucy can't remember when.
She looks better tonight, though. Her skin is still bone white, but gone is the ashen cast. Her smile for the woman is genial. "Hi," she says, shifting a little in her seat so Kiara won't feel like she's on the outside of something.
"I'm sorry I didn't get your contact info last time. All that stuff's been," she glances at Alexander before looking back at the woman in white. "I guess you could say it's been handled."
Kiara
Who won?
"I did. With a little last minute distraction in the form of Grace's coat." There's a minute shrug, a spark of evident satisfaction in her voice, in the coy light in her dark eyes. He'd glimpsed her the other night in the height of competition, stripped down and casual, pushing back at Ian on the courts as they orchestrated a sort of dance all their own, the exultant manifestation of the students of Life, perhaps. Kiara's right hand is wrapped around her coffee, she hasn't tasted it yet but seems content enough in the moment as people gently extricate themselves around her to hold it.
To enjoy the warmth seeping into her skin.
"I figured it probably would be," there's a knowledgeable twist to her mouth. An easy slip into conversation as if they'd been acquaintances long before they'd glimpsed each other that night in the park. Kiara fishes her free hand from a pocket and extends it. Her eyes slipping between the pair of them, her palm very warm despite the chill. "I'm Kiara Woolfe, to make it official. Newcomer, interloper," decided lilt of Devil may care humor inflected there in the way she says it, the curve and precision of her smile.
All dark eyes and red lips. The rattle of stones gathering and clinking around the fine boned wrist she holds out. "Whatever you prefer." Her attention is captured by Lucy again. "I'm glad you're feeling better, though."
Alexander
“He was better without Scrappy, though. That guy was just annoying.” Alexander takes another sip and listens to Kiara announce the winner, and the slightly dirty trick used to do it. He starts to smile at the thought of Grace trying to distract Ian.
But then there’s a glance, with an explanation that things have been handled and it gets... well, it gets a reaction. Or maybe there’s a sudden draft at the coffee shop, but that aura of stasis gets just a little bit cooler. The black coffee suddenly seems to be so much more interesting than the two women, as his gaze falls along with the smile. It would be so easy to slide back into the funk that had lingered after things were handled, but he stops himself sliding. Reminds himself that they did the right thing. That things could have been so much worse. Given enough time, he might even believe it.
But instead he coughs, clearing his throat, and looks back up at Kiara as she finishes her greeting and offers her hand. She might see the edge of the weariness that’s surfaced in his eyes as he releases one of his hands from the mug and extends it in return. “Alexander Brandt. New last Thursday.”
Lucy
[because it's Lucy, awarepathy]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
Lucy mentions the park, meaning more the man missing his dog than anything else. Because Kiara was there, she saw Jeremy's heart torn out and his spirit consumed in the moments of his death. She should know that it's over now. It gets a reaction from Alexander, though, which she notices. Lucy looks to him a moment and there is regret there. He's a cop, he's been trained to deal with things Lucy's had to pick up along the way. And he's older than she is, she can tell. But he's new to all of this, and Lucy has been seeing and speaking with the dead since she was barely out of high school.
Her gaze drops. This isn't the place to talk about things like that in detail. And besides, Kiara offers her name and her hand. Lucy looks at the outstretched fingers and for a second she hesitates, lips parted like she might say something (beg it off, "No really, you don't-"). But then she smiles a little, gives a small shake of her head to dispell some inner thought. All these things she could hide if she wanted. Lucy here, she could sell ice to an Eskimo if she wanted, she can be a smooth talker when it's necessary. She hasn't made a habit of hiding things, though.
The moment of hesitation passes and Lucy reaches over and she gingerly takes Kiara's hand in hers. Where Kiara's is warm despite the chill, Lucy's is cold for another reason entirely. There is a sharpness to her touch as it begins to leech that warmth away, just as surely as the frigid air outside would. Lucy is cold beyond merely her resonance. She's frosted straight through to her core.
"Lucy," she says. "Lucy Simms." Provided Kiara doesn't recoil (in Lucy's experience most do, but the Awakened of Denver have by and large been an exception so far), she gives her hand a quick squeeze before releasing her. "And thanks."
Alexander grips Kiara's hand next, which may still be a touch cool from where Lucy's palm pressed. She looks at him, confusion coloring her expression. "New last Thursday?" A beat passes before she smiles. "I've never heard that before."
Kalen Holliday
[Good for one more?]
Kiara
[Fine by me! :) They're just inside a café chit-chatting.]
Kiara
It's funny the things people's body language can reveal. Tiny tells that more often than not, went unnoticed, uncommented on, filed away perhaps as unusual or uncomfortable but left unturned. Kiara Woolfe was a student of the body. She'd trained in ways to detect and manipulate the flesh, to uncover pain and soothe damaged muscle. She was also a student of energy, a worker in the ways of healing that went behind physical touch.
When you mapped and charted energy, you noticed. It became second nature, like Alexander watching people. You learned to read between the lines, because so very often, it was the darker aspects that bore the most fruitful recompense. She takes Lucy's hand and it's startling. The press of her hands and Lucy leeches the warmth right out of the Verbena's. Kiara's eyes flit to their pressed hands, her thumb curls and touches the edge of the other woman's skin for a minute and she looks curiously at Lucy.
"Hm," Kiara's throat catches on the vocalization, she seems to linger inside the touch of the other woman longer than might be strictly necessary. "My pleasure." Alexander's hand finds hers cooler for the brush of Lucy's. Kiara smiles down at him for a moment, tracing his face for a moment as if to stir loose whatever she's glimpsing there on the surface.
When the handshakes are exchanged, her focus drifts to her coffee, she lifts to her mouth and sips from it almost as an afterthought.
Alexander
A cop he may be, trained he may be. Trained to protect the innocent, trained to fire arms in defence of himself and others. Trained to do what needs to be done. But that training never included acting as judge, jury and executioner. That seems to be part of this new, wonderful, terrifying life. Or is the way that he’s been choosing to live it so far. But then is it really that easy to separate your mundane and Awakened lives when what you were when you were Asleep came to define so much about what you are?
He has doubts and fears and... For the moment they’re under wraps again. Secured again under that wall of ice that had cracked and fractured not so long ago, when he finally opened up to Kalen by the campfire. So that tiredness is all that shows on the surface, all that leaks through. And Alexander is, more or less, the man he was a month ago.
The smile even makes a reappearance when he explains the Last Thursday thing. “It’s how I was introduced to Grace when I first.. arrived.” Arrived on the Awakened scene, rather than arrived in the city. But that had only been a little longer. “It literally was that Thursday when it all went sideways. I think Grace was New Last Wednesday for a while, back when she was newer to everything. It’s more new a few months ago these days.” Which is probably as clear a statement that he hasn’t been Awake for more than a year than he’s going to make surrounded by Sleepers.
He nudges a third chair with his foot, hinting that Kiara might want to sit down. “So what brings you to the pit of terror that is Denver?” There is, thankfully, a smile to indicate that he’s joking.
Exaggerating, at least. But most likely joking. It hasn’t all been terrifying.
Not quite.
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen must spend only perhaps an hour between cups of coffee. He's always making it, or carrying it, or buying it, or having it endlessly refilled in diners. He's dressed warmly, heavy long gray coat, scarf, gloves. Winter is not precisely his favorite season, but it's growing on him. Still, he's cold and the Resonance in the air is cold. It is new life. It is swallowing him whole.
He has to remind himself that these are not cold and devouring shadows. Hungry lakes.
Perhaps he wouldn't some other night. But Alexander is there, Alexander who cannot be entirely at ease with Kiara's Resonance. And so he walks over to join them.
Kalen does not head inside to get coffee first. It is cold and he wouldn't mind having something that smells like vanilla and warmth, but that isn't what brought him here. Instead, he moves to stand behind Alexander, rests one gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Snowdrop,” he says to Lucy. She gets a quick, tired smile. Kiara's greeting is a nod, an even briefer smile.
Lucy
The now-veterans of Denver could tell some stories about the horrors Denver has been witness to. Terrible things that have twisted and warped them, monsters that would have killed them if they had been a little less on the ball.
Lucy is not one of those people. To look at her, one wouldn't think her a veteran of anything terrible. She is cold to the touch but that isn't something that brings her sadness very often or for very long. She talks to the dead, guides them to the other side, but death is a part of life. There are shadows to her now, dark lights in her eyes that echo the things she saw when she Saw Jeremy Tran's capture and subsequent death. There is a somberness that has only just begun to settle into her shoulders, which are held straight. Though Lucy leans forward in her chair, elbows resting on the table now, her spine is straight, her figure poised.
Her head tilts, like a dog angling for a better listen to some far off sound. She senses the storm coming from a ways off. A coincidence maybe, but she doesn't think so.
Then he is there, moving behind Alexander and offering him a comforting hand. If his quick flash of a smile is out of the ordinary she either doesn't notice or doesn't realize. Her own smile is wide and friendly. "Hi Kalen." And then to Alexander she asks, "It's not really that bad, is it?"
Kiara
Alexander nudges the chair and the brunette concedes to the gesture and sits down. It, the offer, the take-a-seat gesture garners him a curling grin that's hard to ignore as anything less than appreciative. They both feel like the stagnation of the winter; Lucy and Alexander; the frost skirting the top of frozen lakes and it collides here with Kiara's destructive, devouring presence. The splinter that cracks the ice; delivers the thaw before the Spring. The jolt of rejuvenating life.
There are enough reasons plainly to be uneasy with a presence like the one the Verbena offers; with her bright, confident looks and easy, lingering smiles. "Hm, well the terror for one naturally," she hits back lightly, drawing a leg over the other. The boots she favors hit her below the knee. All zips and leather and spiked heels that sink into the snow outside. They're scuffed around the toe.
Kiara jiggles one foot idly as she settles as if she can't quite co-operate with a total lack of motion. "But - I - we, my sister and I -" there's a pause then, a deliberate stop and consider as Kalen appears and Kiara directs him a glance, a brief twitch of her mouth in return, before - "travel a lot. I have I guess you could call it the movement bug. Staying in one place too long ... it's a skill I'm trying to master." She punctuates that with a sip of her coffee, leaving the imprint of her lipstick behind like a forgotten kiss, gifted the rim of the cup.
Alexander
At least two of the Mages in town had discovered what happens if you surprise Alexander from behind. Kalen’s one of them. So it is perhaps a good thing that his approach – the sensation of the calm before the storm and the captured glimpse of the man through the milling people – is noted before that hand lands on Alexander’s shoulder. So rather than grabbing the hand and doing something that would very quickly be embarrassing and potentially painful, he just knocks his head gently against Kalen’s arm as his hand rests on Alexander’s shoulder. “Hey. Coffee here’s good, if you want some.” Silly question?
Lucy’s question gets a few moments of consideration, although the smile doesn’t really fade. “I guess I’m probably exaggerating some. It’s just hard to remember the wondrous sometimes, you know?” What with Awakening painfully, joining in with a fight against a corrupted spirit and its minions, facing up to a cannibalistic Adept and her own creations and converts... There is still the memory of The Message, the Archmage who created him. There is still the others in the city who stand against the terrifying.
“Afraid you’ll grow roots and won’t be able to move again? We’re not such a bad lot, honestly. There are worse places to plant yourself.”
Kalen Holliday
"Denver," Kalen says quietly to Kiara, "Seems to possess a certain kind of gravity. Some of us leave, yes, but a lot of us stay."
He squeezes Alexander's shoulder. "In a minute or three, perhaps." There are so many things he could say. About hope or light or triumph. He picks, perhaps, the most oblique. "I've been experimenting with cookie recipes. I have not, yet, set the kitchen on fire. Alyssa and Grace have an actually betting pool about it though.
"But you should come test the cookies, to figure out which recipe is the best. So far there are four candidates for gingerbread. But there are so many recipes for sugar cookies I don't even know how to pick which ones to use as test subjects." He sounds so very serious. Perhaps he is. It is only sometimes easy to be sure.
Lucy
[i promise you this is not important]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Lucy
There are certain things that catch Lucy's attention, hooking it and drawing her focus from one person to the next. That it's hard sometimes for Alexander to remember the wondrous times. Lucy's bright green eyes lower thoughtfully before she nods. She does know. After that first night in the park she thought she'd never know peace again. Lucky for her she has Delilah, or maybe she wouldn't.
Next, there is my sister and travel a lot and Lucy's attention tilts to Kiara, chin lifting and head canting to a curious angle. The corner of her mouth lifts. "Sounds like me and my sister. Only I was...hoping for a place to settle into. When we landed here, Denver seemed as good a place as any to try and end our vagabond wandering. Which," she says suddenly, eyes widening as she sits up, pulls open the bag in her lap to begin pawing through it, looking for, "Ah," her phone. Thumbing it to life, the noise she makes next most closely resembles ack.
"Speaking of, if I'm going to meet her even remotely on time I have to go now." Kalen and Alexander perhaps know by now that Lucy is a slave to the public transportation system. Slipping her phone into the pocket of her jacket instead of back into her bag, she gathers up her things and rises, adjusting the fall of her bag so that she can zip up her jacket. Not that she needs it zipped like other people do, but pretending to at least try to conform to standard winter weather protection will lessen how often she's stopped by well meaning (or lascivious) strangers commenting about her attire. "It was nice to meet you officially, Kiara," she says, and she does not offer her hand to the woman. "Um, Alexander, have fun at the club," she says, squinting as she points to the Orphan and then the Hermetic, "and Kalen, let me know how the cookies work out."
She hurries off, but stops suddenly just at the door and begins looking through her bag again. She comes back to the table and puts a business card down in front of Kiara. At least it looks like a business card. It's not printed like one, though. One one side there is Lucy in a silver-inked, looping, handwritten script. Below her name is only a phone number. When Kiara sees the other side, she will find a kiss mark in bright red lipstick, only a little faded with time. "My number," she explains. "See you around," she says, offering a wave to include all three of them.
Then she's off again. This time, she slips out into the night unimpeded.
[because it is late and unfortunately i must sleep -_- good night, and thanks for the scene!]
Kiara
"Plant being the key word, there." Arch, that. The tone, the eyebrow. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it humor about her Tradition, perhaps. About how she views herself in relation to the world; the universe. As widely or narrowly as she means it Kiara doesn't linger on it long. She does, though, throw her attention to Kalen and his quiet assurances on the city.
"I don't doubt that," she offers up honestly, searching his face for a long minute as if she's hoping to pry out secrets much the way she had Alexander, moments ago. Under her winter's cap, with the collar of her coat drawn up, her hair is darker than ever; invoked curls falling around a heart shaped face; she's sharp edged, Kiara, but there's a natural vivacity curled into her presence that tempers it. At least when she applies herself.
"Most cities I've been, there's always reasons to stay." The unspoken in her voice being: but more to run.
Lucy is catching words, framing them into a context perhaps she is familiar with in her head from Kiara's reasoning and there's a returned smile there - quieter, perhaps more tempered, than her usual - before the other woman announces her impending departure and Kiara watches her flight. The return. There's a card.
Laid out in front of the white-clad brunette and she takes it up, studying it and catching Lucy's eye before she's gone, reclaimed by the gusting climate outside. "Thanks. I'll text you mine."
Alexander
More warmth and humour come back into Alexander’s expression as Kalen talks about his adventures in cookie making and the betting going on between the others. “What are the odds on you opening a gateway into hell in the oven? Or is that only a thing when you get put pasta in there?” It looks like someone might have finally done a little catching up with some of the old messages on a certain messaging service. Alex looks up at Kalen, still smiling, telling him gently, “I’m ok.” His voice goes back to normal when he continues, “And I’m all up for trying out cookies. I’ll swing by.”
Lucy’s making a move to head off before the public transport network starts to wind down for the night and she gets stranded or overly delayed. “Catch you again soon, Lucy. And tell Delilah I said hi?”
Kiara’s hint at her Tradition is a little too subtle for Alex to catch, especially given his lack of knowledge of some of the groups. But is it really all that important to know, right now? Maybe in some cities Traditions are more important and those who aren’t a part of them are pushed apart from them. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in Denver. Not at the moment, anyway. Who knows if and when things will change. Nothing is pre-determined after all.
“So apart from gingerbread cookies, what else would get you to stay?”
Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles and nods to Lucy. He smiles a little at what Kiara doesn't quite say, because Kalen at the center of so many things now and learning to bake cookies and about to decorate three Christmas trees, with one hand still resting on his cabalmate's shoulder still knows more about running than staying.
Denver has him anyway.
Alexander's shoulder gets another squeeze, and then he is released and Kalen settles into one of the chairs. "I think that's only with the Sumerian mulled wine recipe," he says. His attention turns to Kiara when Alexander asks her what would make her stay.
Kiara
The Dreamspeaker's contact details are tucked away into her pocket; cushioned between the worn gloves. At some later time, perhaps that night, she'll empty them, turn the card over in her hands and run the tips of her fingers over the sharp edges in consideration of it. The faded lipstick, the implications inherent even in texting another Awakened. The tug at the edges of her world, coaxing it further into Denver's populous of Awakened souls.
It's not fear, per say, that holds her back.
What would keep her here, Alexander wants to know and Kiara's attention refocuses on him; her eyes; dark and framed by long lashes; coated in smokey layers of shadow; her smile. There's a decided tease in the way it hooks in the corner there. Suggestive of a whole array of things she might be holding back, might be deliberating.
"When I know the answer to that, I'll let you know."
There's the quiet hum of something electronic from her pocket that interrupts her before she says more. Her attention is captured by it briefly, she slips a phone out of a pocket; the screen flashes a riot of color against her coat, bathes her skin in the sheen of artificial light for a moment. "I should get going. Appointments to keep." She cradles the phone in one hand, the coffee cup in another and gently scrapes her chair back a little to rise.
The Verbana and her ghostly white ensemble; bracketed by dark hair and that certain sense of visceral inevitability. "It was nice to properly meet you Alexander, Kalen - " She slides gloves from a pocket, pauses as she slides one on. "Good luck with the cooking endeavors. Don't burn anything down."
With that and a pitstop to toss her empty cup into the trash, lip stick stains and all, Kiara's resonance ebbs away as she slips into the crowd heading for the door.
[Eep, I gotta go organize some dinner guys so I shall bow out here. Thank you for RP!]
Alexander
[Thank you! Glad we got that scene in the end :) ]
Kiara
[Likewise! Hopefully we can do some more with them. :) ]
Denver has a reputation, for those who look past the city’s marketing, for a somewhat changeable climate. It may boast a huge number of ‘days of sun’, but that doesn’t account for the other states of the weather that share those days. Wind, rain, hail, snow: none are exactly rare occurrences. So the residents of the city adapt, check the forecasts, and often leave the house prepared.
Somewhere downtown is a coffee shop which stays open late into the night and sometimes doesn’t even close. It’s independent, and serves decent coffee and a reasonable choice of food. It’s also well located for the pre-and post- club/theatre/pub/cinema crowds, so it tends to be pretty busy through most of the night. It’s not that late yet, though, but it’s no longer that early either. Somewhere between nine and ten – the sky is dark and clouded over, but the light generated by the city mask the sky out anyway.
Outside the coffee shop, sat at a table and indulging in the age-old pastime of people-watching is Alexander. There’s a partially-drunk and still-warm long black coffee on the table and a half-eaten croissant. He’s dressed like he has plans for the night which may well involve flashing lights, deep bass, and getting lost in a crowd. Black combats and boots are topped with what looks like a black t-shirt. It is, until it gets under a UV light and then the wings appear on the back. Under his chair is a small rucksack with a decent, warm, waterproof coat and a few other bits and pieces. Alexander left home prepared.
Alexander
[And Awareness, because you never know who's coming.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
[awareness yuss]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara
(Can I crash the party? :D )
Lucy
[DO EET]
Alexander
[Sure, the more the merrier.]
Kiara
[Mage Spidy Senses Rollin'.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Lucy
Most of the city has been bundled up for days. Heavy sweaters, heavier coats, gloves, scarves, hats, the works. The ordinary citizens of Denver need to layer up if they don't want the dry air to slice the warmth from their skin.
And then there are the extraordinary citizens. A few transplants from even colder climates who bear up well enough in minimal layers, maybe even mere hoodies.
And then there's Lucy. She was born in a place known for harsh and bitter winters, but that's not why she bears up under the chill better than most. She bears up because she is frost-touched, cold seeped, frozen from the inside out. Even on a warm summer day her skin feels like the cold bite of winter's frost. Her (as she would put it) blessing does not mean that she's immune to terribly low temperatures, but it does mean that she can wander the city for hours in considerably less clothing than the normals.
From a distance Alexander can feel her coming, just a cold tingle at the edge of his senses that brings to mind the threading creep of frost coming closer. Maybe it's just coincidence that has Lucy stepping through the door of the coffee shop, squeezing through a small crowd of others in their mid-twenties standing with coffee cups in hand as they discuss their options.
Lucy doesn't believe in coincidence. She enters the shop because as she roamed in search of something or on her way from somewhere else, she sensed someone familiar, someone else who is cold. The last time she saw Alexander things were not so awesome. Death lay all around them, and Lucy herself was so preoccupied with comforting Elijah she didn't speak to the others before she eventually left. This coffee shop is so far removed from a madwoman's slaughterhouse, all warm and cozy with the smell of coffee and sweet pastries filling up her nostrils.
She did not come in for a drink. Once she's through the little crowd she looks around, running the fingers of one hand through her long, maroon-pink hair. She does not look like she's dressed for the weather. No ordinary person would be dressed as she is when temperatures are in the single digits, and yet there she is. In a black hoodie with pink plaid accents at her hips, black denim cutoffs over a pair of fishnets and her knee-high black boots. When she finds Alexander at his seat she smiles broadly and lifts her hand in a wave before threading through the other patrons to get to him.
"Hi," she says when she's there. And then as an afterthought (because look at him, dressed all in black like he's got somewhere to be), "Are you waiting for someone?"
Kiara
A bundled up wave of post cinema-goers are trekking closer to the café as Lucy greets Alexander. He's people watching, perhaps paying attention enough to feel that (not so unfamiliar) stirring of a particular resonance as voices grow nearer, the crowds breaking apart before they quite reach the doors with their inviting aromas, the blend of coffee and baked goods.
On a night like tonight, it's no wonder the store is overflowing with patrons.
Spilling into view from the rear of the crowd is a brunette. Cloaked in white, from the knitted cap to the trenchcoat cinched tight around her waist, Kiara Woolfe is a resplendent sight. Dark waves of hair spill from beneath the cap she's wearing, the touch of the cold present in her pink cheeks, the haste in her footsteps. She's moving with the fluid momentum of the city-goer who wants to be out of the chill.
Are you waiting for someone, the Dreamspeaker wants to know, as the woman who feels like she'll tear you apart only to piece you back together slips through the steady flow of passersby en route for the doors to their café.
Alexander
Certain things are supposed to occur in a particular order. Heat is supposed to lead to things melting, for example. So it may seem strange to some nearby that the feeling of being frozen and caught in a sliver of ice or a shard of time precedes that approaching thread of winter. The drop in temperature should come before the freezing, like the calm before the storm. And the storm coming before the strangely, deathly quiet that follows.
After that night at the house, Alexander has been pretty scarce around the Awakened scene. A few messages had been swapped with Kalen, to reassure him that Alex was still alive and doing ok, but other than that he’s been quiet. If anyone had been interested to follow him, they’ll have found that he disappeared from the city limits and into the mountains for a couple of days with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing and a heft rucksack of camping gear. It was time away to gather his thoughts, to gather himself again, and to try to work stuff out. He’s back now, though. And between the time alone and the time spent with Kalen not so long ago, he’s not doing all that badly. The aura of coolness that waxes and wanes with his mood isn’t too noticeable. He’s doing ok.
The problem with going away, though, is working out how to get back in sync with others. Each of them that night had their own wounds to tend to, and Lucy had been helping Elijah with his.
Bumping into Ian had felt awkward, because how do you even begin to talk with someone when nearly half the occasions where they had met involved fighting and death. At least there had been more time shared between Alexander and Lucy. Enough to make re-breaking that ice easier.
Alexander picks up the mug and sips the coffee as Lucy approaches. He swallows as she greets him, and offers his own in return. “Hey. No, just me. I’m killing time before the clubs get going. How are you?” He nudges the chair opposite away from the table with his foot.
Somewhere in the crowd comes that feeling of consumption and rebirth. A hunger, but under control. Even though, tension creeps into Alexander’s shoulders before he realises that it’s the same feeling that he’d felt in the park not so long ago. He looks around for the source, somewhere in the people.
Lucy
Lucy does not believe in coincidences. It is therefore no coincidence that she happened along this particular street at this particular time and sensed Alexander. And it is no coincidence that the woman from the park is not far behind her. And if others come after that? It will of course be for some purpose, even if Lucy can't put her finger on what that purpose is until some later time.
It's not that later time, but the present, and they are here and they are coming here. The winter children and the living embodiment of the turning of the cycle of death and rebirth. Since that night at the house Lucy has been doing her own things in her own way, spending her spare time mostly with her sister, but sometimes contacting Elijah. The Dreamspeakers are not known for being cohesive with others, either in their Tradition or outside of it.
That doesn't mean she lets the ice between them stay solid for long. Her smile for Alexander is just about as friendly and as kind as ever. There is a darkness shadowing her spring green eyes, dampening the upward curl of her mouth, tempering it. Lucy is Dusk's child, an oracle of the guardian of the dead who may take up that mantle herself one day. Death is no stranger to her, nor is dying. But the horror of the things she's seen and the things she's Seen lingers on her still, making her seem older, or maybe just a little wiser.
"I'm okay," she says, settling into the seat, shifting her slouching canvas bag into her lap before unzipping her jacket. Beneath it she's wearing a fitted dark grey shirt with an embroidered skull of white flowers. "It's funny, whenever someone says they're killing time it reminds me of this cartoon I saw when I was a kid. There was a dog with a," she waves her hand at her torso like the gesture might help jog her flagging memory, "a clock in his chest, a watch dog!" she says, brightening all a hah I remembered! "He had this whole song about how you shouldn't talk about killing time, but I can't remember how it goes."
Alexander looks around, searching, but Lucy's eyes shift toward the entrance, looking through the windows to the outside. She is expectant.
Kiara
The first (and last) occasion Kiara had to see Lucy had been in Washington Park, retching after being subjected to the horrifying last moments of a young man's life. Since then, the pagan's encounters with the Awakened of the city had begun to increase. A group on the college quad here, casual encounters at an art gallery there. If she was prone to consideration of such things, she might just theorize she was being slowly drawn down into another city's chaos; an animal sucked deeper into quicksand the harder it fought the inevitable.
Day by day, night by night.
She doesn't know the history. Bare glimpses, sidelong looks or awkward pauses, it's all the epilogues to stories she has no beginnings for. The closer Kiara draws to the café, the stronger comes the impression of something frozen. Of chill that sets deeper into the bones than mere weather can afford; it's tinged with something other, that sense and she emerges into the relative comfort of the café with searching eyes. Uncurling the length of a scarf from her neck and slipping gloves from her fingers into a pocket.
For all that she's sheathed herself in the color of the encroaching season, there are hints, the slip of colored necklaces buried beneath the folds of her coat; the catch and refraction of silver around her wrists when she moves. Dark eyes painted with dramatic flair and lipstick that delivers her mouth a striking crimson red.
She doesn't place the two Awakened directly until she's returned from the counter with a cup of coffee steaming in her hand. Once she sights them, there's a hesitation for a moment. A slight inclination of thin brows upward, vanishing into the bangs beneath her cap before her path deviates to take her closer. "Hello again," this, with a curling smile and dark eyes resting on Alexander's face a beat. Placing him, no doubt.
Kiara's eyes shift to Lucy. "Times two."
Alexander
There are those who believe in fate – that certain things are just bound to happen, in some way or in some form. This meeting may be one of those things. But there are others who don’t believe in fate – believe that it takes away the freedom to choose and the responsibility for consequences, passes them onto some unknown, unseen entity who may not even be there. No, their movements through the fluid form of reality creates ripples which interact and pull each other together, like a strange form of gravity. It’s simple a matter of probability that brings them all here.
Alexander wraps both hands around his mug and relaxes back on the chair as Lucy talks about the cartoon from her childhood. He cocks his head as he tries to remember, rolling the idea around to see if it’s familiar in any way. “About the only dog I remember was Scooby, and I don’t remember him having a clock.” He shrugs. “Maybe I should say that I’m waiting for something to happen, then. Or watching the crowds? Or just drinking coffee.” He raises the mug in salute. “You not having anything?”
Kiara approaches, and spots her. Watches her approach, although the earlier tension – most of it, at least – has faded away. He didn’t get a particularly close look at Kiara as she battled Ian for the ball that evening, but the view he had along with that feeling announcing her presence confirmed that she was the woman from the park. “Evening. Who won?”
Lucy
"Huh." Lucy turns thoughtful. "I don't think he did, either."
The night in Wash Park was not a good one for Lucy. She was better when she was talking to Oliver in the alley, and she was better even when she was guiding a flock of dead to exact their revenge against the woman responsible for their murders. But that night in the park she had seen the very worst of humanity and so Kiara had managed to see the very worst state Lucy had been in since...since Lucy can't remember when.
She looks better tonight, though. Her skin is still bone white, but gone is the ashen cast. Her smile for the woman is genial. "Hi," she says, shifting a little in her seat so Kiara won't feel like she's on the outside of something.
"I'm sorry I didn't get your contact info last time. All that stuff's been," she glances at Alexander before looking back at the woman in white. "I guess you could say it's been handled."
Kiara
Who won?
"I did. With a little last minute distraction in the form of Grace's coat." There's a minute shrug, a spark of evident satisfaction in her voice, in the coy light in her dark eyes. He'd glimpsed her the other night in the height of competition, stripped down and casual, pushing back at Ian on the courts as they orchestrated a sort of dance all their own, the exultant manifestation of the students of Life, perhaps. Kiara's right hand is wrapped around her coffee, she hasn't tasted it yet but seems content enough in the moment as people gently extricate themselves around her to hold it.
To enjoy the warmth seeping into her skin.
"I figured it probably would be," there's a knowledgeable twist to her mouth. An easy slip into conversation as if they'd been acquaintances long before they'd glimpsed each other that night in the park. Kiara fishes her free hand from a pocket and extends it. Her eyes slipping between the pair of them, her palm very warm despite the chill. "I'm Kiara Woolfe, to make it official. Newcomer, interloper," decided lilt of Devil may care humor inflected there in the way she says it, the curve and precision of her smile.
All dark eyes and red lips. The rattle of stones gathering and clinking around the fine boned wrist she holds out. "Whatever you prefer." Her attention is captured by Lucy again. "I'm glad you're feeling better, though."
Alexander
“He was better without Scrappy, though. That guy was just annoying.” Alexander takes another sip and listens to Kiara announce the winner, and the slightly dirty trick used to do it. He starts to smile at the thought of Grace trying to distract Ian.
But then there’s a glance, with an explanation that things have been handled and it gets... well, it gets a reaction. Or maybe there’s a sudden draft at the coffee shop, but that aura of stasis gets just a little bit cooler. The black coffee suddenly seems to be so much more interesting than the two women, as his gaze falls along with the smile. It would be so easy to slide back into the funk that had lingered after things were handled, but he stops himself sliding. Reminds himself that they did the right thing. That things could have been so much worse. Given enough time, he might even believe it.
But instead he coughs, clearing his throat, and looks back up at Kiara as she finishes her greeting and offers her hand. She might see the edge of the weariness that’s surfaced in his eyes as he releases one of his hands from the mug and extends it in return. “Alexander Brandt. New last Thursday.”
Lucy
[because it's Lucy, awarepathy]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lucy
Lucy mentions the park, meaning more the man missing his dog than anything else. Because Kiara was there, she saw Jeremy's heart torn out and his spirit consumed in the moments of his death. She should know that it's over now. It gets a reaction from Alexander, though, which she notices. Lucy looks to him a moment and there is regret there. He's a cop, he's been trained to deal with things Lucy's had to pick up along the way. And he's older than she is, she can tell. But he's new to all of this, and Lucy has been seeing and speaking with the dead since she was barely out of high school.
Her gaze drops. This isn't the place to talk about things like that in detail. And besides, Kiara offers her name and her hand. Lucy looks at the outstretched fingers and for a second she hesitates, lips parted like she might say something (beg it off, "No really, you don't-"). But then she smiles a little, gives a small shake of her head to dispell some inner thought. All these things she could hide if she wanted. Lucy here, she could sell ice to an Eskimo if she wanted, she can be a smooth talker when it's necessary. She hasn't made a habit of hiding things, though.
The moment of hesitation passes and Lucy reaches over and she gingerly takes Kiara's hand in hers. Where Kiara's is warm despite the chill, Lucy's is cold for another reason entirely. There is a sharpness to her touch as it begins to leech that warmth away, just as surely as the frigid air outside would. Lucy is cold beyond merely her resonance. She's frosted straight through to her core.
"Lucy," she says. "Lucy Simms." Provided Kiara doesn't recoil (in Lucy's experience most do, but the Awakened of Denver have by and large been an exception so far), she gives her hand a quick squeeze before releasing her. "And thanks."
Alexander grips Kiara's hand next, which may still be a touch cool from where Lucy's palm pressed. She looks at him, confusion coloring her expression. "New last Thursday?" A beat passes before she smiles. "I've never heard that before."
Kalen Holliday
[Good for one more?]
Kiara
[Fine by me! :) They're just inside a café chit-chatting.]
Kiara
It's funny the things people's body language can reveal. Tiny tells that more often than not, went unnoticed, uncommented on, filed away perhaps as unusual or uncomfortable but left unturned. Kiara Woolfe was a student of the body. She'd trained in ways to detect and manipulate the flesh, to uncover pain and soothe damaged muscle. She was also a student of energy, a worker in the ways of healing that went behind physical touch.
When you mapped and charted energy, you noticed. It became second nature, like Alexander watching people. You learned to read between the lines, because so very often, it was the darker aspects that bore the most fruitful recompense. She takes Lucy's hand and it's startling. The press of her hands and Lucy leeches the warmth right out of the Verbena's. Kiara's eyes flit to their pressed hands, her thumb curls and touches the edge of the other woman's skin for a minute and she looks curiously at Lucy.
"Hm," Kiara's throat catches on the vocalization, she seems to linger inside the touch of the other woman longer than might be strictly necessary. "My pleasure." Alexander's hand finds hers cooler for the brush of Lucy's. Kiara smiles down at him for a moment, tracing his face for a moment as if to stir loose whatever she's glimpsing there on the surface.
When the handshakes are exchanged, her focus drifts to her coffee, she lifts to her mouth and sips from it almost as an afterthought.
Alexander
A cop he may be, trained he may be. Trained to protect the innocent, trained to fire arms in defence of himself and others. Trained to do what needs to be done. But that training never included acting as judge, jury and executioner. That seems to be part of this new, wonderful, terrifying life. Or is the way that he’s been choosing to live it so far. But then is it really that easy to separate your mundane and Awakened lives when what you were when you were Asleep came to define so much about what you are?
He has doubts and fears and... For the moment they’re under wraps again. Secured again under that wall of ice that had cracked and fractured not so long ago, when he finally opened up to Kalen by the campfire. So that tiredness is all that shows on the surface, all that leaks through. And Alexander is, more or less, the man he was a month ago.
The smile even makes a reappearance when he explains the Last Thursday thing. “It’s how I was introduced to Grace when I first.. arrived.” Arrived on the Awakened scene, rather than arrived in the city. But that had only been a little longer. “It literally was that Thursday when it all went sideways. I think Grace was New Last Wednesday for a while, back when she was newer to everything. It’s more new a few months ago these days.” Which is probably as clear a statement that he hasn’t been Awake for more than a year than he’s going to make surrounded by Sleepers.
He nudges a third chair with his foot, hinting that Kiara might want to sit down. “So what brings you to the pit of terror that is Denver?” There is, thankfully, a smile to indicate that he’s joking.
Exaggerating, at least. But most likely joking. It hasn’t all been terrifying.
Not quite.
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen must spend only perhaps an hour between cups of coffee. He's always making it, or carrying it, or buying it, or having it endlessly refilled in diners. He's dressed warmly, heavy long gray coat, scarf, gloves. Winter is not precisely his favorite season, but it's growing on him. Still, he's cold and the Resonance in the air is cold. It is new life. It is swallowing him whole.
He has to remind himself that these are not cold and devouring shadows. Hungry lakes.
Perhaps he wouldn't some other night. But Alexander is there, Alexander who cannot be entirely at ease with Kiara's Resonance. And so he walks over to join them.
Kalen does not head inside to get coffee first. It is cold and he wouldn't mind having something that smells like vanilla and warmth, but that isn't what brought him here. Instead, he moves to stand behind Alexander, rests one gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Snowdrop,” he says to Lucy. She gets a quick, tired smile. Kiara's greeting is a nod, an even briefer smile.
Lucy
The now-veterans of Denver could tell some stories about the horrors Denver has been witness to. Terrible things that have twisted and warped them, monsters that would have killed them if they had been a little less on the ball.
Lucy is not one of those people. To look at her, one wouldn't think her a veteran of anything terrible. She is cold to the touch but that isn't something that brings her sadness very often or for very long. She talks to the dead, guides them to the other side, but death is a part of life. There are shadows to her now, dark lights in her eyes that echo the things she saw when she Saw Jeremy Tran's capture and subsequent death. There is a somberness that has only just begun to settle into her shoulders, which are held straight. Though Lucy leans forward in her chair, elbows resting on the table now, her spine is straight, her figure poised.
Her head tilts, like a dog angling for a better listen to some far off sound. She senses the storm coming from a ways off. A coincidence maybe, but she doesn't think so.
Then he is there, moving behind Alexander and offering him a comforting hand. If his quick flash of a smile is out of the ordinary she either doesn't notice or doesn't realize. Her own smile is wide and friendly. "Hi Kalen." And then to Alexander she asks, "It's not really that bad, is it?"
Kiara
Alexander nudges the chair and the brunette concedes to the gesture and sits down. It, the offer, the take-a-seat gesture garners him a curling grin that's hard to ignore as anything less than appreciative. They both feel like the stagnation of the winter; Lucy and Alexander; the frost skirting the top of frozen lakes and it collides here with Kiara's destructive, devouring presence. The splinter that cracks the ice; delivers the thaw before the Spring. The jolt of rejuvenating life.
There are enough reasons plainly to be uneasy with a presence like the one the Verbena offers; with her bright, confident looks and easy, lingering smiles. "Hm, well the terror for one naturally," she hits back lightly, drawing a leg over the other. The boots she favors hit her below the knee. All zips and leather and spiked heels that sink into the snow outside. They're scuffed around the toe.
Kiara jiggles one foot idly as she settles as if she can't quite co-operate with a total lack of motion. "But - I - we, my sister and I -" there's a pause then, a deliberate stop and consider as Kalen appears and Kiara directs him a glance, a brief twitch of her mouth in return, before - "travel a lot. I have I guess you could call it the movement bug. Staying in one place too long ... it's a skill I'm trying to master." She punctuates that with a sip of her coffee, leaving the imprint of her lipstick behind like a forgotten kiss, gifted the rim of the cup.
Alexander
At least two of the Mages in town had discovered what happens if you surprise Alexander from behind. Kalen’s one of them. So it is perhaps a good thing that his approach – the sensation of the calm before the storm and the captured glimpse of the man through the milling people – is noted before that hand lands on Alexander’s shoulder. So rather than grabbing the hand and doing something that would very quickly be embarrassing and potentially painful, he just knocks his head gently against Kalen’s arm as his hand rests on Alexander’s shoulder. “Hey. Coffee here’s good, if you want some.” Silly question?
Lucy’s question gets a few moments of consideration, although the smile doesn’t really fade. “I guess I’m probably exaggerating some. It’s just hard to remember the wondrous sometimes, you know?” What with Awakening painfully, joining in with a fight against a corrupted spirit and its minions, facing up to a cannibalistic Adept and her own creations and converts... There is still the memory of The Message, the Archmage who created him. There is still the others in the city who stand against the terrifying.
“Afraid you’ll grow roots and won’t be able to move again? We’re not such a bad lot, honestly. There are worse places to plant yourself.”
Kalen Holliday
"Denver," Kalen says quietly to Kiara, "Seems to possess a certain kind of gravity. Some of us leave, yes, but a lot of us stay."
He squeezes Alexander's shoulder. "In a minute or three, perhaps." There are so many things he could say. About hope or light or triumph. He picks, perhaps, the most oblique. "I've been experimenting with cookie recipes. I have not, yet, set the kitchen on fire. Alyssa and Grace have an actually betting pool about it though.
"But you should come test the cookies, to figure out which recipe is the best. So far there are four candidates for gingerbread. But there are so many recipes for sugar cookies I don't even know how to pick which ones to use as test subjects." He sounds so very serious. Perhaps he is. It is only sometimes easy to be sure.
Lucy
[i promise you this is not important]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Lucy
There are certain things that catch Lucy's attention, hooking it and drawing her focus from one person to the next. That it's hard sometimes for Alexander to remember the wondrous times. Lucy's bright green eyes lower thoughtfully before she nods. She does know. After that first night in the park she thought she'd never know peace again. Lucky for her she has Delilah, or maybe she wouldn't.
Next, there is my sister and travel a lot and Lucy's attention tilts to Kiara, chin lifting and head canting to a curious angle. The corner of her mouth lifts. "Sounds like me and my sister. Only I was...hoping for a place to settle into. When we landed here, Denver seemed as good a place as any to try and end our vagabond wandering. Which," she says suddenly, eyes widening as she sits up, pulls open the bag in her lap to begin pawing through it, looking for, "Ah," her phone. Thumbing it to life, the noise she makes next most closely resembles ack.
"Speaking of, if I'm going to meet her even remotely on time I have to go now." Kalen and Alexander perhaps know by now that Lucy is a slave to the public transportation system. Slipping her phone into the pocket of her jacket instead of back into her bag, she gathers up her things and rises, adjusting the fall of her bag so that she can zip up her jacket. Not that she needs it zipped like other people do, but pretending to at least try to conform to standard winter weather protection will lessen how often she's stopped by well meaning (or lascivious) strangers commenting about her attire. "It was nice to meet you officially, Kiara," she says, and she does not offer her hand to the woman. "Um, Alexander, have fun at the club," she says, squinting as she points to the Orphan and then the Hermetic, "and Kalen, let me know how the cookies work out."
She hurries off, but stops suddenly just at the door and begins looking through her bag again. She comes back to the table and puts a business card down in front of Kiara. At least it looks like a business card. It's not printed like one, though. One one side there is Lucy in a silver-inked, looping, handwritten script. Below her name is only a phone number. When Kiara sees the other side, she will find a kiss mark in bright red lipstick, only a little faded with time. "My number," she explains. "See you around," she says, offering a wave to include all three of them.
Then she's off again. This time, she slips out into the night unimpeded.
[because it is late and unfortunately i must sleep -_- good night, and thanks for the scene!]
Kiara
"Plant being the key word, there." Arch, that. The tone, the eyebrow. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it humor about her Tradition, perhaps. About how she views herself in relation to the world; the universe. As widely or narrowly as she means it Kiara doesn't linger on it long. She does, though, throw her attention to Kalen and his quiet assurances on the city.
"I don't doubt that," she offers up honestly, searching his face for a long minute as if she's hoping to pry out secrets much the way she had Alexander, moments ago. Under her winter's cap, with the collar of her coat drawn up, her hair is darker than ever; invoked curls falling around a heart shaped face; she's sharp edged, Kiara, but there's a natural vivacity curled into her presence that tempers it. At least when she applies herself.
"Most cities I've been, there's always reasons to stay." The unspoken in her voice being: but more to run.
Lucy is catching words, framing them into a context perhaps she is familiar with in her head from Kiara's reasoning and there's a returned smile there - quieter, perhaps more tempered, than her usual - before the other woman announces her impending departure and Kiara watches her flight. The return. There's a card.
Laid out in front of the white-clad brunette and she takes it up, studying it and catching Lucy's eye before she's gone, reclaimed by the gusting climate outside. "Thanks. I'll text you mine."
Alexander
More warmth and humour come back into Alexander’s expression as Kalen talks about his adventures in cookie making and the betting going on between the others. “What are the odds on you opening a gateway into hell in the oven? Or is that only a thing when you get put pasta in there?” It looks like someone might have finally done a little catching up with some of the old messages on a certain messaging service. Alex looks up at Kalen, still smiling, telling him gently, “I’m ok.” His voice goes back to normal when he continues, “And I’m all up for trying out cookies. I’ll swing by.”
Lucy’s making a move to head off before the public transport network starts to wind down for the night and she gets stranded or overly delayed. “Catch you again soon, Lucy. And tell Delilah I said hi?”
Kiara’s hint at her Tradition is a little too subtle for Alex to catch, especially given his lack of knowledge of some of the groups. But is it really all that important to know, right now? Maybe in some cities Traditions are more important and those who aren’t a part of them are pushed apart from them. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in Denver. Not at the moment, anyway. Who knows if and when things will change. Nothing is pre-determined after all.
“So apart from gingerbread cookies, what else would get you to stay?”
Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles and nods to Lucy. He smiles a little at what Kiara doesn't quite say, because Kalen at the center of so many things now and learning to bake cookies and about to decorate three Christmas trees, with one hand still resting on his cabalmate's shoulder still knows more about running than staying.
Denver has him anyway.
Alexander's shoulder gets another squeeze, and then he is released and Kalen settles into one of the chairs. "I think that's only with the Sumerian mulled wine recipe," he says. His attention turns to Kiara when Alexander asks her what would make her stay.
Kiara
The Dreamspeaker's contact details are tucked away into her pocket; cushioned between the worn gloves. At some later time, perhaps that night, she'll empty them, turn the card over in her hands and run the tips of her fingers over the sharp edges in consideration of it. The faded lipstick, the implications inherent even in texting another Awakened. The tug at the edges of her world, coaxing it further into Denver's populous of Awakened souls.
It's not fear, per say, that holds her back.
What would keep her here, Alexander wants to know and Kiara's attention refocuses on him; her eyes; dark and framed by long lashes; coated in smokey layers of shadow; her smile. There's a decided tease in the way it hooks in the corner there. Suggestive of a whole array of things she might be holding back, might be deliberating.
"When I know the answer to that, I'll let you know."
There's the quiet hum of something electronic from her pocket that interrupts her before she says more. Her attention is captured by it briefly, she slips a phone out of a pocket; the screen flashes a riot of color against her coat, bathes her skin in the sheen of artificial light for a moment. "I should get going. Appointments to keep." She cradles the phone in one hand, the coffee cup in another and gently scrapes her chair back a little to rise.
The Verbana and her ghostly white ensemble; bracketed by dark hair and that certain sense of visceral inevitability. "It was nice to properly meet you Alexander, Kalen - " She slides gloves from a pocket, pauses as she slides one on. "Good luck with the cooking endeavors. Don't burn anything down."
With that and a pitstop to toss her empty cup into the trash, lip stick stains and all, Kiara's resonance ebbs away as she slips into the crowd heading for the door.
[Eep, I gotta go organize some dinner guys so I shall bow out here. Thank you for RP!]
Alexander
[Thank you! Glad we got that scene in the end :) ]
Kiara
[Likewise! Hopefully we can do some more with them. :) ]
Sunday, November 9, 2014
glad you waited. [ian]
Ian
The sun was down, though the hour wasn't yet so late that Washington Park was empty of visitors. There were fewer now than there had been when Kiara and Ian had arrived, and given time the place was likely to get pretty quiet, but there were still cars in the lot. Ian got there first, partly because he was running and partly because Kiara had offered to take a detour with Grace. When he arrived, he paced around the lot once, letting his heart rate slow and his muscles cool. Gradually his breathing grew less pronounced.
There were a couple of teenagers arguing a few stalls down from where he'd parked his Audi. He ignored them as he passed by, and eventually they got in their car and left. After that, he was left alone to wait. His car sat idle beneath the overhanging branches of a large oak tree near the end of the lot. Sodium light from a nearby streetlamp illuminated the pavement around him, casting speckled shadows through the leaves. Ian hopped up onto the hood of his car and lay back with his eyes closed. He didn't bother to put his earbuds back in. Instead he listened to the sounds of the park and the distant hum of engines from the road.
This is how Kiara would find him when she arrived. Like a cat lounging in the moonlight. She'd seen his car before, so she knew what to look for. But given their particular awareness and sensitivity to each other's presence, she probably wouldn't actually need to look to find him.
Kiara
Her car was parked across the lot from his. Washington Park, busier when she pulled in earlier, had left her little options for stowing her vehicle. Though it stood now quite solitary in its corner, a red blight amongst the shadows, somehow more obscure for the inky twilight and somehow, of course, of course the car that belonged to a woman like Kiara Woolfe.
It would be blood red. Some small and compact thing with stickers peeling off the back window. With dust etched into the paint, clouding the rearview windows. He's there well before her, detoured as the brunette was walking Grace to the (relative) safety of her own destination, if anywhere could be safe for any of them, being who they were. The temperature has cooled a few degrees for the sun's absence and when eventually, the Verbena closes on the parking lot, she's restored her jacket to her body, a bag slung over a shoulder, basketball caged under one arm, toted against her ribcage.
A set of keys are wound around her fingers.
If she notices Ian (which she does), she doesn't acknowledge him lounging on his car (yet) but heads to her own and unlocks the door, stows her belongings in it and shuts it again. The sound of the door slamming echoing for the near loneliness of the lot now. Occupancy dwindled down to a lone two, one with the appearance of a creature quite at his leisure and the other toying with her own.
Kiara's sneakers crunch over the earth as she approaches. She doesn't need to look for him, he's right about that, she knows the sense of him now. Has felt his pattern curled around her own, knows what he feels like under her hands. She reaches the wheel of his car, hands in her pockets, the streetlight playing over her body.
She doesn't say anything at first and when she does, it's simple. Unfussed.
"Hey."
Ian
She might not have shown. Whispered flirtations on a basketball court weren't necessarily meant to be taken as a promise. And given enough time, Ian probably would have found something else to occupy his evening. But he waited, and there was nothing impatient about his demeanor in that moment. His posture was relaxed, and were it not for the shallow rate of his breath he might have looked asleep. Both of his arms were folded beneath his head. One foot hung loose over the front of his car while the other propped itself up on the hood. His own jacket was still stashed in the back seat, unused. Given another fifteen minutes or so he might need it, but sixty degrees was still tolerable weather and he'd been running recently.
Hey.
Ian knew that Kiara was there. He'd felt her approach from halfway across the lot. But he didn't acknowledge her until she spoke. Then he opened his eyes and turned his head to regard her, blinking slowly as his eyes readjusted to the light.
"Hey."
He greeted her with this small, subtle smile, then gave a slow, fluid stretch. When he was done, he hopped down from the hood of his car and ran a hand over the back of his hair.
"Was beginning to think you might not show."
Kiara
He stretches, hops down from the hood of his car with all the sinuous grace of the cat he so resembles and she watches him, Kiara, the corner of her mouth hooking up as she does because it can't be denied it's no hardship to do exactly that. Look at him, the way he moves, the lithe grace of him.
She doesn't hide that she's watching him and there's that boldness about her that was there on the court. She holds her position, though a hand emerges to tender aside dark strands as they drift into her vision, the wind scattering leaves somewhere, playing in the fall of her hair before finding the tree branches, urging whispers and creaks from the oak above his Audi. He was beginning to think she might not show.
Her head cants a little, she leans a hip against the side of his car, sliding arms over her chest. "But you waited anyway." There's a hint of challenge there, a suggestive edge to the way she studies his face and then looks away. Her profile all dark edges and white on gray under the dull illumination of the light.
Glances back again and turns her body toward him, fingers skating over the curve of his car. Smoothing fingertips over the unblemished paintwork. "I got delayed, walking Grace home. She loves me now so I figured it was the least I could do." Her hand slides off his car, she takes a little step closer.
"I'm glad you waited." Quiet.
Ian
But you waited anyway.
"I did."
There was no trace of self-consciousness in his voice when he said that. Maybe there could have been. Maybe he seemed like the kind of man who didn't like to wait on anyone. Who didn't need to wait on anyone. But his confidence wasn't that fragile, and sometimes experiences were worth waiting for. He could be patient, when he wanted to be.
Kiara was glad he'd waited, and Ian... didn't say anything to that. But his smile returned, playing at the edges of his lips. There was a pregnant pause, silent apart from the ambient noise of the city. Then Ian stepped forward and cupped Kiara's face in one hand, his fingers playing over the outline of her cheek and jaw, and just like that the space between them closed. He leaned down and kissed her - hard enough to feel insistent, his breath a rough gust of warmth against her lips.
Kiara
He kisses her and cups her jaw, the delicate bones of it warm beneath his fingers and she's receptive almost instantly. Reaches up and wraps fingers around his wrist where he's anchoring her face near. Opens her mouth into it when his lips return and meets the hunger in it, pushes into his space and him into the side of the car while she steals the breath from his lungs the way she'd stolen her ball back on the court earlier.
The first time they'd been together he'd kissed her first, tasted her mouth with the bittersweet aftertaste of merlot still clinging to her lips. It had been a mutual exploration, of bodies, of lust, of like minded individuals, perhaps swimming against the current. Now, she's on the offensive. For all that he could map the span of her waist between his hands (maybe he has, at some point, who knew) and pull her off, Kiara pushes into his space, bites the edge of his mouth and traps him there between his car and her body.
Anyone could, in theory, walk upon them like this. Pressed together against the side of his car with their hands all over one another.
She drags her mouth away, lips kiss-stung, pupils blown and breathes, "tell me what you want," while deliberately holding herself away from him. Poised on the precipice of her lust while still attempting a maddening degree of control.
Ian
Their energies met. Crashed and broke like an ocean tide. And Kiara was not the first of the Awakened in Denver for Ian to do this with, but she was the first to turn that question back around on him. To drag her lips away and say: tell me what you want.
Perhaps everyone just assumed they didn't need to ask. Ian was a primal force. If he wanted something... well. Kiara already knew what his passions were like. They were similar creatures in this sense. But he didn't object when she pushed him against the car, just as he hadn't objected that night when she'd taken him by the shirt and led him to her room. Yes, he could have resisted. Could have pushed her away. But that wasn't what he wanted.
They kissed like two people who could have devoured each other (and maybe, in a darker moment, they could have.) Kiara bit the edge of Ian's mouth, and Ian let out a quick breath as his pulse gave an uptick. He ought to have been tired from exertion, and he was - a little. But the ache in his muscles was an afterthought compared to what he felt in his blood and on his skin. There was hunger in the back of his throat. (Strange the things that made people and monsters the same.)
Ian wet his lips. His eyes were nearly black in the reflection of the streetlamp.
"I want to drown in you."
Anyone might see them like this. Despite the dark and the quiet of the park at night. They were still in the open. This was still a public space. Maybe he didn't care.
Kiara
There's a reason she likes Washington Park. There's a reason beyond playing hoops or running, it's the same reason she liked Central Park in another city. Another reason why her coven drew her out into the suburban sprawl outside Manhattan. A creature such as she was, Kiara needed the grounding of the earth. Needed the tactile reminder of who and what and how she was.
She comes here and drowns herself in nature the way he wants to drown in her right now. Her with her dark eyes and wet mouth and feeling like she's fucking devouring him alive only to electrify his nerve endings back into sensation every time she touches him. It strikes her - or it will - that they've never told each other who they are, passing beyond names and the recognition that they were alike, that they were awake in ways other people weren't.
She says it plainly often - Verbena, descendant of the Pure Ones, the Aeduna, the Wyck ... so many ways to say the same thing - to leech out the truth. The one there in the instinctual, visceral reaction animals have toward her. The one she broadcasts in her own way. The one you can feel, sometimes, when she's near and turns her gilded, loaded smiles your way. Pagan. Witch. In the old ways as well as the new.
It's neither here or there really, but it's a discussion to come at some point. It's the calm after the storm, perhaps and not for right now. Not for when she's pressing him into the car and he's staring at her like he is. She wants to hear him say it, say something, that much is plain.
She's very close to him when he does say it and he can sense the smile as much as feel it when she presses their mouths back together and says, "You can, you know," in a private whisper and then takes his hand and pulls it to her chest, under her shirt, over her heart. The warmth of her skin. The rapid staccato of her heart beating just under the surface.
"Go as deep as you want."
Ian
[Forces 2, coincidental, diff 5, needs 2 successes]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ian
[And Life 1, diff 4 -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Ian
[oh come on]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
Kiara pressed his hand over her heart, and Ian closed his eyes as he felt the beat of it beneath his hand. They'd never spoken about their Traditions (or lack thereof.) There were a lot of things they'd never spoken about. Ian himself laid no claim to any organization (or perhaps more accurately, no organization could lay claim to him,) but certainly he had things that he believed. There were a great many things that Kiara didn't know about him, including the fact that they'd both lived in New York. But there were also things she did know that some others did not. People like Grace or Sera, who'd spoken to Ian on many occasions but had not seen the depth of his response to another person's heartbeat. Did not know how much that simple thing could deconstruct all of the carefully erected walls around his soul.
And it was willful, that letting go. It was a release. (Maybe they both needed it.)
Ian closed his eyes and felt the beat of Kiara's heart beneath his palm. And then he leaned back and looked up through the branches of the tree. At the sky. At the stars. The light beside them hummed with electric current. He gave a quick, stuttered breath and closed his other hand into a hard fist - until the nails dug half-moon shapes into his palm. And the light above them exploded into a shower of sparks that rained down onto the pavement.
Then it went dark.
Ian pressed his hands to Kiara's waist as he kissed her, flipping their positions so that he could press her back against the hood of the car. And unless she objected, he'd help lift her weight onto it, so that he could press his hips between her legs and roll his pelvis in this slow, fluid motion. Their athletic clothes were fairly thin, and didn't leave much to the imagination. When he kissed her again, he pressed his hand back over her heart and listened to the rhythm of her blood. Focused on it. Until the details of her pattern grew more acute. Until he could feel her pulse even when he wasn't touching her.
He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the ground. The air didn't feel cold anymore.
Kiara
She knows the way it feels to give over to that sensation.
It's primal, base and instinctual and there isn't any finer example of what it means to be alive than to press your palm against someone's chest and feel their heart raging against the idea that it could ever stop, that the body could cease to be, grow cold, no longer pulse with blood and sweat and everything in between. Ian feels Kiara there, under her skin, beyond the sinew and bone. Feels her, the pulse of her pattern, the threads that connect her to everything. The strength, the desire, every frenzied beat like a synapse, firing and crackling to life only to die before renewing itself.
She gives him that, holds his hand there and breathes out jaggedly when he flips her, the motion stealing her breath. The streetlight shatters, sparks reflecting in the windows of his car before they die and she curls a leg around his waist when he presses into her, rolls his pelvis against hers and he can feel that, too. Her arousal, the sharp noise she makes when he does it. He pulls his shirt off, she unzips her jacket, throws it into the darkness blindly.
Sits up, slides down the hood of his car to shed clothing. Shirt, bra. Shakes her hair out of her eyes and lays back like an offering to be made. For the fact she's half naked on top of a car in a public parking lot Kiara displays a startling lack of hesitation. But then, it's nearly pitch black without the streetlight. The only illumination coming from the moon and the vague impression of another light across the lot, casting dull sallow light across the square of gravel.
She pulls him closer.
Her skin cast in starker contrast for the lights being out, she wraps an arm around his neck, grabs his other hand and guides it back toward her body, whispers against his ear.
"Put your hands on me."
Ian
She didn't need to ask (demand, really,) but he liked that she did. And the moment her skin was bare in the moonlight he could not help but touch her. His hands found her waist again, thumbs pressing into her stomach as he slid his palms slowly up the length of her torso, over the dips and ridges of her ribcage until he reached the swell of her breasts. And he bent down to kiss the base of her throat, an almost disarmingly delicate thing - this soft press of open lips and warm breath. He could feel her nipples beneath his palms and rolled his hands back over them slowly.
A responsible person would say at this point: we should go somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere private. But Ian was not a responsible person. (At least, not in that respect.)
Soon his lips found their way down to where his hands were, and he rolled his tongue over one of her nipples, glancing up to watch her reaction before he closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her skin. One of his hands slipped down past the waistline of her pants and pressed between her legs. Found the warmth there beneath her clothes and traced over it.
His senses were full of Kiara's heartbeat. The pulse and rhythm of it. The way it changed when he touched her or when her breathing shifted. He didn't want to pull away, but he did, briefly. Long enough to help her out of the rest of her clothes. He could have been more careful - gone around instead of pulling them off. But he wanted to see her stretched out like that, naked and beautiful on the hood of his car in the shadows and the moonlight.
He kissed the skin beneath her ankle bone, tracing the tips of his fingers up over her calf. Then he kissed the inside of her thigh. Once. Twice. The second time he bit down lightly. If her fingers were not already in his hair, he would reach out to take her hand and put it there. Asking without asking.
He'd promised her something back on the basketball court. And he had ever intention of fulfilling that promise. Wanted it, just as he'd wanted it the first night they'd spent together. But there was something about the way they were doing it now that made it just that much more fucking perfect. He moaned when his lips found her. When his tongue pressed into wet heat and slid up over her clit. Everything about Kiara was alive in that moment, and it was so very easy to lose himself in it. (To drown, as he'd said he wanted to do.)
Kiara
Perhaps its the fact that she worships the elements, the Gods and Goddesses of the Earth, the divinity in Nature itself that writhing naked under the moon is not such a ridiculous prospect. Perhaps the voyeur in her rejoices in it, the pagan in her certainly does. This is old magic, energy raised by bodies joining together. She'd told Sera as much the other night, hand open on the table, palm upward in a gesture of supplication.
Energy, we're made up of it, we invoke it every day of our lives. Every thought, every word ... it's breathing, running, laughing ... sex. Just another kind of it. Another conduit for connection, for raising consciousness to the next level. Kiara revels in the way he touches her, spine arching slightly off the hood of his car when he sets to mouthing his way down her body, when he slides his palms over her ribcage (feeling the rise and contraction of her breathing), the slope of her chest, fingers grazing her breasts; nipples. He looks up the length of her body at one point to gauge her reaction and finds her eyes open, watching him with rapt focus as he makes himself a devotee, a worshipper at the altar.
Her head cants back, eyes slide shut when his mouth moves between her legs. He guides her fingers to his hair and blunt fingernails bite into his scalp, tugging and (to some degree) guiding him right where she wants him. He had made a promise, after all. He can easily drown in her responses, though. She gives herself so wholly, Kiara, to the act of pleasure; attaining it, harboring it there, right on the cusp that its impossible not to feel entirely surrounded by, swallowed by it.
The heat of her skin, the pulse of her pattern. The way she cages him close to her body with the supple strength of her legs. He keeps his promise to her and she lets him hear it when she comes. Head thrown back, brows knit together as if in consternation, teeth sinking down into her lower lip at some point hard enough to draw blood (and that's an offering too, of its own sort).
Ian
In the moment, Ian didn't think about the fact that making noise was probably a bad idea. Not when the sounds Kiara made felt like velvet crawling up his skin. Her hands were in his hair, knotting strands of it around her fingers as her body grew taught and tense beneath him. Ian sucked in a breath when he felt her come (felt it in more ways than one,) and the sensation was dizzying and electric.
He didn't stop until she released her hold on him. At which point he leaned over and kissed the edge of her collarbone. Then her jaw. Then her lips.
"You're fucking beautiful like this."
She was always beautiful. He'd said as much before. But this time his voice held a note of quiet reverence to it.
He didn't actually have a condom on him, so he had to pull away to open the car. There was always at least a few in the glove compartment, and he found one now, tearing open the wrapper as he shut the door and came back around to where Kiara was resting on the hood. They still hadn't been caught, and Ian was pressing their luck considerably, but that was the thing about being Awake. You got used to being able to do things that most people couldn't get away with.
Later, just after they'd finished, someone would walk by. And Ian would send a mental impulse just in time to keep the two of them from being seen. Probably they'd laugh about it.
But for the moment, there was just the two of them beneath the stars, surrounded by life and open air. And as Ian pushed into Kiara, he curved his spine and kissed her and moaned against her lips. And for a while he didn't think about anything else.
The sun was down, though the hour wasn't yet so late that Washington Park was empty of visitors. There were fewer now than there had been when Kiara and Ian had arrived, and given time the place was likely to get pretty quiet, but there were still cars in the lot. Ian got there first, partly because he was running and partly because Kiara had offered to take a detour with Grace. When he arrived, he paced around the lot once, letting his heart rate slow and his muscles cool. Gradually his breathing grew less pronounced.
There were a couple of teenagers arguing a few stalls down from where he'd parked his Audi. He ignored them as he passed by, and eventually they got in their car and left. After that, he was left alone to wait. His car sat idle beneath the overhanging branches of a large oak tree near the end of the lot. Sodium light from a nearby streetlamp illuminated the pavement around him, casting speckled shadows through the leaves. Ian hopped up onto the hood of his car and lay back with his eyes closed. He didn't bother to put his earbuds back in. Instead he listened to the sounds of the park and the distant hum of engines from the road.
This is how Kiara would find him when she arrived. Like a cat lounging in the moonlight. She'd seen his car before, so she knew what to look for. But given their particular awareness and sensitivity to each other's presence, she probably wouldn't actually need to look to find him.
Kiara
Her car was parked across the lot from his. Washington Park, busier when she pulled in earlier, had left her little options for stowing her vehicle. Though it stood now quite solitary in its corner, a red blight amongst the shadows, somehow more obscure for the inky twilight and somehow, of course, of course the car that belonged to a woman like Kiara Woolfe.
It would be blood red. Some small and compact thing with stickers peeling off the back window. With dust etched into the paint, clouding the rearview windows. He's there well before her, detoured as the brunette was walking Grace to the (relative) safety of her own destination, if anywhere could be safe for any of them, being who they were. The temperature has cooled a few degrees for the sun's absence and when eventually, the Verbena closes on the parking lot, she's restored her jacket to her body, a bag slung over a shoulder, basketball caged under one arm, toted against her ribcage.
A set of keys are wound around her fingers.
If she notices Ian (which she does), she doesn't acknowledge him lounging on his car (yet) but heads to her own and unlocks the door, stows her belongings in it and shuts it again. The sound of the door slamming echoing for the near loneliness of the lot now. Occupancy dwindled down to a lone two, one with the appearance of a creature quite at his leisure and the other toying with her own.
Kiara's sneakers crunch over the earth as she approaches. She doesn't need to look for him, he's right about that, she knows the sense of him now. Has felt his pattern curled around her own, knows what he feels like under her hands. She reaches the wheel of his car, hands in her pockets, the streetlight playing over her body.
She doesn't say anything at first and when she does, it's simple. Unfussed.
"Hey."
Ian
She might not have shown. Whispered flirtations on a basketball court weren't necessarily meant to be taken as a promise. And given enough time, Ian probably would have found something else to occupy his evening. But he waited, and there was nothing impatient about his demeanor in that moment. His posture was relaxed, and were it not for the shallow rate of his breath he might have looked asleep. Both of his arms were folded beneath his head. One foot hung loose over the front of his car while the other propped itself up on the hood. His own jacket was still stashed in the back seat, unused. Given another fifteen minutes or so he might need it, but sixty degrees was still tolerable weather and he'd been running recently.
Hey.
Ian knew that Kiara was there. He'd felt her approach from halfway across the lot. But he didn't acknowledge her until she spoke. Then he opened his eyes and turned his head to regard her, blinking slowly as his eyes readjusted to the light.
"Hey."
He greeted her with this small, subtle smile, then gave a slow, fluid stretch. When he was done, he hopped down from the hood of his car and ran a hand over the back of his hair.
"Was beginning to think you might not show."
Kiara
He stretches, hops down from the hood of his car with all the sinuous grace of the cat he so resembles and she watches him, Kiara, the corner of her mouth hooking up as she does because it can't be denied it's no hardship to do exactly that. Look at him, the way he moves, the lithe grace of him.
She doesn't hide that she's watching him and there's that boldness about her that was there on the court. She holds her position, though a hand emerges to tender aside dark strands as they drift into her vision, the wind scattering leaves somewhere, playing in the fall of her hair before finding the tree branches, urging whispers and creaks from the oak above his Audi. He was beginning to think she might not show.
Her head cants a little, she leans a hip against the side of his car, sliding arms over her chest. "But you waited anyway." There's a hint of challenge there, a suggestive edge to the way she studies his face and then looks away. Her profile all dark edges and white on gray under the dull illumination of the light.
Glances back again and turns her body toward him, fingers skating over the curve of his car. Smoothing fingertips over the unblemished paintwork. "I got delayed, walking Grace home. She loves me now so I figured it was the least I could do." Her hand slides off his car, she takes a little step closer.
"I'm glad you waited." Quiet.
Ian
But you waited anyway.
"I did."
There was no trace of self-consciousness in his voice when he said that. Maybe there could have been. Maybe he seemed like the kind of man who didn't like to wait on anyone. Who didn't need to wait on anyone. But his confidence wasn't that fragile, and sometimes experiences were worth waiting for. He could be patient, when he wanted to be.
Kiara was glad he'd waited, and Ian... didn't say anything to that. But his smile returned, playing at the edges of his lips. There was a pregnant pause, silent apart from the ambient noise of the city. Then Ian stepped forward and cupped Kiara's face in one hand, his fingers playing over the outline of her cheek and jaw, and just like that the space between them closed. He leaned down and kissed her - hard enough to feel insistent, his breath a rough gust of warmth against her lips.
Kiara
He kisses her and cups her jaw, the delicate bones of it warm beneath his fingers and she's receptive almost instantly. Reaches up and wraps fingers around his wrist where he's anchoring her face near. Opens her mouth into it when his lips return and meets the hunger in it, pushes into his space and him into the side of the car while she steals the breath from his lungs the way she'd stolen her ball back on the court earlier.
The first time they'd been together he'd kissed her first, tasted her mouth with the bittersweet aftertaste of merlot still clinging to her lips. It had been a mutual exploration, of bodies, of lust, of like minded individuals, perhaps swimming against the current. Now, she's on the offensive. For all that he could map the span of her waist between his hands (maybe he has, at some point, who knew) and pull her off, Kiara pushes into his space, bites the edge of his mouth and traps him there between his car and her body.
Anyone could, in theory, walk upon them like this. Pressed together against the side of his car with their hands all over one another.
She drags her mouth away, lips kiss-stung, pupils blown and breathes, "tell me what you want," while deliberately holding herself away from him. Poised on the precipice of her lust while still attempting a maddening degree of control.
Ian
Their energies met. Crashed and broke like an ocean tide. And Kiara was not the first of the Awakened in Denver for Ian to do this with, but she was the first to turn that question back around on him. To drag her lips away and say: tell me what you want.
Perhaps everyone just assumed they didn't need to ask. Ian was a primal force. If he wanted something... well. Kiara already knew what his passions were like. They were similar creatures in this sense. But he didn't object when she pushed him against the car, just as he hadn't objected that night when she'd taken him by the shirt and led him to her room. Yes, he could have resisted. Could have pushed her away. But that wasn't what he wanted.
They kissed like two people who could have devoured each other (and maybe, in a darker moment, they could have.) Kiara bit the edge of Ian's mouth, and Ian let out a quick breath as his pulse gave an uptick. He ought to have been tired from exertion, and he was - a little. But the ache in his muscles was an afterthought compared to what he felt in his blood and on his skin. There was hunger in the back of his throat. (Strange the things that made people and monsters the same.)
Ian wet his lips. His eyes were nearly black in the reflection of the streetlamp.
"I want to drown in you."
Anyone might see them like this. Despite the dark and the quiet of the park at night. They were still in the open. This was still a public space. Maybe he didn't care.
Kiara
There's a reason she likes Washington Park. There's a reason beyond playing hoops or running, it's the same reason she liked Central Park in another city. Another reason why her coven drew her out into the suburban sprawl outside Manhattan. A creature such as she was, Kiara needed the grounding of the earth. Needed the tactile reminder of who and what and how she was.
She comes here and drowns herself in nature the way he wants to drown in her right now. Her with her dark eyes and wet mouth and feeling like she's fucking devouring him alive only to electrify his nerve endings back into sensation every time she touches him. It strikes her - or it will - that they've never told each other who they are, passing beyond names and the recognition that they were alike, that they were awake in ways other people weren't.
She says it plainly often - Verbena, descendant of the Pure Ones, the Aeduna, the Wyck ... so many ways to say the same thing - to leech out the truth. The one there in the instinctual, visceral reaction animals have toward her. The one she broadcasts in her own way. The one you can feel, sometimes, when she's near and turns her gilded, loaded smiles your way. Pagan. Witch. In the old ways as well as the new.
It's neither here or there really, but it's a discussion to come at some point. It's the calm after the storm, perhaps and not for right now. Not for when she's pressing him into the car and he's staring at her like he is. She wants to hear him say it, say something, that much is plain.
She's very close to him when he does say it and he can sense the smile as much as feel it when she presses their mouths back together and says, "You can, you know," in a private whisper and then takes his hand and pulls it to her chest, under her shirt, over her heart. The warmth of her skin. The rapid staccato of her heart beating just under the surface.
"Go as deep as you want."
Ian
[Forces 2, coincidental, diff 5, needs 2 successes]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ian
[And Life 1, diff 4 -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Ian
[oh come on]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
Kiara pressed his hand over her heart, and Ian closed his eyes as he felt the beat of it beneath his hand. They'd never spoken about their Traditions (or lack thereof.) There were a lot of things they'd never spoken about. Ian himself laid no claim to any organization (or perhaps more accurately, no organization could lay claim to him,) but certainly he had things that he believed. There were a great many things that Kiara didn't know about him, including the fact that they'd both lived in New York. But there were also things she did know that some others did not. People like Grace or Sera, who'd spoken to Ian on many occasions but had not seen the depth of his response to another person's heartbeat. Did not know how much that simple thing could deconstruct all of the carefully erected walls around his soul.
And it was willful, that letting go. It was a release. (Maybe they both needed it.)
Ian closed his eyes and felt the beat of Kiara's heart beneath his palm. And then he leaned back and looked up through the branches of the tree. At the sky. At the stars. The light beside them hummed with electric current. He gave a quick, stuttered breath and closed his other hand into a hard fist - until the nails dug half-moon shapes into his palm. And the light above them exploded into a shower of sparks that rained down onto the pavement.
Then it went dark.
Ian pressed his hands to Kiara's waist as he kissed her, flipping their positions so that he could press her back against the hood of the car. And unless she objected, he'd help lift her weight onto it, so that he could press his hips between her legs and roll his pelvis in this slow, fluid motion. Their athletic clothes were fairly thin, and didn't leave much to the imagination. When he kissed her again, he pressed his hand back over her heart and listened to the rhythm of her blood. Focused on it. Until the details of her pattern grew more acute. Until he could feel her pulse even when he wasn't touching her.
He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the ground. The air didn't feel cold anymore.
Kiara
She knows the way it feels to give over to that sensation.
It's primal, base and instinctual and there isn't any finer example of what it means to be alive than to press your palm against someone's chest and feel their heart raging against the idea that it could ever stop, that the body could cease to be, grow cold, no longer pulse with blood and sweat and everything in between. Ian feels Kiara there, under her skin, beyond the sinew and bone. Feels her, the pulse of her pattern, the threads that connect her to everything. The strength, the desire, every frenzied beat like a synapse, firing and crackling to life only to die before renewing itself.
She gives him that, holds his hand there and breathes out jaggedly when he flips her, the motion stealing her breath. The streetlight shatters, sparks reflecting in the windows of his car before they die and she curls a leg around his waist when he presses into her, rolls his pelvis against hers and he can feel that, too. Her arousal, the sharp noise she makes when he does it. He pulls his shirt off, she unzips her jacket, throws it into the darkness blindly.
Sits up, slides down the hood of his car to shed clothing. Shirt, bra. Shakes her hair out of her eyes and lays back like an offering to be made. For the fact she's half naked on top of a car in a public parking lot Kiara displays a startling lack of hesitation. But then, it's nearly pitch black without the streetlight. The only illumination coming from the moon and the vague impression of another light across the lot, casting dull sallow light across the square of gravel.
She pulls him closer.
Her skin cast in starker contrast for the lights being out, she wraps an arm around his neck, grabs his other hand and guides it back toward her body, whispers against his ear.
"Put your hands on me."
Ian
She didn't need to ask (demand, really,) but he liked that she did. And the moment her skin was bare in the moonlight he could not help but touch her. His hands found her waist again, thumbs pressing into her stomach as he slid his palms slowly up the length of her torso, over the dips and ridges of her ribcage until he reached the swell of her breasts. And he bent down to kiss the base of her throat, an almost disarmingly delicate thing - this soft press of open lips and warm breath. He could feel her nipples beneath his palms and rolled his hands back over them slowly.
A responsible person would say at this point: we should go somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere private. But Ian was not a responsible person. (At least, not in that respect.)
Soon his lips found their way down to where his hands were, and he rolled his tongue over one of her nipples, glancing up to watch her reaction before he closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her skin. One of his hands slipped down past the waistline of her pants and pressed between her legs. Found the warmth there beneath her clothes and traced over it.
His senses were full of Kiara's heartbeat. The pulse and rhythm of it. The way it changed when he touched her or when her breathing shifted. He didn't want to pull away, but he did, briefly. Long enough to help her out of the rest of her clothes. He could have been more careful - gone around instead of pulling them off. But he wanted to see her stretched out like that, naked and beautiful on the hood of his car in the shadows and the moonlight.
He kissed the skin beneath her ankle bone, tracing the tips of his fingers up over her calf. Then he kissed the inside of her thigh. Once. Twice. The second time he bit down lightly. If her fingers were not already in his hair, he would reach out to take her hand and put it there. Asking without asking.
He'd promised her something back on the basketball court. And he had ever intention of fulfilling that promise. Wanted it, just as he'd wanted it the first night they'd spent together. But there was something about the way they were doing it now that made it just that much more fucking perfect. He moaned when his lips found her. When his tongue pressed into wet heat and slid up over her clit. Everything about Kiara was alive in that moment, and it was so very easy to lose himself in it. (To drown, as he'd said he wanted to do.)
Kiara
Perhaps its the fact that she worships the elements, the Gods and Goddesses of the Earth, the divinity in Nature itself that writhing naked under the moon is not such a ridiculous prospect. Perhaps the voyeur in her rejoices in it, the pagan in her certainly does. This is old magic, energy raised by bodies joining together. She'd told Sera as much the other night, hand open on the table, palm upward in a gesture of supplication.
Energy, we're made up of it, we invoke it every day of our lives. Every thought, every word ... it's breathing, running, laughing ... sex. Just another kind of it. Another conduit for connection, for raising consciousness to the next level. Kiara revels in the way he touches her, spine arching slightly off the hood of his car when he sets to mouthing his way down her body, when he slides his palms over her ribcage (feeling the rise and contraction of her breathing), the slope of her chest, fingers grazing her breasts; nipples. He looks up the length of her body at one point to gauge her reaction and finds her eyes open, watching him with rapt focus as he makes himself a devotee, a worshipper at the altar.
Her head cants back, eyes slide shut when his mouth moves between her legs. He guides her fingers to his hair and blunt fingernails bite into his scalp, tugging and (to some degree) guiding him right where she wants him. He had made a promise, after all. He can easily drown in her responses, though. She gives herself so wholly, Kiara, to the act of pleasure; attaining it, harboring it there, right on the cusp that its impossible not to feel entirely surrounded by, swallowed by it.
The heat of her skin, the pulse of her pattern. The way she cages him close to her body with the supple strength of her legs. He keeps his promise to her and she lets him hear it when she comes. Head thrown back, brows knit together as if in consternation, teeth sinking down into her lower lip at some point hard enough to draw blood (and that's an offering too, of its own sort).
Ian
In the moment, Ian didn't think about the fact that making noise was probably a bad idea. Not when the sounds Kiara made felt like velvet crawling up his skin. Her hands were in his hair, knotting strands of it around her fingers as her body grew taught and tense beneath him. Ian sucked in a breath when he felt her come (felt it in more ways than one,) and the sensation was dizzying and electric.
He didn't stop until she released her hold on him. At which point he leaned over and kissed the edge of her collarbone. Then her jaw. Then her lips.
"You're fucking beautiful like this."
She was always beautiful. He'd said as much before. But this time his voice held a note of quiet reverence to it.
He didn't actually have a condom on him, so he had to pull away to open the car. There was always at least a few in the glove compartment, and he found one now, tearing open the wrapper as he shut the door and came back around to where Kiara was resting on the hood. They still hadn't been caught, and Ian was pressing their luck considerably, but that was the thing about being Awake. You got used to being able to do things that most people couldn't get away with.
Later, just after they'd finished, someone would walk by. And Ian would send a mental impulse just in time to keep the two of them from being seen. Probably they'd laugh about it.
But for the moment, there was just the two of them beneath the stars, surrounded by life and open air. And as Ian pushed into Kiara, he curved his spine and kissed her and moaned against her lips. And for a while he didn't think about anything else.
playing dirty. [ian, grace, alexander, kalen]
Kiara Woolfe
[Dexterity + Athletics: playing hoops! Can you play, Ms Woolfe?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 10) ( success x 1 )
Kiara Woolfe
[That was terrible, let's try that again.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Ian
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Alexander
[Awareness too]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Kiara Woolfe
Washington Park at dusk is captivating.
The days are growing a little colder in Denver, winter's claws are neatly beginning to sink in, inch by inch, into the air, into the earth. Hardening it, turning it into a slumbering beast awaiting the warming rays of the thaw to come. The female on the courts is alone, but not, in a broader sense. There's joggers doing the circuit of the park, stepping in unison.
There's a couple entwined on the grass some distance from her, a woman walking her dog, figures moving through the grand expanse on their travels elsewhere. Heading home, most likely. Most pay little attention to Kiara as she moves across the court, bouncing a ball and weaving it this way and that, stopping short of one hoop and neatly tossing it toward the net.
It sinks through, dropping and bouncing away to collide with the fence.
The Verbena walks over to it, rolls it back into her hands and begins anew, flicking the hair out of her eyes as it sticks to her brow. There's no judge, no jury and surely no need for finesse when you train alone. Only the surety of the rhythm of your heart, the air expanding your lungs and the sound of your breathing. She enjoys it, the push and strain of her muscles as she runs, twists, throws the ball.
Muscle memory expanding and encompassing until its forgotten -- where body begins and ends -- where the line is drawn. Until there is no line. She's been at it long enough to be breathing hard and fast, to have discarded her jacket, laying with a pile of belongings on top of a wooden bench beside the court. The sun is banking the horizon now, it'll be dark save for the lighting the park provides, but the brunette has little urgency to her steps as she repositions herself to try for another hoop.
Grace
Parks are cool. Especially parks in the city where one can still get a good wi-fi signal. Nature is fine, so long as you don't completely detach, right? Or at least, that's how Grace sees it.
She's walking along with Kalen in tow, wearing the coat he gave her (red, sharp, and a whole lot more fashionable than Grace would ever do to herself). The coat is covered with little additions -- doodads and plastic strips sewn into the fabric. What purpose they serve? Who knows. If one gets a very close look, one might see that they're all electronic.
She notices Kiara first, not the person, but that sense of her that's so reminiscent of... Ah, yes.
Don't ignore the signs of the snake which shall appear in your daily life, before the messenger appears, they said. There was the boy with the ouroboros tattoo. There were the Auryn keys, there is Kiara.
"Hey, come on. I think I see somebody," Grace says, and starts walking down toward the court.
Ian
It was evening in Washington Park, so of course Ian was running. His feet beat out a steady, rapid pace along the path, keeping time with the lush pulse of music coming from his earbuds. He'd been at it long enough to feel the low, steady burn in his lungs and the flush of heat on his skin. Exertion kept him warm, despite the season - though the temperature in Denver had not been nearly so chilly as it had in days past.
The park was busy tonight. There were other runners. Dog-walkers. Couples. Mostly, Ian ignored them. But as he approached the basketball court and felt a stirring of cyclic (rejuventating, devouring) energy, he slowed his pace to a loping jog and cut across the grass, finally coming to a halt beside the court. He pulled the earbuds out of his ears and draped them loosely over his neck. For a moment he grew still, catching his breath as he watched Kiara toss the ball through the net.
"Need an opponent?"
He had on black drawstring track pants, silver running shoes and a short-sleeved black athletic shirt. His cell phone was strapped around his left bicep.
Kiara Woolfe
[How are our Mage senses tonight?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alexander
The park is attracting Alexander a lot at the moment. Part of that is the hope that The Message will make another appearance. Part of that is simply because it’s a large open space in the city, a space with a whole load of potential for getting out and doing things.
And so the pleasant weather and the wide open space pulls Alexander out running. His route so far has taken various turns from the Downtown area towards the park – still learning the lay of the land, the shortcuts and backstreets that can make the journey from Point A to Point B that much quicker. Call it useful knowledge for his current career, or old habits from an old job. Either way, it’s fun to explore the parts of the city that the tourist trails avoid.
So he’s pounding the path through the park when he feels the coming-together of their kind. Kalen, Grace and Ian are close – to Alex and to each other – and their resonances begin to merge. But there’s another, an unknown sensation in the air. Not exactly unknown. Certainly reminiscent of someone else not so long ago, that Devouring sensation. He slows, breathing steadily, and slowly makes his way to where he can see what’s going on. His red running tee is wet with sweat, even in the cool air, and black shorts and black-and-red running shoes clothe him for the moment. A cable runs from his headphones and into his pocket, although the headphones are pulled away when he notices the feelings in the air.
Kiara Woolfe
She's got her stance down and shoots, but the ball rebounds off the back of the board and ricochets behind her, rolling gently in the direction of the man who's appeared, blackclad at the edge of the court. She feels the stirring at the edges of her awareness, that prickling over her skin that's more than just the fact she's suddenly stopped after long minutes of exercise.
He's in black, she's in gray and white the female, her track pants tied loosely around a narrow waist, shirt short sleeved, cut close to her shoulders and leaving a fair expanse of her arms bare. For once, Kiara's devoid of her jewellery and it's striking how notable that is. She's stripped back, casual and flushed from exertion.
"Hey," is the quick greeting he gets, though she couples it with a breathless smile and moves closer, one hand on her waist as she lets her breathing even out. "Sure, if you think you can keep up." There are others nearby, Grace and Kalen are approaching and another, one Kiara doesn't yet know is on his way, too. But her senses aren't that keen tonight, distracted by the game. Focused, for the moment, on reclaiming her ball and gently lobbing it at Ian.
Grace
Grace huffs a little laughing breath at Kiara's "if you think you can keep up." To Ian?
Ahh yes, they're playing sportsball. Grace plops herself down by the side of the court in the grass, waves at Ian and Kiara. But it doesn't look like she's going to be playing tonight.
Nope, her cell phone comes out.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen is dressed warmly and carrying a cup of coffee. Like Grace, he is wearing a tailored coat. His is also long, but gray and not covered with any extra bits. Not that he has not implored Grace to male him a technocoat, he so has, he is just not wearing that tonight.
He trails behind Grace until he registers not only Kiara but Alexander. He does not settle into the ground beside Grace, just glances quickly to where Ian is joining Kiara and then toward where he can sense Alexander.
"I'll be back, Kit," he says. But her phone is already out. Ian is right here. He and Alexander will not be far away. Grace is certainly not the inexperienced Orphan he met a bit more than a year before.
And so he doesn't even remind her to be careful before he starts toward Alexander. Ian and Kiara, if they look toward him, get a wave. But apparently Alexander gets his attention first tonight.
Ian
Kiara tossed the ball at his chest, and Ian caught it with a wry smirk. Did he think he could keep up? "Guess we'll have to see."
He tucked the ball under his arm and reached over to unstrap the arm-band from around his bicep, setting it and his earbuds down on a nearby bench. There was a brief glance tossed back at his things, then at the park at large, as he walked onto the court (as though he did not entirely trust that someone might not try to make off with his phone.) Grace walked up with Kalen and sat down in the grass, and Ian shot them a quick greeting.
"Hey." He nodded at Grace, but Kalen was already on his way to talk to Alexander, so Ian let his focus shift back to Kiara. He rolled the basketball out from under his arm and tossed it between his hands once, then gave an experimental shot over her head at the opposing hoop.
[Dex+Athletics, wee!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Alexander
That feeling in the air – the feeling of inescapable consumption – is similar, but still different, to that Ravenous hunger that had been plaguing the city. He’d thought that it had ended, but... Well, he’ll see. That there are several familiar others gathering, and that there doesn’t seem to be any conflict – not yet, at least – is slightly reassuring. As is the feeling of the approaching storm.
“Hey,” he greets Kalen with. “Somebody new in town?” Kalen gets a smile, but Alexander’s attention keeps getting drawn back to the basketball court.
Kiara Woolfe
[Dex + Athletics, he's totally showing you up, Kiara. At least get it in the hoop.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kiara Woolfe
Kiara's presence does take getting used to. It's not overwhelming, not in the way some resonances are but it's distracting, at first. For some people, it might even be a little upsetting. Certainly the sensation of being devoured and then restored, brought abruptly back into the moment was unsettling in its own way. It was the beginning and end of a cycle. The woman it belonged to however, was not by any immediate impression, a creature to be feared.
Distrusted, perhaps. Wary of, certainly, any Awakened meeting another for the first time carried with them that inherent hesitation but Kiara Woolfe didn't strike you as the type to devour anyone beyond what her pattern's imprint conjured up. At the present moment that being said -- she was also feeling rather competitive. Ian gracefully lobs the ball over her head and it sails into the net with a degree of precision befitting someone with his natural athleticism.
Grace is acknowledged, as is Kalen as she turns on the spot to watch it arc through the air. She glances at him. "Show off." The jib isn't hostile, not with the way the corner of her mouth curls up. If anything it's playful. She jogs over to reclaim her ball, bounces it once and walks toward him, balancing it against her hip.
She nods at the net over his head and taking a moment to recalibrate her footing, aims for the hoop and lets the ball sail, watching it intently as it hits the board, teeters for a moment as if in deliberation about whether to score or not and eventually sinks through.
Grace
She nods to Kalen, and smiles at Ian. "Hey yourself."
Ian can be a bit distracting can't he? And so he distracts her away from her internet to watch him be all perfect.
"He is a show off. Oh very much so," she says with a roll of the eyes. As if she herself didn't show off with regularity. Is it a Mage personality quirk perhaps?
Kalen Holliday
Alexander's attention is drawn toward the court. And, in all honesty, so is Kalen's, but not for Kiara. Ian is something to watch, when he's moving. Kalen's attention returns to Alexander rather quickly, but then, this is hardly a show to Kalen.
"Yeah," he says to Alexander. "I haven't spent much time with her, but she is very willing to do tequila shots and seems very friendly. I find her lack of suspicion suspicious, but then...I'm kind of terrible like that, huh?" He leans into Alexander for a second, casual and not really cuddly, as if Alexander is a nice convenient column. Yeah...he definitely doesn't need more sleep.
"Come meet her?" And there is, in that tone, an invitation. One that if Alexander turns down will likely be followed up with invitations to donuts. Or Thai. Or whatever thing Kalen thinks of that sounds interesting for the moment.
Ian
It was a perfect shot through the net. Better than he'd expected, if we're being honest. But Kiara and Grace didn't need to know that. From the outside, all they saw was how absolutely effortless he made it look.
Show off.
Ian grinned. Kiara grabbed the ball and tossed it into the other net, and maybe it wasn't a perfect shot, but it was still pretty good. She wasn't exactly out of her element.
"I can stop if you want." He shot another look over at Grace and raised an eyebrow teasingly. When Kiara's ball dropped to the ground, he jogged over to grab it.
"Feel like playing for stakes?"
Kiara was feeling competitive. Evidently, so was Ian. The look he shot her was confident and flirtatious. Like a dare. He spun the ball in his hand and bounced it on the pavement as he walked back to the center of the court, turning around to shoot her another look over his shoulder. This one felt more like a temptation. (Like thinly veiled secrets.)
Alexander
“Well, everybody’s up to something. Maybe she just doesn’t care. But sure, I’ll come and say hello.” Alexander fishes around in his pocket for his phone, turning off the music. He knocks into Kalen, nudging him with his elbow, as he starts the walk over to the basketball court. He wraps his headphones around a hand before tucking them back into the same pocket as the phone.
He settles at the side of the court, near Grace. “Hey, Grace. How’re things?” She gets a smile, although maybe not as open and warm as it would have been a few weeks ago. Not for anything she’s done. More for other things.
And speaking of other things, how does he greet Ian? Ian will get a wave if he looks towards Alexander, but he doesn’t call out to him. Mainly because he doesn’t know what to say. And so he stays quiet.
Kiara will get a hand raised in greeting if she happens to look over. Her resonance isn’t the easiest to get used to, and between that and the awkwardness of not quite knowing how to interact with Ian? He’s not looking all that comfortable, and it’s nothing to do with the surface that he’s sitting on.
Kiara Woolfe
Kiara shoots Grace a smile that is accompanied with a dramatic roll of her eyes heavenward when Ian decrees he can stop. She's flushed, but the exertion suits her, somehow. It makes her more focused, for one thing. Her smiles come freer, there's less calculation to the manner she approaches the world when she's like this. Surrounded by nature. Grounded by it, thrilling in the physicality of the moment.
"Ante up, buddy," she calls as she approaches, there's amusement in her voice; a gleam in her dark eyes that matches Ian's. The flirtatious banter comes easily, apparently. So does getting in his space as soon as she's near, crowding up close and trying to steal the ball out of his hands in a dirty maneuver.
As she does, two new figures appear on the sidelines, Kalen she recognizes and he gets an acknowledgement of sorts and Alexander -- a curious look, a brief incline of her head toward him in unspoken hello before she returns her attention to the stakes at hand.
She wants her ball back. Nobody would ever say Kiara Woolfe was above trickery in sports.
Grace
Grace's eyes flit up from her phone to Alex. "Things are ridiculous. We've got White Knight problems again," she says, keeping her voice low. "He, she, it, whatever seems to like contacting apprentices and telling them all about the wonderful fuzzy goodness of the Techs, and how they just want to help. Which, yeah. No."
She bites her lower lip, looking at the court, but not really watching the players. "Something's going to go boom again soon, I can feel it."
Ian
[Dex+Ath keep the ball!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen settles next to Alexander, opposite Grace. He looks over at Grace, and his eyes are serious. But he doesn't really address the question about their (self-proclaimed) White Knight. He has a different read on that situation, but he does think it's dangerous. Still, for someone who can laser focus on the thought that they are besieged by monsters and evil, he seems oddly willing to let it go. Technocrats and vampires and things that are not the five of them in this park.
All he says, without any real sense of urgency, is, "That's always how this place is. But, at least I hope, not tonight. Let's get to know our new friend shall we? It would be a shame if we lost sight of doing that just because the world threatens to end once or twice a season."
Ian
Back on the sidelines, Grace started talking about technocrats, and Ian... chose not to let it distract him. Not because it wasn't a valid concern (of course it was - there was always some kind of potential threat looming) but because it wasn't a matter that immediately involved him, and sometimes one just needed to play a fucking round of basketball without worrying about the world ending.
Kiara tried to steal the ball, but Ian held it close and rolled it around his torso, keeping it teasingly out of reach. She answered his challenge with one of her own, and he grinned broadly enough to show a flash of teeth. Then he leaned in and whispered something in her ear.
And there was Kalen suggesting that they all get to know each other. Whatever Ian was up to, it probably wasn't appropriate for a larger game. But of course, they didn't need to know that.
"First to five wins?"
Ian
How about if you win, I'll go down on you in the parking lot.
Kiara Woolfe
Say what you would about Kiara, the girl certainly knew how to throw herself into the thick of things. Drinking tequila into the early hours one night, keeping pace on the basketball court the next. That sort of general exuberance for life was almost exhausting to watch, but, looking at her now, half arguing, half smiling at Ian as they fought over possession of the ball -- it seemed fitting, somehow, for who she was.
Or at least, the impression she offered (rejuvenation).
"That's my ball you're getting handsy with, Sir." She calls loudly, her voice carrying across the court as she quests relentlessly for it, twisting around Ian, one hand still half tangled around his torso when he leans in and whispers something in her ear. It's hard to imagine (or maybe not at all considering) what it is he says from her expression. It's still taunting, still bright and set with determination but she does lift her chin a little.
Says something in return that doesn't carry and then, lifting her eyebrows, makes another play for the ball.
"Deal."
[Dex + Subterfuge, only diff 7 cuz Kiara can't be stealthy at all.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alexander
Truth be told, Alex hasn’t been on Ginger for a couple of weeks. Not since those last updates before they went to confront Victoria. So he’s a little out of touch when it comes to people being contacted by the Technocracy. He knew that was why Elijah had moved into the warehouse, but developments after that are still to be discovered.
There isn’t even a sigh when he pushes himself back up from the ground, although it’s not to follow Kalen over to the basketball match. He sounds tired when he tells Grace, “there’s always a boom tomorrow. Law of the universe. But I should really be getting back before it gets too late. Grace. Kalen.”
With a look back and a wordless wave to Ian, Alexander heads back towards the exit to the court and pulls his headphones back out. If he’d been in a better mood, if Kiara wasn’t so reminiscent of that hunger, if he was more sure of how to be around Ian... It’s just better that he be somewhere else right now.
Kiara Woolfe
How about no matter who wins you do?
Grace
"Mmm. Okay, I'll see you later, Alex," Grace says, warmth in her smile (yes, even toward the cop). He's had his troubles lately.
"Also, yeah, I know. We can't stop living just because the world wants us to so very much," she says to Kalen, gives a little sigh. "Look, who do you think's going to win? I'm thinking Ian. Because that guy can jump."
See? Grace can lay down her troubles too. Sometimes.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen tilts his head back to look up at Alexander. "Hey," he says quietly. "Call if you need me. Have whiskey. Will travel."
And then he turns his attention back to Grace. "Mmmmmmm...I don't really even know much about basketball. Or...you know...sports. Soccer was kind of neat. But I think my sport is laser tag." He takes a sip of coffee and looks to where Kiara and Ian are playing. "I may miss the end. I have errands, yet."
Ian
Alexander didn't know how to talk to Ian. And Ian... wasn't terribly focused on Alexander at that moment. He was more aware of Kalen, who he'd yet to really acknowledge beyond that initial hey as Kalen walked over to see Alexander. But in either case, it was difficult to pay attention to both the basketball and the other conversation at once. He did notice when Alexander got up to leave, and there was a brief moment of distraction when Ian glanced over and returned the man's wave with a nod.
Only a moment, but it was enough to give Kiara a chance to steal the ball out of his hands as she leaned in to whisper something to him. And Ian? He just laughed. There was a strong implication in the fact that he didn't attempt to debate the matter with her.
But there wasn't time to dwell on these things. Kiara had the ball, and Ian darted in to try and steal it from her before she could shoot.
[Dex+Ath Can he steal the ball?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Kiara Woolfe
[Gasp! Rudity. Keep the ball, Kiara.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Kiara Woolfe
Kiara does spare a moment to notice Alexander's departure. She doesn't know the guy, but it didn't take much to gauge some level of discomfort, however surface it was. She doesn't have time to consider it beyond a brief measure of curiosity about who he was however, because she finally finds her triumph in stealing the basketball out of Ian's hands.
She dances out of his reach, the ball above her head and jogs backward a few steps --
"Thank you very much."
-- before twisting around and jogging toward the opposing net. Of course, momentary distractions aside, she's still trying to keep pace with Ian. Who, in all fairness, could probably lap her a few times over. They dart around the court, though. Kiara's eyes on him, she feints one way and then another. Smiling over her shoulder as she denies a grab for the ball and twists, aiming to shoot -- when its snatched from her grasp and she breathes out what sounds decidedly like a curse.
Pushes the heavy fall of her hair from her face and gives chase.
"You play dirty," she calls, though it sounds less like a reprimand and more a compliment.
Grace
"I think mine is laser tag too," Grace says, appraising the stealing of balls and the general sportiness going on. Huzzah, Ian.
"Errands? Really? You going to pick up some cupcakes for Elijah or something? Just no red ones. You know. He's a lot like I was about this time last year, if you get my drift."
Elijah's been very vegetarian lately. He's staying away from anything that might remind him of flesh. Grace remembers a pancake breakfast wherein the bacon was avoided for similar reasons. She remembers how red sauces and fruit juices were abhored as well. It doesn't result from a desire to save the animals, exactly.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen nods. "I probably should get cupcakes too, yes. And groceries. And cookbooks." He laughs, tired but warm. "Alexander and I are going to learn to make cookies."
There is a pause. "Maybe also another fire extinguisher. Or three." He rises and looks over at Kiara and Ian again. There is still something warm in his expression, though maybe, for a second, a bit wistful. But then his smile widens a little and he waves to Ian again.
"Am I forgetting anything else," he asks Grace.
Ian
"Always."
Whether or not Kiara meant it as a compliment, Ian certainly seemed to take it as one. And it was an easy enough statement to believe, coming from someone whose very essence radiated cunning. They raced down the court, Kiara fighting to keep the ball while Ian tried to snag it from her grasp. They were both such agile creatures. Beautiful to watch in their own way, if one had an eye for athleticism. But ultimately Ian managed to wrest control of the ball back into his own hands. He dribbled it quickly as he turned back to run for the other goal. And as soon as he had a shot, he took it.
Maybe Kiara would catch him by then and try to block it. Either way, he caught the ball in his hand, leaned back and tossed it toward the net.
Kalen was leaving. Ian didn't spare him a glance until after he'd thrown the ball. He caught the smile Kalen offered him and returned it, though his expression seemed reserved.
"Later, Kalen."
Ian
[Dex+Ath - does he score?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kiara Woolfe
Ian steals the ball, Kiara gives chase.
It's not a question of which of them is innately the better athlete. One has all the cunning and grace of a jungle cat and the other, well, she gives as good as she gets. Which is more than some might expect. Kiara's no athlete, not the way Ian Lai is but she is a runner. Keeps pace with him surprisingly well when he moves after the opposing net.
She's not necessarily as quick as he is, but she's opportunistic which can make up for many shortcomings, especially in competitive sport. Ian throws the ball, she attempts to block it and snag it back into her grasp, succeed or not she's panting lightly, bent forward a little with her hands on her thighs when Kalen gets up to leave. Night has well and truly fallen around them.
The park is inky black beyond where the dim illumination of the lamps cast light and for a moment, Kiara is distracted by it. She straightens and reaches to reclaim the ball. "Sure you don't want to join in, Grace?" She directs a challenging look Ian's way.
"We're playing dirty anyway."
[Block that shot, grab that ball.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace laughs at the need for three fire extinguishers so that he can learn to make cookies. "Kalen, if you set fire to the kitchen while baking cookies, I will never let you live it down. But I am not against homemade cookies, oh no."
She seems to think for a bit. What do they need?
"Mirrors. For the laser tag."
She laughs at Kiara when she suggests Grace join in. "I'd get owned, no contest."
Kalen Holliday
Ian gets a little nod in return. "Later."
"I think, Kit, that she is suggesting she needs you to level the playing field. Or possibly that you should take this opportunity to demonstrate who you love most.
"Anyway, fuck if I know what mirrors we need. Can you text me part numbers or something?" But whatever her answer, he is already walking away.
Ian
Ian took the shot, standing up on his toes to avoid Kiara's attempt to block his path. And just like before, the ball sailed right through the net and bounced off the asphalt. Kiara caught it.
"I don't know..." Ian contemplated the possibility of a third player. "Two against one? You might get lucky." He winked at Grace and grinned as he jogged down the court, aiming to get in front of Kiara to block whatever throw she was about to make.
Kiara Woolfe
Kalen opines that Kiara wants to level the playing field. She grins, dimples surface in her cheeks that suggest all of their own that he's not so far from the truth of the matter. There's a shrug of slender shoulders and she bounces the ball once, for good measure.
"I'm just looking to maintain my reputation on the court." She cusps the ball under one arm as Kalen departs, waving after him before steadying it back between her hands. Ian jogs down to block her play and she narrows her eyes at him, body curling forward slightly. "Not this time, buddy." Her eyes glint under the lights of the court.
She darts around him, throwing the ball toward the net.
[Dex + Ath, shootin' for the net!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Ian
[block!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kiara Woolfe
[We're in a fight, dice roller.]
Grace
Grace rolls her eyes. "Fine, fine! I'll send you some mirror links, then."
Kalen walks away. He cannot pick his own mirrors. For laser tag. As if she needs to curate every single decision about anything slightly technical. Then again, left to his own devices, he might have gone out and bought mirrors framed in solid gold or some ridiculous thing.
At least she'll go with the wholesale type. Maybe she can find some first-surface ones...
Oh yeah, sportsball.
"I don't know if I'd be a benefit or a disadvantage, really. But whatever," she says, and ditches her phone in the laptop bag next to her seat so she can stand and join them. "It's official. I love Kiara more than you, Ian."
Ian
It really wasn't a fair fight, truth be told. Ian had a good five inches of height on Kiara, which... in basketball? Was definitely an advantage. Ian certainly seemed to enjoy the competition, but it wasn't only because he was winning. He watched the way Kiara moved with the ball, feeling her resonance brush against him as they dodged around each other. She took her shot, but...
Ian's arm shot out and slapped the ball back to the ground. He caught it on the way back up and immediately took off for the other end of the court.
"Ouch, I'm so wounded." Ian clutched his free hand over his heart in mock injury when Grace stepped in to join Kiara. But now that there were two people trying to wrest the ball from him, there wasn't much time to contemplate the change of odds. So Ian stopped running and took the shot.
[Score?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kiara Woolfe
Grace loves her more. The smile flashed her way at that pronouncement is toothy. Wolfish and satisfied and she turns a very self assured glance down the court at their mutual enemy who, presently ... was about to attempt to score again. Kiara gestures for Grace to dash in and cover his other side as she attempts to block his access to the net.
There's a certain determination to the set of the brunette's jaw. Competitiveness, yes. Playfulness, absolutely. But also resolution. Tireless resistance to the idea that she can't find a way to beat Ian. There's a lot that says about who she is, when you strip it all away.
[C'mon dice roller! Block that shot, snag that ball.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
[Oh! Oh! Stop the Ian! Dex + Ath!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace harries Ian off to his side, trying to keep him from shooting anywhere other than where Kiara waits to grab the ball away. Amazingly, she does not trip all over herself in doing so, but it's a close one.
She doesn't have much of what you might call raw athleticism, or... well... grace. But she makes up for it with a certain agility.
"Haha! Go Kiara! Woo!"
Ian
Kiara put up a valiant fight, and inevitably her efforts paid off. Ian ought to have been disappointed, but he wasn't really. Well, maybe a little, in the way that Ian was always a bit annoyed with himself when he wasn't able to succeed at something he'd set out to do. But mostly? He was just quietly impressed. He started to take the shot, but Kiara leaped up and blocked him as Grace harried him from the side, and the ball fell into Kiara's hands.
"Oh fuck you," Ian laughed. There was warmth to his voice, despite his words, and as Kiara inevitably ran to make her next shot, he called after her, "Changed my mind. Whoever has the most points after this shot wins."
Which... either meant that they'd tie, or that Ian would win.
[Block Kiara's next shot?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kiara Woolfe
[Doo de doo. One last try!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Manip + Performance = 2, spending WP -- Dazzling lights, Ian! What's that? Look over here!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ian
[I'm going to say that Grace's performance gives Ian a distraction penalty to his difficulty, and so, he actually only got 1 success. Kiara totally scores.]
Grace
[Woo!]
Kiara Woolfe
She does try for the last shot, of course, so does he. There's something invariably about knowing its the last attempt of a game, even one without any real pressure behind it that make you want to press harder, dig deeper, throw better. Feel the sweet burn in your muscles and the sting of sweat in your eyes.
It also helps a lot when you have someone there covering your back.
Kiara goes for the final hoop and Ian's right there in her space with her as he has been the entire game, dogging her footsteps when she isn't his. He can feel the sharp inhale as she throws the ball, the quiet catch of a laugh as it snags in her throat, breathless as she is from hard play. Grace does something which, in the moment, Kiara can't quite glimpse aiming as she is for the net.
Apparently, it's enough to sufficiently distract Ian, though. The ball sinks through. Kiara's breathing right into Ian's face. "Game, then." Her hair is wild, now. Dark waves loosened in a riot around her face as she smiles over his shoulder.
"Thanks for the distraction."
Grace
Grace has a trick up her sleeve. Literally. That coat of hers, the red thing with tiny metal and plastic things stitched upon it, is no ordinary coat.
It's a coat modified for laser-tag. It's got infrared sensors and strips of brilliant LEDs which suddenly burst into rainbow brilliance just to Ian's side. The lights scintillate. She waves her arms. She's showing off.
The ball finds its home, as Ian can't help but be a little off-kilter at the sight of something that unexpected.
Grace laughs, and gives Kiara a rainbow-hued thumbs up. "No problem."
Ian
Ian wasn't generally the type to be easily distracted, but a light-up coat wasn't something he'd been anticipating (who would?) There was an involuntary flick of his eyes away from Kiara at just the right moment, and then the ball sailed over his head, evening the score at one to one.
Ian shot grace a pointed look, then leaned towards her and said, "I'll get you back for that."
Precisely when, or how, he planned on doing that, would have to remain a mystery. But he followed up the threat with a broad grin, catching his breath, and in a moment he turned back to Kiara. "Good game."
His smile remained, but it shifted to something else. Something a little more genuine, a little less playful. And when it slid away, he wet his lips briefly with his tongue.
"I should get back to my run. I'll catch you later, Grace."
Ian jogged over to the bench where he'd left his phone and his earbuds. The latter he stuffed into his pocket while the former he strapped back onto his arm.
He did not say goodbye to Kiara. Instead he shot her a meaningful look as he turned around. Then he started to run, loping off down the path toward the parking lot.
Kiara Woolfe
She reclaims her ball, hugging it against her chest as Ian catches his breath. She's doing the same, breathing hard, red cheeked, smiling in a sort of exhausted elation as he turns back to her. His expression shifts, schools into something else and for a minute, she looks on the brink of saying something but he's heading back to his run and she drops her eyes to her ball, twisting it in her grasp and frowning.
It's momentary, though. The flicker-catch of something there and gone. A ghosting expression before her smile resurfaces and she's all curling smiles and careful, easy camaraderie. "Thanks for the game," she calls, holds the meaningful look he casts for a beat and then turns her attention on Grace, offering her the same.
"And that coat is -- wow, it's a thing. Is that available on order or ..." she engages, moving to collect her belongings from the bench where she's left them. Re-zipping her jacket. Shouldering a bag easily over one shoulder. A set of keys jangle in her pocket.
"I'll walk you back if you want." Dark eyes appraise her coat. The flashing lights. "I might need you to navigate my way."
Grace
"Oh, I made it," Grace says, and turns off the lights. It's probably not the best idea to walk around in the park at night looking like a mobile Christmas tree.
"Well, not the coat itself. But I sewed the special pieces on. It's for laser tag, which you can totally come play with us if you want," Grace says and goes to retrieve her things at the edge of the court.
"Kalen will likely insist upon buying you your own special coat, which I will fix up for the game. Kalen is like that. Thanks for walking with me. It can get a little weird at night, you know."
They walk together, these two with their somewhat uncomfortable resonances twining.
[Sleep time!]
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