eliotwaugh | Say When (A New Year's Brunch)

In keeping with last year, this New Year's had been gods-curst ridiculous. She shouldn't complain, really; the mermen were so slow that they weren't able to do much harm (unless you count whatever injuries folk suffered while stampeding away from them). But the downside to them being so slow was that she didn't have the time or strength to bear down on them all for as long as it would've taken them to get back into the sea, so she'd mostly been stuck halting their mischief at the last moment, or getting them turned around in the hopes that it would slow them up further.

It'd been a long night, and she's glad that attending Eliot's brunch only requires her to make herself presentable and climb up a few floors of her own building — and that it's timed such that she can slip inside a little before noon without feeling as if she's either too early or too late. She didn't want to show up empty-handed, so she's brought a few jugs of juice that she figures folk'll either use as mixers or just drink straight (depending on what kind of evenings they'd had).

She acquires a mimosa and a plate of crepes, and plunks herself down into the nearest empty chair.

"Glad you could make it." Eliot grins and pulls out another bottle of bubbly to set on the counter with the juice. "I hope you didn't have too much trouble last night, with all the...things." He gestures vaguely and frowns as a thought occurs to him. "Do you think they count as animals? did you get a sense of like, malicious intent behind the whole beach landing? Because if they were just acting out of instinct, because they were hungry or whatever...I have some regrets, in that case."

He's not exactly looking for absolution, it's not as if Daine is the Animal Pope, but Eliot would like to get some kind of perspective on exactly how immoral his fish-stabbing adventures were.

"Ugh," Daine says with feeling, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. "They were nasty, weren't they? Didn't feel quite like animals, though. More like immortals, 'specially the part-animal ones, like spidrens or stormwings. Itchy." She gestures vaguely to her own head for emphasis. She hadn't been able to speak with them, but she could feel the general mood of the things easily enough, and it hadn't been very pleasant. Much like spidrens and stormwings, they'd seemed to enjoy the prospect of causing a little misery. "You needn't feel bad for killing them, anyhow. They were out to make trouble."

"You didn't get bit, did you?" she asks, eyebrows rising. "If you get bit, you turn into one." That isn't true at all, and her solemn expression lasts about two seconds before it collapses into a snort, and she takes another sip of her drink. "Well, no. I s'pose if you got bit, you'd just have to live with the embarrassment of being caught by one of 'em."

He tries to keep a straight face at the way Daine's ominous pronouncement deteriorates, he really does, but Eliot can't help a bit of a giggle. "Ugh, that'd be shameful," he agrees, still laughing a little. "Either way really, being a were-fish or just knowing you slipped up that badly. Still, came away with my pride intact and..." he considers the events of the previous night, how it honestly felt good to be out being heroic again.

"You know at least it happened now, in the winter? They smelled godawful but imagine if it'd been in the summer." He shudders dramatically. "Reminds me of this giant...snapping turtle we had to deal with, that was high summer and he stank like nothing else. Good old Prince of Mud."

Daine isn't entirely sure her pride is intact, if only because it's gods-curst frustrating to face off against dumb, slow creatures she ought to have been able to handle, and find herself overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. But she's unhurt, and she knows she managed to do some good.

She hadn't even thought about how much worse the smell would have been in summer, and she wrinkles her nose with a good-natured groan. "Horse Lords, that would've been awful." Her mood makes an abrupt shift when the giant snapping turtle comes up, though.

"The Prince of Mud?" she repeats, plainly delighted. "What was the trouble with him?"

"Oh it was a huge ordeal." Eliot slouches in his chair, frowning at the memory of it. "We were on a, you know, quest to save the world from decaying and falling apart, extremely serious business, and Janet and I-" He pauses a moment, trying to think of a way to describe Janet that doesn't come off as deeply uncharitable to an outside perspective.

"She's one of my co-regents, the most formidable woman I'd ever met, perpetual bad mood but I don't hold that against her. You'd hate her. Anyway. She thought we should ask this ancient turtle fellow what he might know about where we ought to go to fix the damn dying world problem, because he's been around a long time, immortal being and whatnot, all sorts of things end up in the swampland and he probably knows a great deal. So we go to see him, and he does know where we need to go, but for that information, and passage through his swamp, he wanted to eat our horses. Obviously unacceptable."

"The cold-blooded creatures do tend to be a bit... single-minded," Daine allows with a lopsided, sympathetic grin. It's not that they can't be clever or engaging, more that they've often got less energy, and devote more of it to finding food or a mate or whatever it is they're after. Wanting to be paid in horse meat does sound like something an enormous turtle would ask for, at any rate.

"But I suppose the rest of the quest would've been miserable on foot. What did you end up giving him, instead?"

Daisy recognizes her in that way that she knows she's seen her before, but they've never properly met. Now seems as good a time as any to change that, so she makes her way over to a neighboring chair and offers the girl an up-nod.

"Alright?"

Daine's seen the woman around the building before, and it doesn't really surprise her that Eliot's made friends with her. He's good at that — far better than Daine is, really, and she offers the woman a faintly uncertain smile in response to the greeting.

"Better now than last night," she says, figuring that's probably true of about everyone. Her smile fades and her gaze sharpens as she feels a faint... she's not quite sure what, a something, a distant pang of familiarity that makes her think of Rattail and the rest of the Long Lake Pack. She wonders suddenly if this woman is like Biffy and Lyall, but she doesn't look with her magic quite yet. It'd feel like prying.

"I'm Daine," she says instead. "How d'you know Eliot?"

"Daisy," she answers, pretending she doesn't notice the sharp, studying look she's getting. "We almost had it out in the street. Misunderstanding, but he's... good." She looks over at the girl — Daine — and offers her another nod. "You live in the building. That how you know him?"

Daine's eyebrows creep towards her hairline at that. She has a hard time imagining Eliot brawling in the street, not because he isn't a fighter, but because he's so well-mannered that she figures he'd find a way to talk the other person out of it. Maybe that's what happened with Daisy; it isn't entirely fair, but Daine finds it easier to believe that she's the one who started it.

"Helped save him from the landlord," she offers with a slight lift of her glass. "He was trying to get back inside with too much shopping, and of course Peter had to come snooping when he heard us."

"But he is good," she agrees, looking over to where he's chatting with one of the other guests. "It's nice of him to throw a little to-do like this. Usually it's a big party, or nothing." And while the big parties have their place, she's more comfortable in smaller gatherings like this.

"Mm, any larger and I wouldn't be here," she admits. "Not a fan of crowds." It's an understatement, and she has a feeling the girl knows it. She's been watching Daisy with a discerning eye since before they'd started talking.

Maybe she'll ask John about her. Or Martin. Martin probably knows her sooner than John. Of the three of them, he's the friendliest, the most approachable. She's trying, sure, but... She's not like Martin.

Daine snorts softly. It's a preference she well understands, and not just because she shares it. The crowd was one of the main reasons last night was such a gods-curst mess. Folk tend to act more sensibly in smaller numbers, but when you put loads of them together, you're more liable to end up with a panic.

"Were you in any of the crowds last night?" she asks, her smile turning wry. "It was fair ridiculous, really. Could've been less harm done all around if folk had stayed calm."

There's definitely some judgment in her tone, but not as much as there could be. There's often a bit of ridiculousness to the threats Darrow cooks up, but it being silly doesn't make it safe. She can't blame folk for wanting to get away from the beach and the creatures in a hurry; she just wishes they'd at least used their eyes and their good sense a bit more.

"People don't stay calm," Daisy says with a shrug. It'd been a pity the creatures were so damned slow, actually. She would've liked to have seen—

No, she wouldn't.

"Especially in numbers," she continues. "A sort of herd mentality sets in, doesn't it? The more panic people sense, the more they panic, and it feeds the rest."

Daisy's not wrong, but Daine still wrinkles her nose at the assessment. "Except I can reason with a herd," she grumbles. Or, if nothing else, stop a stampede in its tracks. Two-leggers aren't half so biddable.

Belatedly realizing that what she just said won't make a bit of sense to someone who's only just met her, she adds, "I can talk to animals. It's magic." She can give a more in-depth explanation if Daisy wants one, but for now, she just raises her glass in a tired little toast and takes a gulp.

Daisy should probably be surprised, but she's not. She offers a little chin-raise, sort of a nod. With everything she's seen and experienced since meeting Jonathan Sims, finding out that someone can talk to animals feels rather... par for the course. But then a thought occurs to her, and she realizes she can actually ask, instead of just stewing on it.

"I wonder if a herd of panicked cows is more sensible than a herd of panicked humans," she says.

The nod is a little surprising, but not unpleasantly so. Daine's used to having to say more, to explain herself properly, or at least deal with more outright shock or wonder. A nod of acknowledgement — fellowship, even, though when she peers at Daisy with her magic, she doesn't see anything to suggest she's a fellow mage — is sort of nice, by comparison. Makes things feel simpler.

The question Daisy does level at her ends up being a tricky one, though, and Daine cants her head in consideration. "I don't know if sensible is the right word," she allows. "But I could at least stop a herd of panicked cows, so long as it wasn't too large. Getting two-leggers to mind me is a lot harder."

That changes her understanding of what Daine's said so far. Daisy looks at her, a bit appraisingly, then says, "Ah."

And promptly winces, because Christ, she sounds like John.

"I didn't realize it was that sort of magic," she explains. "Suppose I should've asked that, first."

The night had been odd, mostly, and in a few places a bit fraught, but he and John and, as far as he knows, most everyone else made it out no worse for wear. Martin is both quite glad to have the distraction of a little get-together and relieved that he doesn't actually have to leave his building for it. He dresses only a little more casually than he does for work—which translates to jeans instead of slacks and a slightly larger jumper than usual—and heads upstairs, thinking his proximity will probably make him one of the first to arrive. That's good, too; it'll be nice to get settled before all of Eliot's other friends show up. He realizes he doesn't know who all that'll include.

He is, indeed, the first to arrive, and he smiles pleasantly at Eliot. "Love what you've done with the place," he remarks. "And, er, thanks for having me." He knows one's boss isn't exactly an ideal party guest, but he'd like to think they're more friends than that.

[Martin will be here for a while just hanging about. Catch him enjoying a crepe and mimosa and/or being a mildly awkward wallflower whenever.]

Honestly, Sweeney doesn't know why the fuck he's here.

He does know, he'd hardly been able to pass up the opportunity to fuck with the cat-man just a little and he's under the impression he and the easily flustered one who'd been carrying him around in a backpack will be here. But he doesn't know why the fuck he's been invited. Mad Sweeney isn't exactly at the top of anyone's party guest list, though maybe that had been different back when he'd been a king.

Eliot seems to like him well enough, which is usually someone's downfall, but hell, he can't be responsible for everyone else's choices. Or anyone's choices. Sometimes he doesn't even feel like being responsible for his own.

There's still some merman blood on him, a bit on the cuff of his denim jacket and some in his beard, which he scratches at idly as he takes a sip of a mimosa. A fucking mimosa. He'd kill for a bit of whiskey to dump into it.

"You know there's this brunch in Vegas where you pay five bucks and get bottomless mimosas," he comments to the nearest person. "You can just sit there and drink all fuckin' day. Get blasted on orange juice and champagne."

The nearest person, as it happens, is the easily flustered one, who turns very slowly toward the unmistakable voice which appears, against all odds, to be addressing him. Martin looks at the leprechaun, which involves looking a great deal more up than he could have anticipated, and the expression of mingled disbelief and disapproval slips almost immediately from his face. Christ he's big; Martin knew he was big, but he was never standing on their first encounter, and now Martin, who is already shorter than most men, finds himself absolutely dwarfed by what must be seven entire feet of loud, muscular Irishman.

"Oh," he blurts stupidly; the actual content of what Sweeney has just said escapes him utterly. His height and unexpected proximity have all but activated Martin's flight reflex, but he manages to stay put, clutching his own drink a bit tighter than before. "It's you," he adds, disapproval making an absurd resurgence in the absence of anything else.

Edited 2020-01-02 01:40 (UTC)

Sweeney gasps, a sharp and somehow sarcastic intake of breath, then looks down at himself and pats his chest as if to confirm that, yes, it is him.

"Shit, you're right," he says, then the false expression of surprise drops off his face and he looks down at the boy as he takes another swig from his glass. Martin. Sweeney knows his name, knows John's, too, only because the two of them had been so much fun when they'd first met that he'd had to do a little digging. They'd really brightened his shitty fucking day, even if he's pretty damn sure he'd ruined theirs.

That's the trade off, though. His good luck is someone else's bad.

"Relax, darlin'," he advises. "You're gonna die young you keep bristling up like that."

Martin's expression hardens back into an unimpressed frown over Sweeney's display, which he might find distantly amusing had their first encounter gone any different.

"Don't—" He huffs impatiently, deciding to ignore the pet name despite his own mild discomfort; he's getting the impression this is just how the man is with everyone.

"What are you doing here," he asks, assuming he just showed up before he realizes Eliot likely wouldn't just let strangers in. "Do you... know Eliot?"

Christ, he doesn't entirely like the idea that he's being rude to one of Eliot's friends, but... well, he was rude first, as far as Martin's concerned. And he's also not totally sure he can trust Eliot's taste.

"The fuck do you think I'm doin' here? Just wandered in off the street and decided a mimosa sounded like a good time?" he asks, then realizes that is something he would absolutely do and so he shrugs, as if acknowledging that Martin might be right in that assessment.

"Nah, me and Eliot are friends," he says. "Said he's got an affinity for tall, drunk and handsome."

He'd said no such thing, but Mad Sweeney can't help himself, and it isn't as if he and Eliot haven't casually flirted enough for there to be something close to the truth in the assumption. Mostly he just wants to see if Martin will squirm at the implication that they might actually share a friend.

"Of course he does," says Martin dryly, and he takes a sip of his mimosa, scanning the room for a more familiar face. He doesn't think anything would surprise him about Eliot's taste in men—and it's not as though Sweeney is unpleasant to look at, if one sets aside the bit where he's a bit of a bastard.

To his mingled relief and trepidation, the first person he makes eye contact with is John, standing off on his own. Martin isn't exactly looking to reprise their original meeting with Sweeney, but John sees him looking and sees who he's with, so it's probably inevitable now. He also wouldn't entirely mind—he's not quite willing to just walk away from this interaction, but he'd feel better having a bit of backup, as it were.

John has been, predictably, at something of a loss since his arrival. He likes Eliot too much to sneak out at the first opportunity, but he isn't entirely sure what he's doing here, besides availing himself of free beverages and beating back the intruding conviction that Eliot's flat is an unintentional but inescapable insult to his own, which is far less... aesthetically deliberate? Nice? Homey? Something along those lines.

Catching Martin's eye provides him with about half a second of relief, before he realizes Martin's giving off 'help me' vibes and standing next to none other than the fucking leprechaun. Christ, did Eliot invite him? Does he know that they had a run-in when John was a bloody cat?

Regardless, he can't leave Martin to fend for himself. Allowing himself a quiet sigh, John makes his way over. "Martin," he greets, realizing only in the moment that he has no idea if Martin wants back-up or an outright extraction. Leaning towards the latter, he gives Sweeney a wary nod, then continues, "I think one of the items in that cabinet over there might actually be cursed."

"Wouldn't fuckin' surprise me," Sweeney answers, as if the comment had been for him. He knows damn well it hadn't been, but fuck it if he's not going to answer anyway. Martin might be dreadfully uncomfortable, but they were having a fucking conversation.

"Don't really need to worry about it right now," he adds, then gestures at himself with his champagne flute, the mimosa sloshing close to the edge and miraculously staying inside the glass. "Good luck and all that."

John looks... about the same, if he's honest, even when he's not a cat. Kind of haughty in a quiet way. It makes something inside of Sweeney itch in almost the same way Shadow Moon had, although he's pretty goddamn sure he'd beat John flat in a fight, so that's not what he's looking for here.

Martin's not totally sure what John was hoping to accomplish with that—perhaps trying to steal him away to investigate whatever cursed items Eliot no doubt has, but he doesn't think that's likely to lose them Sweeney's interest, and he's right. Sweeney responds before he can, leaving Martin to frown up at him a bit primly. He's not thrilled to be caught up in conversation with him, but it's happening; he's glad John's with him now, but Eliot's flat is too small to make much of an escape in any direction.

So, conversation it is. "Is that really how it works," he says, a bit dubious. With John's capacity for communication so limited on their first meeting, all he really knows is that Sweeney is, despite his incredulity at the time, an honest-to-Christ leprechaun. As for the rest of it, well, he's learned not to expect living myths to match their stories.

Sweeney grins and gives Martin a wink. "Sure is, lad. You stick around for long enough, you'll see it for yourself. I don't spill things, I don't trip, I'm more likely than most to find money lyin' on the ground. People spend a bit of time around me and it's the same, unless they piss me off. Leave me a gift, you'll find yourself with a bit of extra luck following you around for awhile. But I've warned others and I'll warn you, don't start somethin' if you can't follow through."

His grin grows and he says, "You'll not like the way luck can turn bad."

He could just give the two of them a bit of bad luck for the hell of it. It wouldn't amount to much, certainly wouldn't see them on a ship, condemned the transportation the way it had with Essie, but if John trips down the stairs on his way out, Sweeney doesn't think it'd be such a terrible thing. Be better still if Martin tripped right after him.

John manages not to roll his eyes when Sweeney winks at Martin, but it's a near miss. He does frown up at the leprechaun, though, not disapproving so much as pensive as he considers that brief explanation of how his luck works. It's... well, it's all bit small, isn't it? Granted, good or bad fortune tends to slip beyond the purview of mere luck rather quickly, as it grows increasingly dramatic. Maybe he shouldn't expect a leprechaun's luck to pertain to anything grander than finding an inordinate amount of spare change.

Which makes the veiled threat just sound a bit ridiculous. John doesn't mean to goad him as much as he's seeking clarification, but he does sound a bit dubious as he remarks, "Sounds a bit dramatic for someone whose good luck is comprised of not being overtly clumsy and finding an above-average number of quarters on the pavement."

Martin wrinkles his nose in displeasure at that wink, leaning back a bit. He doesn't like the way that sounds, just shy of a threat, really—and he especially doesn't like the way Sweeney is grinning at him. If his idea of a leprechaun is so at odds with the man before him, there's no reason his idea of 'luck' would be either. This might be an ideal time to change the subject, but before he can think of anything, John's already launched into a counterpoint.

Martin doesn't quite turn to stare at John, though his eyes go wide and a bit unfocused as he takes in what sounds like a bloody challenge. Christ, really? Even if the good luck really is limited to those examples, it doesn't necessarily follow that the bad won't be worse. Even if it is as unimpressive as John believes, Martin sees no reason to poke that particular bear.

But for all that John is brilliant, he hasn't always been smart, self-preservation never particularly high on his priority list. Martin shuts his eyes and heaves a quiet, put-upon sigh.

Sweeney gives a laugh, then finishes the rest of his mimosa. The examples he'd given are small, the day to day things most people don't notice until they begin to add up. For someone like Greta, the only person who still leaves him offerings in this city, it may have simply become something she's used to, something she doesn't even notice, but still things that make every day just a little bit easier all the same.

And then there are the bigger things, too. Greta would know about them just as well as the rest.

"You'd be surprised how quickly a bit of change on the sidewalk can turn into a lottery win," he answers with a shrug and another grin as he goes for a second -- fifth? -- drink. "Or how swiftly a trip on the edge of a stair turns into a broken neck. But nothin' you've got t'worry about, right? Can't imagine you care much for leaving offerings to leprechauns or gods."

"Did you, though? Not drink all day," she clarifies, because Blue's pretty sure that she knows Sweeney well enough to know he can and will do that on most days. She's still pretty sure that most of her worst hangovers have been from drinking in his presence. "Get drunk on bottomless mimosas. It seems like it would. Well. Take a lot longer for you."

As for her, she drank a touch more than she was expecting to last night, but she'd woken up with little enough in side effects that she doesn't feel like she's staving off a hangover with more of the same.

"Happy new year, by the way. Your night go okay?"

"Might take a bit longer, but it sure as shit isn't impossible," he answers when Blue steps up to him. Vegas isn't exactly his choice of city to spend his time in, because when a leprechaun gambles, they tend to attract a little bit too much attention and while that often ends in a fight, it just isn't the same as a good and proper fight. All of Vegas reeks of falsehoods, fights included.

"My night went about as well as a night can go when fuckin' mermen crawl outta the ocean," he says with a grin. "How 'bout yours? You avoid those ugly, slimy bastards?"

They hadn't been worth much in a fight at the end. Too slow.

She laughs, a soft huff, and shakes her head, wryly. "Almost, but not quite. A dog was about to be merman chow and I had to go back and help."

Blue perches on a chair nearby and shakes her head, grimacing. "Extremely ugly. I think I preferred thinking of mermen as those kitschy pinup ornaments." She grins a little. "Have you ever seen them?"

"Nah," he says. "Seen real mermaids, though. Proper ones, not that disgusting shit, whatever the fuck they were."

If they were mermen, they're not the sort he's ever seen before and he knows that's possible in a place like this, where everything seems to meld together from a thousand different worlds, but he'd still like it known that those are not the sorts of merpeople he's fucked.

Not that anyone really gives a shit, which is fine.

"Really?" Her amusement over extremely gay Christmas ornaments is stifled by curiosity. "So, the ones you've seen, are they like the Disney version, or something else entirely?"

"They're the female version," he says. "And the good to go version, if you catch my drift."

There might have been mermen, too, but he's just never encountered them. Mermaids always just seemed more interesting anyway. All things considered, Sweeney is pretty fucking certain Wednesday has had one or two encounters with them himself, but he's not sure they've gone as well as his own had.

Wednesday might be a god, but mermaids have been fucking with men since the beginning of time.

She cough-laughs and says, "I got you."

That makes her think of a slew of other questions, at least half of which must show up competing for an expression of her face. "I feel like you'd drown," is what she ends up exclaiming, and laughs at herself, sipping her mimosa and perching on the edge of his chair.

"Or is that half the fun."

"Christ, lass," he says, laughing. "They can come up on land."

He really doesn't want to use the fish-men from the night before as an example, but because how fucking ugly they were, they really were kind of similar. Even the ones he'd fucked had had some pretty vicious looking claws and teeth, but it had all worked for him.

Not that anyone who knows him would be surprised by that, he figures.

"Oh tell me about it, if I were a few years younger this would be a very different kind of party." Eliot smirks and nudges him with an elbow while cutting another bite of crepe with the side of his fork. "And there are worse ways to spend a day of course but...honestly, after last night?"

Eliot looks him over, but Sweeney certainly doesn't look any worse for wear, not really. "You look like you did all right, but I could take care of that--" he gestures at the blood, fingers wiggling to indicate magic, "if you want. As it turns out I've gotten...surprisingly good at cleaning bloodstains of late."

He'd really hoped to start the year without odd shit and dire business after the way the past months had been, but of course he's not that lucky.

"Gonna clean me up?" Sweeney asks with a grin, but it's not a refusal. Half the time he doesn't even notice the stains anymore, specks of blood on most of his jeans and his boots have certainly seen better days. He's been wearing them for decades, though, and that's decades of fighting, decades of sleeping on barroom floors, and decades of doing all kinds of things in them he ought not to be doing.

"You run into any of those ugly, smelly fuckers?" he asks. "They weren't much of a fight, were they? Honestly it was all kinda boring after the last few years."

He and Spike had still managed to have fun, but it sure as fuck hadn't been the same.

"I'm sure better people than I have tried, but if you'd like a little less blood on you, sure." Eliot smirks and does a quick bit of prestidigitation to fizzle away the freshest stains. He wouldn't dare do any more and disrupt Sweeney's whole look, not when he wears it so well.

He wouldn't exactly call the trouble with fish-people 'boring,' but then he isn't blessed with divine vigor, either. "Yeah," he says after a moment, "it was...interesting? And a bit annoying that it ended up being easier to just stab them with swords than anything else." Eliot sighs, quite dramatically. "not my preferred means of physical exertion at all. And of course I'd only heard that things get weird at New Year's, not any real specifics of past troubles." But if things usually get even weirder than last night, Eliot might have to rethink the whole concept of being stuck here as a lazy forced retirement.

"Yeti," Sweeney answers, using his mimosa glass to tick things off on his other hand, miraculously managing to not spill a single drop as he does. "Flying monkeys, fuckin' cave bats, living gingerbread cookies that were bent on stabbing the shit out of anyone who got too close, Christ on his cross, what the fuck hasn't this place seen?"

The fish-men had just been so damn slow. Sweeney had been looking forward to a real fight.

"All that shit was plenty of fun," he says with a sigh that's almost wistful. "Even the cookies were a better fight than the fuckin' mermen."

Eliot listens to him list off the parade of nonsensical horrors and tries to imagine what each of those must have been like, and can only shake his head in disbelief. "Shit," he says finally, and takes another bite of crepe. "This type of thing keeps happening and I'll actually have to get in shape, ugh."

"Though I suppose," he smirks at Sweeney's reminiscence, "the cookies also probably didn't smell so fucking bad. The mermen were too wet for me to set on fire, hugely disappointing. It really felt like...doing community service litter pickup, in the end."

Honestly they should be getting paid for this. Some kind of tax break at least. "I'm sure you were like some force of nature, or something, slow monsters or no."

"Oh, me and Spike had a bit of fun," he agrees with a cheeky grin, very much enjoying being referred to as a force of nature. It drags up memories of war from long ago, of a giant painted with gold, a god who made Sweeney look like a small man. And yet Sweeney -- Lugh -- had still take off the giant's head.

"Hard not to revel in even the littlest bit of violence," he admits. Hard for him, anyway, the urge and the itch for it sometimes so deep it feels as if it's woven into his skin. He understands it better these days with the memories that have surfaced.

He's a bloody god of war. How could he not enjoy violence?

"And it would take you all day, wouldn't it?" Greta drawls with a fond smile, though her gaze sharpens a little when she spots the blood on his cuff and — ugh — in his beard. Her fingers itch with the urge to pull a handkerchief out of her pocket and just start dealing with it, but she's wary of mothering him in a crowd. Besides, she doesn't think a little blood about his person will make a bad impression on the person she's introducing him to.

Goodness knows if Anne will like him, of course, but she likes to think Anne and Sweeney would get on. And she has a vague but persistent suspicion that Anne is both short on friends and not terribly adept at making them, so if she can lend a little assistance, so much the better.

So she glances back at Anne, her eyebrows ticked up hopefully — come meet the enormous bloody leprechaun — and then turns back to Sweeney. "You look a mess," she informs him mildly, "but it's good to see you. Have you met Anne Bonny? Anne, this is Mad Sweeney."

There's too many people here and Anne has negligible interest in meeting any of them, so she's both grateful for and wary of Greta's pointed summons. Best to stick close to those few here she knows, even if they're going to make her meet more people. What surprises her is that the man Greta wants to introduce is... not the sort of person she'd ever think to find among Greta's associates. He's enormous, bigger even than Teach or any of those lumbering fools Vane brought back with him to take Nassau. He's got blood on him and a look about him like he could be dangerous, not just down to his size. Not necessarily in a bad way, neither. It's almost familiar. But she wouldn't have expected Greta to know him, and as Anne draws near, she even hears her chastising him mildly for looking a mess.

Greta has never quite ceased to surprise her, and yet Anne still ain't used to it.

"Mad Sweeney," she echoes, sizing him up, slow and ponderous. Sounds like a name earned, something he had to be given, and that's familiar, too. She has to tip her head back to see beneath the brim of her hat; beside him she is dwarfed even more than usual, but that don't bother her. "Who calls you that?"

And ain't this interesting.

Sweeney drapes a casually affectionate arm across Greta's shoulders, one of the few people here he's comfortable touching in a manner that's not remotely sexual or violent, and he cocks his head a little, grinning at the woman who walks over to join them.

Anne Bonny. He wonders if she has the slightest fucking idea who she is.

"Ain't had the pleasure yet," he tells Greta, looking right back at Anne as she sizes him up, finds himself grinning down at her when she has to tip her head up to see out from under the hat. "Most people call me that, but I guess you can pick and choose if you'd like, darlin'. Mad Sweeney, Sweeney, Lugh, Suibhne. Up t'you, really."

Casual affection is a rare enough thing from Sweeney that for a moment, Greta wonders if he noted her rather critical examination of his shirt, and has slung an arm around her just to be obnoxious — to give her cause to surreptitiously duck into Eliot's bathroom, later, and check her blouse for any shared mess. Then again, it's equally (if not more) plausible that he's just in a good mood thanks to a night of spirited monster-slaying, and either way, she's not about to shrug him off. It's nice to think she's earned this sort of thing, exchanged for something a little less tangible than a steady supply of offerings set on a windowsill.

So she grins, giving him a gentle bump with her hip before rolling her eyes in response to his other names. "Just go with 'Sweeney,'" she advises Anne. "Lugh was far less fun." She'd only met him the once, and she'd kept leaving out offerings because she was frankly terrified of what might happen if she stopped, but she vastly prefers this version of her friend.

That thick brogue is familiar in a way Anne hasn't felt in a long, long time; old, mostly faded memories of distant childhood, of being so young she hadn't learned what hurt was. She thinks her mother might've sounded like that. That memory's so far away it don't feel like hers anymore. It ain't just that, either; it's not like meeting an Irishman sends her back down this path on an ordinary day. It's something more precisely fitted to him, almost like his presence alone is enough to stir up that old shit. The names he gives, Lugh, Suibhne, these are also familiar, touching somewhere so deep it's past recovering. Maybe she heard the stories before that world was gone, that person she was and might have been was gone, and she became something else.

And if Mad Sweeney is the Mad Sweeney from the half-remembered dust of those stories, the Lugh, the Suibhne, the names that may have been whispered to her before she slept her quietest nights away, then this man is something more than a man, and that shouldn't be possible.

All that's one thing. The rest is smaller, and yet it arrests her just as much. Seeing Greta approach this great dangerous figure was unexpected all on its own, but the way he slings an arm around her like—she don't know what. Greta's smiling and nudging him back, easy, casual. Ain't never seen a husband treat his wife like this, or a wife answer like that; closest thing she can even imagine is from drinking in the brothel, watching the men idle with whatever whore'd been chosen to entertain him that night. And this don't even come close.

It's like the way men lean on each other, like friends, like there's shared trust and shared respect. And she's gone through life believing she and Jack were the only ones in the world who knew what that was.

She just stares at them both for a long while, and then she says, "Right." She keeps her eyes on Sweeney, on his face, narrowing as she considers this wealth of new information. A lot of people have known her and Jack from stories; Eliot's got his impossible magic, Greta's little one has her strange draw to the sea. There's plenty here she don't understand, but this?

"Maybe I know those names," she says after a moment. She stands her ground, but her fingers twitch a little from the uncertainty of what that means. She's not sure how to be. Greta is so easy with him, and she don't know if that means she ought to stand down, or stand twice as guarded. She proceeds with caution, stepping more delicately than she's accustomed: "Stories from a long time ago." She juts her chin up at him in a slight nod. "So what does that make you?"

"Besides really fuckin' old?" he asks, then looks to Greta, almost as if he expects her to have the answers he can't give. It's true he doesn't know the extent of his background, the memories still unclear most of the time, coming to him as sharp flashes when they come at all, but Greta doesn't know any more of his past than that either.

"These days I'm mostly just Mad Sweeney," he settles on. "Used t'be a god, then a godking, then just a king, and now..." He shrugs and grins and then reaches out toward the air about a foot in front of Anne's face. With a shifting of the space around them, just the slightest shimmer of it, he plucks a coin from the hoard. Even indoors, it sparkles like it contains the sun.

"We've settled on leprechaun, yeah?" he asks Greta before he unwraps his arm from around her shoulders so he can take her hand and press the coin into her palm. It's Greta who leaves him offerings these days, Greta who, in essence, keeps him as full a being as he is.

Well, Greta and General fucking Mills. Even Darrow has its equivalent of bloody Lucky Charms.

Greta's well past presuming that any given scrap of myth or legend or superstition exists across multiple universes. Some things seem to crop up over and over, but it still doesn't seem wise to just assume anything is universal — especially when being a bloody pirate feels about as far from Greta's old life as someone might get.

So it isn't until Anne expresses some guarded familiarity with Sweeney's names that it occurs to Greta that Anne might actually know, not just about leprechauns, but about Sweeney in particular. She perks, eyebrows ticking up as she looks between Anne and Sweeney. Her rather charged scrutiny lasts until Sweeney plucks a coin out of the air and then presses it into her hand, at which point she gives him a level look of fond exasperation: a sort of nonverbal must you? No point in actually voicing it when she can guess what the answer would be. He must, whether it's to show her a bit of favor or to simply show off.

"Leprechaun," Greta confirms, her fingers curling around the coin automatically. It's not exactly like his lucky one; it doesn't feel as warm as if it'd been sitting in direct sunlight for an hour or so. But it is solid and real, and moreover, it'll stay that way, as opposed to turning into a scrap of bark or a river stone when her back is turned. Not that she has any intention of spending it — or pawning it for spending money. Maybe it's not atypically lucky in and of itself, but it only seems right that she guard it, instead.

"Did you have tales of them back home?" she asks Anne. "I know Saoirse and I both grew up with such stories, but beyond that..." she shrugs, glancing up at Sweeney. She might not be the only one leaving him offerings, but she's guessing the list isn't terribly long.

Anne snorts, vaguely appreciative of Sweeney's quip, but she sobers again when he lists his vocations. God, God-King, King. She don't know what to think about any of that, how to even begin to believe it; and then Sweeney reaches toward her, and her shoulders twitch and her weight shifts back a fraction from sheer reflex. She stays herself, watching with slowly dawning incredulity as he produces a gold piece from thin fucking air. Ain't a trick of his hands, either. She can see the way the air sort of moves around him. It's all wrong, and she's seen Eliot do things like that. She's seen enough now that, mad or not, she's reasonably confident in knowing magic when she sees it.

And then, he says leprechaun, and he asks Greta to confirm it as he puts the coin into her hand. She takes it like it's no great surprise, like this happens plenty, like what looks to Anne to be a proper doubloon — something Jack's told her is seen as surprising here — is nothing to her. Gives Sweeney a look and agrees: leprechaun.

Anne blinks at Greta's question, glancing between the two of them, quiet for a long time.

"Yeah, I... yeah," she says, her gaze fixing on Sweeney with intent. "But they're stories."

That doesn't matter so much. Not when she's seen all Eliot can do. Not when all of this is so impossible. She wavers for a moment, and then she says, "You're tellin' me you're all those things, a king, a god, and you're also a leprechaun?" She looks him up and down again, like there's somehow something she's missed. "You're too fuckin' tall," she protests finally.

"Now, darlin', that's a very narrow view of the world," he answers with a grin.

There are stories he can tell, stories he's not even sure Greta knows, and if he's honest, he doesn't know if he knows them all either. The details are still fuzzy in some of them, memories he can't quite grasp, but he knows enough to be able to at least tell her why he's so bloody tall.

"Lugh was grandson of Balor," he says, the grin fading a touch. "A Fomorian. Giants. T'be honest, I don't remember all the shifts. It was so fuckin' long ago..." He trails off and shrugs his broad shoulders. For a moment, he looks almost sad, trying to reach for things that are long gone, lost to a past he knows he's never going to be able to fully grasp.

"I remember they tried to drown me. A transition. I remember bein' Suibhne, king of the Dál nAraidi, and a curse. Wandering for a long, long fuckin' time, mad with it all." He doesn't mention Eorann or Moira. He'll not mention them, not now, perhaps not ever. "And I remember Mother Church movin' in and those of us who were left bein' turned into somethin' else. Fairies. Demoted gods and goddesses of the Tuatha Dé Danann."

Greta can't help but snort at that last comment, though there's sympathy in her grin. She's known Sweeney for a long time, but hasn't yet forgotten how startled she was to find him towering over her as much as he does. Some of the stories she was raised on did suggest that the fair folk could look like any number of things — like birds, or hounds, or even ordinary people (unless you knew just what to look for) — but they never specified 'bloody enormous.'

She notes the shift in Sweeney's expression, and lays her hand on his arm for a moment in quiet sympathy. It's only natural to forget pieces of your past — goodness knows there's plenty she doesn't remember, and she's had far less time in which to lose things — but it must be unnerving, to know that what you don't remember might be important.

"I don't think any of the stories I was told as a child included all that," she muses. With a little more deliberate lightness, she adds, "Certainly not enough for me to expect you to be so enormous."

"I'd only just heard there was a leprechaun in the city, at first," she says, this more for Anne's benefit. Sweeney knows this part of the story just as well as Greta does. "I didn't actually meet him until I'd been leaving out offerings for a little while."

He'd gone home to change and grab a new bag, stopping over at Eliot's for brunch. It's not a long stop, because their reservations at Kagura are still good for another day or so, and Michael really does want a romantic getaway that isn't marred by bad luck and mermaid creatures.

It's honestly lucky that they'd survived last night, never mind that he managed to get engaged in the middle of it.

The moment he turns up, though, he sees mimosas and yanks two. Not for him and Alex, but both for him. He downs them rapidly, and when he feels like he can face the world again, he grabs a third to spike with acetone, absently sipping at it before he finds a place to settle in, still aching and feeling nauseous from how much he'd used his powers last night.

Blue's sitting sideways in an easy chair like she might be a throw pillow if you didn't look close enough, and she can't resist a little grin when she sees Michael down two mimosas and take a third.

"You survived your first New Year in Darrow!" she exclaims cheerily and lifts her own to him. "Good."

He should've known to expect her, because even though he's exhausted and the thought of using his powers is the last thing on his mind, the energy still swells like he could. He salutes Blue with his glass, snorting as she talks about surviving it.

"If dear Alex had found his shoes on time, we would've been safely tucked up on Kagura instead of in the chaos, but then he had to go and play hero," he says, with no bitterness at all, and only a deep well of fondness in his voice and eyes.

"That a normal thing, then?"

She smiles at that fond tease. "It seems like a thing he does," she agrees. "Did you get to the mountain after all that?"

"Oh, yeah." She pushes herself up out of the chair to wander over. "Or, well. Something is. Usually it's at Kagura. Last year it was gingerbread men come to life trying to stab people with forks. One year there were flying monkeys. Apparently ice bees are a real thing." Her lips twitch. It shouldn't be funny, given that there are injuries every year, but New Year's crises tend to have an extra layer of ridiculousness somehow.

"I was already at the mountain," he complains, which is a big part of why he'd been so irritated. "I pretty much barrelled my way down before the power outage, thank fuck, and then went around on the beach screaming his name like an idiot."

He laughs, because it's funny now, but he shakes his head in disbelief.

"I can deal with all those things, but what I had issues with is Alex almost ruining a day I was planning for, for ages," he gripes.

Blue can't help but smile at that image. "It's a common name, too," she points out. "I bet you got a couple of confused Alexes fleeing gooey fish men." She refuses to call them mermen. That's an atrocity of the imagination.

"Kagura and planning for ages? I'm hearing big romantic gesture, here." She gestures at him for details.

"Hey, what can I say, I shout a good name," he quips.

He figures that she's gonna hear about this from Alex at some point soon, and it's not like she can know by looking at him. With his hand being the way it is, it's not like he can wear a ring, but he gives Blue a confiding smile as he leans in. "I asked Alex to marry me last night, amongst the fleeing gooey fish men."

It's definitely not the most romantic proposal, but it had been theirs.

She snorts. "Remind me to avoid your room at Kagura," she teases back. Then he's leaning in, though, and her eyes go wide and more serious and excitement.

"You -- wait, did you really? He said yes, right?" Of course he said yes; you barely have to meet Alex to figure out that he's crazy about Michael. Well, that, and she assumes he wouldn't be at brunch being a goof if Alex had said no. "Please tell me you asked him literally in the middle of fish goo."

What an image.

"Once I found him, yeah," Michael says, like he has a right to be irritable about the fact that he'd taken so long to find Alex, but he's beaming. "And yeah, we're going back to Kagura tonight to celebrate," he adds, his smile only getting bigger.

He snorts, and it hadn't been right where the fish men were, but it felt pretty close. "We were on the pier overlooking all the fish goo, but yeah. His prosthetic was rough, I was panicked, but I'd been planning to ask him for months. I wasn't gonna let fish things ruin that."

She grins right back. "Well, congratulations!" Most of her friends that have been married here have either been married already, or very shortly after she met them; she hasn't been here for very many engagements among her friends and she finds herself delighted for them. Blue laughs at his afterthought. "Don't get yourself arrested for noise complaints," she says, with a failed attempt at a deadpan.

"Honestly, I think there's something weirdly more romantic about that than it being perfect?" She sips at her mimosa only to realize it's well and truly dead, and she puts it down on a table with just enough oomph to make a statement and not damage the glass. "It's romantic that you planned everything, but life isn't perfect, you know? Love isn't perfect. Why not propose in the middle of man-eating mermaids."

Michael's feeling pretty bashful and good at the same time, beaming away. He knows that Alex said he'd be here too, but later, so she can offer her own congratulations when he comes, but for now, he's happy to accept them on his behalf.

"And hey, we know how to behave."

By which he means, he knows how to order a room and ask if it's soundproofed to avoid that kind of thing. "Our lives definitely were never perfect before here, but this time, I decided it wasn't gonna stop me." He's tired of not being with Alex, like that, especially when he's stopped walking away. "I'm pretty sure Alex is gonna ask you to be there with us. So, you know, hope you can rock a suit," he says, as if a glance at her doesn't prove she can.

She levels a sure sort of raised eyebrow look at him, partly out of dubiousness and partly because she's pretty sure getting pulled out of space and time to, miraculously, the same pocket universe, figuring out your shit, and getting engaged in the middle of attacking mermen deserves some noise complaints.

"That's good," she says, and smiles genuinely. It tugs somewhere just north of her stomach, but a very young, petulant version of her reminds her she was supposed to never fall in love anyway. "This place, it can--" she starts, faltering a little, but he forges on and she pauses.

"Did you just pre-invite me to be your guys' grooms...maid? Is that what that was?" She beams, surprised and delighted away from more wistful thoughts. "You know, I have not often been the one in the suit, and I think that is well past due to change."

He shrugs, not seeing the big deal. "I mean, if you wanna be? I know Alex really likes you, and I know enough from Isobel's wedding and her planning them to know that the one you want to be happy is the one you allow to make the plans."

He's not calling Alex the bride, but man, was it a long and circuitous path around it.

"I mean, keep in mind we don't have a date," he warns, sipping on his mimosa. "We still gotta make a lot of decisions about how this thing looks, but the people part is easy, for me." Because Michael's got people and he holds them fiercely close and that's not changing.

"I'd love to be," she says, and even if he doesn't think it's a big deal to be important enough to someone to have them want you in their wedding, she's still warmed by it.

That roundabout path to not saying happy wife happy life does make her grin. "Well, I think your wedding party has to help you plan, traditionally, so you know. I'm available for venue hunting, or whatever."

"Bachelor parties? Cuz, I mean, there's one non-negotiable thing happening, but other than that, I think we're pretty open to anything," Michael says, but he wouldn't mind someone planning it for him. On the off chance he ever got hitched back home, he'd assumed Isobel would plan it all for him.

Fuck if he was gonna let Max ruin a bachelor party.

"I trust you to make it a plenty wild night."

She laughs. Blue hasn't ever pictured herself as planning someone's bachelor party, but then again, there's the fact that this is hardly likely to be a wedding with someone making ball and chain jokes and that most of those she's met who've worked as a stripper in Darrow did it because they enjoyed it -- benefits of having an allowance guaranteed by the city.

Both thoughts make her consider that she might want to ask Kavinsky for wild night-having advice, which is ...weird.

"You know, I've never planned one before? But I'm always up for a challenge," she answers honestly, grinning.

"I've never been to one and never had one." He doesn't count Isobel's, because being forced to go to a spa and do all those things would've been awful, but he'd been a bad brother and bailed on her, then deciding not to go to Noah's.

Maybe he should have figured Noah out back then, but he'd only been avoiding everyone because the wedding was making him feel sad and miserable, that his life got fucked to pieces while hers was flourishing. "Besides, you could just play Panic! songs for Alex all night and he'd be giddy."

"Hey, maybe you can help me dress as the guy, the main guy," he says, suggestively, because that would be an excellent pre-wedding gift, he thinks.

"Great! Then you'll have no expectations," she replies brightly, and grins, then examines her empty mimosa. "Do you want another drink? I'm feeling irresponsible."

Blue ducks through the others milling about and returns with hers refilled and one for him, grinning at his deadpan about Alex's music taste. She's about to retort something about even finding emo bands from home when Michael's suggestion makes her cough on her drink.

"Save a horse, ride a cowboy?" she suggests back. "Is that where we're going with this?"

"You could strip to Panic! at the Disco, that'd be an...event..."

"Sure," he agrees, because he's always down for another drink. Morning beers are a pretty normal thing for him, even if he mostly uses acetone with Alex, but at the Airstream, he'd just finish anything lying around. Reaching for a new mimosa, he smirks at her suggestion.

"I mean, I'd be doing the riding, and I don't think there's many songs about riding an Air Force Captain."

Though shit, it's reminding him that maybe he'd like to go back to that, roleplay a little, and make those reunion dreams come back alive.

"Hey, you got any suggestions, I'm down. I'm only giving the one lapdance, so I only need one song."

Eliot raises his eyebrows when he catches a glimpse of Michael knocking them back like that, and sidles over to see what's up.

"I suppose asking 'rough night' would be redundant?" He offers a weak smile and a toast with his own glass. "Seriously though," he says, keeping his voice low, "it seems like the monsters weren't too bad but depending on where you were during the whole scene...I do have harder stuff around if you, you know, need to cope."

Michael doesn't look injured or anything, just exhausted, perhaps. That, he can certainly relate to. "But other than weird merman invasions, how have you been?"

"Did you not have to trip over the gooey fish monsters?" Michael questions, because even if the night had ended pretty well for him, he's not forgetting that it had been pretty rough for a long while in the middle. Scoffing, he shakes his head.

"No coping needed, I'm celebrating," he guarantees, lifting the glass with a big grin. "Not the fish things," he clarifies. "But that I finally popped the question to Alex and he said yes, so I figure I'm going into the New Year right."

Eliot stares at him, and lets out a short laugh of startled delight. "Oh for fuck's sake did you really? Well congratulations!" He claps Michael on the shoulder and raises his own glass. Eliot's certainly not the marrying kind, but he's grown enough out of some of his bad habits that he can at least support other people's happiness, even if he has no desire for romance himself. Josh and Poppy seem to actually have a functional relationship. He shouldn't be surprised that other people are able to make it work, too.

"Shit, you really did have a busy night, then. I mean the fish-monsters were pretty easy to avoid unless you went out of you way to fight them, but--wait, you weren't fighting them, were you?" Eliot frowns a little. He's never picked up a 'magic' vibe from Michael, but you never know with people.

Michael's pretty proud of himself, and the smile on his face reflects it, saluting him with the glass. "It's pretty wild, but he and I have been off and on and in some form of love for over a decade, so you know, it's about time," he says, seeing as if they'd been mature and worked their stuff out, this would have happened a lot sooner.

"Yeah, I wasn't out there fighting them," he says, with the specific tone that meant that someone else was. "Had to drag Alex away from playing hero before his prosthetic got yanked off by a fish thing, or the sand did it for him."

Martin's quite surprised to see Michael there, but perhaps he shouldn't be. Darrow is sort of a small world, both in the figurative and quite literal senses, and Eliot has a greater talent for getting around than he ever did. Once he recovers from the start, he decides he's glad to see him; last night had been fraught, and he'd been a little more curt than he wanted. Michael had helped him find John, and he presumes, if he's here and looking not too worse for wear, heavy drinking notwithstanding, that he must have found Alex as well.

It would be nice to get to know the man under circumstances actually designed for getting to know someone, as opposed to their other attempts. So he picks up a second mimosa and drifts over.

"Fancy seeing you here," he says, raising his glass in a little mock toast.

Edited 2020-01-30 19:11 (UTC)

Michael salutes him with his mimosa, pleased to see that Martin didn't go and get himself eaten by a fish thing in his search for John. "Yup, look at me, all alive and shit," he deadpans, even though it is fairly impressive that he'd managed.

Soon, Alex will get there, and he'll be able to really celebrate.

"Either you found John or you're a really steely-eyed motherfucker who moves on pretty quickly," he jokes.

"Oh, he's fine," Martin assures him, glancing about the room. "He's here, actually, probably trying to blend into a wall." It's a gentle sort of teasing; he knows this really isn't John's thing, and he's glad he showed up anyway. "I found him sort of herding them back toward the ocean by poking them with a stick."

It had been sort of hilarious, though that had taken a backseat to how relieved they'd been to find each other, and the ease with which John had hugged him had clashed a bit with the conversation he'd been having with Michael. But he has no desire to get back into that again and fortunately, there are better things to ask about.

"And you found yours, I'm assuming?" He smiles faintly. "Are congratulations in order?"

Michael leans forward on his toes to pick him out, eyeing Martin, and thinking about what they talked about, but hey, they're here, they're alive, and they're happy. Who the hell is he to argue with any of that?

"I found mine," he confirms. "As expected, rescuing people like the hero he is," Michael says, but it's with fondness. "We got his prosthetic back in place, and I got him on the pier before I proposed, but lucky for me, he said yes."

Martin smiles, small but genuine. "That's fantastic," he says warmly. "I'm glad he's all right. And that he said yes."

He raises his drink again, less in jest and more in a sincere toast, taking another sip.

"Is he here?" he wonders, a bit curious to meet him, curious about Michael in general, given their limited but markedly odd interactions so far.

"Fuck, me too, because I don't think I could ever get someone like him again," he scoffs, shaking his head. "He's over there, with Blue," he says, gesturing to them. "We're going up to Kagura to make good on the couples retreat that we were supposed to have," he says, blissful. "Alex and me. Not Blue."

"Like I said. I get complicated, man," he promises. "But proposing to Alex was the simplest thing I've ever done."

Martin glances back, pleased to see Blue's here as well, Christ he really ought to catch her up on a few things—and turns back with another smile as Michael mentions his plans for the evening.

And then he brings up last night's conversation, a bit obliquely, but it's enough to make Martin falter a bit.

"That's good," he says, and looks down at his drink. Of all things he doesn't want to feel jealous, Christ, but it's a bit difficult. He is happy for Michael, of course. It is good to have that certainty about someone, to have it reciprocated, to feel it strongly enough to act on it in a place like this. He wonders how long it took. He's not even sure how long Michael's been here, doesn't remember if that came up on their first meeting or not. It is tempting, the idea of finding someone here, as much as it is dangerous. This is not his life; it's some state of in-between, something he's constantly aware he might lose at any moment. But god, if it works for other people...

The idea of getting over John makes his stomach turn, and he pushes it back at once. It's not as if he's been able to pull it off before. Years of disdain, paranoia, and unattainability couldn't do it, six months of an unliving coma couldn't do it, so it's laughable to think he could simply exert his own will on it now.

He retreats into the quick distraction of realizing he's just made a complete assumption about Michael and Alex's history. He'd been given to understand it was a bit rare to have someone from home join you but that certainly doesn't mean he and John and Daisy are the only ones.

"Did he erm... did you meet him here, or do you come from the same place?" he asks, looking up.

Michael stares at Alex for a long moment, but he does that a lot. It's making up for lost time, all those moments he didn't get to look at him like this, all the nights and mornings he wanted to, and he lets out a soft breath, trying not to get lost in what-ifs and hypotheticals like that.

When Martin asks about that, Michael snorts.

"Shit, I'm what, twenty-eight now?" He guesses, seeing as he doesn't have a real birthday and doesn't like to celebrate the fake one that he has. "We met when I got back to Roswell and started in school with him, so when I was eleven," he says. "Fell in love with him a few years later," he says, still staring across the room. "Didn't do anything about it until we were seventeen, and then things got massively fucked up for a decade."

It hurts, even now that they're engaged, to think about all that lost time. "But we're here now. We're making it work."

Oh. Martin's internal barricade against that petulant jealousy crumbles a little more as he realizes Michael and Alex are actually in a very similar situation. Of course he and John didn't meet until Martin was 28 himself, but...

There is no sense in comparing the two. They're different. That's all.

"Well, I'm glad," he says with a little smile. "Better late than not, right? It's good you still have each other here."

He can't quite resist looking back toward John, who's talking to Daisy now. Good that she's here, probably a bit pissed he came without her when she's ostensibly playing bodyguard to him. Last night was bad enough.

"Definitely better to happen at all," he guarantees, because honestly, before here and with Caulfield, who knows how things could have ended up? Alex had walked away from him more than once, but he stopped that and now they've been together six months. He's stupid lucky, and he knows it. "Helps, really, to not be bogged down in a lot bullshit," he says, finishing his drink and reaching for another.

"I was here without him for five weeks," he admits, "and yeah, I managed, but surviving's not the same as living."

That's the lesson that he's learned over the last six months, and he knows it's a crucial one. "Speaking from experience," he also adds, "I wouldn't give up on anyone, cuz if I had, we wouldn't be engaged."

Seems like he's not going to escape this line of conversation anytime soon, and Martin sighs quietly as he decides to just accept it.

"Yeah." He frowns into his drink before taking a more substantial sip. "I mean, I'm not giving up on him, ever. But it's bigger than just my... m-my feelings for him."

Ugh. He hesitates, glancing back at John, still otherwise engaged. It's weird to be talking about this openly at all, much less with John in the bloody room, but... well, it's not like he chose the moment, and he's got just enough of a buzz going that he thinks he can bully his way through the discomfort.

"We were both part of something back home that... it didn't exactly let us go when we came here." Martin shrugs. It's vague, but he's not sure he has the stamina to just launch into all that. "We need each other. He needs me. And if it's just that, if it's just... taking care of him, that's all right."

He means it, too. There is always going to be that unforgiving heartache and the awful loneliness whenever he's left with his thoughts for too long, becoming sometimes literally oppressive in his empty flat and his haunted dreams. But he can survive it.

"I'll live," he says aloud, just a bit too tired to sound properly wry, as he takes another drink.

"Look, if he told you point-blank that he doesn't want you, he doesn't like or love you, and you know him well enough to believe him, then fine," he allows. Then again, Michael screamed at the love of his life that he didn't love him.

Thank fuck Alex could see through his miserable lying.

"I just think that living isn't so great if it's just going through the bullshit motions. From experience," he allows, because he definitely did that a lot.

Martin stands there, his gaze still downturned at the dregs of his mimosa, letting Michael's advice sink in before he even considers a response. No, of course, John has never said these things. Not point-blank, not even obliquely. People have forced him to confront this before as though it ought to provide him some sort of hope, and it's difficult not to resent it. It is never so easy as just allowing himself to think maybe. As though the only thing missing in their situation is a bloody discussion, oh, why didn't I think of that.

But he can't explain all that. He can't explain about the tapes and what he said on them and how he knows John has listened to every one, and he certainly can't explain that a lack of discussion is evidence considering his own pointed unavailability that filled in space where John might have addressed any of it. Most of all he can't just go into a whole damn diatribe about John's asexuality and the murky state of his capacity for romantic attraction because that isn't anyone's goddamn business, least of all his own.

But the thing that really needles him this time, more than any other moment this has come up, is that he has a harder time shaking it off than usual, a harder time resenting it than he did last night. Because Michael is right: Martin's entire life has been a perpetual state of going through the motions, and it's only recently that anyone's had cause or willingness or interest to tell him he deserves better. And that person was John.

He rubs at the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up, and downs what little remains of his drink.

"Maybe you're right," he says tiredly as he resets his glasses, because as hedging goes, that at least feels marginally like the answer Michael is going for. "Just..." He risks one more glance toward John, then faces Michael directly. "We only just became friends, if I'm honest," he says, because if they're going by the first time they actually had the audacity to use that word with each other was here, just a day over two months ago. "I really, really don't want to mess with that."

"Fuck, you genuinely sound like me," Michael says, because he'd been the same. "Alex wanted to start over, as friends, and when I got here, I was a fucking mess and I wanted the same, so we did start that way. Friends, no kissing, barely hugging, and learning about each other. We became best friends."

And then this place turned them into the teenagers that hooked up, with no memory of anything else.

So maybe the universe is bound to step in, if it's meant to happen. "Look, if that's what's most important to you, I get that, I do. I'm just of the opinion that you should never shut doors if you want something." Says a man who indulges in acetone and liquor like it's going out of style, and he reaches for his mimosa for a punctuating sip.

Martin relaxes a bit, relieved that Michael understands where he's coming from. That certainly makes it easier to appreciate his ongoing encouragement.

"Yeah," he says, managing a little smile. "Well, nothing's shut. Guess I'll just have to see if anything comes through."

He doubts it, but it's nice to imagine there's a shred of hope, even if that mostly feels like a mistake.

"I need a top-up," he says, gesturing with his empty glass. "You?"

John thinks about not going to Eliot's brunch in the same way that he thinks about not going to any given sizable social gathering, more of a reflex than a commentary on the gathering itself. But it doesn't take long to reject that impulse: Eliot is a friend more than a colleague, and while he hasn't exactly got much sleep, the highly anticipated New Year's Eve chaos wound up being rather placid, by his standards. Martin and he had made some observations of the creatures, and then he'd seen Martin home and returned to the Archive to start building a file. He'd caught a few hours of sleep on the cot in his office, then headed home to change and make himself presentable before returning to Candlewood. He imagines that these festivities will also be on the more laid-back end of the spectrum. And with substantially less screaming.

This is the first time he's seen Eliot's flat, and he looks around with a vague sort of envy at the decor. Eliot's actually tried, hasn't he? He really shouldn't be surprised; Eliot exudes style, and his flat should be no different. But John does feel rather shabby by comparison as he obtains a drink and goes to examine one of the cabinets, wondering if its contents serve a magical or merely aesthetic purpose.

"It's good stuff, isn't it? My aunt used to have a crystal a little like that one." Blue, who has been circumnavigating the room in the opposite direction, gives John a wan smile, pointing to a slightly cloudy crystal sphere, a little more oval than round in its setting.

"It didn't actually help her predict the future," she adds -- ironically, crystals fall more in line with Blue's own powers if what Gwenllian had said was right about mirrors and focal points, but she doesn't have any idea how to learn more about that -- "But she was...what's the word. Psychometric, and it had belonged to a very interesting woman."

"I met a girl who can see ghosts," she adds casually, as though this is part of the same conversation. "Not just see. Got grabbed by." That last bit still might be her fault, a little.

For all that he'd met her on his first day here, she made such a stronger impression on him as a cat that he's always vaguely surprised to find himself towering over her. Or maybe it's just the way she seems to dial everything up a few notches, her presence larger than her person. Regardless, he manages a wry smile for her.

"I presume that by 'psychometric,' you're referring to something besides making job interviews more obnoxious," he replies. Going off context, he ventures, "Gathering information via touch?" Georgie or Melanie might know, but Christ, he's had to draw the line somewhere. And his own research has generally been rather focused, based on whatever Statements he was reading. Discrete flavors of divination are still outside his wheelhouse.

Snorting softly, he adds, "Martin and I had our own ghost adventure up at Kagura about a month ago. Your new acquaintance has my sympathies."

Edited 2020-01-05 01:59 (UTC)

Blue blinks. Different people with different wheelhouses, clearly. "I need to brush up on my hiring tactics," she says, wryly, feeling a little under-educated and slightly annoyed at herself for taking it personally. "I have no idea what it means in that context. But you've got it. Calla could tell you the -- story of a thing by holding it." It's easier and more complete than saying the past and the future. Time isn't linear; it's just that not everyone can see through it.

She raises an eyebrow, intrigued. "What sort of ghost adventure? Or should I not ask?"

"You're not missing much," he dryly assures her. "It just refers to people who incorporate dubiously legitimate personality tests into the hiring process." It's all rubbish, if you ask him; whether people can do the job ought to matter more than whether they're sufficiently extraverted about it. And that's presuming the tests have any more inherent scientific rigor than reading bird entrails, which he tends to doubt.

Hell, with Blue's family, bird entrails might actually get you somewhere, though he isn't going to ask for clarification regarding something so ghoulish (not at brunch, anyway). Instead, he grimaces at her question regarding the ghost, which... he probably should have seen coming. At least the wince can believably be applied to the non-mistletoe-related portion of the day, too.

"It was... needlessly dramatic," he offers at length. "I did manage to get a Statement out of it, which you're more than welcome to read next time you come by the Archive. But I've had more cooperative subjects." After a beat, he admits, "She locked us in the boiler room."

"Oh," she says, "you mean MBTI and enneagrams and all that." She likes taking those things, but they're not divination tools. Or rather, they probably are for someone, because almost anything can be, but it'd be about as useful for her to look at someone's own impressions of themselves as for her to break out a tarot deck and hire based on her, very unpsychic, reading.

"That is dramatic," she says, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't heard of many ghosts that could manage a lock. When they weren't around me." Her smile is a little wry, a little embarrassed.

"I..." She doesn't know how to broach this, especially with her knowledge so abridged, like someone redacted most of a report and gave her cut-word poetry to interpret instead. "Heard there have been some other dramatics. Are you...doing okay?"

"Exactly," John says, experiencing that little pulse of relief that comes with unanticipated commonalities between universes. Christ knows what the Darrow brand knock-off versions of the tests are called, presuming an equivalent exists here, but hearing Blue use the actual, real names for them is oddly but profoundly reassuring.

Responding to the ghost comment is a little trickier, if only because the whole topic feels fraught by association. But the technicalities ought to be harmless enough, and he ventures, "I think it might have been... an atypical effort on the ghost's part. What we experienced doesn't align much with the stories and rumors about the place. I suspect a good deal of the alleged hauntings had nothing to do with her." Or with ghosts of any kind, quite frankly.

He blinks down at her when she asks after him, then tips his head a little in wry acknowledgment. There was already a small scar across his throat when he arrived here, but the one his would-be murderer left him with is far more prominent, and visibly fresher. "I'm... surviving," he replies at length. "I presume Kat told you something." There's no ire or accusation in his tone; he doesn't begrudge Kat wanting to talk about it with someone, and as third parties go, Blue is rather unobjectionable. There is a hint of inquiry, though; he doesn't know how much Kat has told her, and he'd rather know how much ground there might be to cover before he runs the risk of ruining anyone's brunch.

"Something," she agrees, not wanting to throw Kat under the bus precisely, though he doesn't sound angry about it. "She -- told me you'd been attacked," she admits, tone concerned, "and obviously there was a little more to it, but I didn't want to push. She seemed like she didn't know how much she was allowed to say."

"I was...a little worried," she says, mildly.

Perhaps it's not the right topic for a brunch, but Blue's also not exactly a brunch person and she is fond of being open with her feelings, so.

"I was," he acknowledges evenly. It's been long enough that he has the facts of the matter pretty well sorted into what is (or may as well be) common knowledge, and what should be kept more guarded. That he was attacked is no secret, but the motives and identity of his assailant are details he'd as soon stayed under wraps. It's bad enough that Martin worked it out; he won't have anyone else following in his footsteps.

Which, unfortunately, leaves him with little to do but brush it off. He doesn't want to tell Blue it's none of her business, and not just because her concern is genuine and rather touching. But he doesn't want the whole truth haunting her, either.

"But I'm more... resilient... than I look," he continues. "We're taking appropriate precautions, going forward, but it would take something substantially more dramatic than an attack to, er..." he falters; there's really no good way to put this, "... finish me off." After a beat, he adds, "I don't believe Kat is in any danger," his tone and expression softening by a few degrees.

John is clearly weighing his words, which isn't altogether abnormal, though often he seems to have just the right word picked out ahead of time. This is a more stressed -- more redacted, Blue thinks, but she doesn't necessarily have the right to be frustrated about that -- sort of tone.

"I mean," she says, and sort of gestures at the collection of scars that make up his general being. "You do look like you've seen some shit." Somehow, putting it crudely makes her feel better about the whole thing. "I just -- no one should have to," she finishes, ruffling her hair.

His comment about Kat is so on the mark that her eyes snap back up to his, and for a flash she wonders if he's listening without thinking about it. Probably, not. It's just natural to be worried. That's what she decides to think, anyway. "Good," she says, then adds, "I doubt we'd have to worry, she's kind of a survivor, but. I'd much rather everyone be safe. Not just Kat," she adds, a little embarrassed.

John is in trouble.

Not in the sense that he's in danger. Not in the sense that he's about to get murdered (again). But he has an actual killer after him, and she's supposed to be protecting him, and how is she supposed to do that when he's being an entire idiot?

Daisy had clocked him the moment he'd entered the building. He's not supposed to be alone, and when Martin is here and he isn't, she realizes that's exactly what's happened. The idiot had probably seen Martin home and then gone to the bloody Archive, instead of staying with Martin or having Daisy see him to his own building.

So the moment he enters Eliot's flat, she lands a solid, dull punch to his shoulder and glares at him.

"Oh, D—ow." John frowns, affronted, and makes a show of rubbing his shoulder. "Christ." He almost makes a 'some bodyguard' quip, but that would invite a retort so obvious that he doesn't even need to hear her say it.

And she'd have a point. Yesterday's madness had been so fundamentally silly that he'd managed to forget there were more salient threats to his safety. Granted, the odds of his murderer hijacking a cab had seemed unlikely enough that he wasn't troubled about coming here alone, but... well. He shouldn't ask Daisy to help protect him and deny her the opportunity. Especially if he doesn't want her taking matters into her own hands.

So he ducks his head and raises his hands in a hopefully appeasing gesture. "I'm sorry," he says sincerely. Then, "Please don't hit me again."

"Don't give me a reason to," she retorts coolly. She huffs out an annoyed breath, then leans closer and offers a much gentler nudge of her shoulder against his.

"Glad you're alright," she adds. "Don't be an idiot."

She turns back to looking at Eliot's flat like that's sorted. She's feeling similarly to John — Eliot's made an effort, here, made this weird little prison into a home, and she has to admit that she's a bit jealous. Her own flat is just a few floors down, but the only thing that didn't come with it is the plant that Martin had given her. She wonders if Martin's is the same.

John leans into the nudge, one corner of his mouth ticking up into a small, relieved smile. "You say that like there's an alternative," he quips, before following her gaze across the flat. He doesn't know if he Knows or simply suspects that she's also a bit thrown by how... put together the place is. There are plenty of perfectly sensible reasons why he hasn't gone to any great lengths to make his own flat feel more homey, up to and including the fact that he might not even wake up there tomorrow. It's hard to really think about settling when Darrow might spit him back out at any moment.

But it's also hard not to be a little envious. "He's really done something with the place, hasn't he?" he remarks, taking a casual sip of his drink. "Feels as if I'm not even trying, by comparison."

"Neither am I," she remarks. "Suppose it would feel less like a cell if we made it look less like one." She looks at some of the things Eliot's bought, though. Things that reek of indolence to look at, and that's not something Daisy wants to feel when she thinks about her own space.

"The problem is, it's lonely," she notes, softer than before. She doesn't even necessarily mean to say it, but it's John. It's so easy to be honest with John. "Even a pretty cell is still a cell when it's lonely."

John hums softly, somewhere between acknowledgment and agreement. None of them are bound to the Archive the way they were bound to the Institute, physical dependence and outside threats rendering them functionally under siege. They can all go their separate ways at the end of the day (to the extent that applies, with three of them living here in Candlewood), to their individual flats. No more forced camaraderie, which so easily translates to everyone respecting one another's newfound wealth of personal space.

It is lonely. He spends more time at the Archive than he does his own flat, and that's at least partly down to the potential that someone else might walk in at any moment, a fantasy he can't entertain so easily at the Bramford.

But he's not going to pretend that forced camaraderie is a tenable solution. Martin probably had the right idea by obtaining a cat. "You could get a pet," he suggests. "That might perk the place up a bit."

She huffs a laugh. "Could you imagine? Me with a goldfish, or a cat, or something. Poor Kermit's enough, and I'm barely tending to him." Though, she supposes that's rather the point of succulents, isn't it? They're very low-maintenance plants.

"This is... good... though. All these people. I used to hate crowds." Now, she can't imagine being alone even long enough to sleep, anymore. She has the telly going, just for the noise. For the illusion of company.

God, she's pathetic.

"Not a fish," John says with a dismissive flap of his hand. A properly run fish tank is a lot of time, money, and effort, and the payoff is largely aesthetic. He wouldn't expect a tank full of fish to feel like companionship. "But cats aren't bad. Or a dog. A dog might even be able to assist you on one of your little dinosaur-related missions." As if Daisy needs the help. He's yet to stump her, and he suspects actually doing so would be too maddening for her to feel like a victory for him.

"Think I still might," he admits in response to her comment about crowds. "But this is all very... normal." It takes him longer than it should to find the word, and he has to chase the unfamiliar taste of it with a sip of his drink.

He looks a bit like he's just tasted something that disagrees with his palate, and she realizes that she can relate. Normal is a hard pill to swallow, these days.

"Normal is good, John," she says, though she sounds like she's trying to convince herself. "Normal is normal. Sometimes the rest of us mere mortals need that." She doesn't mean to sound bitter, or even to steer the conversation away from talks of pet pros and cons. But she doesn't think she's wrong, either. Normal is good, and sometimes it's good to be reminded of that.

"I—" John starts, getting halfway through 'I know' before the rest of us mere mortals registers, and then he stops, as abruptly as if a hand had closed around his throat, and presses his lips together into a tight frown. Setting aside the fact that he'd sooner characterize normal as atypical as opposed to bad, it's impossible not to feel hurt by the implication that... what, that he's beyond it? That it isn't for him anymore, anyway? That he's forgotten what it means, that he doesn't at least intellectually understand that it's a good thing?

Maybe he's overthinking it. But then, he's slowly losing whatever knack for lying he ever possessed, and that includes lying to himself. All of those implications might be unintended or unkind, but that doesn't make them strictly untrue, does it?

"And what would I know about mortal concerns," he volleys back in an almost rhetorical undertone, though there's a pained edge to his customary dry humor.

Daisy winces a bit at that. Well, fuck. She hadn't meant to do that. Her words taste like copper in her mouth and she fixes him with an apologetic grimace.

"John, I—" she says, and forces herself to say the rest. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant it in the... casual, playful, 'oh look you're an aloof arsehole' way, not in the... 'oh look we're both weirdo monsters' way. Not that that sounds better, now I say it out loud..."

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, muttering to herself about needing a fucking drink.

John snorts quietly, but some of the tension leaves his shoulders. He does know that Daisy wouldn't have meant to outright insult him — she's not above giving him a verbal kick in the arse when he needs one, but her intention has never been to hurt — but, well. They're both still... adjusting, to all of this. It's no surprise that said adjustments aren't always graceful.

"How do you feel about mimosas?" he asks. "Or I suppose you could go with straight champagne." She'd probably need a whole bottle to get anywhere at all, but it would be rude to raid Eliot's liquor cabinet for anything stronger.

"Rather a decent scotch," she admits, but she has the same moral obligations as John not to raid Eliot's flat for something better, and it's obvious in her tone. "Suppose it'll work for now," she adds, "but you owe me something stronger for that scare."

It isn't as though she'd been clutching her pearls like an old woman, but she does want to drive the point home to John: don't be an idiot. Let her do her job.

"Fair enough," he allows, though a small part of him is already thinking, a little despairingly, of how much mid-shelf scotch Daisy could put away on his dime without breaking a sweat. It might be more cost effective to go buy her a bottle of something rather than go out somewhere.

They make their way over to the drinks table, and as Daisy pours, he asks, "What did you make of last night? Get a good look at Darrow's idea of a mer-person?" Christ knows how he ought to gender the things; his examinations hadn't been particularly revealing in that regard.

Brunch had, to Blue, long seemed like a concept for some distinct groups that were Not Her: the upper middle class and their offspring (in Henrietta, usually around the beginning and end of Aglionby semesters), old women (probably also rich, because the gossipy kind who gathered at someone's house after church in Henrietta didn't really call it brunch), and occasionally college-age girls who would have dated but were not from the first group.

Being too young for college parties and growing up in a place without much of a queer community had deprived her of two very obvious other Types of Brunch, though, and anyway, when she got Eliot's invitation she'd thought being a little fancy and a little bit of a mess might be fun.

Now in his flat, she finds herself even more comfortable than she thought she'd be. His taste isn't precisely the same as her aunts and mother -- probably to his benefit -- but the mismatched, decorative furniture, and the plants and magical elements bring a cozy clutter that reminds her ache-ily of Fox Way. She's almost expecting a tarot deck to just appear on a side table.

She's lost in thought, sipping a mimosa and contemplating some of the things on the shelves, when she steps into someone's way - or someone steps into hers, she's not quite sure - and startles just a little.

"Blue!" Martin hadn't noticed her, small as she is, when he almost walked right into her, and before he could babble an apology, he recognizes her and just grins instead. He's on his third mimosa by now, and while he's certainly got a ways to go before he gets properly drunk, the impulse to go in for an immediate hug is still much easier to accept. He's careful not to disturb her drink when he leans in to put his arms around her. "Christ, it's been ages, how are you?"

He feels quite guilty about that—how long it's been. He made an effort to catch up with many of the people he'd lost touch with over the course of his isolation, but some had fallen through the cracks, especially in the wake of all that's been going on. But he's very happy to see her, and it feels good to be able to just show it.

Blue grins and hugs him right back, solidly and glad to see him. Tipsy Martin is a hugger, how about that. She thinks of the first time she'd hugged him -- he'd felt like he needed it, like he wasn't quite used to it.

"Good. I think. Alive and mimosa'd," she decides, "which is better than some people, after last night, I think." She can't imagine having died by floppy merman, but she'd heard there were some casualities. "Were you out in it at all?"

She hugs him back, just as nice as he remembered—she is wonderfully good at them—and his smile stays warm and happy as he pulls back, even as she mentions the turmoil of the previous night.

"Oh, we were," he says, flapping a hand about it. "Awful business, but we managed to avoid the worst of it, for the most part. I'm glad it wasn't... well, worse than it was." He shrugs and takes a sip of his drink. "And I'm glad Eliot decided to have this on as planned. I think we all probably needed it."

He looks at her, wondering what to say next, feeling vaguely guilty about the wealth of options. There's a lot that's happened, a lot that's been difficult to talk about, and keeping everyone apprised was a more difficult task than he'd anticipated—even without his temporary return to the Lonely. Probably because he's simply never had this many people in his life at once who actually do care to know what's going on. He supposes it's possible Kat's kept her informed, but equally possible she wouldn't have thought it her business to share.

"Honestly, last night was almost a break for us. Things have been a bit... messy, of late." It's impossible not to wince at his own choice of word, a bit too literal in some ways. "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch."

"It was living gingerbread cookies, last year," she says, matter-of-factly. "Armed with little cocktail forks. Tris and I --" She pauses, realizing that Martin wasn't here while Tris was. "My girlfriend then," she says with what she hopes is a natural or at least brave smile, and hides any stumble behind a sip of mimosa. "We had a room at Kagura, so we sort of held back the siege and battened down."

Her brow furrows, frowning. "Don't apologize. I mean, anyway. But I heard bits, from Kat. I could tell she wasn't sure how much was her business to say. Is John...is everything all right now?" She isn't sure how much is her business to ask after, but she feels as though she ought to make it clear that she considers them people to worry after. Or avenge, small an avenger as she might be.

"Oh," he says of the gingerbread cookies. That sounds... exactly as stupid and underwhelming as last night's danger, certainly not anything he'd apply the word siege to, but perhaps it was somehow worse than it sounds.

Whatever mild curiosity he might have over that is quickly forgotten when the conversation turns to John. He sobers a bit, proverbially at least, and nods. "He's all right. Miraculous recovery is very much in his wheelhouse."

It's hard to tell how much Blue actually knows, and he resigns himself to the possibility that they'll be dancing around a bit until someone finally gets up the nerve to reference John's near murder directly. He's not exactly relishing that, but at least Blue is someone he trusts. He takes another sip of his drink, hoping for a bit of alcoholic fortification.

Edited 2020-01-27 04:57 (UTC)

She's not sure that his recovery being miraculous is something she should be glad for, exactly, but she nods in -- acknowledgement, approval? Something like that -- anyway, sipping her mimosa. "Are we speaking proverbially or, actually miraculous?" she asks, frowning.

They are speaking about a man who can read minds, feeds on statements of terror, and has once been a cat, after all. The idea that it was some normal mugging strikes Blue as a little bit more unlikely than the alternative.

Ah. Well, that clears that up neatly, and Martin can't quite keep from frowning into his drink as though he's suddenly lost the taste for it. He hasn't, though he thinks he'll need to save it to follow the explanation.

"Well," he says, huffing out a tired little sigh, "not so proverbial, no." At the very least he has a great deal more distance from it than the last time he had to explain. It's been more firmly relegated to a thing of the past, its only remnants the scar on John's throat and the occasional flashes Martin still suffers of the memory of walking into John's flat and finding him on the floor.

"Someone tried to kill him," he says, his voice lowering a bit. They aren't making a habit of telling anyone, but they trust Blue, and it's only their own poor capacity for keeping up with everyone to blame for her not having already learned. It's especially unfair given that she lives with Kat, so. He draws a breath that has only a faint tremble to it and amends, "Did kill him. And... he came back."

There's a great deal more to it than that, a great many questions she might ask, but he'd rather wait for those than just launch into it. He takes a long sip of his mimosa, now a bit comically unsuited for the discussion.

She blinks at that, face ready to move into real concern already, but did kill him gets a much more seriously alarmed and perplexed expression, her brow furrowing and eyes going wide. "He --"

"I need a stronger drink," she says, lifting a hand in stay right there and coming back with the dregs of her mimosa having been refilled into a screwdriver. She still sips it, but it at least feels more serious.

"Is that normal?" she hisses in an undertone. "I mean. Not people trying to kill him, him-- Well. Actually...Is that normal?"

It's selfish, but the first thing she thinks of is Kat, working for someone for whom people trying to kill them might be a common occurrence. It's quickly followed by all the horrific images of death and resurrection and being hunted she can conjure; how panicked Martin must have been, how horrible it must be to have known any of this without being able to tell it. She doesn't think it's unfair, anyway: Kat can't come back from the dead.

He almost wants to ask her to get him one, but he resists, just letting her go while he stares down at his cocktail. When she returns she asks some rather salient questions and he shakes his head quickly.

"It—no," he says. "I mean, his recovery is just... part of his whole thing, the Eye... sort of protecting its assets, I suppose." He grimaces faintly at the clinical sound of that. "But the, erm, the killing isn't a usual thing, no. Not here. Back home it was a lot more dangerous, but this was just... it was a special case."

Not exactly comforting, and he's not sure how comforting he can be. Jacob Riggs is still out there, and he knows John is alive now. But they've got Daisy to keep John safe, and Martin can't imagine Riggs would go after anyone else. From what Martin could find out about him, he's historically been too smart for that.

Really, if anyone's put themself on the proverbial chopping block, it's him. But thinking about that makes his stomach drop, so he doesn't.

"We've got another friend from home who joined us a couple months ago," he says. "She's a lot, er, stronger than us. She's protecting John. And the rest of us by association." It's not a terribly broad leap to guess where the height of Blue's concern might lie, and he softens a bit as he says, "We won't let anything happen to Kat."

It seems appallingly stupid to make such a promise, not with the miserable track record of lost friends back home, but he does mean it. Things are different now. They've taken every possible step to ensure Kat and Eliot are kept on the periphery of their preexisting conditions, and with no real danger to speak of that doesn't exist outside their heads... it's fine. And Jacob Riggs will either make good on the arrangement John made, or Daisy will make some sort of lunchmeat out of him. It'll be fine.

Blue's not sure if that's good or not, that it's his -- patron, or whatever she's supposed to call some eldritch power that enjoys knowledge using him as a sort of straw, from what she gathers -- keeping him alive and not some individual ability. But it is better than it being out of nowhere and unexplainable, and it's much better than him being dead.

"A special case," she says, and sips the screwdriver. "Okay. Well, that's horrible. I'm glad it's safer here than home usually, but."

"Oh," she says at the news that they've got another friend here, and can't remember if she was told that. "That's -- that's good. I mean, that she's protecting you, but also, just to have someone from home. I assume?"

He picks out her particular area of concern and she flushes, just faintly. "Good. ...Kat probably won't let anything happen to herself, either," she adds, something of a reminder to herself, with a fond, slightly wry little smile. "Has she told you much about what she dealt with at home?"

He nods to the remark about Daisy being good to have around. Not long ago he wouldn't have thought so, but... things have changed. He hasn't spent much time with her since she got him drunk, but that was a fun time, all things considered. And he's grateful to have her here.

Blue goes a bit pink at the mention of Kat, and Martin can't resist smiling into his drink, pleased he guessed correctly.

"Not much," he says. "We know it was... something, and it seems to have prepared her for all this, but we haven't pried." He's not sure if John is hoping she'll eventually give him her Statement, as Blue has, as Eliot has. It'll be left down to her, if that moment ever comes. "Not that I'd wish this kind of preparation on anyone, but it does help, at the same time. And you're right." He smiles rather fondly. "I don't think she would let anything happen to herself. And we don't intend to either."

He kind of smiles self-satisfiedly to himself when she blushes, and Blue makes a little wrinkled-nose face at him, embarrassed to be obvious. Not that Martin isn't, though she thinks there must have been some sort of conversation about that by now. Who knows; she gets the feeling, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. She's taken a long time not saying anything with most of her crushes, and she's not sure that's ever going to change.

Blue nods, more serious. "It...if she hasn't said anything, it's not my place to tell," she says, carefully, "but she's lived through a lot. Here, too."

She smiles. "I'm glad. That you care, even if nothing does happen." She rubs her neck. "Are you doing okay, with -- all this?" It strikes her that this very well could be more distressing for Martin than it was for John.

"Oh," he says, as though the concept of his wellness hadn't even occurred to him, and he looks down at himself as if there's anything telling to see. "I—I'm all right." It's not strictly a lie, but it's not very convincing either, and he smiles, a bit apologetic. "I mean, it... it was hard. It's been hard. But we're doing all right, I think."

It's been two months now; he still occasionally gets flashes of it, seeing John's body on the floor, uncomfortable and unpredictable little jolts now and then. And there's the more recent brush with Riggs, memories of which tend to prompt smaller waves of nausea over what could have happened, what might still happen. But it's all right. They're all right. He's trying to come round to the idea that it might actually stay that way.

"Nothing I can't handle," he amends quietly, taking a ponderous sip of his drink.

It's not a good impression of someone who's all right, but it's an attempt at normalcy, and she's been in that place enough -- perhaps not quite as apologetically, but still -- that she can't scold him for it.

She does notice that he says we the second time, though.

"Good," she says mildly, and adds, "Just -- if you need someone to talk to, I...it can be hard, and lonely, trying to get through things like that in your own head, especially if it feels like it's worse for someone else."

He looks at her, faintly surprised at her assessment, though he shouldn't be. It's a fairly natural understanding; of course this sort of thing can be lonely. And it was obviously worse for John, so he's sure it's all too easy for someone as intuitive as Blue to recognize the need he feels to suppress his own hurts.

"Thank you," he says gently, giving her a soft smile. "I—I really appreciate that, Blue."

He huffs out a sigh like he's physically pushing all that aside, and says briskly, "But surely we can find something nicer to talk about while there's mimosas about. Does Kat know you're so worried about her?"

This is the sort of ambush Tim used to pull on him, and while he normally wouldn't dream of doing that to someone else, he is extremely eager to stop soaking in his own soupy emotions, and he hopes Blue will see this as the lighthearted poke it's intended to be, rather than some sort of interrogation. He also does have two and a half mimosas in him, to be fair. He can't resist grinning a bit.

She gives him a little nod, you're welcome without having to say it. And then laughs and rolls her eyes at him, when he asks about Kat.

"I...think she does," Blue says carefully. "I mean, I hope she knows that part," she adds with a little laugh, and ruffles her hair. "We...have both lost an awful lot of people," she confesses, and if it's a little apropos of nothing, it doesn't feel like it to her. Loss is, in one way or another, part of the foundation of their relationship. And at this point, it's like a vulture, patiently circling all the time.

She leans against the cabinet gently to take a sip of her mimosa. "Sometimes I'm not sure if I want her to know..." She glances at Martin, wry. "How much I worry," she says pointedly. "Or if it'd be easier if she just never does."

Maybe it's odd, or even alarming, that her remark about she and Kat both having lost a lot of people doesn't even make him blink. The same is true of him and John. As connections go, it's not a bad one. In a lot of ways he feels like it might be the most important thing.

Her final remark is familiar too, and he draws a sharp, faintly hissing breath as he nods into his drink. "Ah," he says, matching her wry tone. "Yes. I... really, really understand that."

It's not quite the same. John certainly does know about his feelings. But Christ, it would definitely be easier if he didn't, or if they weren't there at all.

"But, er, why? If you don't mind my asking." He looks back at her. "Is it... how tenuous all this is?" He hasn't really dug deep, but she has mentioned lost friends and even exes before.

It's the sort of thing that Blue doesn't really want anyone else to relate to, even though it's nice to be understood, and she makes a face when he takes a hiss of a breath.

"Yes, sort of that," she says, and tries to formulate a way to say what she means. It's a little bit ridiculous, the way she feels about it. "And sort of me." She takes a slightly longer sip of mimosa.

"Do you remember when I was telling John about Henrietta, I said my family saw that I'd kill my true love when I kissed them?" She can't remember if Martin had wandered out during parts of it: she'd been very caught up in the storytelling of it. "It doesn't work that way here," she adds, with a little wave of her hand. "I'm not sure exactly how it happened at home, but it...did happen."

"I can kiss people; that's not the issue. But there have been a few people now who I've loved here who've died, or sent back to places where they will. And after a couple times -- and, I mean, being told your whole life that was going to happen -- it's hard not to feel like you're the problem."

She lifts a shoulder. "Maybe it's an excuse, but -- I can't even know."

Martin does remember, and he nods thoughtfully as she explains, sobering a bit further. He hadn't thought of that, how difficult it must be with that always looming in the background. And it isn't just the tenuousness of this place, either, it's an ongoing history of loss that she's suffered, from the sound of things, far too much for how young she is.

He's quiet for a moment after she finishes, and then he reaches out and touches her arm gently, giving her what he hopes is a reassuring little squeeze.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That sounds awful. And... well. I've never been through anything quite like that, but I—I think I understand." He looks down at the floor briefly. "Thinking you're the problem, I mean. And... feeling like it's safer if you just... don't."

Really, he thinks John is a better candidate to understand that than he is; John, who tried so hard to push them all away, only to lose more and more of them anyway. Martin himself nearly included. But there's plenty of grief and self-recrimination between the two of them that it's not much a stretch to tell Blue he understands.

"You know, Kat kind of saved me," he says. "When I was... sort of relapsing, I suppose. You know, the day we met, when I was so... I'd spent months trying to kinda of make myself disappear. I felt like it was better if everyone forgot about me. Being here sort of threw all that off for a bit, and then back in October, I just... I fell back into it. It was hard not to. All these ideas about it just being better that way, that didn't really go away. And Kat's the one who woke me up. She said she knew what I was going through, and I didn't believe her at first, but... she did. A lot of people helped, but more than anyone, she's the reason I came out of it enough to... to find John, when he was..." He shrugs, not wanting to dip back into that. "The point is, Kat's a good person, we both know that. And we both know she's strong. And... I just think that if she knew you were keeping this at bay for her sake, well... she wouldn't want you to."

It feels a bit hypocritical, giving this kind of advice when he'd just moments ago been trying very hard to get Michael to stop giving him this kind of advice. But, well, Blue probably has a better shot at this than he does, and for Christ's sake, someone around here deserves to get what they want.

The touch is reassuring, and she manages a grateful, if terse, little smile, leaning into the touch, and nodding as he looks down. Martin sort of gives off insecurity along with caring, and it's easy to believe he's thought of himself as the problem before. Blue likes to think of herself as someone who projects confidence, or at least stubbornness if she can't have the former, but when it comes to this she's had her determination hacked at a little too often.

She looks up as he goes on, brow furrowing. Kat had maybe mentioned Martin worrying her, but she's never heard the story from Martin's point of view, and she finds herself swallowing against a lump in her throat from Kat saved me onward, her eyes fixed.

It's a mix: fierce pride in Kat for being both kind and persuasive enough to pull Martin back from the darkness; a deep painful dislike that either Martin or Kat have hurt like that even if it's not currently the case; shame at thinking so much about her own grief when Kat's been through so much; maybe a million other things. She takes it in, nodding.

"She probably wouldn't," Blue admits with a soft laugh at her own expense, and she ruffles her hair, still curly from the sea fog of last night. "She is good, and she's so strong, and she's survived -- so much. And she'd hate it." She can't help smirking. "I mean, I don't even know if she -- what she wants, but she'd hate me making decisions because I thought I knew what was best for her."

She takes a breath. "It's just hard to tell myself nothing's going to happen to her. And if something did--" She lets out a breath. Blue doesn't handle grief sensibly: she nearly fell off a fucking fire escape, that night Tris and Biffy and Lyall and Beth all disappeared at once, and she set Party Poison's car on fire when he and Jack disappeared. But through that, through losing them, Olive and Eduardo, Krem, even Gansey, Kat has always been there with hugs and food and sometimes alcohol, there for Blue's anger and tears. Happily around for weird wishes that turn their apartment into an actual rainforest and totally benign shopping trips that become hilarious because they're them and increasing numbers of other people's animals. It's hard to imagine what life would even be like without her.

Edited 2020-03-08 06:12 (UTC)

Martin keeps his hand on her arm and his eyes on her as she answers, attentive and gently sympathetic as she trails off. She agrees with his assessment, but it isn't quite that easy, and even without her finishing the implied thought, he thinks he understands.

"Yeah," he says softly, and finally pulls his hand away. "I understand."

He knows he's lucky, in a warped sort of way, that John can survive so much. It's luck that comes at a terrible cost, a gift horse that ought not be trusted. But after having lost so many people and consigned himself to losing just about everyone, it's hard not to feel a certain security over John's... hardiness, for lack of a better word. Blue may have a shot with Kat that he doesn't have with John, but she doesn't have that security.

Digging into it any deeper probably won't help matters, and he has no desire to darken their moods any further at what is meant to be a fun occasion. He glances back toward the drink table and offers Blue a faint smile. "Maybe we should get more of this in us and see if we can't lighten up a bit. There'll be plenty of time to worry when we don't have access to mimosas."

[I'd be good wrapping here if that works for you! Let's let these kiddos drink and lighten our collective loads. ❤︎]

"Ah!" Eliot steps back sharply, and laughs a little. "Terribly sorry my dear, I may need to indulge in more solid food, I've been running around with all this and the mermen and, ugh." He sips at his drink, a compromise instead of simply downing the rest of it, and sets the glass on a shelf. He's not sure he actually managed to sleep? Nothing to do about it now.

"But it's so good to see you, it's been far too long, and I hope last night wasn't too harrowing for you." He leans down to give Blue a hug, and grins. He hasn't had the opportunity to throw a party, a real party, in who knows how long. Events in Fillory always had a legion of officials to plan and arrange things, and before that...if nothing else, Darrow's given him chance to do things like this with intention, instead of just feeling like he's in a haze and flailing.

"What do you think, is it too Bohemian?" Eliot asks, gesturing at the decor, the eclectic odds and ends. "I feel like I have no perspective on what's normal anymore."

She beams to see who she's stumbled into, and puts a hand on his arm in apology or possibly just fondness. "Food is, usually, a good idea," she tells him. "And you did all this, so you're due a sit down."

Blue has stopped counting most people under a foot taller than her as tall, but by that count Eliot still is, and she smiles a little, standing on her toes to return what is a really rather nice hug solidly. "Not terrible," she says, "and I'm assuming not for you either, because, well, brunch. New Year's in Darrow is always ..." She tries to decide on an all-encompassing word and just ends up laughing. "A little wild," she says, with a tone that implies she's being tactful.

She frowns, trying to see the collection through the eyes of someone who wasn't raised by fortunetellers, and can't. "I don't...think I'm the one to ask," Blue says, and lifts a shoulder with a small, amused smirk. "Was normal something you were going for?" It doesn't seem like Eliot's wheelhouse.

"I love it. It actually reminds me of home, a little."

"Right, okay, that's probably--yes." Eliot dips back to the kitchen to grab a few crepes, and takes the plate back over to Blue. He grabbed two forks, and offers her one.

"Of course nothing could prevent me from throwing a party," he says, taking a small bite. "But it ended up being rather a bracing time, even if it was, you know, horrible. Going out and killing monsters, like I had a real job again." It's enough to make a man sigh wistfully, if that wouldn't betray something rather pathetic about how he views his own life. Instead, he smiles.

"Everything was very...palatial and rococo back in Fillory," Eliot explains. "I didn't exactly want to go full Clark Kent mundane here, so. Perhaps this is a middle ground? And also it's just practical, I need things to do most magic, so they might as well be organized." He pauses, thinking about it what Blue's said. "It would make for an interesting environment to grow up in, certainly."

She smiles, taking it with a thank you. "Were you the one killing monsters where you were before?" She knows little bits, not large segments, of Elliot's life: she does know he was a sort of king, which to her suggests handing out orders rather than battling, but maybe it shouldn't. Besides, he also went to a magic school; maybe there's dueling.

What? She met Harry Potter. Everything that can happen, does.

"When you grow up with four seers -- when they didn't have friends visiting -- and a lot of cats, interesting is the default," Blue deadpans, taking a prim bite of crepe, and smiles. She does miss it. "And my father was a...tree wizard, or something, that my mother accidentally summoned on what I think was a lark when she was barely in her twenties. If the house had been boring it would have just been a front."

She runs her fingers over one of the cupboards. "It is very organized, for as cluttered as it looks, actually."

Jack had spent the night slicing through an unexpected invasion of mermonsters on the beach. As extraordinary as the fact of that is, by the time they finished and Jack and Anne made it back to their apartment, the surprise had thoroughly worn off and he's tired and sore.

He considers just staying home and soaking in a bath for a few hours, but Eliot had said that his event was still happening. He does set aside his slime covered coat, washes, shaves, and gets a little sleep before he has to pull himself together to go.

He arrives in a knee-length dusty-pink coat with matching leather gloves, carrying a bottle of sparkling cider. He hadn't known if he should bring something or not, or indeed what to expect from brunch. It's all a little more free-form than he'd been expecting, and part of him wishes that Anne had come along with him right away. He sets the sparkling cider on the counter, removes his gloves, and attempts to find the host.

(Find Jack peeking into an apothecary cabinet or working through the supply of deviled eggs.)

Eliot's taking a break from kitchen duty but he'd kept his apron on whilst making rounds; he feels abruptly and unusually shabby once he catches sight of Jack wearing that, and makes his way over to the cabinet by the wall.

"Well shit, Captain, don't you clean up nice," he declares, smirking, by way of greeting. "Glad you could make it after all that brouhaha, but you know, make yourself comfortable, eat drink, be merry, et cetera." He looks up for a moment, scanning the corners for any sign of a small glowering redhead. "Is your better half here as well? She does know she's invited too, right?"

He's delighted Jack decided to show, since they were all understandably exhausted from a night stabbing horrible stinking fish people, and now Eliot feels as energized as if he hadn't spent all his downtime prepping crepes. He wants to ask where the fuck Jack got that coat and/or learned to wear pastels that well, but steers his babbling toward the safer ground of magical accoutrements.

"Let me know if you have any questions," he waves a hand at the multitude of drawers. "It's mostly bits of twigs from various species of trees, but--" Eliot stops, startled, and looks at the drawer Jack's just pulled out. A larger one on the lower shelf, containing only a cloth-draped glass box. "Ah." Eliot frowns, feeling very awkward indeed. "Could have sworn I'd locked that."

"Anne will be along later." He doesn't offer more explanation than that. If she were going somewhere dangerous, she would have said, and he trusts her to come back by whenever she's done what she needs to do.

Jack had already been poking through the drawers of the cabinet, but with fresh permission given, he pulls out one of the larger drawers. Part of him had just been expecting larger twigs, perhaps stones or crystals. Instead, it's a box draped in fabric, as if it needs to be guarded or protected from prying eyes. It feels like it might be important. Or private. Or both.

Jack places his hand on top of the box, then pauses. He's curious, and certainly he might normally move aside the fabric without consideration, but Eliot has been kind to him. If he has secrets to keep, Jack doesn't believe that they are the sort that will come to anything harmful. He's the one that has been poking around in Eliot's things, and he doesn't want to upset the man just to reveal something that he'd rather keep hidden.

He raises his eyebrows at Eliot. "May I?"

Eliot bites his lip, hesitating a moment. There's no point in refusing Jack, it's just that this was bound to come up sooner or later and it's turned into much later than is sensible, and that makes Eliot feel embarrassed. "Oh, go on," he says, exhaling in a bluff sort of laugh and not looking at the box because he knows what Jack will see. The crown of the High King of Fillory, with its gold openwork of intertwined spiral arcs made to resemble rams' horns. His crown, from a kingdom so far removed that compared to Eliot's day-to-day existence in Darrow it hardly seems real.

"I know I probably should have told you about this ages ago but it never really seemed relevant, and well...now here we are," Eliot says with a shrug. He definitely locked the drawer, he's sure of that, and he looks over the room to see Sweeney might be up to, the big ginger bastard. Of course Eliot's never done anything to induce any sort of ire from him, as far as he knows, but perhaps just having the leprechaun around is enough to make probability and magic go a little bit...off. It's the least of his problems for now, though.

"You're going to think I'm very silly," he adds, and glances sidelong at Jack to observe his reaction. He hopes he's wrong about that.

"Oh," it takes him a moment to realize what he's looking at. The first impression is gold, and delicate metalwork, and then... "Well."

He leans down to get a better look. It's a beautiful crown, organic and strange, undeniably regal, and probably worth a fortune just for the craftsmanship alone. He might like to pull it from its drawer, but there are a lot of people here today, and Eliot had locked it away for a reason. It's very likely that he doesn't want it to be shown out to everyone in the room.

The implication of it being here is not lost on Jack. If Eliot owns a crown, what does that make him? A prince? a King? Jack straightens, and as he looks back at Eliot, can't help sparing a moment to imagine him crowned in gold. He doesn't think that it would look out of place at all.

It takes a moment for the last thing that Eliot said to hit him. "Wait-" He frowns. "Why would I think that? Did you buy a crown? Or is this yours?"

He only seems to be curious, for now, but it isn't enough to fully assuage Eliot's wariness. Of course Jack's curious, it's an odd thing to have around in a drawer. It's odd on a deeper level, Eliot thinks, because he's not used to having any aspect of his identity hidden away or not immediately obvious. It was so much easier before, in Fillory. Not just the comfort of being known and respected, but the fulfillment of knowing that what he did mattered.

Eliot's cut off from that here, even moreso than he'd be if their plan had failed and the world had ended and they'd gone back to Earth. Here he can say 'Fillory' and it means nothing to anyone, it feels so much less real than it should. He feels less real. It's a pernicious weed of a thought, and he tries to push it back down from the forefront of his mind, because Jack is looking at him. Assessing him, it seems like, and Eliot grimaces a little as he meets his gaze, braced for...he doesn't know what. Nothing good.

"No it's--it's mine," he answers, sighing. "It's just silly, because..." No, he can't get into all his self-doubt baggage, not at brunch. There's no crying at brunch. Eliot clears his throat. "I just thought, you know, we've gotten on rather well so far, but as far as I'm aware pirates aren't traditionally known for having much respect for authority figures or, or being very friendly towards the idea of kings." He looks down at the crown in its case. "...or kings in specific."

Jack grins. Eliot's apprehension hadn't been about where the crown had come from or his position as a king. He was worried about what Jack might think of him. When was the last time that anyone was worried he might think poorly of them? It's a startling admission, and Jack can't help but be pleased by the care it implies.

"Eliot, kings and pirates aren't cats and mice. We're not natural enemies. God, Henry Morgan was knighted." He laughs, then quiets himself. He doesn't want Eliot to think that he doesn't appreciate the concern. He continues, a little softer. "It's true that it's not likely. Sanctioned piracy makes one a privateer rather than a pirate, and there is an important distinction there, but..." He shrugs. "I don't have any quarrels with you or your kingdom." It hardly matters here anyway, him without a ship, and Eliot without his kingdom, but he doesn't feel like saying that out loud. He'd still like to think of himself as a Captain, and despite him keeping it hidden, he's reluctant to throw away Eliot's title without his permission.

He smiles at Eliot, then looks back down at the crown. "It seems a shame to hide it away."

Eliot, a king. That will take some getting used to. He wonders what being a king is like in a magical land, and if Eliot was a good king to all the strange magical creatures and people there. He'd like to think so. He'd also like to ask more questions, but his friend being a king still feels like a lot to process. He has to think about what to ask first.

Eliot holds his breath for a moment, anxiety wrestling with frustration at himself for worrying over something so juvenile. As if the possibility of someone saying I don't want to be friends with you anymore is something unfamiliar and devastating. He out of practice at handling something like that, certainly. He doesn't usually put himself in a position to face rejection, but somehow here he is. So he braces himself.

Except the blow doesn't come, only reassurance and amusement, and Eliot blinks at Jack in utter confusion. He's laughing, and it's gentle and not unkind at all, and Eliot thinks that maybe he's just been incredibly foolish about this whole issue.

"I--" He wants to explain himself, but the words die in his throat at the sight of Jack smiling at him like that. Eliot can't remember what he was going to say, and fumbles for a moment, flushing, before he's able to fill the gap with etiquette. "I have to apologize, I...expected the worst somehow, and did you a great disservice." The shock finally gives way to relief, and Eliot smiles, crooked and flustered. "I am glad, though. That you don't mind. And I don't have it shut up all the time," he adds, starting to feel lighter now that he can actually talk about it. "Just that there's a lot of company over, plus I don’t have many occasions to wear it anymore. I like to be overdressed, you know, but perhaps not that much."

Edited 2020-03-04 21:59 (UTC)

Blue's investigating the shelves herself, both slightly nostalgic -- the place is a little younger, a little hipper than Fox Way, but the clutter and plants and bohemian air of it is still something that would fit right in -- and curious; she rounds a cabinet and nearly bumps into the man.

"Oh!" she says, "I'm sorry, I was -- um. Peering," she admits, with a little wry smile, gesturing at the curiosities inside. Given a moment, she processes his outfit. "That is a fantastic coat," she interrupts herself. It reminds her a little of something Dorian and Biffy might have agreed on, which doesn't help the slight achey nostalgia she's feeling today, but does make her like him immediately.

Jack takes half a step back when a young woman nearly collides with him, and he follows her gaze to the things inside the small cabinet. He'd been looking himself. He assumes that much of it is for magical rather than decorative purposes, but he does wonder about the small vase filled with glass marbles. What possible use could they be?

"Oh," He smiles, and returns his attention to her, surprised and pleased by the compliment. He smooths a hand down the lapel, settling it. "Thank you. I'm rather glad I didn't decide to wear it last night. I don't think that fish-monster blood would have been easy to get out of the wool." He huffs a short laugh. "Hopefully you weren't as close to the action as I was, ah—"

"I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced." He holds out a hand. "My name is Jack Rackham."

"Ugh, yeah, probably a good idea," she says, wrinkling her face at the memory.

"Blue," she replies, reaching to shake his hand firmly. "Blue Sargent. It's nice to meet you." His name sort of rings a bell, but she's not sure if it's because of him being mentioned by one of the other people she knows here, or if she knows of him somehow from something in her own world; usually she tries to sort of set aside pre-knowledge in this place, since it's generally not quite accurate anyway.

"We definitely saw some of those fish guys, but we skedaddled pretty quickly," she adds with a small smile. "I take it you were fighting for a while?"

"They just kept coming up out of the waves like overgrown sand crabs. Eliot did some magic to sharpen our swords, and that made it much quicker work." They'd gone on til morning, and by the end it had almost felt tedious, but no less strange and ultimately exhausting. After this, he would definitely like to go back to the apartment and sleep off the rest of the day. "But yes, for a while."

"You know," he says, nodding back towards the cabinet, "I don't think he minds anyone looking. Or if he does, I haven't seen him stop anyone yet." He lowers his head, hunching his shoulders a little further to direct her attention at an apothecary cabinet on the other side of the room covered in small drawers. "I looked in some of those. All twigs. Different kinds of twigs. Don't ask me what he uses them for. I hope for some kind of magic," His lips twist up into a barely restrained smirk. "otherwise he's a much stranger man than I'd initially thought."

Blue grimaces. Granted, she doesn't have a whole lot of experience with sand crabs, overgrown or not, since Henrietta is very much not the coastal area of Virginia, and although there are seafood restaurants that claim local catch, she's never really seen many here. But it sounds terrible, and she'd seen what the things looked like, and that's even worse.

She laughs when Jack nods at the cabinet covertly, and turns to look at where he's nodding, lips twitching into a smile, and holds up two fingers to indicate little twigs?. "I don't doubt Eliot has some ...quirks I'm, uh, unaware of, but I think those must be supplies."

"It all actually makes me feel a bit at home," she confesses, waving around. "My mother was a...well, a seer, a psychic. Our house where we lived with my aunts was full of all sorts of weird focal objects. And just things they picked up in some shop even though they were absolutely useless, because they looked cool," she adds with a wry little smile.

Jack nods to her unspoken question, his eyebrows raising in confirmation. He's sure too, about Eliot having a few hidden quirks. He's been a surprising man to get to know.

"There may be be some of that here, as well," he says, pointing out the vase filled with marbles with a brief smile. Even if some of the decor isn't required for Eliot's magic, it still makes this place feel like a reflection of Eliot's personality. Unusual, but charming nonetheless.

"Though I could be wrong." He gives the marbles a second assessing glance before returning his attention to Blue. "Magic as a reality is new to me. I can't imagine what it would be like growing up with it." He's not entirely sure what Blue even means by psychic (perhaps something to do with telling futures?), but he does wonder if her mother being psychic would mean that Blue also has those powers.

Edited 2020-02-28 09:02 (UTC)

Blue smiles at his gesture to the vase, which looks like it could be off one of those moodboard sites, though very prettily so with the light refracting. It widens into a smirk when Jack points out that maybe they aren't just pretty. "Sometimes the most benign looking things are the most powerful," she says, "but usually, they're just benign."

"It's..." She hmms thoughtfully. "Sort of like growing up any other way, I think, it's not until later that you realize it isn't the same as everyone else's. I mean --" She makes an assessing face. "Obviously, I knew it wasn't normal, I was around other kids, but -- I was raised by my mother and my aunts and no men, all in one little house, and that's just to start with. Nothing about me was normal for Henrietta. I wouldn't have known what to do with being normal." She laughs softly. As a teenager, she'd made the most of it, blown it up into a look that's only faintly more subdued now. That's another thing she finds relatable about Eliot.

"For me, it was more annoying than anything, I think, at the time. I don't have the same abilities as my mother," she explains, "but when I'm around, I make them stronger. So I was dragged around to sit through all sorts of people visiting wanting to know their futures and I always wanted to be doing something else, of course."

"There you are."

She smiles as she draws up beside Jack at her perch over a platter of eggs. She saw him the moment she came in, eyes always drawn to him, especially in that coat. He'd seen her too, though he hadn't come near. She'd stayed with Greta for a little while, met her friend, before finally managing to pull away. So it isn't so much that she's found him; just that he hadn't come to her.

That's all right, of course. But she doesn't want to be apart too long, with all these people around.

"Enjoying yourself?" She eyes the eggs, which are significantly depleted.

Jack breathes a small sigh of relief as Anne settles in next to him. He has been having a nice time, but he feels more at ease with her standing next to him. "You should try one," he says, indicating the platter of eggs. "They're good."

He keeps his eyes on her for a moment, not really sure where he wants to start. He wants to tell her that Eliot is a king and he wants to tell her that half of the things on these shelves could be used to do magic, but it also feels like there's a more pressing question to ask. His eyes flick down to the shirt that is definitely not the one she left in this morning, then over to where Greta is talking with a very tall redheaded man.

"You went to get Greta. Did something happen after you left?" He tries to keep his tone light, but some of his wariness about Greta creeps into his voice. He's not entirely sure what he's asking, but he is sure that Greta has been someone that Anne has started to trust. That's rare, for Anne, and as much as he wants Anne to have people to trust, he doesn't want to see her get hurt if that trust is misplaced.

He tries to push aside the worry that Anne being so thoughtful towards Greta might mean that his bed will be empty again in a month or two.

She does try one, and they are good, so she focuses on eating for a moment while she thinks about how to answer his question.

She knows what he means to ask, what he's really asking. The borrowed shirt might be close enough to what she wears, hidden enough by her coat, that no one else would notice; but it must be obvious to him. She can imagine what that might look like to him, what he might think. But she don't know how to address that. Feels like it would be a mistake to try.

Anne keeps her eyes on the spread of food as she answers, "One of them... things from last night. Straggler. It was outside her house. So I took care of it." She gestures over her front. "She wanted to get me cleaned up, so. Shirt's in her laundry. She gave me this."

That's the truth, and she can only hope it'll set his mind at ease. She picks up another egg and looks up at him as she eats it.

Edited 2020-03-15 07:07 (UTC)

He keeps his eyes on her a little longer as her gaze drifts away from his own. "It's fortunate for her, that you decided to check down that far." He knows that she meant to check on Greta, and there's something in that, but digging into that more feels like it would be a mistake. "I doubt she would have liked to get her hands dirty." He watches Anne's face until she looks back up at him, then he lets his gaze drift out over the rest of the party-goers.

His eyes land naturally on Eliot. He's faced away, talking to a young woman that he doesn't recognize, but he can tell from his posture and the way his head is tipped down a little, that he's smiling.

"I learned something about our host," he says, leaning towards her, but still watching the line of Eliot's shoulders. The corner of his lips lift up into the trace of a smile. "He's a king. Was a king, in his...other world." He chuckles a little, and nods towards the chest at the side of the room. "He's got a crown in there."

"He's what?" She blinks at him, her mouth full and her question muffled. She might've wanted to venture something about how there's more to Greta than he thinks, but something tells her that would be a mistake, and now it's all but forgotten. Eliot, a king, and Jack smiling about it like it ain't even surprising.

She looks across the room at Eliot, who seems to spy them looking and lifts his drink toward them in some half-hearted toast with a crooked smile.

Anne turns back to Jack at once. "He's a king?" she all but sputters.

Jack keeps his eyes on Eliot, and it's almost as if Eliot senses them watching, because he turns around and acknowledges them with a smile. Jack straightens his posture, feeling a surge of something like pride gathering in his chest.

Anne's reaction makes him turn back to her. He chuckles and nods. "He's a king. I can see it-" He lets his attention drift back to Eliot as he holds the attention of the people around him. "I don't think what he is is like being a king of England. More like a king out of a fairy tale. You see how he is with people, he has a talent for it. "

He looks back at her, a faint smile lingering at his lips. "He was afraid to tell me. He didn't think that a pirate would approve." He's still incredibly charmed by the idea that Eliot cared that much about what he thought. It's funny, and also it feels nice in a way that he can't properly describe to know that Eliot is invested in their friendship.

Anne's expression changes minutely as she watches Jack notice Eliot looking, watches him shift his posture, watches his smile change. By the time he's looking back at her, she's as guarded as ever, but she recognizes all of this. She's seen it before. She saw it when they first appealed to join the Ranger's crew, she saw it when Jack spoke loftily of Teach's brilliance. Here again, over this fairy tale king who's made his own interest clear, if not plain.

Fuck's sake.

She scoffs softly, turning to look back at the food, though she's lost her appetite. Jack wouldn't like it if she challenged his ideas about Eliot and his 'talent for it', or if she questioned why he was wrong to think Jack wouldn't approve. She doesn't want to sour his mood, and she supposes she probably shouldn't insult their host. But she has to say something.

"Awfully hands-on for a king," she says, thinking of how he'd fought alongside them last night. It wouldn't be a bad thing, and she might even agree with parts of Jack's assessment if she had a better sense about what Eliot wants to gain from it all. Jack doesn't seem worried about that in the slightest. She raises her eyes to him again. "You trust him?"

Jack hums in agreement to Anne's assessment. It was surprising to see Eliot in action last night. He knows that Eliot had been in some sort of battle, but how he had talked about it, it didn't seem like a common enough occurrence for him to become skilled at fighting. The creatures were easy to kill, but all the same, Eliot had settled in beside him and Anne naturally. Jack wonders if it seemed like second-nature to Eliot because of his experience...or just because they work well together.

He meets her eyes. "I do." He glances back at Eliot for a moment before redirecting his gaze to the spread of snacks instead. Maybe he shouldn't trust Eliot. The fact that Eliot hid information from him might be reason enough to doubt his intentions, but he doesn't doubt Eliot's sincerity. If anything, he feels like he might trust him more now that he knows Eliot had been worried about what a pirate might think of him.

Jack reaches out and adjusts one of the plates, feeling like he needs something to do with his hands. The party really is remarkably put-together for how long they'd been fighting last night. Eliot must be exhausted. "He likes to make people feel welcome. That's all."

Anne keeps her eyes on him while he answers, his gaze traveling to Eliot and then away again, reaching out to neaten the table with that constant, contained restlessness of his. And then he explains, only he don't explain the trust; she's not sure what he's answering with that. Several steps ahead, like he needs to outpace his own thoughts or something awful will happen.

He's been like this before. Brushing aside looks and questions with assurances and answers to questions that ain't been asked. It's all familiar, but familiarity's not much good when she has no more idea now what to say to it all than she ever did. When this, more than it ever has before, leaves her wondering if she's going to lose him.

She has no idea how to venture that subject, and thinks even if she could that it, too, would be a mistake. But it digs at her, the sense of a widening gulf between them, and no idea how to mend it.

In the end, she just turns and leans back against the table, arms folded as she lets her gaze drift over the rest of the people, most of them strangers to her. She settles on Greta as a familiar signpost, still talking to that massive Irishman.

"That one there," she says, nodding her chin toward him. "Says he was a king as well." He said far more than that, and she wants to tell Jack all of it, but later, when she's had some time to sort it out, when they can talk quietly just the two of them. For now, she offers Jack a wry smirk. "Didn't know we'd ever be in such fine company."

Say When (A New Year's Brunch)

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