Say When (A New Year's Brunch)

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot had been warned by various people that New Year's often brings some kind of supernatural mischief to Darrow, and this news had only made him more determined to stick to his plan. No power of god or man or eldritch entity place-spirit or army of fish people will prevent him from throwing a damn party. 

It made sense, really, and part of him wishes he'd done something like this before now. He needn't frame it as a sort of surrender to this imprisonment, but rather just indulging in something frivolous because, as far as his understanding of the metaphysics goes, none of this really counts. So why shouldn't he enjoy it? He's been here long enough to decorate the apartment some, and it really is a marvel the amount of things available through Nile. There's more comfortable furniture, potted plants, and a series of apothecary cabinets and display cases for magical components that give the whole place the air of some eccentric explorer's gallery of curiosities. 

He's even managed to get enough appliances that the little kitchen is decently functional, and has spent a few days stocking up and preparing for what he hopes will a successful brunch. He has enough eggs to feed an army. There will be copious crepes. There will be mimosas for days. 

Eliot's used to working through a wicked hangover this time of year, so he built that into consideration in his prep time. Thanks to the night's adventure, though, he spends his downtime sober and scrubbing mer-blood off of himself, and still feels a bit frazzled by the time the first guests arrive.

[It's time for brunch! Brunch is a state of mind, not an actual timeframe, so please feel free to have your pups show up whenever in the day, honestly. Tag in, tag around, chase the memory of merman horror away with a mimosa, air your grievances and dirty laundry in the neutral ground of Eliot's apartment. This is a safe space. For Drama.]

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[wildmage_daine]

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.

[eliotwaugh]

"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.

[wildmage_daine]

"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."

[hear_the_blood]

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?"

[wildmage_daine]

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?"

[loficharm]

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.]

[onlythebranch]

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."

[loficharm]

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.

[formicine]

"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?"

[eliotwaugh]

"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. 

[andhiswife]

"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."

[littleorphanalien]

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.

[formicine]

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."

[eliotwaugh]

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?"

[loficharm]

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.

[statement_ends]

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.

[formicine]

"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.

[hear_the_blood]

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.

[formicine]

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.

[loficharm]

"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.

[eliotwaugh]

"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."

[jackrackham]

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.)

[eliotwaugh]

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."

[formicine]

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.

[annebonny]

"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.