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

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Say When (A New Year's Brunch)

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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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.

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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."