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.]

Comments

[statement_ends]

"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."

[hear_the_blood]

"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.

[statement_ends]

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."

[hear_the_blood]

"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."

[statement_ends]

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."

[hear_the_blood]

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.

[statement_ends]

"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.

[hear_the_blood]

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.

[statement_ends]

"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.

[hear_the_blood]

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.

[statement_ends]

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.

[hear_the_blood]

"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.

[statement_ends]

"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.