Shelter - 10.8.2014 [Nate]

Molly

As it turned out, the mystery 'thing' that Lux wanted very much for them to come check out with her was a costume party-- a zombie crawl of sorts.  There was some kind of a music festival, some kind of a charity, awareness raising for some local film community or something along those lines.  Molly hadn't been paying too much mind to those particular details, because the fun they found was more in the gathering than it was in the purpose.

There was face paint and fake blood and red punch with some sort of jello-y situation worked into it to make it look more like gore and guts.  "Tastes like Hawaiian Punch, though," Molly had informed Verna while fetching a cup for both of them, as the woman seemed hesitant and untrusting of the stuff to begin with.  To her credit, Molly had picked up on the wallflower tendencies the other woman had and was making an effort to try and keep her included.  Chattered about nursing and what Verna did as well (Holy shit when do you find the time to sleep?).

Ultimately, though, the clock would peter away further into night until Verna insisted she needed to go home and have some minimal hours of sleep at least.  Molly and Nate used that as a cue to call it a night as well, and since they'd arrived together they left together as well.

She'd finally purchased a car for herself earlier in the year, so she drove them out to Santa Fe earlier that night.  The newer model Volkswagen GTI parked against the curb in front of Nate's house.  She didn't presume that there would be an invitation to come in, so she didn't kill the engine right away.

"Y'know," she said, "that surprise wasn't so awful.  I kind of half-expect that word to come with emotional bruising usually."


Nate

Nate had been distracted all night but anyone who gets to know him could claim that he always seems distracted. He has a lot on his mind and social endeavors pull him away from his work. Got to a point where he was drinking more often than anyone would consider healthy to try and get his mind off of mercenary squads and blown-up buildings and the things he knows lurk in the dead zone where his peripheral vision doesn't offer him safety.

Now he's taking on more responsibility at the newspaper for the way he handled the Dogwood attack in the spring. He's writing a book. The anniversary of Shannon's death is rapidly hurtling at him. It isn't just the dead that had him half-listening and hardly responding all night but the membrane between the world of the living and the world of the dead isn't so thick as most folks would like to believe.

They come to idle at the curb and Nate at first says nothing of it. He doesn't move fast on his best days. Doesn't start to undo his seatbelt until Molly first speaks and by then he's sat back and looking at her through the darkness. A lone porch light shining from his neighbor's house and his own front porch dark.

He frowns and opens his mouth like he's about to speak but he catches himself. Holds onto the expression a moment as he searches for a proper response. He closes his mouth to sigh through his nose. Hard to name what colors his gaze. Regret maybe. His paranoia eclipsed hers once.

"Not everything in the world is out to get you, you know," he says.


Molly

"Mmm," Molly hummed to what Nate said at first, and the sound was grim, resigned, and humored all alike.  She did smile, though, a closed-lipped expression that mirrored the tone in her voice, and chose that moment to kill the engine and take her hands from the steering wheel.  For now the keys stayed in the ignition, but if they were going to chat she wasn't going to leave the car running.

"Well, not everything is out to get you," she agreed, using 'you' as a general rather than a specific.  "But a lot of it can be, and that's the part that keeps sneaking up."

Without reason to hold the steering wheel anymore, Molly's hands came to settle in her lap.  She's known Nate long enough, well enough.  She had no reservations about looking at the man when she spoke with him, didn't nervously trail eyes out the windshield or to the digital numbers in her dash that determined the time (coming up on one in the morning now).

"I'm trying not to let it wreck my calm."

And, as though realizing that she was beginning to usher in metaphorical rain clouds on an otherwise nice night, she smiled again and tipped her head and shrugged one shoulder.  "I haven't started carrying a gun and avoiding nighttime yet, at least."


Nate

Idling is bad for the car. It's bad for its engine and it's bad for the exhaust system. It's bad for the people who live in the houses not far from the road and it's bad for the grass. They've been idling for several seconds and Nate is not normally a forceful person. He has it in him to be but he is a man of long fuse and seemingly boundless patience.

She knows better. She's seen what happens when flame consumes his fuse and he blows up.

This is not a blowup. He just acts without thinking. The car's transmission is in park. He reaches over and twists the ignition key to shut off the engine. Though he has to lean over her to do this he does not turn this into an excuse to stay in her space. Doesn't put a hand on her knee or sling an arm over the back of her seat.

He and Carole have been seeing each other again but how many times has he fucked that up already. Doesn't matter if being around each other is like finding the other half of a broken talisman. He keeps fucking it up.

"Good," he says when he's settled back in his seat. Turning off the ignition isn't an invitation to come in but Nate knows what's going to happen if he invites her in. "You'd be a shit shot anyway."


Molly

Nate had leaned across the center console to turn the car off, but found his way sitting up straight in his own seat again.  Just as Nate didn't leave a hand at her knee or open himself up physically by stretching an arm around the back of her headrest, Molly did nothing of the sort as well.  She just chuckled and nodded her agreement.

"You're probably right.  I can barely hold the gun I have let alone line up a shot.  I've had advice that I should practice, but 'eh..."  She shrugged once more and twisted her fingers together where they rested in her lap.

"I've seen someone take a bullet and hardly flinch.  And he was an alright guy, too.  I can't imagine that using a gun on anything less-than-alright would do much more than just piss it off anyways."

He didn't invite her to come in, but he didn't appear to be in any hurry to get out of the passenger seat either.  There was worry about what might happen if she did come inside, worry that Nate may do something to pull threading from the seams of what he had going with Carole.  Molly was less worried, not thinking about that.  For now the car was a fine safe-haven for conversation and still being just slightly somewhat in the public eye.


Nate

Nathan comes from a family that fails at monogamy. His father cheated on his mother more than once before she threw up her hands and took him to court. She didn't need to have his custodial rights stripped or to move them out to fucking Nebraska but that's what happens when a lengthy divorce case becomes even lengthier because the husband loses his temper and calls the wife an ice-snatched bitch or whatever the fuck it was he said. Nathan only came into court once and that was so the lawyers could ask him a bunch of questions before shunting him back out into the hallway.

Suffice to say it isn't in his blood. Maybe Carole already accepts this. Her boyfriend is a damaged piece of work. He lies to her all the time. She doesn't know what he's hiding but they can only go on for so long before his little gift threatens to upend her life again. It's not the infidelity that Carole has a problem with. It's the weird phone calls at work.

"You don't need a gun," he says. Says it with the authority of someone who was once as familiar with his rifle as he was with anyone else in his life. He spent his entire military career in a combat zone.  His thoughts on necessity versus desire are somewhat skewed.

She knows what the rest of that speech is going to be. She's heard bits of it before. She can see he wants to say it now because for all he's tried Nathan hasn't learned to just let her go on as she's been going on. But he doesn't waste his breath now. Just looks at her for a few seconds and then sighs out a mirthless laugh as he realizes nothing's ever going to change.

"I don't know what you need."


Molly

The speech wasn't an unfamiliar one.  Molly's heard it both in whole and in bits and pieces over the course of her and Nathan's friendship.  She would be safer if she simply extracted herself from the situation entirely and let this underbelly of the world, this World of Darkness, continue to flow like a river that's left her on the shore like a bit of drift wood.

Molly never listened, though.  It was always the same;  she would go a little hard (determined) in her eyes and her lips would press together, but she wouldn't debate him or argue him or explain that he was wrong and her current course needed no correcting.  It tended to die in the water anymore, so Nate didn't even try to get that motor started now.  Molly probably appreciated it.

"You don't have to," she told him when he confessed that he had no idea what she needed with a small shake of her head.  That wasn't his responsibility.  "I would joke that I need a psyche evaluation, but the medical books don't account for the levels of shit that we deal with."  She chose the word 'we' because it felt less self-pitying, because it was helpful to keep in mind that someone else knew these things were real too.

She went quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and when she spoke up again there was a dollop of humor in her voice-- shoehorned in there because she actively wanted to try and lighten the mood.  Hadn't it been a good night, with brain-punch and ice cream and zombie crawls?  Let it be a good night still, that forced humor begged.

"Maybe a suit of armor.  My breastplate could have something really cool on it, like a phoenix."


Nate

"The phoenix doesn't become a phoenix until it rises up out of its own ashes. It has to burn first."
Okay, Nerd. He says it like that's inevitable for her. Like he already knows her story isn't going to end with death. They aren't even through the first act of her story. He goes through his life as if he's waiting for the curtain call. He's tired and he's depressed and he could have plenty to live for if he didn't know what happens after death. It's either oblivion or it's ceaseless torment caused by holding onto something the dead can't take with them.

The shit they have to deal with doesn't let them choose what they'd like to cope with on any given night. He has to deal with the dead whether he seeks them out or not. He is a beacon to them. They come find him. They always have.

Fuck it.

"You wanna come in?"


Molly

It ran in the Amherst family to buck monogamy, whether they went into these habits with full understanding and intention or not.  That wasn't the case with the Toombs family;  Molly didn't speak of them much, but he did know that her parents are still together in their first marriage.  She herself, though, didn't have much of a history of relationships.  The most that would happen is she would go on a couple of dates before simply falling away from whoever she'd been seeing.

Hasn't been in a steady or proclaimed relationship since her college days, and didn't actively pursue or hunt for one either.  There had been more enthusiasm on the topic, more nights that she'd gone out on dates last year.  For the past dozen months, though, it has just seemed better not to get anyone else involved in the spiraling descent she was making into things that mortals had no business being tied up in.

So, while Nate had reasons not to invite her inside, Molly had no motivation to turn the offer down.  Instead, she smiled at him and tugged her keys free of the ignition and tucked them away into her jacket pocket.

"Nerd."  Spot on.  She sounded affectionate with the term, though.  "I do, though."


Nate

This is the first time she's been in the new house. Last time she was at his place he was injured. He healed faster than a man twice his age would have and was back on his feet faster than his doctor would have liked him to be. Working himself hard wasn't going to do any of them any favors and yet stillness and Nathan haven't spoken in some time. Even when he's at home he doesn't give himself over to idle pastimes.

It's a single-story house and if it has a basement the shrubbery conceals the windows that would betray its presence. The porch is dark and so is the house beyond it. Hard to tell from looking at it straight on but once they're inside Molly will realize the only windows in the place are in the front and back of the house.

She calls him a nerd and he smiles the first genuine smile she's seen from him all night. Touched by the term of endearment.

"Alright," he says and lets himself out of the car and hauls his messenger bag with him.

Before they come up the sidewalk Nate casts a glance down the street one way and then the other. No one out here with them. College kids throwing a party down the street but they're quiet aside from errant strains of laughter flitting out of a window. He puts his hand at the small of Molly's back to guide her and there is nothing possessive or forward about it. Maybe he ought to put his hand on her elbow instead of her back but he's more concerned with their surroundings than with what his hand is doing.

Up on the porch he removes his keyring from his jacket pocket. Holds the screen door open with the back of his calf and undoes the locks and waits until Molly has hold of the screen before he cracks open the door. Peers inside before he steps over the threshold. No way to be sure they're alone but he takes his chances. The door whines open and he's the first one in. Holds it open behind her and flicks on a light to reveal a clean yet somewhat cluttered living room. Papers and books everywhere and an empty bottle of diet Sprite sitting on the coffee table.

Through the living room is the kitchen. The backyard lurks dark beyond. Nothing moves in the house and the only door open in the corridor goes to the bathroom. The guest room and bedroom doors are both slightly shut.

He tosses the messenger bag onto the floor before he shuts and locks the door behind him.


Molly

"Your street's nice," Molly commented as they approached the little bungalow that Nate called home.  He was glancing this way and that, checking for shadow-creepers, and Molly did the same but at least appeared to be more invested in scoping out the scoping out the scenery than making sure monsters weren't going to spring on them.  The sound of loud laughter from a party made its way into the air, but from this distance it was hardly offensive.  The 'blip-blip!' that her car made when she locked the doors with the remote was louder, after all.

The touch at her lower back was met with a small stiffening of the muscles about her spine-- Molly didn't have people touching her very often anymore, and was seldom escorted anyplace.  But she knew Nate's fingers were warm and she was safe from them turning to claws or ringing the life out of her neck.  She knew him, and so that initial reaction of stiffness faded away quickly.  Might have even gone unnoticed through the fabric of her coat.

Once the door was unlocked and Nate had made his way over the threshold, Molly released the screen door and followed him in.  She stepped off to the side of the door so he could lock up as he saw fit and looked around while unbuttoning her coat.  "I like my apartment, but you might have the right idea with a house instead."  She grinned and added:  "Probably fewer ghosts in your attic here than at my place."  Because certainly, he remembered the haunting in the apartment above hers.  How was that going for her, anyway?

Nate had been few of words tonight in particular, and Molly had noticed that.  There was no sense in asking him what was wrong or what was eating him, though.  Just as Nate had a good idea of what kept Molly preoccupied and occasionally quiet as she receded into her own mind, Molly likewise had a firm enough understanding of the reasons why Nate may come across as a little despondant.  Instead of prying she was content to let some quiet fill the gaps between them.

When she breaks this particular bout of it, though, she's standing with her coat in her hands instead of on her back and speaks quiet because the house was still and dark and silent save perhaps for pipes or a furnace groaning someplace from within.

"Nate, we've known each other a while, right?  Been through some shit...," She had been looking toward the back of the house, but looked back to Nate when she got to her point.  "I... might need to get something off my chest."


Nate

Once they're inside decorum mandates that he ought to offer her something to drink. It isn't as if he doesn't still have stray unopened bottles of wine or the last vestiges of a six-pack lying around. But they're talking about heady enough things and sobriety suits him. Maybe he was going to offer to make coffee or tea after she mentions the scarcity of the ghosts in this place.

A coat rack waits by the front door. Once he's turned to face Molly he shrugs out of his jacket but doesn't step any further into the house. Other than the wind outside the place seems to be holding its breath.

Nate, we've known each other a while, right?

That's one way to get his attention. Inside the coalescence of electric lighting and shadows draws the scar tissue out of his skin. The fading laceration on his temple hasn't lost its pink hue yet. Like as not the scars on his arms are darkening. The incisions on his chest and midsection from nearly a year ago may well have started fading to white but Molly hasn't seen him with his shirt off in some time.

They have in fact been through some shit. He frowns as she gets to her point but he doesn't take his eyes off of her. Not any longer than it takes to toss his jacket onto a peg and stuff his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

"Sure," he says. "What's up?"


Molly

Had a drink been offered, Molly would have turned down wine or beer that's still hanging in his house.  Perhaps she would offer to take it off his hands if he didn't want it in his fridge anymore, but they didn't get to that point.  Hell, she didn't even give the guy a chance to get out of the entrance of his home and make the offer in the first place.

She took his cue and hung her jacket up on a coat peg as well.  His hands slipped into his pockets, and hers did the same.  On account of how well she filled her jeans out, though, she had to settle for slipping fingers into the snug space of her back pockets instead of jamming them down into the front ones.

"I'm not sleeping really well anymore," she said, and frowned as she figured the best way to present what she was trying to tell him.  Her elbows were pushed out by how she had her arms positioned, and they did so even further when she pushed her hands into her hips and rocked her weight on the flat bottoms of her shoes some.  "I have these terrible dreams but they're not just because of what I spend my time all focused on."  She forced a small, somewhat apologetic smile for him.  "I'm sure the concept of nightmares isn't new to you.

"But I'm dreaming of the end.  Because of something that I've seen.  I think--..."  She sighed and the sound was a frustrated one.  It was pretty clear that she was just working around the best way to spit out her concerns.  One hand left her pocket and brushed at her side swept bangs as she hunted for and found her words by starting another sentence entirely.

"Several weeks ago someone ripped into my mind and showed me some horrific shit.  He called it The Truth, and that truth was some ancient thing coming up to eat the world.  And now it just won't go away."


Nate

The very thought of death terrifies most people. They live their lives as if it's never going to end and when it comes as it comes to everyone they fight it hard as they can and the ones left behind have to carry on knowing that their loved one failed to fight off the one absolute everyone shares.

So far as Nate knows all four of his grandparents are dead. His father is going to die some day. His heart is going to give out on him or cancer is going to get him. His mother is probably going to live to be a hundred fucking years old for how mean she is. For all he knows his sunny vibrant cheerful little sister could die in a train crash or a school shooting tomorrow.

He's seen many of his buddies blown up by explosives or mowed down by enemy fire. Saw a lance corporal's head vaporize when a sniper's shot hit it one day. If he's ever fired his weapon he's said no more about the experience than he has about surviving a ground invasion.

His best friend died in a car crash because she wasn't wearing her seatbelt. Because the fuse on the alarm had blown for how frequently she forgot to hook the damned thing. All he could do was sit there and wait for the firefighters to cut him out and wonder why she wasn't answering him. Shannon never shut the fuck up. Made no sense that she wouldn't make a sound lying on the floor between the two seats as she was.

The concept of nightmares isn't new to him. Neither is the reality of them. But he isn't afraid of dying. At least when he's dead he won't dream anymore.

They're not talking about him. They're talking about what someone did to her. She can see a flash of anger flare up when she speaks of this someone. Of a He.

"This isn't that guy you brought back to your place, was it?" he asks. Because he can't keep track of her contacts anymore.


Molly

That flare of anger didn't go overlooked, and Molly pressed her mouth into the shape of a small smile.  It was nothing worth smiling about;  there was no mirth in the situation and nothing funny about Nate's protective anger.  But still, it was nice to know that someone could become angry for you.  She was touched, similar to how her calling him a 'nerd' had done for him.

"No," she shook her head and glanced aside.  "No, that's--," she almost said 'Jacky', very nearly, her mouth made the shape to begin the 'J', but she thought against it and shook her head.  That was a different monster chewing her up from the inside on out.  And currently he slept very, very deeply in a concrete closet.  "Someone else," she finally explained to finish her thought.

It's true, her contacts were difficult to keep track of.  She had many of them, and they all were risky and questionable people to keep company with in the first place.  That was absolutely how she wound up in this position in the first place, standing in front of Nate in the front of his house telling him about an assault on her sanity.  He knew that.  They both knew that.  Molly's had that conversation with her reflection more times than once before, but there was no correcting her course it seemed.

"The diazepam used to help, but it isn't anymore.  I'm tired, and terrified, because I know there's something under these streets that can kill you just by being near you, and that it's just biding its time before breaking the surface and I don't know what comes after that."  To her credit, Molly's voice wasn't cracking and her eyes didn't have tears in them, but they were wide and did shine with precisely the sentiment she'd just expressed-- exhaustion and fear.

"And I'm sorry.  Because nobody needs to be walking around knowing that, and now you do."


Nate

The difference between cognition and perception is a huge one. Nathan wasn't the one who had someone force himself inside his head and show him what his interpretation of The End looked like. He can no more imagine what that sort of terror tastes like than Molly could imagine what it is like for a normal person to find themselves hunted and fed upon by a vampire.

If it has happened to her in the time since they last told each other as much of their everything as they were comfortable telling Nathan has no idea.

He's never been very good at comforting other people. He is tall and stronger than he looks but he also looks sleep deprived and volatile. Not like someone who's in touch with his own feelings or the hardships of others.

"Y'know," he says, "if we're all gonna die anyway, you might as well enjoy the time you've got left. No point stressing out about something you've got no control over, right?"


Molly

"But what if I could have control over it?"  There's a light of hope there, flickering and weak like a short wick surrounded by a pool of melted wax.  Feeble and small and dim, but still holding out despite that all.

"Not, like, actually controlling it, but--...," and, again, she cut off her own thought and shook her head.  Even chuckled a little, though it was more of an exhale than anything else.  "Well, I was going to say 'learn how to send it away', but it's looking into things that's gotten me here in the first place, huh?"

Nate wasn't the best with comforting people.  It was hard to tell people that it was going to be okay and serve as a soft place for them when he knew better.  He was a person who'd seen plenty in his adult life that many go to the grave without knowing (war, combat, physical attacks and fatal auto accidents), and that's not even mentioning the ever-present whispers and calls for help across the veil that have been around from an even younger and more tender age.  The fact of the matter was, though, that he was the only person with a pulse that she could go to with these concerns.

She didn't expect him to fix these problems for her anyways, and that didn't seem to be what she was asking-- at no point did she sound like she was expecting him to have a solution for her.  She said it herself, she just needed to get it off her chest.

"Y'know, that's what I keep hearing from other people too."  Molly said this with another weak grin and laugh, then turned to look around the home again-- specifically, seeking a place to sit.  She'd suddenly become aware that she and Nate were simply standing in the entry space of his house.  She opted for the sofa and made her way over to it.

"It's more advice I need to learn to take."


Nate

The fact that they're hovering in the entryway hits Molly. He's not used to having company it seems. His sister when she stayed here was more of a second roommate than a guest and whenever Lux comes over she's content to move around the place as if she needs no escort. His mother would have stood in the doorway all day if he hadn't shown her where the table was. He has an island countertop separating the living room from the kitchen but there's a table up against it all the same.

Molly finds her way over to the sofa and Nate flinches like he's just realized how big of a sty his place is. He doesn't apologize for the mess because there's no reason to apologize for the mess. It isn't as if he knew he was going to have company tonight. As Molly pronounces the situation she's in and the advice he just gave her to be something she needs to learn to take he makes a half-assed attempt at clearing off the couch. There are a couple of hardcover books and a legal pad strewn across it.

Once he's transferred these things to the wasteland that is the coffee table Nate drops down onto the couch and blows out a breath.

"Moll," he says, "if investigating this thing makes you feel better..." He gives a slow protracted shrug as he grapples for words. He doesn't want to say it. He says it anyway. "Then..." He locks his eyes onto hers. "I don't know. Do what your gut tells you to do."


Molly

She didn't seem to mind sharing the couch with some books and a legal pad.  Molly simply selected a cushion that they weren't piled up on and called that good enough.  He's right, there's no sense in apologizing for your house being messy when you weren't expecting company.  He lived alone, paid the rent and his taxes like an adult, and as far as Molly was concerned that gave him the right to leave empty Sprite bottles and legal pads of paper wherever he damn well pleased.

All the same, he cleared the space and settled onto the couch beside her.  Molly hooked her elbow on the arm of the couch (to her right) and leaned into it some.  This helped her angle to be facing Nate better without just twisting her neck alone.

His advice surprised her.  Molly's eyebrows went up and, for a moment at least, she was caught off guard enough that the doom around her dissolved temporarily.  "Really?"  She asked-- not asking permission, but more like she wasn't sure for a second if she heard him correctly.  He held eye contact, and she didn't shy from it-- it wasn't in her history to avoid a gaze anyways.

"It does.  Make me feel better.  Things are dark and horrifying, but now that I know they're there understanding them helps me feel... I don't know, like I can watch my steps better.  Kind of like medicine-- if someone didn't start out poking brain matter we would have gone on believing that seizures were caused by demons."  Though now Molly wouldn't be nearly so surprised if someone told her that demon-induced seizures really were a thing.

Her head tipped sideways until she could rest the side of her head on the back of the couch.  Didn't break eye contact when she observed:  "I don't know how you've gone on so long without looking into the lore of Shades...  I'd lose my fucking mind."


Nate

Really?

He nods. It's a reluctant nod and it's obvious that it pains him to tell her to go ahead and do the opposite of what he would do. But he knows her. What he wants for her isn't good for her. To tuck herself into a closed safe place and bolt the door and never know what's beyond it scraping and dragging chains behind it is not a life she was ever going to lead. Not once she got her first glimpse of what lies beyond the door.

And he follows her train of thought up until she says she doesn't know how he's gone so long. He drops his gaze to the empty space between them and casts his eyes away to the dormant television across the room. Nathan doesn't have cable. An Internet router and a gaming console sit on a small stand beneath the wall-mounted unit. It's flanked on either side by bookcases. Framed photographs and memorabilia he's picked up in his travels. Faces in the photographs she won't recognize except for his sister Hannah.

"Yeah, well." He looks back at her. He's never talked to her about this. It stands to reason he's never talked to anyone about this. "I'm not so sure I didn't."


Molly

"You might have."

Molly mused.  Her eyes weren't so wide anymore, and with her head rested she looked more relaxed.  Hadn't cried it out, but just stating what she was struggling with aloud seemed to have taken some of the pressure off.  She moved her elbow off the arm of the couch and rested her right hand in her lap again.  The left arm was previously pinned between her body and the furniture, but she re-situated so her left elbow was the one propped now instead-- against the back of the couch as opposed to the arm.

When she spoke she was soft with her words still, and it was doing a much better job of reflecting in her baby blues as well.

"Doctors would tell you so, if you were honest with them.  They'd lock you right up.  But, again, that's just because their books can't account for what's actually real."

Her right hand moved out of her lap and into the space between them to rest on the cushion, palm up and fingers relaxed-- clearly an invitation to hold hands (how cute).

"I've probably lost mine too by now, anyways."


Nate

And Nathan knows exactly what would happen. It's why he's never said anything to anyone. He knows that when the Marine recruiter asked him if he had any mental health or criminal history whatsoever that they were trying to weed out the crazies. Knew from having two lawyers for parents that the best thing to do was just deny any history of anything until confronted with evidence he had to explain but a 17-year-old with no prior history of conduct disorder or legal trouble can fly through that process without any trouble. He shipped out shortly after graduation and he kept that shit to himself the entire time he was in the service.

Would have kept that shit to himself here too but Molly caught him acting strange one too many times. Reacting to things she couldn't see or hear. By now she knows enough to recognize that he isn't schizophrenic. Fear of drugs has kept him from talking to anyone though.

His eyes tick down to find her hand prone on the couch. He considers it a moment. Then he puts the arm nearest her behind her on the couch. Takes her left hand in his left. He intends to slide his arm around her shoulders.

"I know you've lost yours."


Molly

When fingers touched to hers, Molly loosely wrapped them around the edge of Nate's palm.  Her eyes flickered to the side, just a bit, to catch that his arm was moving to the back of the sofa, but were back to him when the distraction soon passed.

Molly laughed, the sound low and mellow and quiet as she had been since they'd stepped through the doorway.  "It's a charming way to live.  I've adjusted to it."

This was why he was reluctant to invite her inside in the first place.  Molly felt the back of the couch shift as the weight of Nathan's arm slipped further down, nearer to her shoulders.  He could dismiss the approach as amping up for a hug, or maybe even something so bold as to hold her and take another stab at just being comforting.  But Molly had her doubts that was the case.  She and Nate had gone to bed before, though he had been a bit drunk still when that had happened.  His hugs tended to be full-bodied things, firm and bracing and upright.  He wouldn't be slinking his arm for something like that.

She knew he still saw Carole.  She'd felt the twist of guilt before when having a conversation with the pretty blonde policewoman about Nate, when the officer put together that the two may have had a fling.  And yet Molly did nothing to shrug his arm away, and all the same she still light-and-idle ran fingers from the heel of the hand she was holding to the inside of his wrist and back again.

Perhaps Miss Molly was designed to be a mistress after all.  She certainly had the vavoom for it.
"I've learned a lot."  Back on the subject of Shades and their lore, but not specifying outright.  "I could show you?"


Nate

If he had a filthier mind or he thought more highly of himself and his game than he does Nathan could have swerved the conversation back into murkier waters with the in she leaves there.

Drunk as he had been that Sunday afternoon when he came back to her place and kissed her for how scared he was Nathan was not blacked out or impotent with him. Took him a long time to finish but that had nothing to do with Molly. Had to do with his mind racing as he metabolized the alcohol he'd slammed back.

Carole knows nothing about the supernatural and she would have known nothing about Nate's affair with Molly if it weren't for the fact that Nate has left so many questions unanswered that any kind of light gave way to something that could serve as an explanation.

He wants to be of some comfort to Molly before she goes rushing off to what may be her death. All his life the dead have come to him for services for which he has enjoyed no compensation beyond the momentary return of silence. May be he doubts some days whether he's hearing Molly's voice because she's still alive or because the cellphone is a fetter for her. Shades don't feel solid in his arms like this though. He can only see them when they're old and powerful and angry.

His thumb lies over her pulse point and he cradles her right shoulder in his other hand. Maybe he was just trying to hold her. She can feel the depth of his voice in his chest where they rest near each other.
"Show me what?" he asks.


Molly

A noble enough man, Nate refrained from using Molly's statement as a doorway to lay on some charms.  He was once described as a White Knight, and though Nate hated the mouth the title had come from Molly still agreed with it, even if Nate may not himself.  He asked her to clarify instead.
Molly scooted nearer on the couch so her hip and leg were against his, though that was the consequence rather than the goal.  The goal was that she could tuck and lean more effectively into his side.  If the man was going to offer her an arm, she intended to take the comfort that came along with it.  She didn't go quite so far as to rest her head on him yet, though, she still supported that herself.

"What I've found about Shades."  She thought about it for a second, and seemed to only just realize what her prior phrasing could have led in to.  A somewhat sheepish grin pulled harder on one corner of her mouth than the other.  "I left that one wide open, huh?

"It might help you make things easier on yourself.  Maybe even salvage some of your mind, if you were so inclined."


Nate

I left that one wide open, huh?

It takes him a second to replay the conversation in his mind but when he realizes what just happened Nate snorts. The snort leads to light laughter and he moves his hand from her shoulder to her forehead. Like he's feeling for a temperature or trying to tamp down any more thoughts like that.

He is not fighting for his virtue over here. Doesn't matter that he's back to seeing Carole. He has about as much faith in the future of that relationship as he has in anything else in life.

As the conversation continues on Nate smooths hair back from Molly's brow and returns his hand to her upper arm.

"That's a tall fuckin' order," he says of salvaging what's left of his mind. He isn't skeptical. He doesn't have any doubt left to be skeptical. At this point he's just humoring her. Idiot. "Alright. Show me."


Molly

There's no temperature to be found on Molly's forehead, but her bangs were growing out and sweeping them aside wasn't the same futile task that it would be were they trimmed above her eyebrows still.  But they'd already established that she wasn't sick, she'd just lost her fucking mind.  Just like him.

Show me, he invited.  Molly had smiled at the touch to forehead and hair, and the expression lingered even after his hand settled back at her shoulder.

"Good."  Sure, it was likely that he'd agreed just to humor her, but she still seemed glad-- maybe even relieved-- to hear that Nate would be willing to take on some knowledge about the things that plague and pester him.  "I don't have anything with me right now.  I can bring over some really good books sometime.  Or make you a cheat sheet to all things ghost." 

The smile twisted into a bit more of a smirk, and she glanced briefly toward the kitchen, specifically hunting for a clock to find the time.  "Maybe I can quit my job and start making a living on Occult for Dummies books instead."

The hour was one where polite people would excuse themselves and see their way out, but all that waited at home were animals and nightmares and pills.  Nathan was warm, she could find his pulse in his wrist and she knew he wasn't consciously making his heart thump like vampires learned to do to fool their prey.  As much as she could get away with it, up to the point when she'd pick up on passive signs that it was time for her to go, she'd take the shelter he offered.


Nate

Nathan has plenty of quirks that unsettle normal people. The fact that he speaks with a flattened affect is among the chiefest of them but he also has a morbid sense of humor and a ghoulish complexion. It's rare that he seems as if he is entirely present and when the other person does have his undivided attention he looks haunted by something he will never talk about. To learn that the man is a combat veteran and a crime reporter seems an answer enough.

But Molly knows better. His is not a haunting of nightmares or demons or guilt. So far as she can tell he does not live his life regretting his action or lack thereof. He doesn't pick fights when he's drunk and he doesn't dwell on the things he cannot change about his past.

Aside from the one in the bathroom that he kept a t-shirt thrown over Nate did not have mirrors in any of the rooms in his apartment. Later she will learn he has none at all in the house. The only sources of time come from the digital displays of his stove and microwave but she would have to rise to check them. No windows in the bedrooms or the bathroom and she may notice white candles in every room of the house. None of them have been lit.

He had white candles in the old apartment. All of them had charred wicks and were various lengths. They didn't do a damned thing.

Nothing at home for her but animals used to long hours alone and a psyche that would not rest even with pharmaceuticals. He doesn't extract his arm from her shoulders and suggest they look at the time.

He lets her get so far as maybe I can quit my job before he puts his fingertips to her jaw and turns her face towards his and kisses her full on the mouth.

She can't stay here forever but she can stay here tonight. That's the sort of shelter he offers her.

Small World - 10.8.2014 [Nate, Maggie, Lux, Verna]

Molly Toombs

While bars were typically the place to meet a friend in Molly's adult life, she was hardly opposed to having an ice cream date instead.  The weather was nice and mild, hovering in the sixties even after the sun had since gone down, and the sky was clear enough for the moon to be bright like a ceiling lamp up above.

"Santa Fe," Molly had recommended on the phone call beforehand.  "There's a creamery I know of.  Plus, Santa Fe."  By now Nate knew she just plumb liked the neighborhood.  She's said before that she would consider moving there if that didn't mean, you know, moving.

But it is a pleasant part of town, and the ice cream that she and Nate exited the front door of the aforementioned creamery with was pleasant as well.  Molly had stepped outside and onto the sidewalk ahead of Nate, dressed simple but neat in dark jeans, a white blouse, tan flat shoes and a tan jacket, cinched and tucked nicely at the waist to make those curves all the moreso.  In hand, a cone of plain chocolate ice cream.  Sometimes it was the simple things in life.

They were mid-conversation, and it carried into the street as the exited the little ice cream shop.
"I've actually had to learn how to build a shelf and mount it on brick wall-- that's how hard pressed for space for books I've officially become."  She'd been a reader before, but the recent influx of novels purchased and spines tucked into her bookshelves was due to her passion for the Unreal and Abnormal (except they knew how real, and carried stones in their stomachs because they knew how unfortunately 'normal' the types of things they knew and bore witness to really were).  Molly's library was turning into something that a very specific crowd would drool for.


Maggie Smith

Did Maggie have a library?

She did. She did and it was full of books, most of them old. Most of them for decoration. Most of them about leadership and building codes Okay, so it wasn't her library, it was Marshall's library, but she did have a shoe box full of romance novels in Polish shoved under her bed that she occasionally pulled out when she was feeling winsome and lonesome and other somes that a woman felt from time to time that only Polish romance novels could satisfy.

She liked ice cream. Marshall was still out of town and she had decided, or maybe Lux had decided, that they should have ice cream. Because ice cream was delicious. Because company was delicious. because Marshall could't eat dairy on account of his acid reflux or something like that. Maggie didn't pretend to understand, but in some quiet conspiratorial way that was not going to be her problem sooner or later.

She felt bad about going out and buying ice cream with her allowance, so she was instead spending her artist money. So there she was, waiting outside for her friend-date to show up for ice cream.  Because ice cream? And friends? And ice-cream and friends when one's husband is away?

What could be more American?


Nathan Amherst

Most people have some semblance of a tan by the end of the summer. Summer has been gone from them for weeks now and though the city is still warm enough to convince oneself that snow won't start falling until the holidays if it weren't for the fact that the sun bleached out his straw-colored hair Nathan would look as if he hadn't stepped foot outside all year.

It was warm today and it's cooling off now. Nate appears to have met Molly straight after work. He's wearing loafers and khakis and a white button-down shirt tucked in and belted. He's lost weight since the springtime but that's what happens when you quit drinking and don't replace the calories with anything else. When you take up jogging and start smoking again because you're writing a book and if you can't drink when you're writing you might as well chain smoke.

"I'm surprised you don't have a room just for your books," he says. Says it the way he says everything else. In a tired deadpan makes it sound like he just woke up. Same bruises under his eyes as have always been there. Consistency is key in a relationship. He ordered a hot fudge sundae because fuck it. It's not like his waistline is in danger of expanding. "The rate you're going you're gonna have to get rid of your bed. Your apartment isn't getting any bigger."

They walk past Maggie as they exit the creamery. He met her once before. That was months ago though. Laurel was there.

[int + alert: DO I REMEMBER YOU BLONDIE]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )


Maggie Smith

[Do I remember you? Int+alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )


Molly Toombs

"Well there's only the one bedroom in that apartment, you know.  And I'm already sharing my room with three upright bookshelves as it is-- it's taking over my closet wall."

Molly had never met Maggie Smith before, so she wouldn't recognize her even if she was being keen-eyed and sharp-minded tonight.  The woman walking beside Nathan (who Maggie did recognize) was voluptuous and well put together, with her red hair twisted into an up-do, bangs swept neatly to one side.  Her make-up was subtle, save for the wings of eyeliner that existed specifically to add drama to an ensemble that would teeter on the edge of 'public school teacher' were it not for how she stood with an unbent back and didn't appear frazzled from a long day of teaching kids.

"It isn't.  Maybe I'll start stashing the books in that storage closet I rented after...," she trailed off, let the sentence finish itself.  Nate knew, she wasn't lying to him about the fact that she was keeping a broken and deep-sleeping Nosferatu hidden away until he woke.  He was still there, she checked regularly, and the fact was starting to become as routine as walking the dog felt.  At least when she walked the dog she didn't have to do so with a handkerchief pressed firm to her nose and mouth-- Florence's smell didn't make her nerves tremble and strong will try to cave like even the stagnant smell of vampire blood still did.  That little tidbit she'd never mentioned to Nate.  It was a dirty little secret, you see, a shameful little addiction.

That was another story, though, and not the one she was letting tell itself through the unfinished end of a sentence.  Molly smiled politely to Maggie when they crossed paths going in-and-out of the same shop, but did not extend a greeting herself.  Perfect strangers after all.  Instead, she licked at her ice cream cone.


Maggie Smith

She was waiting for Lux, and there was the quiet in between waiting time and she looked up in time to see a familiar… ish face. She'd met him once, but Maggie was good with faces. Terrible with directions, yes, but wonderful with faces. With faces and contours and shapes and lines and this shape called himself Nate.

And he helped her find the complete wrong professor, but she was grateful anyway.

"Nate?" she asked, and she cocked her head to the side curiously. The woman he was with was pretty and curvaceous and colorful, colorful enough that the bleached blonde with the immovable cleavage (either a good bra or a better plastic surgeon) looked at her and smiled big and bright and perhaps a little too eagerly. Like a tourist.

"Thank you again!" she tells him, because she recognizes him, or at least she thinks she does, "for the directions? On campus?"

In case he didn't remember.


Nathan Amherst

Even if he doesn't jump with the shock of hearing his name come from someone who wasn't standing right next to him Nate always looked a bit startled. The curse of having dark eyes set into a pale face. Of not blinking very often. Not blinking is supposed to be a sign of mental disturbance.

The woman standing right next to him knows of some of the disturbances he's weathered in the last year alone. That he doesn't ever truly feel alone. Hard to feel alone when he's staying late at the office or out at a gastropub or standing in line someplace and he hears something cold and dead whisper in his ear. When he and his friends become witnesses to a haunting and rather than running the fuck away he wants to barrel in and confront the spirit causing it. When he can't even lie in a hospital bed without disembodied visitors coming to chatter at him.

So he doesn't jump but Nate does look startled when he turns towards Maggie. His eyes search her face and it takes him a second but no longer.

"Hey," he says with as much brightness in his tone as any stranger can ever claim to hear and stops walking. Maybe they were on their way to a bench or a table anyway. Some of the places around here are stubborn in their refusal to bring in their patio furniture just because the Halloween decorations are already popping up. "Yeah, no problem. How's class going?"

Where the fuck are his manners.

"Molly, this is, uh, Maggie, she goes to DU."


Molly Toombs

Molly's left hand (with no ring to stake a claim of marriage) was the designated ice cream hand, so it was preoccupied with holding on to a waffle cone through a napkin to avoid sticky fingers as much as possible.  Even though the fingers on her right hand weren't sticky at all yet, she still dusted them on the thigh of her pants to be sure before extending her hand to the blond woman introduced as Maggie.

"Nice to meet you," Molly said with a smile that was completely polite and pleasant (but just didn't seem to quite shine from behind the eyes) but didn't have the same sparkling bright enthusiasm that the college student had displayed when spying Nate.  It was hard to shine from the eyes when everything behind them was cluttered with the dark and unreal anyways.

The place had three mini wire tables, precisely, for customers to use.  There were a few extra chairs pressed directly up against the store's front wall as well, but the sidewalk only allowed for so much room.  Thankfully Wednesday evenings in October weren't the busiest, so the tables were all clear (save for the one Maggie herself was at?).  Molly didn't move to sit, but her right hand slipped into her jacket pocket and her weight dispersed between her feet to indicate she was content to stand and chat for a while.  After another lick of her ice cream, she glanced briefly to Nate, then to Maggie once more.

"DU?  I graduated from there."  Of course you did, Molly.  Many people in Denver did.  "What are you studying?"


Verna

How does she even have time for this sort of thing? It's a mystery, truly. Perhaps Verna is burning the candle at both ends, spending time she should be sleeping in a quest for ice cream. It looks that way, at least. She might seem sick if it weren't for the makeup disguising dark circles under her eyes.  Everything is a disguise really. The makeup, the clothes, the amount of effort she puts in to appear nice.

But one has to live a little, don't they? Treat themselves once in a while?

Maggie's the only one she recognizes upon walking out of the place, double-chocolate cone in hand. There is a bright smile. There is the sense of familiarity at noticing who her friend is talking to. Hasn't she seen them before somewhere?


Maggie Smith

Molly was a graduate of DU. Maggie smiled that bright- too bright- smile and her features lit up lovely and the ring on her hand was the size of Kansas and her nails were bright red and either fake or very well manicured. She has a nice, firm handshake, like she is conducting a business deal. Like she practiced shaking hands and knew precisely what she was doing. Magdalena shined, it was simply what she did.

"I am graduate student? In art history?" everything sounded a little like a question when she said it, her inflection rising in the wrong places and her accent thick and dripping with the lilt of a non-native English speaker. " But not with concentration in museum studies. I studied at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw before I moved here? It is lovely."

A little longing, perhaps?


Lux

Lux is in black tonight. Lux is sheathed in it: midnight's darling, an inescapably lovely young woman. Her throat is bare. Her arms, too. The dress is modern [haute], deceptive in its simplicity: thin black straps, a razor's edge of thread, scoop neck, swath of black silk against an asymmetrical swath of more black silk down to just the top of her thighs, little black shorts a silver safety pin gleaming and then over the whole fucking thing this veiled half-transparent shadow-gauz, wrapping 'round her thighs then flaring out at her calves in darkness-edged sweeps, an elegant torrent of night which she'd step on if Lux weren't wearing heels (black and spindling, but quite without ridiculousness), weren't also sharped up by virtue of being Other into a thing which exceeds the measure of grace allotted most souls.

Lux is in black. Lux's nails are polished pearl-silver, the colour of the gates of Heaven (y'know, those things we're going to tear down -- what fucking fun!), and Lux's hair is pinned back and she has a wrap she's not wearing because it's only sixty out tonight anyway and she always bums a jacket from somebody else anyway so the wrap is technically folded up in her little box purse and she glitters in the light sparkles we might even say around the eyes because to counteract the severe suggestiveness of the outfit itself she has little sequined stars by her eyes around her eyes and glistering shadow and she looks very casually elegant as hell

and

she is late.

She is late for reasons she will likely share with nobody, but that is life in Denver; one must occasionally circle 'round, take a different route, be discrete. Lux is not discrete and Lux is not good at hiding; frankly my dear, she refuses to change herself in certain ways, because nights unenjoyed mean everything (the blood, the years, everything, everything) is a waste.

The only thing to do is party, get it?

And look, a party! A strange and ecclectic party still in proto-party phase, but surely, a party nonetheless. Maybe. The ultimate Toreador challenge, perhaps: make this a party.

(Is Lux a good little Toreador?)

Here she is, cutting across the street, not lifting her voice or her hand until she is near enough to catch Maggie's eye or perhaps Nathan's or hell why not Molly's one of those people where she was heading directly so she can wave. Which she does. And who's to say why she opens her bag and finds a cigarette case, and the first person she actually speaks to is the one who's still outside of the group being descended upon,

Doesn't she sound surprised and warm?

"Why, Verna! Is that chocolate? I would have guessed strawberry!"


Nathan Amherst

There must be a god somewhere. Verna doesn't recognize Nathan and Nate couldn't testify to what Verna looks like anyway. That may change as she comes closer and figures out this is the drunk creep she'd managed to avoid twice last spring but for now they can enjoy their ignorance a while longer.

Nate has to use two hands to put a hurt on his sundae but he's just holding it in one for now. This creamery doesn't believe in styrofoam containers. The cardboard dish is a poor insulator but Nate has cold hands anyway.

He isn't going to be the first one to decide if they were sitting or standing or scraping themselves free of the conversation and continuing on. He shifts his weight between his feet and puts his empty left hand behind his back. Looks like he's standing at half-assed ease but really he's pushing his knuckles into the small of his back.

Of course his is one of the sets of eyes that finds Lux as she steps up onto the sidewalk. He acknowledges her with a glance and then looks back to Maggie.

"I had a layover in Warsaw once," he says. "The airport was nice."

Conversationalist of the year, over here.


Molly Toombs

"Poland is a pretty beautiful part of the world," Molly agreed.  "You're from there originally, I'm guessing?"  She didn't need to specify why she was guessing, Maggie's English was great but the accent was a red flag in a sea of white.  "Makes sense that you're studying art, then."

The red-haired woman smiled appropriately, it pushed up her freckled cheeks and touched the corners of her eyes and all.  The warmth that should be geniuine to go with a comment like that-- speaking of the beauty of someone's home and how it may have impacted their interests-- was just a bit lacking though.  She licked again at her ice cream and let her eyes creep a scan about their surroundings.

In doing so, she spied Lux and Verna both.  Lux she knew, and recognized both for who and what she was (equally to some degree but not to any full extent, oh no).  Verna was someone she recognized vaguely, a tickle in the corner of her mind of 'I've seen you someplace before', but without a solid identity to tack down on to it.  The most memorable occasion was some time ago, and then they hadn't spoken a word to one another let alone shared names and shaken hands.  But recognition?  A little, enough that Molly furrowed coppery-ginger brows in thought.

What she actually commented on when she opened her mouth to speak-- her tone of voice was more relaxed and familiar than a moment ago, so she was probably directing it more toward Nathan than Magdelena, but she was looking at neither and the statement was open.

"It is by some supernatural gift of grace that that woman hasn't fallen directly on her face yet."  Speaking specifically of Lux, and the skirt about her ankles.


Verna

Lux is always a feast for the eyes, isn't she? A walking piece of art that Verna has casually appraised now and again as worth a great deal. It always makes one feel a little ragged, doesn't it? Outmatched? But jealousy doesn't erase the fact that Lux is good people.

"Oh but I needed chocolate, Lux. Bad day," she says, a little smile in order to say that the day wasn't that bad really. Nobody died. "It's good to see you."


Maggie Smith

Was she originally from poland? She nodded, and that bright light stayed on her face for Lux and Verna- (Vair-Nah).

"The airport is lovely? Has a very nice Barnes and Noble? It is more pleasant than Berlin," she replied to that particular notion.

But there was Molly to talk to. Molly who was lovely and curved and red and perfectly shadeable. Something sculptable. She wondered about that, if it would be strange to say. Something made her smile, laugh a little, "it takes practice? And very good ankles."


Lux

"You need company," and thus is Verna whisked off to Molly, Nathan, and Maggie. Cigarette acquired from case, and wouldn't you know she taps it out with the air of long habit although her fingertips aren't stained. "But poor strawberry, so maligned! If I were a flavor, I'd despise chocolate because of how quickly it is loved, how swiftly it gets into the mix of things,"  

and now, the whisking is accomplished. "Why hey there, guys. Do any of you know Verna here? She's the cleverest person I know when it comes to Natural Laws and being noticing. Verna, this is Nathan, who's a brave writer of crime stories and other more important things, and this is Molly, who -- let's see, Molly, how should I describe you? Molly's a darling, quick on her feet, a nurse too, and don't big hearts come with that? Hey, Maggie, I'm truly sorry I'm late. The contritest. D'you really like my ankles? Did I hear that right? I will blush."


Nathan Amherst

Oh great. More introductions. Now's the perfect time to shovel sundae into your mouth Nathan good job. Maybe that will keep your foot out of it.

Nathan, who's a brave writer of crime stories and other more important things--

He's making sure he doesn't have melted dairy product on his mouth before he inserts himself into the conversation. Dabs at his lips with the back of his thumb and turns out yeah okay he's fine. Buries the spoon up to the hilt in his ice cream and sets the dish down on one of the empty tables.

Once his hands are freed he lifts the right one in a motionless wave and tucks both hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

"Sup," he says.

Writers. So eloquent when they don't have pens and keyboards in front of them.


Molly Toombs

Molly Toombs of the red hair and va-va-voom that this bright-smiled bright-haired lady wanted to shade, maybe sculpt, stood beside and a couple of inches shorter than Nathan.  Since you can't set a waffle cone down to rest for a while, she kept a hold of her frozen treat and licked to keep it from melting into a mess before she could enjoy it.  Lux had ushered Verna on over and started with introductions right off the bat.

Blue eyes met Verna's, and she smiled but waited for introductions to be completed before speaking up herself.  When Lux said Verna's name, Molly kept that smile up and nodded.  When Nate was described as a brave writer, Molly cast a glance his way.  When she heard her own name, that smile turned to more of a grin ("how should I describe you?") and she at last extended the right hand, free of chocolate ice cream drips and drops, to shake.

"I think I've seen you here or there.  It's nice to meet you, Verna."

Again, as was the trend this evening, Molly is pleasant but there's too much noise from the gears whirling in her head for her to seem especially focused on niceties.  Already, she had cast a glance to Maggie-- largely because Lux expressed that she was keeping the woman late, they were meeting there by arrangement.  Molly liked Lux, don't get her wrong, but there was a particular suspicion and caution that still sank into her bones and ticked away at her rib bones from inside the cage of her chest.

These poor women probably had no idea what they were in for.


Verna

Verna's whisking away has her uncomfortably shuffled down the sidewalk to mingle with people. She's introduced as the cleverest person with the natural laws, and this has her recalling events she'd rather not. A pang of a thought. She wasn't always the person Lux knew who was the cleverest.

She puts on a smile anyway, and extends her free hand to Nathan and Molly in turn. "Oh, a writer -- and a nurse? What an honorable profession, truly."

Small talk. Social scripts. The grease that runs the world really.

"And Maggie. I didn't know you knew Lux! Small world."

Truth, Molly. Verna has no idea what she is in for. None. She doesn't have an idea what she was in for.


Maggie Smith

"Verna!" she says, pronounces her name incorrectly even though she knows that she can say it Ver-nah and not Vair-nah, but for some reason the name does not ever seem to come out right, but she smiles all the same, all bright and my must she get tired of beaming so damnably often?

"And I do like your ankles," she admits, though there is no real admission in it. Just a statement of fact and unabashed appreciation the way that an artist would appreciate anatomy, before she could say anything, though, her phone rang. Her phone rang and Maggie looked- not distressed, but her sunlight dimmed for a moment and she sighed. He didn't always make her sigh, she didn't always feel a sense of impending dread when she had to talk to her husband but her stomach felt weak and her heart felt heavy and.

"I am sorry, I must take this call," she apologizes, genuine and sincere. As though her phone call would inconvenience anyone.


Nathan Amherst

Seems as if he wasn't going to shake Verna's hand until she offered it up herself. She extends it to him and he flinches as if he hadn't been expecting it. A self-reprimanding frown stains his brow and he overdoes it trying to smile to seem friendly. He looks distracted.

Hell for all Verna can tell context lacking and Lux being so complimentary as she is Molly is a psych nurse and Nathan is her fucking client. He hadn't exactly been behaving himself that day she spied them all at the bar and grill at noon.

Small world.

"Heh," Nate says before he can convince himself not to.


Lux

Maggie did not look distressed. But what did Maggie look, then, if not distressed; dimmed? Lux considers this, cut of a glance a sidelong sort-of-thing in response to that sigh.

"If you must, don't do it," she says, immediately; "Doing things because one must is a terrible way to run your night," and she means it, too, means it with ardency, but by the end of the sentence, see, her expression is an understanding one, and the cant of her head meant to indicate she won't follow Maggie off into privacy land. Doesn't she look regretful?

Back to socializing, socializing, socializing; contained vibrance. Lux reaches on over to fix something that needed fixing on Nathan. Look at him and take your pick. 

"Who's got a lighter? Anyone? And what's the noblest profession of all? There is a correct answer, I'm curious to see whether you know," and there; edge of a half-smile, just surfacing. 

"I want you two to entertain me," she tells Molly and Nathan, up-front. "Where are you headed after this? There's a thing going on a street over..."

Invitation for all. 


Molly Toombs

Being a nurse meant you heard all kinds of things.  Sometimes it was requests to come home and play nurse with a real man, because she wore her scrubs walking home.  Occasionally she'd been accused of being outright evil for refusing some demand or another from an admitted patient.  In nice company like this, though, you got to hear things like compliments and being called honorable and a lifesaver.  Molly wasn't sure if she would call herself so honorable anymore, but that wasn't the kind of thing you pondered aloud when meeting new people.

"Thank you," she sufficed to say instead, and even looked a little bit modest over the compliment made.  "It's a way to make a living, in a few ways I suppose you could even say."  Ha, medicine joke.

Her attention pulled toward Maggie when the phone buzzed and rang, and the heart-heaviness that dragged a curtain over the sun-filled windows that were the blonde woman's brightness didn't go unnoticed.  There was a faint sympathetic crease to the brow, but Molly had only just barely met the woman.  She liked her enough, as much as you could after being just introduced, but she was precisely that-- just introduced.  So she made no suggestions to buck the chains of obligation and just nodded her understanding instead.

Ah, but who had a lighter for that cigarette in Lux's hand?  Molly shook her head apologetically, then took to looking humored instead when the gorgeous and magnetic (undead! do not forget!) woman next explained that she wanted her to keep her entertained.  Between ice cream licks, she chuckled and conversed.

"Oh do you, now?"  Of course she did.  Molly looked past her shoulder to Nate, searching his face for answer to the silent question of 'well?'.

"We....," she started, dragging the word a little because she started talking while still looking up at Nate and asking silent questions about what they were doing and what he was up to later and if they should stay for that thing or or or...

"...hadn't really gotten farther than 'ice cream'.  What's the thing?"


Verna

Verna waves off Maggie's departure with sadness. Now the crowd is dwindling down to people she barely knows.

"Hmm. Well, I suppose by one definition, an emperor is the noblest profession. But then, emperors are so rarely noble," Verna says, and oh, there's chocolate ice cream dripping down her hand. How noble.

She catches up to it, of course. Oh, chocolate. It's a substitute for something she can't quite place...
Lux tells Molly and Nathan that they will entertain her. This does not exactly include Verna, and that is a good thing. She has homework. To grade and to do. What life is there to have, really? Still, there is the whole 'being left out' thing to consider. Wallflower as she is, she makes no comment either way.


Nathan Amherst

Of course he has a lighter. He's off the nicotine wagon again. He fishes a small silver Zippo out of his pocket and hands it to Lux before picking up his ice cream again.

Then the question of the thing and the going to it or the not going to it. Nate is looking over at Molly as she's looking up at him and her expression is one of overt questioning while his is bland. Only way to tell that he's thinking is the fact that he sets his lips into a line as he does it.

They seem to be in agreement. They hadn't planned out the rest of their night and it depends on what the thing is. Nate glances over at Verna to see if she's coming along.

Being a medium supposedly means you have an excuse to walk up to anybody. He barely uses it as an excuse to talk to people.


Lux

"The thing, oh. Don'tcha like surprises?"

This is how Lux collects lighters. Somebody gives her one, and she doesn't quite remember to give it back once she lights her cigarette, stands back (aloof and alone [never! far too present for that]) so the wind won't wash the smoke over the ice-cream lickers and flavor their treats acrid. Smoking suits Lux; she does it with such an offhand air that the rest of what she's doing, the attention she is paying, becomes sharped up.

"The kind that don't come at the end of a scary story, that is," and see, she sounds as if she's thinking of something else for a moment; pause. Remember oneself; glance down, then up through her lashes, regard the living things through the veil of 'em, a hopeful cant. 

"Come to the thing, and find out. I will be just devastated if mysteriousness which doesn't involve me trumps mysteriousness I've got in my hand."

Her gaze wanders over to the platinum blonde sunshine (Saint) talking on the phone, and stays. She is loathe to let Verna go, as Verna will no doubt find out as soon as she tries to make her mouse-polite neat-neat-neat way off. Loathe, suddenly, to let anybody go; it causes the corner of her mouth to quirk up, impulse.


Molly Toombs

"I used to."  Like surprises, that is.  Molly had gotten to the point on her ice cream where she could begin crunching away on the edges of the waffle cone, and after she'd taken the first crunchy bite and come away with ice cream on her nose, she wiped it free with the inside of her left wrist.  Maggie was off, up the sidewalk, talking and Molly had no idea what the call was about or where she was going but, well, there she went.

That left four:  two others that Molly knew plenty well, well enough to have gone on ghost-hunting expeditions (well, one).  The third, Verna, was an unknown, but Molly had spied her here and there before, and Lux knew her well enough to use names and pull into conversations at least.  Even if she didn't know it yet, chances were that this poor Verna woman would become as solidly aware of Truth as the rest of them, and before long no doubt.

"Not so much these days.  But, that could just be that the last few were sour and spoiled it for the rest."  Another quick-lick of the ice cream cone to catch a dribble trying to creep its way toward her fingers.  "And it would be callous for me to just leave you devastated, wouldn't it?"

A glance back toward Verna, and Molly raised her eyebrows curiously.  "How about you Verna?  Up for adventure?"


Nathan Amherst

"Oh, yeah," Nate says in a deadpan. "I fuckin' love surprises."


Verna

"Oh, I can't," she says, in response to Molly. "I have so much work I need to do. Grading papers. I really wish I could be doing anything else with my night but figuring out how someone managed to live for eighteen years and not learn how to add."

There is a thing about teaching remedial math courses for college students. It will put you off your dinner. Make you crave chocolate.

"Honestly, I do not know if they realize how much money they're throwing away by not taking their classes seriously," she shakes her head. 

Verna knows. That ice cream was saved up for.


Nathan Amherst

At some point he picks up his paper dish and starts carving away at it with the spoon. Maybe while Molly is talking. It gives him time to eat and he eats as if this is the first solid food he's had all afternoon. Then Verna has an excuse to deliver. He's put a decent sized dent in the dish by the time she gets to:

Honestly, I do not know if they realize how much money they're throwing away by not taking their classes seriously.

He's smearing the fudge and whatever the hell else goes on a sundae around as he says, "They don't."
This coming from the guy who went to school on the G.I. Bill. No bias at all.


Lux

"But don't reward tedium with your time," Lux says, just for starters, and she proceeds to lay a lure, a come-with-me sort of how-can-you-say-no?, for Verna the scientist who she is reluctant to lose at the moment.

Maybe Verna can be tugged along (caught [in orbit]), maybe she can't. If she can't, Lux asks Molly whether or not she thinks Verna seems sad. There's a point to this line of conversation; there always is, even if it's just to keep herself occupied. Didn'tcha know, Lux would want to know, you guys had somebody in common?

Maybe Verna stays just a little longer, finishing her ice cream, and it's not until Maggie regretful and full of apologies has to take her leave that Molly and Nate and Lux go to the thing, the thing a street away, (but c'mon, Verna, stay, do), which turns out to be a zombie crawl party-cum-art show-cum movie night movie night for charity sort of deal.

Maybe Lux looks at Nate with muted -- longing, or maybe that's Verna, or, Hell, maybe Maggie stays, maybe it's Maggie; maybe Lux is just a wistful young woman, whenever her personality gives her a chance at introspection.

Maybe it's nothing.

Maybe some of the zombie crawl practice-costumes aftermath costumes are pretty fucking fabulous; maybe the movie is good. Wednesday isn't a big party night but it's a dark world:

Gotta remind yourself you're alive one way or another, make all the best mistakes.