Breathe

Elijah

[how did last night go?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 4) ( fail )

Elijah

What does Elijah Poirot dream of?

What keeps him awake, struggling and burning bright well in to the hours when he has no business to be trying so desperately to stay awake.

What is it that he dreams of? What is it that puts him on rooftops with his eyes careening over the edge and wondering, briefly, how high up they really were. The bass beneath him thumped and some pop up DJ event kept thrumming beneath him. This was a one night event. This was a warehouse, just a standard warehouse with standard warehouse amenities and the industrial feel was part of its charm. The street below was cast in glowing swirling rainbow lights and the world was thumping and humming.

It didn't matter how much he took, or what pills came from where, Elijah was looking to escape something that he couldn't get away from. That he couldn't avoid and the shadows felt too thick and too real and something hungered. he could feel it in the pit of his stomach and playing on his mind. He savored that sound, that loud thumping wonderful sound of people and bass and hearts beating in time to the music because he knew that something would happen.

That the world would fade out and it would all begin again.

His eyes stayed over the edge, and he was miles and miles away.

What does Elijah Poirot dream about? What has him cradling that wrist close to his abdomen like he may not be certain how to reset it?

What has him losing that struggle on various nights when he can't be sure if he's awake or asleep?

Ian

[Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Kalen Holliday

[How awake are we?

Also - my internet does die for like twenty minutes at a time. If that happens I will try to text one of you. But...yes. *sigh*]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Kalen Holliday

[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

Ian showed up at the warehouse with three people, all of whom had the same lithe and athletic physique that he did. The older of the two women (she might have been forty, but if so she looked young for it,) had a section of her blond hair plaited into a braid that wound back over the side of her head. She had on a pair of jeans, a black silk halter top and calf-length boots, and her arm draped loosely around the shoulders of a younger blond man next to her. Ahead of them, an Indian woman in a deep red dress and high heels stood beside Ian. She laughed at something he said, then turned around to tap the blond man in the arm playfully as the four of them made their way past the doorman into the warehouse.

They'd come here for the same reasons everyone else had come here. To dance. To get drunk, or high, or otherwise act a bit less like responsible adults for the evening. But once onside, Ian didn't stay with them for long. He could feel Elijah's resonance filtering down from atop the roof, so he said something to the older woman that made her grin and roll her eyes, then he slid through the packed, tumultuous crowd until he found the stairs.

The air on the roof was noticeably less thick and humid than it had been inside, and when Ian opened the door and felt the cool night breeze on his skin, he breathed it in gratefully. The city skyline was lit up with warm, bright colors, and Ian glanced at it a moment as he made his way across the roof to where Elijah stood.

There was a pause. A brief moment of consideration as Ian eyed the set of Elijah's shoulders - the way he stood gazing out over the edge like he was lost. Then Ian fell in at his side.

"Everything okay?" he asked quietly.

Because truthfully, Elijah did not precisely look okay at that particular moment.

Elijah

[do I have the presence of mind to lie? manip+sub]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Ian

[Empathy?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Kalen Holliday

It is not traditional for the esteemed Magi of the Order of Hermes to attend events of this manner unless they are hunting. And if Kalen Michael Holliday had come here hunting in the fashion of his training...well...this would be a different kind of exciting. But Kalen Michael Holliday is not hunting here.

It is not that kind of night. He is not, tonight, that kind of knight.

He has had so many Names. He has been so many things. Because he had to be. Because he was expected to be. Because he was trained to be. All of those things are true. Have been true. Will be true. But there are nights, even now, when he lets all of that go. Falls and let the drifting currents of fate that catch leaves and glitter and clouds catch him and move him and he does not question where he finds himself or what he finds himself doing anymore on these nights of surrender than he questions the currents of fate as they move anything else.

Fate has its own Will. Its own patterns. And while one day he might understand them, for now Kalen is content to leave them like as some people are content to leave oceans. Mysterious, ancient, mythic things - unknowable and vast. Beautiful, deadly, mercurial things.

Tonight he ends up, of all places, on a roof. There is music underneath them, pulsing, reaching up like the waters of some underground spring. An underground spring with a pulse? Perhaps it pulses to the beat of a sylph? A freshwater mermaid? Its own secret and Slumbering heart? None of these things seems impossible tonight. Nothing seems impossible tonight.

And so he drifts toward his apprentice and his whatever-the-hell-you-call-someone-who-can-barely-stand-you-but-might-be-about-to-teach-you-magic. There are lights and there are stars hidden by clouds of lights and there might be clouds and there are-

He forces his attention to the people he is joining on the roof.

"Hey," he says, quietly.

Elijah

He didn't reach for him. He didn't turn around to look at Ian; he didn't turn around and look at Kalen. He just waited and pinned some point with unfocused eyes off in the distance

(And this is how it starts. At first the lights seem to go out for him, only for him, one by one. That one reminder that the world was slowly, slowly becoming less and less and devoured whole by something with an all-encompassing hunger. Something that would take, because it was in tis nature to take and give nothing in return. That was the nature of the Void. Something deep and black and the majesty of the city was quietly swallowed whole and oh god, oh god come back-)

Everything okay? Ian asked.

Hey, Kalen said. Both quietly, both enough that his mind strained harder than his ears over the heartbeat beneath them.

"Bad trip," he said. It's all he said, so effortless and easy that it must have been the truth, so easily that it came from a solid six months of continual, habitual lying. Something that could have been bought, were it not for the fact that Elijah wouldn't look at either of them and he could feel his mind drifting and there was no point in breathing because the lights were leaving one by one and he was holding his breath.

Ian

Hey, Kalen said, and Ian glanced back and regarded him quietly. It had been almost two weeks since the last time they'd seen each other, and nothing in Ian's body language suggested that Kalen's presence here was an unwelcome thing. Ian didn't smile or try to touch Kalen, but he did tip his head and give a light nod.

"Hey." He didn't realize yet that Kalen and Elijah knew each other.

Elijah gave an easy lie, and Ian, sharp as he was, could not quite see his way past it. He put a hand out to touch Elijah's shoulder, a grounding kind of gesture, letting the weight of it tether him more securely to the rooftop.

"Maybe you should sit down."

[Life 1 - bad trip?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 8) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen barely seems to respond to any of that, particularly in regard to the kinds of responses that either of them is used to seeing. He takes the 'bad trip' and the nod by way of greeting in, the same way he is drinking everything in. These are the things that are here. That are real.

Fate is real too. It is wrapping around them it has wrapped around them it will-

He kneels and touches the weather-roughened roof of the warehouse. It is humming with the music and the dancing below them. For a few seconds his eyes close. He doesn't need to see them. He can sense them both, can feel them, can breathe in their presence that way he can breathe oxygen and light and smoke.

Ian is already touching Elijah. And Kalen...well...isn't exactly even Kalen right now. There are gritty grains in the little gap of the roof that remind him of sand. That remind him, distantly and faintly, of sand mixed with bits of shattered stone and glass. But the air on his tongue isn't like the air there. Not the night everything burned and not the night he went back.

"It isn't the worst idea, Fae," he says. "And I find his advice is generally worth listening to."

Elijah

[do I move?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Elijah

Maybe he should sit down.

Maybe he should sit down, he says it again in his head and there is a hand on his shoulder and tension rides through him and at first it doesn't register as being human , as though Elijah Poirot had encountered anything in this lifetime that was beyond humanity in its most basic form- nothing outside of his dreams, perhaps, but that was the truth of the matter. That was the heart of it, and he took a step back. He'd been too close to the edge, too distant and too detached, but his eyes wouldn't stay focused and he held himself smaller, protective of whatever he might have needed to protect himself from.

Elijah was tense, though the hand on his shoulder brought a shuddering breath, an exhalation from his lungs.

"It will all come back, it always does," he says, more to itself than anything and he takes a second step away from the edge. Elijah took a seat a few steps away from a region on the rooftop that would seem dangerous, that would seem like he might just jump.

If he was sitting, he wouldn't jump. Wouldn't lose himself and run from something that wasn't there… not that he would have far to run. the world was feeling small and closing in and Elijah closed his eyes tightly, brought his right hand to his eyes but kept the left one precisely where it had been- close and protective. he wasn't injured, it wasn't dislocated again or broken or anything of the sort, just… a memory.

"Am I awake?" he asks.

Lie to me if you have to, he says without saying.

Ian

Maybe there was a moment there, when Ian glanced between Kalen and Elijah, where a part of him considered walking back down to rejoin his co-workers. Ian looked as though he'd come here to dance. He had on expensive jeans and a black tank top and a bands of braided leather looped around his neck and wrists. His hair was perfect. He smelled nice (really nice, actually - hints of citrus and sandalwood.) He could have been doing any number of other things at a pop-up rave besides standing on the roof with a couple of other mages who seemed more than a little lost in their own heads.

A moment, yes. And he considered it. But he didn't go.

Kalen called Elijah Fae. Elijah, whose heart was beating very quickly. Whose nerves were alight with anxiety. Whose pheromones were steeped in this animal scent: locked in fight or flight. Tripping, maybe. But this wasn't just a chemical reaction. Elijah reacted to Ian's touch with a coil of tension, and Ian lifted his hand just enough so that it hovered out of contact. Close enough still that he could catch Elijah if Elijah started to fall or step off the roof or otherwise need... something.

But Elijah did not step off the roof. Instead he pulled back and sat down, and Ian lowered himself into a crouch, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet.

"You're awake." (Barely.)

Ian glanced back at Kalen again. Watching the way Kalen ran his fingers over the roof's masonry. It was only for a moment, then his focus was back on Elijah.

"Hey." He pitched his voice into a calming register. "You're okay. Look at me."

Kalen Holliday

Is Elijah awake?

There are so many answers to that question. They swim through his eyes, all infinite and wondrous possibility. He tries to find, in all of that possibility an answer that seems most right right now.

"Stars only live in constellations because people Named them," he says softly. "They're always just stars. Consciousness is just perception."

Elijah's demons call him back, or call back the version of him they know better, more than the feeling of the roof or the grit under his fingertips. Remind him that he isn't just there to drink in the whole of the cosmos until the day or the night that it swallows him instead. Vows. Oaths. Improvised swords on fire escapes. Blood that swelled, just as the music does now, to a pulse. Impact. Flesh on flesh. Bullets tearing into his skin. The feeling of a knife sinking into something long dead. Not like cutting into the living. The sharp, overwhelming sensation of a brand on his skin. Kharisma screaming. Ice cutting his skin as he falls through it.

"That isn't what matters. What matters is that what you're afraid of isn't here. And I wouldn't let it have you if it was." He looks away from them, out over the city. He lets all the weight of that memory stay long enough to say that for Elijah, and then he lets it fall away again. Like rain. Like waves. Like falling leaves. Cherry blossoms.

Ian's voice too, he lets fall away. Whatever Ian is on this roof for, it isn't him. He lets that go too.

Elijah

[this is willpower, I totally have it]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

The lights went out and the sky was black and the world was getting smaller, so much smaller and it was getting quieter, so much quieter and the only thing he could hold onto was sensation, and he held it so tightly. So fervently. He closed his eyes, kept them closed and he remembered look at me and he had to. He had to look. Not because of anything except the fact that he wanted to find comfort there.

When he opened his eyes, the city was gone to him, the lights dimmed and matte across the sky. If gave him other things to focus on, other people to hold onto, like the sound of Kalen's voice nearby and the sound of Ian telling him that he was okay.

When Elijah looked back, his eyes weren't clear, but they were still that brilliant green-and-amber brightness. There was more disaster in his countenance. He was not the calm in the storm, but the disaster itself, and that was as beautiful as it was terrible. Elijah looked from Ian to Kalen and back. He inhaled sharply, blinking hard away whatever terrified moisture may have come to his gaze.

You're okay.

What matters is that what you're afraid of isn't here. And I wouldn't let it have you if it was.

Ian

"Elijah, I need you to do something for me, okay?" Ian kept his eyes focused on Elijah's. He rested an arm on his knee and turned it so his hand stretched out palm-up, but did not move to touch Elijah again. The hand was there, close enough for Elijah to take if he wanted it.

"Try to count in your head when you breath. Inhale for four, hold it for four, then exhale for four. Can you do that?"

Whatever Ian had come up to the roof for, it didn't really matter anymore. Elijah wasn't in a state where it was safe for him to be left alone, and Ian seemed to care enough at least to be here with him and to try to help in whatever ways he knew how. He wasn't as good as Kalen at weaving words of hope or comfort. But he understood things about stress and human physiology.

"Like this..." Ian pulled in a slow breath, counting out four beats. Another four, and he held the air in his lungs. Calm. Quiet. Around him, there was the sensation of a hurricane. Kalen's storm and Elijah's tumultuous anxiety. But right now, Ian let it slide off his skin (much the same way that Kalen had done with the sound of his voice.)

He exhaled. Four beats. His eyes were focused and present. Maybe it would help. Maybe it wouldn't. He tried anyway.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen can say things that sound pretty. And he can make promises, though those don't come as easily to him as one might think. Tonight though, he doesn't really have words. He came here to get lost in sensations. Not conversation. He wanted something very different from this place in this moment.

But here they are. In a moment.

He is exhausted and he is not really ready for this and so he tries to help Ian the only way he can think of. He closes the distance between himself and Elijah, leans into Elijah enough that Elijah can feel him breathing, and follows Ian's instructions. Well, about the breathing. He does not look at Ian, does not watch his fingers move. Instead he closes his eyes and listens. Not just to Ian, but to everything. Cars and music and voices and laughter and distant planes.

But Ian too. Very definitely Ian too.

Elijah

Breathe.

Breathing was hard to remember. He remembered this, laying with his head in Kalen's lap and inhaling deep and exhaling and letting those moments of panic wash over him before letting them fade away. Elijah reached tentatively for Ian's hand, craving some moment of physical contact, leans into Kalen because that touch was enough for him at that juncture.

He inhaled, nodded because he followed and he understood and the young man breathed. And breathed. And breathed into the world went right again. Breathed until the stars came back- twinkling pushpins of light against the sky and cityscape. He breathed as force of will and strength of purpose alone managed to stave off what could have been a complete disaster.

There was dread in his countenance, yes, but Elijah was no longer at risk of doing something incredibly, incredibly stupid on accident. ''

After a good, long while, he finally asks no one in particular, "wanna dance?"

Ian

The three of them breathed together, and there was something almost ritualistic about it. The way their patterns gradually took on the same rhythm. Elijah took Ian's hand, and Ian let his fingers wrap around Elijah's to seal the contact between them. Ian only rarely held people's hands this way, but Elijah didn't need to know that. It was likely a thing he would discover on another day - when he was present enough not to need the stability.

Elijah asked if someone wanted to dance.

"Tempting," Ian replied with a slow smile. "How about once, and then I take you home?"

He looked at Kalen as though to include him in the offer, but there was more of a question in his gaze. Kalen wasn't presently in danger of hurting himself - at least not that Ian could immediately tell. But there was something off-kilter about him tonight.

"You okay?"

Perhaps, were it not for the need to focus on Elijah, Ian would have asked Kalen this earlier. He rose up and helped Elijah to his feet, leaving their hands entwined for the moment.

Kalen Holliday

"I'm okay. I'm just not ignoring staggering portions of the universe." He rises on his own and smiles, and it is a real smile for all it isn't overly bright. "Or, at least, trying. But time is fluid and almost everything is fluid and even Names in mundane languages...it's imperfect and gorgeous and messy.

"I'm going to go back to the people I'll probably not really see again in any meaningful way. I'm not in a place for this tonight. Some other time, maybe." He frowns a little. There are things he wants to tell Ian, but not with Elijah there. And he isn't exactly in a place for a discussion, at least not about any of those things. He could totally talk about reality with Serafine. Until sunrise. Or until he passed the fuck out.

It...is almost an answer to Elijah's question. In an attempt to not be the worst mentor ever he gives Elijah a little smile. "Call if you need me." And then he's wandering back toward the stairs downward. There are people arranging and rearranging themselves into constellations that will not be mapped out or named. Interplays of colored light and shadow that will change everything and nothing about everything that comes after them in the cosmos. Because perception. Because interdependence. Because fate.

And it will be imperfect and transcendent and beautiful because there has never been anything else it could be.