Elijah
[Nightmares]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (5, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
[how many drinks in are we?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Sid
[percept (paranoid) + awareness]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2
Elijah
[per+aware]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Elijah
There was a house (in New Orleans) they call the Rising Sun.
They call it that because the paint job is atrocious, but nobody in the neighborhood has the decency to tell the couple who owns the litle two bedroom shack that they have managed to make their house look like a New Age crystal shop. Maybe that's what the couple does. They were older, which read that they weren't twenty anymore, but happened to have a lot of artist friends and an abundance of tattoos.
Jenn got Elijah into this little house party, mostly because she did work for these people. There's a phoenix on the woman's back that Jenn had been working on for the better part of a week, somehow manage to work that cobalt color she loved so much into it because sometimes a flame burns so hot it's blue at its core. Jenn had an eye for these kinds of things, and the owner of said house was more than pleased with the results.
They had been at the party for an hour and a half, and Elijah was alread four drinks in. It wasn't his fault this time, really, because this time Elijah had been being good and the next thing he knew someone handed him a shot of something, and then he did a shot of tequila and then he had some kind of iced tea and then there was a PBR, which he was nursing right now. There may or may not be a shot of tequila in it.
He didn't really believe in slowing down, but he was still articulate. Still remembered his name and his address and where he had been and who he had come with. Occasionally forgot to speak English, though, which seemed to get him far with the brown haired gentleman he was chatting up. He worked in an office somewhere, Elijah missed that part.
Attire was comfortable. Vest. button up shirt. Jeans. Pocketwatch, because pocketwatch. He even had a tie tonight, too, but it was loose and more like a little noose around his neck. He would no doubt lose it by the end of the night, or tie something to something else with it like a lasso.
That's what neckties are for, right?
Of course right
Sid
Sid is not inside the house. Not yet, maybe not ever. It isn't very large and it is very full of people and Sid hasn't been fond of small and crowded places for some time.
No, Sid is on the street, on her way from one place to another. The place: a coworker's home for an early July 4th slash after-work barbecue that she couldn't comfortably beg off completely. The other: the place down the block where she parked her truck. Ordinarily the walk would be nothing to her. She is not yet thirty and she is athletic. But she - or rather her body - spent the bulk of June prone and unmoving in a hospital bed. She's past the point where she needs to magic strength into her muscles, but she's still weak.
Her heart hammering in her chest, her breathing is already becoming shallow when she walks past a two-story house with a poorly-planned paint job. There are people all inside of it, so many that they've spilled onto a small square of yard that is midsummer brown infused with green. Sid, dressed in jeans and sneakers and a short-sleeved shirt, ducks her chin as she passes a group of young men leaning against one of the many cars parked in the narrow driveway.
"Hey, gorgeous, you here for the party?"
Sid wraps her arms around her torso and continues.
"Don't be like that," one of the others adds, pushing off from the car. The third among them puts his hand on the second's arm to arrest his motion, stopping him from doing whatever it was he'd had a mind to do.
Somewhere Sid senses a thread of tumult, a breath of unrest and chaos. It's coming from the house. Hunching her shoulders, she keeps walking.
Elijah
There's a feeling. There's a feeling that is familiar and he begs off because curiosity gets the better of him. It always gets the better of him, because he feels desperation. desperation and euphoria and he knows both of these feelings so well. His attentions travel to outside of the house and with a kiss on the cheek and a bright smile, the blond man made his way outside.
There was a stag, something strong and powerful with shoulders hunched making her way down the street.
There were hunters; Elijah didn't care much for man. Men, yes, because dear god they were fun, but mankind as a species tended to be a little less than favorable. All the same, Elijah preferred humanity to mankind. There was some distinction to be made there. desperation. Euphoria. Empowerment... but her shoulders were pulled in and the tall woman seemed smaller.
No, no this wouldn't do at all, Elijah concludes.
He looked onward, a little too drunk and not quite knowing what's going on here, missing the context.
"Sid?"
Sid
Her name being shouted out across the neighborhood has her stopping suddenly. There is something slow and graceful about the way she turns her head, as though it is burdened by the weight of vastly branching antlers. And the way she looks at the young man who's come outside the house. Even in the fading light of day he can see the weariness, and the wariness followed by a momentary confusion. It shadows her brow and tightens her mouth.
But she doesn't flee. She does not turn and bound away. And perhaps because she doesn't she remembers where she saw the young man last. In Kalen's office, the last time in this world that Sid talked to the Hermetic. Right.
"Sid, huh? That short for Sidney?" one of the prime examples of Mankind asks, not yet ready to back off like his friend.
"That's it, you guys are cut off." Humanity steps in in the form of the third, pushing off from the car to collect his two more inebriated buddies. He doesn't take them away, though, but guides them back inside. He doesn't look back at Sid to offer her an apology via expression on behalf of the others, which is just as well. Sid's attention is focused on Elijah. She would have missed the look, but she doesn't miss that they are leaving, and that now most of the revel spillover is centered around the house. Her shoulders relax and her spine straightens, but Sid does not relax.
Elijah
He's very green. That's a good way to put Elijah, he's green in so many senses of the word. His eyes are green, he is young, he is vibrant, he isn't golden like the poem insisted- earth's first green is gold. He doesn't know better. Doesn't know that things went from awkward to worse with Kalen and Sid. What he does know, though, is that she is walking around and she is there and he can't help but want to bridge the gap.
They aren't friends. They aren't even familiar with one another save for that pang of familiar resonance. Elijah smiles all the same, bright and wide-eyed with wonder. When he speaks, the south creeps into his voice- unashamed of its own presence.
"I'm glad you're awake," he said once there was enough distance to do so. Said with the sincerity like he actually meant it. Odd, because he doesn't seem like he should be a creature capable of guile.
Looks are deceiving.
Sid
Sid knows better than most that looks are deceiving. The people who should have protected her didn't. The people she trusted shouldn't have been trusted. The people she loves most have all made their ways away from her and out of her life forever.
She knew boys like Elijah once, back when she was young and full of the vibrancy of life. Back before those boys taught her that wary countenance. Before new people came along and renewed the lesson.
That's why, when he approaches and says that he's glad that she's awake, Sid turns her body so that she's facing him directly. It's why she watches him while remaining aware of her surroundings, the people lingering near the cars or up by the house. And Elijah.
"Me, too," she says eventually. Her hair is down, spilling over her shoulders in curling waves of dark red. Her t-shirt is yellow with some sort of image, but that image is distorted and mostly hidden by her arms, which have yet to lower.
"I don't remember your name."
Elijah
He stands like he's come as close as he can to a wild animal, like she will bolt or he'll get gored, because he knows better than to anger anything so ancient. It is instinct; he knows better than to ignore instinct, lest he be reminded of those lessons. Elijah puts his hands up for a second, surrender for a moment before letting them fall where she can see them.
No sudden movements. No running jumping springing restlessness, but it is still with him. under the surface, barely restrained. He is perpetually in motion until he finally, finally falls to rest and spring to life again the next day.
But let it be said for him that Elijah? Isn't running from her. He isn't retreating.
"I'm Elijah," he offered again, "it's been awhile."
He inhaled sharply, "I guess you are not here for a party."
Sid
The bried raising and lowering of his hands gets a slight if temporary frown. It takes more than that for the older woman to trust a stranger, but that he does it, that he stops advancing, that he seems willing (for the moment at least) to respect her space goes a small way.
He offers up his name again and Sid nods once. She won't forget again.
As for the party, she shakes her head slightly before saying, "No. I just left one." Not that it was anything like the one going on inside the small house. This close it's easier to see the dark smudges beneath her eyes, stark against her pale complexion. For a few moments her skin was flushed with exertion, giving her an almost healthy appearance, but that's fading now.
She frowns again. "Did you need something from me?" Like that's the only reason other mages approach her anymore. When they need to be healed usually.
Elijah
"Do you wanna go get waffles?"
Sid
Sid's frown deepens and she looks away, down the street in the direction that she was going. Maybe she can see her truck from where she's standing or maybe it's hidden behind the row of cars. Something about this - or maybe it's just something about him - makes her stomach tighten.
Face still turned mostly away, her eyes shift back to him, considering him and his offer and also his condition. The flush of his cheeks, the look and light of his green eyes, if he's swaying. She is gauging just how drunk he may or may not be. People who are drunk are prone to unexpected actions, but sometimes they are also easily overpowered.
Does she want to get waffles? With him? No, not really. But she is tired and she would like some coffee, and places that sell breakfast food at all hours tend to serve coffee at all hours, too.
"There's a breakfast place on Santa Fe. I think they have waffles." It's a breakfast place, why wouldn't they?
Elijah
[what did I do? Awarepathy!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Sid
Sid isn't hiding her wariness. Stomach-twisting is because of his resonance. Mostly, though, he's a stranger and he's drunk and she's paranoid.
Elijah
"Can I walk there?"
There was a note that he wasn't asking her for a ride, but certainly he was not good to drive. He drove a motorcycle, Beyond that, he hadn't actually driven that night. If he took the keys, Jenn would never forgive him. which was saying something, because Jenn- darling sweet Jenn- forgave Elijah for any number of things that he did not actually need to be forgiven for.
He shouldn't have been driving in the first place. His cheeks were flushed, but his eyes weren't quite glass. He didn't quite sway, but he did have the fluidness of motion that indicated he would be a couple shots away from swaying. he has a smile that comes easily, though, and that was the worst. He smiled like he meant it.
"If I can't, do you want to have a rain check on waffles? Like, on Tuesday?"
Sid
"It depends how you feel about walking, I guess."
Talking to Sid when she's like this, when she's in an unfamiliar neighborhood talking to unfamiliar people moments after other strangers tried to harass her. When she's tired, and when her fear and wariness are riding high. It is rather like talking to a wild animal. One wrong move and she'll bolt. One wrong look and she'll tip her head down and shred someone to pieces.
Elijah, even a little drunk as he is, has an instinct that tells him to give her space. He asks her if she wants waffles and then offers a rain check. He offers to meet her again in a planned place at a planned time. Finally, Sid relaxes. Doesn't lower her arms, no, but she does hold herself a little less tightly.
"It's a couple blocks that way," she says, tipping her head to the west, away from the neighborhood with its small and artful or rundown (or artfully rundown) homes and toward the strip of galleries.
Elijah
Sid doesn't seem like she does surprises; Elijah feels like surprise somewhat regularly. Ironically, he felt like expecting the unexpected.
"Cool, uh... I'll see you there in about twenty minutes? Or we could walk together," he offers. He's drunk, but he offers anyway.
Sid
"Are...are you sure you can find it?" she asks.
Elijah
"Yes?"
No, no he was not sure.
Sid
[hmmmmmmmm let's go WP to resist helping the puppy find his way]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
[passive awareness]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Sid
His mouth says yes but all the rest of him says Uhhhhhhhhhhh?
Sid frowns, but then Sid is always frowning. Few get to see the laugh and smile lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, evidence of a life that was once full of love and laughter and joy. The lines of her frown are finally starting to set in to her skin, and to overtake these other signs of the life she's lived.
Looking away, she pulls the messenger bag resting against her hip forward. Reaching in, she pulls out a simple white-tubed Bic ballpoint pen. Then she looks at Elijah, or more to the point, she looks at his hands. Hesitantly, she reaches for one of them, her palm up to show that he should place his atop it, glancing up at his face and nodding very slightly to say without words It's okay. Even though she's the one who is nervous, not him. But it's important for her to let him know, even silently as she does, that she isn't going to hurt him, either. Not physically, anyway.
If he lets her take his hand she steps a little closer, pulling his arm to her and adjusting where she stands so that she can write on the inside of his wrist. Her hands are gentle and warm. They are good, strong, comfortable hands. He can see that on the inside of her own there is a tattoo. Two concentric circles around a dot, with two dots on the inner-circle and four on the outer. Beneath it, and at an angle that it's upside down to him, are the words WE ARE MADE OF STARSTUFF.
With just a few strokes of her pen, Sid draws out a small map on the inside of his wrist. One line for the street they're on, one for a cross street, one for Santa Fe, with small arrows to indicate directions and the names of the streets in tiny, precise handwriting. It's as she draws a tiny circle to indicate his destination that he'll start to notice it. The air around them tints toward something green. The breeze when it washes over Sid brings with it a hint of something fresh and new and growing.
"It's called Swifts Breakfast House." Releasing him, she tucks the pen behind her ear and steps back. "I'll keep an eye on you."
[Life 1/Corr 1: Bio Tracking, coincidental and practiced]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
[don't touch her tattoo!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
Elijah craves contact. He is a very, very physical person. He is a strange dove, but a dove none the less. He isn't as solidly built; he wasn't going to be running an marathons or winning any boxing matches. If he told someone he once broke an orderly's nose, someone would probably laugh and not believe him. He's more prone to caged desperation than any actual harm.
It's a good sign that he craves touch. he's not nervous, though, has no problems offering skin.
His pulse is bright and live and vital. A steady, slow drum beat. His eyes fall to her tattoo, and there is a strange fondness that crosses his features reserved. His fingers twitch just once once the pen drags across his wrist. Something warm stays on his senses. Elijah closes his eyes and lets it all wash over him- it felt like home was supposed to feel.
"Swift's breakfast house," he repeats, and he takes a step back along with. His eyes are bright and he looks down at his wrist and the little map there. "I'll see you in twenty?"
Wrong, but he doesn't know that yet. He doesn't know that it'll take him a solid hour to figure out precisely where he was or that he would get distracted by shiny things. Bu, he should expect it at this point.
Sid
It may come as a surprise to many, particularly to those who don't get to know her very well, but Sid also craves physical contact. Every human being - nearly every living thing on the planet needs it. It creates a connection that Sid bolsters with her magic, tagging Elijah's Pattern as it were so that she can do as she says and keep an eye on him.
She touches him but even though she doesn't hold his arm gingerly or limit the contact as much as she can, she doesn't hesitate to move away when she's finished her map. A map that will soon prove completely useless, but neither of them know that yet. When Sid moves away from him there is a sense that it is not simply to get away from him, but to get herself away from him, give him distance. Sid craves contact but what she's learned over the last several months is that these people, the ones that she's met and cared for and loved, these people have been hurt because she's come in contact with them.
So she puts a space between herself and Elijah, almost more for his sake than for her own. And he repeats the name of the restaurant dubiously, which makes Sid dubious in turn. Her mouth firms into a line and she looks at him uncertainly. But her magic is wrapped all around him. She can feel the pulse of his heart thrumming in her own veins, can feel the way that their very atoms seem to be connected in this moment. If he should get lost, she will know where to find him.
Which is good, because in five minutes she's driving up Santa Fe toward Swifts and, rather than pulling up to the curb to park, she passes it with a sigh. She guides her truck around the block so that when Elijah reaches a cross street she's already there waiting for him. Rolling down her window, Sid leans her head out to call, "Elijah!"
Elijah
He hasn't had a chance to sober up yet. Nope, on the contrary, he finished his beer and very politely deposited the can in someone's recycle bin, because if he is going to be drunk in public he is going to do it while being environmentally conscious. Elijah continued along the way, blithely unaware that he was going in the wrong direction and had read his arm upside down until someone was calling his name.
Someone was calling his name.
It made him jump, pull his arms up and look around for the source. Sid can feel his heart rate spike, his adrenaline course, dopamine flow and god damn he should be a lot more drunk than he is, because she knows precisely how much he's had and how much he can take. Always pushing the limit, this one, or unaware of what that limit was.
It hit him that it was Sid yelling at him, and he stagger/sauntered down her way.
Sid
Sid is aware of the effect the exertion of walking what was supposed to be only a block and a half but which has turned out to be slightly longer is having on Elijah. She is aware of his elevated heart rate and the moment when his BAC spikes. He is a young and healthy male, however, and so she knows he's not at a level that is dangerous. At least, not dangerous enough that he shouldn't have been trusted to walk that block and a half without issue.
That was Sid's problem. She still hopes and has trust in people's sense, reason, and ability.
He stagger-saunters over to her and when he's close enough that she needn't raise her quiet voice too much, she asks, "Do you still want waffles?" She doesn't know. Maybe he changed his mind and that's the reason he's wandered off course.
Elijah
"Have you seen the new Avengers movie?"
Sid
Confused, off guard, and immediately wary, "You mean the one that came out two years ago?"
Elijah
"Yeah, that one," he replied. He paused, "Has it seriously been two years?"
Sid
Sid doesn't answer that question. In fact, she doesn't immediately speak again. She looks at Elijah and then she turns away, looking down the street ahead of her, considering. After a moment she turns back.
"C'mon," she says, "get in. You need food."
Elijah
He is a force of nature, or at the very least forces those around him to exercise their better nature. He was... an interesting young man. He continued along, because she w`as right Elijah did need food. His stomach growled in agreement and he followed along in line by her like a confused duckling who hadn't figured out that he needed to be behind people instead of caddy corner to them. "Anyway, I'm always in the mood for waffles."
Elijah
(on a one or a ten he falls asleep in her truck)
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Sid
[do you seem sleepy? alertness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sid
[Life 3 coincidental: You seem tired and I don't know that you have nightmares and also I'll probably feel better driving around with a strange drunk boy if he's asleep, let's help you take a nap, threshold of 2 (1 to target, one to snooze briefly)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sid
It's a good thing that Sid has her hazards on, letting the cars behind her know to go around her while she talks to a young man. Traffic forms a steady stream of cars along one side of her truck while she climbs out the other to head him off and get him inside. Which she does, noticing the weariness of him. It's something that is separate from the drunkenness, but is in no way helped by it, surely. Taking his hand as she helps him up into the cab, she focuses a moment on the drawing she made on him.
Climbing up onto the step, Sid slides the seatbelt across him and carefully locks it into place. Stepping down, she closes the door gently before returning to the driver's side. Within seconds Elijah will feel a deep weariness bear down on him. Not enough to knock him out should he choose to fight it, but it will be a hard fight if he does.
Sid climbs up into the driver's seat, closes the door, turns off her hazards, and drives. Not to Swifts, it'll be busy tonight. Most places will be busy tonight. She goes instead down Santa Fe, past the I-25 overpass to Breakfast King. They are better used to dealing with crowds.
In the parking lot, Sid parks the truck somewhere toward the back. As she kills the engine, she undoes the Working that she put over the apprentice and waits. Either his weariness wins out, and he keeps sleeping, or he wakes.
Elijah
[am I tone deaf?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
He takes her hand and climbs into the cab of the truck. He marvels at how her hand feels, how she is warm and the feeling of empowerment fills the air. He doesn't quite know that something might be going on, because he doesn't know something has sot[[ed happening. He still believes her first effect was in effect, and Elijah looked at her with those green eyes of his and he smiled.
He starts to nod off, but tries to snap himself back to reality, to fight it off with some kind of sound. Like a small child, he sings-
"À la claire fontaine, m'en allant promener- J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle que je m'y suis baigné," hé wasn't bad by any means, but there wasn't the sustaining poet in his tone. He was most assuredly tenor, maybe a baritone at best but that was neither here nor there. The sound was achingly sweet, a song for pining, "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime- Jamais je ne t'oublierai"
They get two minutes into driving before he can fight no longer and finally succumbs to sleep. By the time she is undoing her working, Elijah is… still surprisingly deep in sleep. Hr makes a little sound, something almost concerned, but he doesn't wake up.
At about this time, the young man's cell phone starts going insane.
Sid
If Sid spoke or even remotely understood French the song might have more meaning for her. As it is, Elijah could start singing Frère Jacques and it would still threaten to make her chest hurt. Within minutes, though, his voice trails and his head lolls and then he's out, leaving Sid in relative silence. She glances at him once and then turns her attention to the road.
In the parking lot, when she lifts the effect and finds Elijah still asleep, at first she assumes that he was tired. He was drunk and needed to sleep it off. He just needed the sleep. Which is good. For one shining second Sid starts to think that maybe she is capable of doing good after all. The only downside is that now she's stuck with a sleeping young man.
It's while she's pondering this dilemma that his phone goes off. At first, Sid ignores it. The ringtone goes and goes and stops. Then goes and goes and stops again. And again, and again.
Finally, frowning deeply, the corner of her bottom lip disappearing between her teeth, Sid undoes her seatbelt and slides across the bench seat, the better to locate the source of the ringtone. When she has it, she looks at the face of his phone, at the name on the caller ID, the picture if Elijah's put pictures with his contacts. Swiping her thumb across it to take the call, Sid sings her hair away from her ear, holds the phone up and says,
"Hello? Ah. Elijah's phone." Her quiet voice seems almost an ordinary volume in the relative silence of the cab.
Elijah
"Elijah Renee Poirot if you are going to hook up with people, you need to tell me-" a tiny woman snapped on the other line, which was about when she realized that there was a voice she did not recognizing answering Elijah's phone and-
"Ohmygod, I am so, so sorry, is Elijah there? Did he lose his phone?"
There was a moment of silence, some stammering and- "oh, uh, if you have his phone and not him, Elijah's the blond guy in most of the pictures, I can come get his phone if you need. Is he with you? He isn't with you, I don't hear talking."
There is a picture of a brown haired woman of questionable ethnic origin licking his face on the caller ID. The name next to it said - ICE Jenn
Sid
At first Sid holds the phone away from her ear, letting the snap of the voice on the other end sail harmlessly past her ear canal. Then,
"No, he's here. He's," she pauses, looking at him slumped into the corner of her truck, the seatbelt all that's keeping him sitting upright and not sliding to the floor. "He's asleep.
"Actually. Are you." Jenn can't see the way that Sid frowns as she tries to put together the words to express what she wants. "Is...is there somewhere I can take him? So he can sleep not in my truck."
Elijah
"Oh god, he didn't crawl into your truck bed and go to sleep, did he? He's done that before," she said with no small amount of worry.
Jenn, patient Jenn, does let her worry stew and she waits. The little bleeding heart waits patiently, tries to come up with something to say, "I could get him if you want? He could sleep in my car, I mean... you could try and take him home, he should have his house key in with his pocketwatch. Left pocket."
Wow, he does have a pocketwatch in his left pocket.
Jenn's good.
Sid
"No," says Sid. In another life, the question of whether Elijah crawled into her truck of his own volition to pass out without her knowledge would have been met with an understanding laugh. Sid was like that, too. Once upon a lifetime ago. Now, though. Now her voice is quiet and steady and nearly void of inflection. Elijah didn't crawl into her cab and she's neither concerned about it nor upset. But the fact of the matter is, there is a boy sleeping in her truck and she would like him not to be, because she is tired herself and would like to go home and lay down. But she's not going to take Elijah home with her, and she's not going to leave him in his truck or somewhere laid out in the grass to wake whenever he wakes.
"No," she says again, to the idea of Jenn coming out to her to pick him up. She isn't much for caregiving, but it seems to her that Elijah would be better off sleeping on a couch or a bed or some other soft, comfortable thing that isn't her truck's bench.
"I can take him home. If...I mean." Sid frowns again. The trouble with being untrusting of others is the knowledge that others who don't know her won't be trusting of her, either. Not until she proves that she's trustworthy. Only how do you prove your trustworthiness over the phone to a stranger?
"If you give me his address. I can take him home, and...and I promise I'll just drop him off and go."
Elijah
She promises.
She promises that nothing will happen, that she'll just drop Elijah off and leave, nothing weird. Nothing terrible. Jenn nods absently, unaware that the woman on the other line can not see her nodding. Can not see her trying to think through what may happen and puzzling through worst case scenarios. She realizes, at that juncture, that they have nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth taking save for the sleeping cargo with her.
"I-I'll text you the address, I'll meet you there if you want, but like I said his house key is in his pocket, please be careful with him," she all but pleads. Whoever this young man is to the woman on the phone, he means the world to her.
Soon enough, there is a bing on his phone with an address.
Richard
There is a rap on the window. A very tall, very blonde man is standing outside, his forearm braced along the top of the truck, his shoulders hunched to peer in. He's wearing a faint, quizzical smile, and when Sid looks at him he waves with three fingers.
Rest of his fingers are holding a doggie bag from Breakfast King.
Sid
"Okay."
That's all Sid says at first. She cannot see Jenn on the other side of the phone call, but she knows how she would be if their roles were reversed. If she called looking for- for Frank, and some other voice answered in his place. She would be frantic. She would be affecting a demeanor of calm, but she would be frantic. Desperate. And she would be so happy to find him safe and unharmed she wouldn't care if she came home to find their house cleared out completely.
"I'll put your number in my phone. Ah. I'm Sid, by the way."
She is, for those just joining us, sitting behind the wheel of her old blue-and-cream-and-rusted truck, in a parking space toward the back of the Breakfast King parking lot. There is a young blond man quietly snoozing in the passenger seat, head lolled toward the window.
Sid
[don't freak out: WP]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sid
There is a rap on the window and Sid, distracted from the presence of patterned and oceanic resonance by her own dilemma, starts. Body freezes, shoulders tighten, and her eyes narrow beneath a tense brow.
When she turns and sees Richard outside of her window some of that tension eases, but not all. One hand still holding someone else's phone to her ear, she uses the other to roll down her window. Yes, it is a manual-crank window. Sid's truck is closer to Richard's age than to the boy in the passenger seat.
When the window is half down, just enough for her to speak without having to stretch her chin upward, Sid says quietly, "Hi."
Richard
"Hi."
Long, lanky Richard with his lazy, easy grin: he looks in at Sid, and then at Elijah, and then back at Sid.
"You didn't roofie my friend there, did you?" It's a joke. Mostly.
Sid
"No." What she doesn't say is not exactly. There was nothing slipped into the last drink that Elijah had about a mile north of the Breakfast King, not by Sid and not by anyone else. She would know. Until about ten minutes ago Sid was aware of every process running in the boy.
There is the kind of silence coming from the phone that lets Sid know that it's ended, so she lowers it.
"He was drunk and tired and restless so I helped him fall asleep. I thought he'd wake up when we got here, but..." The phone in her hand lets out an alert - a tone or a buzz, something that sounds different than the calls Jenn made to it only a few minutes ago. Sid looks at the screen, catches the message as it flashes across the top, and lets out a small sigh. Leaning in against the side of her car, Richard can see that Elijah isn't the only one. Beneath the lights of the parking lot Sid is a sickly kind of pale. There are dark shadows beneath her eyes and, should Richard open up his senses, he'll detect recent workings.
"I'm taking him home now."
Elijah
The knock is faint, and not enough to actually wake Elijah up. The little blond man, who wasn't little by any means he was thin but he was six feet tall so he wasn't a petite creature by any means, was a heavy sleeper. The young man was probably just being he'd up by the seatbelt and the good graces of the powers that be. He did, however, look like he was sleeping, which was a familiar look for Richard because he's seen how this kid passes out and it looks just about like that.
Richard
"Hm. Okay." Richard eyes Elijah for another moment. Then those remarkable eyes, ocean blue, come back to Sid. "Did you two run into trouble or something?"
Elijah
[Did I sleep okay?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Sid
"Not today," comes the reply, and for a moment Sid wonders if they shouldn't make signs.
It has been ___ days since Denver's last crisis. Or
Denver's crisis level is- with a wheel of colors and a needle pointing out a color spectrum. But where would it go?
Sid's reddish brows tighten and she looks at Richard, her expression thoughtful. The look in her eyes is somehow older than she is. Like something ancient moves just beneath the pale surface of her skin. Something animal and wild that seems at odds to her quiet demeanor.
"If you're worried you can come with us."
Elijah
Car alarms are obnoxious.
Car alarms, as a rule, are always obnoxious. There is never a point when they are not because they are supposed to be obnoxious so they will get attention. Most people drown them out, but the sound, coupled with the rather loud cursing of the owner of the car nearby whose panic alarm wouldn't shut up, happened to be enough to rouse the young man from his slumber.
Not as well rested as he could be. He inhaled and he smelled something sickly sweet. Something that smelled faintly of decay and he had no idea no one else could smell it, that it was his imagination carrying things over.
He groaned, and suddenly was aware of precisely how much tequila he'd had in a short amount of time.
"… sonofabitch.."
Richard
On cue, Elijah stirs. Richard straightens up a little, his forearm atop the car lifting off; now just a hand on the frame.
"Nah, it's all right." He quirks a grin. "Looks like Sleeping Beauty woke up, anyway."
Sid
A car alarm starts blaring from the car beside them and Sid tenses again, eyes shifting to that side, watchful of the stranger cursing. That watchfulness subsides when Elijah shifts. The sigh Sid breathes is one of relief. An awake Elijah should be able to get himself from the truck into a building of some kind. Or at least he won't be dead weight for her to attempt to carry.
She starts the engine again. For as old as the vehicle is, and for as ill-kept as the exterior is, the engine sounds alright. Like it's been cared for to the best of the ability of one who can't afford for it to break down.
"Okay," she says. "Take care."
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