[Jarod Nightingale] It's funny how one's conception of home becomes blurred over the years. There was a place where Jarod Nightingale had been born. Grown up. Spent the first 18 years of his life. Most of his family still lived there. His old house was much as he remembered it, despite the new layers of paint and carpeting. Despite the new furniture. Underneath all that, it was the same.
But that place... hadn't really felt like home for a long time. This year was no different. He hadn't gone home for Christmas, he'd just gone back to walk around in the memory of something that didn't exist any more. So where was home? Chicago? Was he home now that he was back? No more so than he'd been in New York. London. Paris. Beijing. But it suited well enough for now, and he had to admit... he'd missed the snow.
So now he was walking down the sidewalk on the mile, leaving the Vosges chocolate store and winding around towards the tea shop. If he were being honest with himself, Argo was a fairly pale version of what he was really looking for, but it was the best he could find in this little part of the universe, so he often ended up there by default, to undertake the national capitalist past-time of paying too much for sub-par drinks simply for the excuse of somewhere to sit and wind down for a few moments that wasn't home.
Jarod pulled open the glass door and strode inside, making a beeline for the counter where (thankfully) he didn't have to wait in line. When the girl at the register looked up at him expectantly, he smiled briefly (politely - and perhaps a little knowingly) and asked for a cup of Golden Monkey. When he paid, he tossed the change into the tip jar. (Maybe he was feeling a bit more friendly than usual.)
[Enid Geraint] Enid is, in fact, already there; Jarod doesn't have to wait in line to order, but he does have to wait for a certain seventeen year old pain in the butt to get her tea before he gets his. She'd been smiling, or at least not scowling, and chatting with someone who has a large textbook open in front of him - from the sounds, he's studying for LSATs and she's grilling him.
But then there's Jarod.
Her eyes narrow briefly and the random person she's talking to asks if she's okay, to which she shrugs, and smiles. "I'm fine," she says, just as her tea (which is actually a blended, steamed thing that smells of white chocolate and mint as much as it does tea) handed over along with an overly large muffin. She takes it, and gives thanks, before she so much as acknowledges Jarod's there.
"Hey," she says by way of semi-polite (or at least civil) greeting as she makes her way by him to a table.
[Jarod Nightingale] From the moment Jarod had walked in the door, he could feel eyes on him. This wasn't an unusual feeling, and he'd have been laughably hypocritical if he'd dared to complain about the attention. (After all, why else would an already beautiful person go through the trouble so often to make himself completely flawless?) The cashier stared at him. The barista stared at him. Half of the other customers stared at him. (And those who didn't either hadn't bothered to glance up yet or were making a conscious effort not to.)
But Enid Geraint wasn't staring at him. She was stubbornly, adamantly refusing to play into the role that seventeen-year-old girls usually ended up acting out with men who looked like he did. This, of course, was mostly Jarod's own fault. He'd said some rather cruelly unpleasant things to the apprentice upon their last encounter, and no... he hadn't forgotten. Any of it. But for all that she pretended not to pay him much mind, he similarly behaved as if nothing of much note had ever occurred. (Maybe, in his mind, it hadn't.)
"What, no shock this time?" He grinned with mild amusement as he picked up his own tea and followed along in Enid's wake. He didn't attempt to join her at her table, but rather he chose another nearby, so that his presence might prove inescapable while she tried to study. There was a newspaper lying there, discarded, and he picked it up to glance at the front page before taking a slow sip of his tea. Contemplative.
[Enid Geraint] That does get a flicker-flash of scowl and, for all she's obviously noticed him, she isn't exactly looking at him. And she was studying, of course - she nearly always is, in one way or another. Her tea's set down by her laptop, and she quite studiously (see what she did there) continues not looking at him.
"At what, you deigning to be here amongst we mortals?" It's as audible as it is visible, the rolling of her eyes. "I have more important things to think about than you, you know."
Tap, tappety tap, type. There's a book too, and that gets consulted, but mostly it's the laptop. And then, belatedly - and sincerely, for everything else, "I hope you had a good Christmas."
No sarcasm, no teenage jadedness, just honest well-wishes. They hadn't hit it off well and, for how little she knows him, Enid dislikes Jarod an awful lot. But she's young, yet; she's willing to admit that maybe she was wrong. And that everyone, even too-pretty-too-perfect jerks deserve happy holidays.
[Jarod Nightingale] Enid snapped at him sarcastically, then asked if he'd had a nice Christmas, and Jarod laughed as if he knew something that she didn't. As if the question was patently stupid. (Of course people like him couldn't deign to bother with things like Christmas, right?) He'd probably spent the holiday at some fancy party full of people in the fashion industry, taking excessive amounts of opiates and fucking every pretty girl in a nice dress that he could find. One might imagine so, anyway.
Ultimately he didn't provide her with an answer. (Though perhaps the laughter was meant to be interpreted as one.) Instead he asked, without removing his eyes from the newspaper, "Tell me, Enid... what bothers you more about me? My honesty, or the fact that you can't bat your pretty little teenage eyelashes at me and have me practically falling over myself to do your bidding?"
[Enid Geraint] (WP!)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Enid Geraint] "You think you're honest?" This draws her eyes up (mistake!) for a moment, and she's lost . . . she can't help staring, eyes focusing first on too perfect lips, on the curve of a cheek on . . . but she is not one of the 'normal' people that surrounds them, not one of the mundanes. While she is quite definitely distracted beyond all reason for a few seconds before she can tear her gaze away, she does manage in the end. She even manages to speak coherently when she opens her mouth again. "I think you're full of shit. I think you're a narcissistic jerk, and you're mean which is worse."
The bit about batting her eyelashes doesn't even get acknowledged; while she's seldom had trouble in the boy department, she's never particularly exerted herself there. She's never really had to. There have only been two boys she's been interested in enough to try, and one of them came to her. The other . . . well, things are far more complicated now than they had been when she was just another high school girl, getting ready for internships and college and goodness knows what else.
And what Jarod was doing over his holidays, Enid doesn't contemplate. It's none of her business, and she doesn't really want to know.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Mind 1 - reading surface stuff - coincidental, diff 4 -1(focus)]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 6, 8 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod's eyes flicked up briefly when Enid chanced a glance in his direction, and for a few heartbeats their gazes met. But Jarod saw a lot more than simply the physical details of Enid's face. The colorful aura of her emotions shifted and flowed, broadcasting stress and irritability like a beacon. It flustered, briefly, while she looked at him, and there was the faintest curl or a smile touching one corner of Jarod's mouth when the teenager looked away again. He really wasn't playing fair, but then... Jarod wasn't the type of person who cared about fairness. Not that it mattered much, in the end. Most (if not all) of what he saw could have easily been guessed at simply through the tone of her voice and her body language.
Finally, he chuckled. The sound was almost a purr. "I am a narcissistic jerk, and I never said I wasn't full of shit. But that doesn't make me dishonest." (Didn't it? The world was just full of contradictions.)
Now he abandoned the newspaper (which didn't seem to have anything worth reading anyway) and stood up, sliding into the seat across from Enid and setting his mostly-full cup of tea down on the table as he leaned forward on both elbows. Jarod still had his coat on: a black leather Armani jacket that hung open at the front to reveal a deep blue buttoned shirt underneath (cotton with satin accents.) The shirt matched his eyes almost exactly. And he smelled... good. Like orchids and exotic spices. The scent itself was very light. An undertone, if anything. (Probably from his hair products.) But at this proximity, Enid would be able to pick it up.
"Would you prefer that I was pleasant, then?"
[Enid Geraint] [You're way too smug, wtf? (Awareness)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Enid Geraint] [laskdjhoasdfigjas SUPER MODEL AT MY TABLE (WP)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Enid Geraint] There's a hitch in her breath when that scent hits her nose and breathing switches to her mouth - it's winter in Chicago, everyone has a cold! - even as she pulls her tea to her in an attempt to mask it. That he's done something, she knows, and this gets a scowl, though she's still quite carefully focusing on anything but him as much as she can manage.
".....I think," she says, as calmly as she can manage, and she's so desperately grasping to self control that it's almost comical, "that everything you show is a lie. And yes, that does make you dishonest."
He's right across from her - her legs had been stretched out in front of her, with her perched on the edge of her chair, but she recoils as quickly as she might have if he'd threatened to bite her. Would you prefer that I was pleasant, then? Her eyes close, just briefly (long lashes rest on pale, freckled cheeks) and she inhales deeply, carefully through her mouth, before letting it out slowly and sipping her tea.
"I would prefer that you are who you really are, and that I could decide whether to like you or not based on facts instead of stuff that . . . well, people just don't act like you do. Not real people, anyway."
[Jarod Nightingale] "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth."
People like Enid (or, for that matter, her new Akashic friend) wanted the world to exist in black and white. There was good, and there was evil. There was honesty, and there was deception. Unfortunately, that wasn't the way that Jarod saw things, and he'd never be able to even if he desired it. His particular point of view was far too ingrained, both due to his life experience and... the influence of that very old, very powerful creature that lurked and prowled behind his eyes. Enid may yet have been too newly awakened to understand why Jarod gave off such a feline aura, but she'd picked up on it nonetheless. It was impossible not to. (He had something of the opposite of Arcane. He did not disappear. He stood out. He glowed. Even without the benefit of his mystical augmentation.)
And perhaps that was why she'd decided she couldn't trust him. After all, no one ever trusted a cat. One always got the sense that they were hiding things.
"This is who I really am. What I do is no different than getting a haircut or putting on makeup." He reached out to touch Enid's own hair, sliding a few strands of it through his fingers thoughtfully. "If you dyed your hair black, would that make you a different person? If you look at me and think that you see something false, then you aren't looking very hard. In which case, you don't deserve to know the truth anyway."
Then he closed the remaining (small) distance between them and leaned in so that he could whisper something in her ear. "Tell me then. Am I real? Or am I a dream?"
His breath - his lips - were tantalizingly close, but ultimately he didn't make any attempt to touch her beyond that brief moment with her hair. Instead, he simply leaned back again and picked up his cup, refocusing himself on his tea as if nothing of consequence had occurred.
[Enid Geraint] [OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD (WP)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[Enid Geraint] Enid is young, and she wants the yes or no, black or white that most young folk do. She hasn't had time, yet, to realize that there is no definitive answer - that there isn't even a definite question. All she knows is that he's wrong, however much older and more experienced (and stunningly gorgeous [That has nothing to do with anything.]) he is. She hasn't trusted anyone in a while, has Enid, and now even people she'd never imagined being anything but trustworthy are suspect, seen in a different light.
He
"Oh god, please don't," she murmurs, whispers, pleads.
touches her hair (which is silky-smooth, straight, thick and just coarse enough to behave exactly as she wants it to, most of the time, without so much as a hint of a split end) and her eyes fly from her monitor to meet his. It was a mistake the first time, and this is no different; she can't look away, literally can't stop him when he leans in to whisper in her ear. She is frozen, an animal caught in headlights (a rabbit waiting for a jungle cat to pounce), until he starts pulling away, and then she can't [Oh god what the hell where is Ashley or Austin or Uncle Zeke or someone I've never behaved this way in my life] help turning just slightly, pressing lips at his jaw.
When someone in a chat room types 'headdesk', most people assume it's hyperbole. Right now, in Enid's case, it's very literal, and produces a keyboard slam right in the middle of whatever she's typing. Her face is hidden by the fall of her hair, but ears peek out just a little - they're a shade of pink that's usually reserved for people choking, just before they start turning blue.
"Whatever you are," she tells the table, "I think I might hate you."
[Jarod Nightingale] Game. Set. Match.
And yet... the victory was ultimately unsatisfying. And instead of following his course of action to its usual and logical conclusion (everything about him was built to seduce, to draw people in, to make their instincts and desires overpower common sense and morality), he remained on the other side of that invisible barrier. The edge of his jaw was slightly warm where her lips had brushed without her entirely wanting them to.
Please don't, she'd said. I think I might hate you. And when she said it, she looked very, very young.
"I'm sorry..." he said quietly. "I shouldn't have done that." And for once, he sounded the way that Enid wanted him to sound. Like his words weren't carefully chosen to instigate some desired reaction. He sounded like he really was sorry. "I didn't mean to... make you feel that way." Like she was being hunted. Like he was this cruel temptation sent down to torture her.
"Are you okay?" (Concern? Really? Enid probably would find that laughable at this point.) "I hope you didn't break your computer."
[Enid Geraint] "I'm fine. So's my computer. Thank you."
She's still taking a moment, and whether she believes him or not is difficult to read in her as she is now - her face still buried in her keyboard, the visible bits of her ears calming from angry red as the rush of blood in them quiets. When her head does pull up, she can't look at him; she's mortified, embarrassed past all endurance. He's still reading her, can see it - maybe he remembers what it was like to be that young, to be so affected by such a small (relatively speaking) thing. Maybe it's blessedly far enough behind him that he doesn't.
"Just . . . you . . . my uncle . . ." not so coherent now, not sure what to say, and so obviously not. looking. at. him. "I should pack up, anyway." The handful of characters made when her head met keyboard are deleted, and she saves before shutting down (the dulcet tones of Windows closing resound in the space between them, bouncing of disciple and apprentice) and closing the laptop to put it away. "You're Chuck Bass," she says, and it stops just short of being an insult in a civil sort of way.
She is Enid of the pop culture reference - she can hardly help it.
"I'm supposed to go see Avatar with Uncle Zeke and Uncle Dan."
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod did not, in fact, remember what it was like to be that young. Or at least, his experience of it had been rather different than most. Some people had to grow up a bit faster than others. (But then again, perhaps he remembered just enough to feel guilty, which was not an emotion he allowed himself very often.)
If there was ever a moment where Jarod had doubted Enid's proto-adult status, any and all possibility of his thinking of her as anything other than a teenager was completely destroyed by references to both Gossip Girl and Avatar. Not that he'd ever seen either of these little gems of media, but it was hard to exist in the world and not at some point be exposed to the more prominent pieces of pop culture.
And he could have shot back with something suitably snide and pretentious, but at this point it would have been like grinding salt into a wound, so he kept his opinions (such as they were) to himself. Instead, he simply raised his eyebrows slightly and grinned. "If you say so." And then, after a pause, "Have fun."
[Enid Geraint] ".....thanks."
Once the laptop's actually shut down, it gets put away (in a stylish, tasteful bag that gets slung over her shoulders. When she's standing, there's a pause, during which she looks at his hand on his tea cup rather than his face.
"I'm." Her voice cracks just a bit, and she swallows before continuing. "I'm going to be friends with Emily. And she thinks you have redeeming qualities." God only knows why, her tone implies. "So if we could . . . I dunno. We're not going to be friends. But, you know. It would suck to feel in the middle of two people who don't like each other. Does suck, I've been there. And . . . there's the car," she finishes as a nice, sleek car (that will be forgotten bare moments after it drives away with her in it) slides into a spot in front of the tea shop.
"They're . . . well. You don't want to meet Uncle Zeke and Uncle Dan. Later."
And, in a cloud of awkward and embarrassment, she's leaving.
