((Edited from room log to private play. Many thanks to Saila's player and the many others who have played along with Amare. You are much appreciated! Quinn, Ed, Trick, Mist, Nick...just to name a few!))
There's a song somewhere in the motion of his hand when he climbs up the stairs of the Red Dragon Inn. It should be noted that he was subdued, that the usual electric sparks of who he was had grown quiet. He nodded at Ed and Goshen upon entering, but it was an incidental acknowledgment. He came to sit at the piano bench seat, shooting off a text. Something about not going backward in time for fuck?s sake.
He is always an expensive suit he doesn't take care of. Spades of blond hair falling down to his brow. He was supposed to be neat and beautiful, though he had strayed so far from that idea. He treaded water in it, he treated that with a smile. Amare was waiting, and his attention was for Saila. "Have a seat." His hand patted the piano bench next to him. He twisted to face the keys.
The thing about the text telling her to hurry up was that Saila was already there. Not thirty seconds after the sparkly jeweled monstrosity in her pocket went off, Saila was headed down the hallway and then down the stairs, trailing one set of ringed fingers along the polished wood of the banister as she came. Her violet hair was down tonight, falling in loose waves to her waist. A short black skirt with zipper detailing was paired with a black tank top and a black hoodie with the words 'born this way' emblazoned across the chest. Rainbow striped thigh-high socks were her nod to this 'pride' thing, encased as they were in her usual knee high boots. Her strange eyes fell over Ed, Goshen and Mist, lingering there a moment before they moved on. She did not look towards the piano, but her steps carried her there anyway. She was going to sit down beside him even before the invitation came, which is how it happened so immediately. "What's up?"
He might have hated the piano, but he played it beautifully. His fingers worked a few of the keys, he paused and worked along a few more keys.
For now, she crossed long legs at the thigh, curled her hands around the back of the piano bench to either side of her hips and leaned back against them, watching Amare play. She said nothing, because the question had already been posed. He would tell her what he wanted, or he wouldn't.
The sound of the keys went quiet in a way more smooth than one thought he might ever intentionally do. It wasn't regretted, not exactly, but did he need to finish the sentence? He'd start it. Let's see if she knew the ending, "Saila, I--"
The expression on her face said she knew what he was going to say, and she hadn't even had to touch him first. It was written in the way he played, the melody that flowed from his fingers, the line of his shoulders, the way he said her name. A panic twisted like barbed wire in her stomach, but her tone stayed even despite the shallow way she breathed in. "When?"
"Tonight. The car is ready and I don't do well with lingering." There was a small, partly defeated shrug of his shoulders and then a new smile, one she'd grown to know, which followed just before he continued, "Perhaps you should keep me off your radio. Fuck, though, " his hands slid forward, shutting the protective shudder over the piano keys before he stood, "I don't know of a better way to torture anyone more than that goddamn piano."
She tried to keep her expression from altering any, but it was difficult. There was a fist-sized lump in her throat, or so it felt, and her tongue felt like a block of wood. Saila focused on her breathing, and said nothing.
"Look, just? Fucking smile or whatever. I don't normally even give someone a goodbye so... where's the gratitude?" One hand caught the edge of his hip and then the other patted her atop of the head. In the space of his motions, he wasn't promising to come back, and he wasn't expecting her to unplug and resign herself to the outcome. "Night, worthless teenager. May the odds be ever in your loitering favor."
We told you we were leaving, which is more than a lot of people got. The words he spoke paralleled the words of another so perfectly that the moment got exponentially worse, that much more difficult for her. Saila looked away, shaking her head. She swallowed roughly, bit down so hard on the inside of her cheek so that she could taste the first telltale hints of salt and copper. Her voice was tight with strain when she forced herself to speak. "Thanks."
She wasn't supposed to be sad. She was supposed to be relieved. Maybe even happy. Her melancholy was arresting, enough that his weight shifted uncomfortably before he spat, "Well who the hell else is going to make sure my shit doesn't get stolen. You got to like... dust things and looks about and beat the maids when the silverware goes missing for fuck's sake."
She smiled then, mostly because she knew she was supposed to. "I'll see what I can do."
"Right," his fingers snapped and he grinned. Then he did something he hadn't done before. Not with her or basically anyone else. One of his knees caught the edge of the piano bench seat and he leaned forward and kissed her, right on the cheek. Th moment was so pristine, immediate and well-packaged that it didn't seem as though it came from him but from some sunny, other place. He then got to his feet, his hands smoothing out his suit and jacket as if preparing for an interview. He paused just at the door and growled, "Well? Are you coming for a car ride, or am I going to sit and wait here all day?"
It was the last thing even she would have expected him to do, and in the wake of it Saila was too stunned to be too tangled up in her thoughts anymore. She sat there blinking stupidly.She didn't move when he stood up because she had expected this to be his abrupt, dramatic exit. The subsequent growl, well, that's what you get for expecting things. The teenager stood with a trademark roll of her eyes and crossed towards him, weaving her way around patrons as she went.
"You will even get to drive," his keys swam through the air like a silver, fish, landing in her palm, "and we may even survive it. Let's see if the car was worth its price tag." It was an electric blue two seater. It was the sort of car that men liked to stare at.
Saila caught the keys one handed with little to no effort. She raised her eyebrows skeptically but said nothing. Poking a finger through the key ring, Saila put her shoulder to the door and stepped out into the night. Presumably, the wolf followed.
She steps past the door, his steps come shortly after her own, his hands jammed into the front pocket of his pants as he watched her. It was likely the wolf was considering a cigarette, but it?d be easier to light that up in the passenger seat of his car. He moved, standing at the passenger door and waiting for her to unlock the blue Z360 so he could slip into the passenger seat. Tonight, and this moment was about her. He hadn?t let anyone interrupt it, he hadn?t let any distraction deter from it.
There were times, apparently, where it was important to be focused.
Saila was silent as she made her way down the porch steps and out into the parking lot. She could see Amare behind her already, knew it the moment he veered aside to approach the passenger door instead, so the teenager didn?t glance back for visual confirmation. She made her way to the driver?s side, unlocked the door and pulled it open, reaching for the latch on the door that would open the passenger side for him.
Folding long legs to lower herself into the driver?s seat, the teen caught her hair in one hand to pull it over one shoulder so she wouldn?t be leaning on it, then fit the key in the ignition. Her fingers caressed the steering wheel like she was greeting a long lost lover, her right hand dropping to smooth over the gear shift. With her thirty-second lesson on how to operate this particular vehicle complete, she turned the engine over, a piece of a smile grazing her lower lip when it roared to life with the satisfying purr of a performance automobile. So much time around a certain greaser had given her a great appreciation for cars of all kinds.
Putting the machine in gear, she tipped her head to glance over at Amare for the first time since they?d left the Inn, breaking her silence at last. ?Where to??
?Where ever you want to go. The next few hours are yours.? It was, like the moment before, a delicate and unusual moment. Amare let go, he let go of control and planning, thought and pretense and he allowed the purple-haired teen to take the driver?s seat. Literally, metaphorically. One hand hooked up to catch the oh-shit handle.
One eyebrow arched up and he looked at her. She didn?t need him telling her what they would do next. That he wasn?t her damn Google or responsible for making the world fun and digestible. This was Saila, at the steering wheel, and perhaps it was time that she call the shots.
Even a year and some change in, Saila?s consciousness could be plainly mapped as a Johari?s Window; the biggest quadrant was still the chunk of things she didn?t know that she didn?t know. The months of existence had given her some preferences and interests to be sure, but she was still largely an open book full of blank pages, waiting for new information to color them in.
It was the primary reason she was generally amenable to whatever potentially ludicrous plan Amare had come up with next, why she was generally willing to go along with whatever he?d cooked up. She found it hard to turn anything down that she hadn?t tried yet, on the off chance that whatever it was might turn out to be her Favorite Thing.
Still, the moment was an unusual one, and the teenager was at least a little lost in a maze of tangled thoughts that involved Cane nearly as much as they did Amare. There was that creeping sense of dread in the pit of her stomach, a hard formed anxiety that, even if he did come back, things wouldn?t be the same, couldn?t be the same. She?d have lost him as surely as she?d lost the warlock. Gritting her teeth against that pervasive unease, the teenager nodded and let her foot off the brake, navigating them out of the parking lot.
Once she?d cut through the busier urban streets, the speed increased as she began to let the car do its thing on the open road. City miles fell away, giving way to winding mountain passes, her mismatched eyes intent as she watched the asphalt fall away in front of her, anticipating each turn as it came, guiding the sports car through its paces. This was a route she?d traveled before, then, and one of the few she actually knew well enough to navigate on her own. She was quiet as she drove, borrowing a page from Hex as she let the driving itself soothe her.
What he did was smoke a cigarette and allow himself to be calm, to be soothed and less tumultuous than he normally was. He allowed her to drive and at moments, though small physical landmarks told him what was happening next. He liked the little buzz nicotine put in his head, but he didn?t like the tension wrapping about her like a wire.
Truthfully, she was supposed to be relieved, not upset. Her phone, like everyone else, could relax a bit more. Isn?t that what everyone always wanted?
He?s too restless for the entire car ride to stay silent. His voice drummed against the back and forth sound of air coming through the open car window as he spoke, ?Where??
There's a song somewhere in the motion of his hand when he climbs up the stairs of the Red Dragon Inn. It should be noted that he was subdued, that the usual electric sparks of who he was had grown quiet. He nodded at Ed and Goshen upon entering, but it was an incidental acknowledgment. He came to sit at the piano bench seat, shooting off a text. Something about not going backward in time for fuck?s sake.
He is always an expensive suit he doesn't take care of. Spades of blond hair falling down to his brow. He was supposed to be neat and beautiful, though he had strayed so far from that idea. He treaded water in it, he treated that with a smile. Amare was waiting, and his attention was for Saila. "Have a seat." His hand patted the piano bench next to him. He twisted to face the keys.
The thing about the text telling her to hurry up was that Saila was already there. Not thirty seconds after the sparkly jeweled monstrosity in her pocket went off, Saila was headed down the hallway and then down the stairs, trailing one set of ringed fingers along the polished wood of the banister as she came. Her violet hair was down tonight, falling in loose waves to her waist. A short black skirt with zipper detailing was paired with a black tank top and a black hoodie with the words 'born this way' emblazoned across the chest. Rainbow striped thigh-high socks were her nod to this 'pride' thing, encased as they were in her usual knee high boots. Her strange eyes fell over Ed, Goshen and Mist, lingering there a moment before they moved on. She did not look towards the piano, but her steps carried her there anyway. She was going to sit down beside him even before the invitation came, which is how it happened so immediately. "What's up?"
He might have hated the piano, but he played it beautifully. His fingers worked a few of the keys, he paused and worked along a few more keys.
For now, she crossed long legs at the thigh, curled her hands around the back of the piano bench to either side of her hips and leaned back against them, watching Amare play. She said nothing, because the question had already been posed. He would tell her what he wanted, or he wouldn't.
The sound of the keys went quiet in a way more smooth than one thought he might ever intentionally do. It wasn't regretted, not exactly, but did he need to finish the sentence? He'd start it. Let's see if she knew the ending, "Saila, I--"
The expression on her face said she knew what he was going to say, and she hadn't even had to touch him first. It was written in the way he played, the melody that flowed from his fingers, the line of his shoulders, the way he said her name. A panic twisted like barbed wire in her stomach, but her tone stayed even despite the shallow way she breathed in. "When?"
"Tonight. The car is ready and I don't do well with lingering." There was a small, partly defeated shrug of his shoulders and then a new smile, one she'd grown to know, which followed just before he continued, "Perhaps you should keep me off your radio. Fuck, though, " his hands slid forward, shutting the protective shudder over the piano keys before he stood, "I don't know of a better way to torture anyone more than that goddamn piano."
She tried to keep her expression from altering any, but it was difficult. There was a fist-sized lump in her throat, or so it felt, and her tongue felt like a block of wood. Saila focused on her breathing, and said nothing.
"Look, just? Fucking smile or whatever. I don't normally even give someone a goodbye so... where's the gratitude?" One hand caught the edge of his hip and then the other patted her atop of the head. In the space of his motions, he wasn't promising to come back, and he wasn't expecting her to unplug and resign herself to the outcome. "Night, worthless teenager. May the odds be ever in your loitering favor."
We told you we were leaving, which is more than a lot of people got. The words he spoke paralleled the words of another so perfectly that the moment got exponentially worse, that much more difficult for her. Saila looked away, shaking her head. She swallowed roughly, bit down so hard on the inside of her cheek so that she could taste the first telltale hints of salt and copper. Her voice was tight with strain when she forced herself to speak. "Thanks."
She wasn't supposed to be sad. She was supposed to be relieved. Maybe even happy. Her melancholy was arresting, enough that his weight shifted uncomfortably before he spat, "Well who the hell else is going to make sure my shit doesn't get stolen. You got to like... dust things and looks about and beat the maids when the silverware goes missing for fuck's sake."
She smiled then, mostly because she knew she was supposed to. "I'll see what I can do."
"Right," his fingers snapped and he grinned. Then he did something he hadn't done before. Not with her or basically anyone else. One of his knees caught the edge of the piano bench seat and he leaned forward and kissed her, right on the cheek. Th moment was so pristine, immediate and well-packaged that it didn't seem as though it came from him but from some sunny, other place. He then got to his feet, his hands smoothing out his suit and jacket as if preparing for an interview. He paused just at the door and growled, "Well? Are you coming for a car ride, or am I going to sit and wait here all day?"
It was the last thing even she would have expected him to do, and in the wake of it Saila was too stunned to be too tangled up in her thoughts anymore. She sat there blinking stupidly.She didn't move when he stood up because she had expected this to be his abrupt, dramatic exit. The subsequent growl, well, that's what you get for expecting things. The teenager stood with a trademark roll of her eyes and crossed towards him, weaving her way around patrons as she went.
"You will even get to drive," his keys swam through the air like a silver, fish, landing in her palm, "and we may even survive it. Let's see if the car was worth its price tag." It was an electric blue two seater. It was the sort of car that men liked to stare at.
Saila caught the keys one handed with little to no effort. She raised her eyebrows skeptically but said nothing. Poking a finger through the key ring, Saila put her shoulder to the door and stepped out into the night. Presumably, the wolf followed.
She steps past the door, his steps come shortly after her own, his hands jammed into the front pocket of his pants as he watched her. It was likely the wolf was considering a cigarette, but it?d be easier to light that up in the passenger seat of his car. He moved, standing at the passenger door and waiting for her to unlock the blue Z360 so he could slip into the passenger seat. Tonight, and this moment was about her. He hadn?t let anyone interrupt it, he hadn?t let any distraction deter from it.
There were times, apparently, where it was important to be focused.
Saila was silent as she made her way down the porch steps and out into the parking lot. She could see Amare behind her already, knew it the moment he veered aside to approach the passenger door instead, so the teenager didn?t glance back for visual confirmation. She made her way to the driver?s side, unlocked the door and pulled it open, reaching for the latch on the door that would open the passenger side for him.
Folding long legs to lower herself into the driver?s seat, the teen caught her hair in one hand to pull it over one shoulder so she wouldn?t be leaning on it, then fit the key in the ignition. Her fingers caressed the steering wheel like she was greeting a long lost lover, her right hand dropping to smooth over the gear shift. With her thirty-second lesson on how to operate this particular vehicle complete, she turned the engine over, a piece of a smile grazing her lower lip when it roared to life with the satisfying purr of a performance automobile. So much time around a certain greaser had given her a great appreciation for cars of all kinds.
Putting the machine in gear, she tipped her head to glance over at Amare for the first time since they?d left the Inn, breaking her silence at last. ?Where to??
?Where ever you want to go. The next few hours are yours.? It was, like the moment before, a delicate and unusual moment. Amare let go, he let go of control and planning, thought and pretense and he allowed the purple-haired teen to take the driver?s seat. Literally, metaphorically. One hand hooked up to catch the oh-shit handle.
One eyebrow arched up and he looked at her. She didn?t need him telling her what they would do next. That he wasn?t her damn Google or responsible for making the world fun and digestible. This was Saila, at the steering wheel, and perhaps it was time that she call the shots.
Even a year and some change in, Saila?s consciousness could be plainly mapped as a Johari?s Window; the biggest quadrant was still the chunk of things she didn?t know that she didn?t know. The months of existence had given her some preferences and interests to be sure, but she was still largely an open book full of blank pages, waiting for new information to color them in.
It was the primary reason she was generally amenable to whatever potentially ludicrous plan Amare had come up with next, why she was generally willing to go along with whatever he?d cooked up. She found it hard to turn anything down that she hadn?t tried yet, on the off chance that whatever it was might turn out to be her Favorite Thing.
Still, the moment was an unusual one, and the teenager was at least a little lost in a maze of tangled thoughts that involved Cane nearly as much as they did Amare. There was that creeping sense of dread in the pit of her stomach, a hard formed anxiety that, even if he did come back, things wouldn?t be the same, couldn?t be the same. She?d have lost him as surely as she?d lost the warlock. Gritting her teeth against that pervasive unease, the teenager nodded and let her foot off the brake, navigating them out of the parking lot.
Once she?d cut through the busier urban streets, the speed increased as she began to let the car do its thing on the open road. City miles fell away, giving way to winding mountain passes, her mismatched eyes intent as she watched the asphalt fall away in front of her, anticipating each turn as it came, guiding the sports car through its paces. This was a route she?d traveled before, then, and one of the few she actually knew well enough to navigate on her own. She was quiet as she drove, borrowing a page from Hex as she let the driving itself soothe her.
What he did was smoke a cigarette and allow himself to be calm, to be soothed and less tumultuous than he normally was. He allowed her to drive and at moments, though small physical landmarks told him what was happening next. He liked the little buzz nicotine put in his head, but he didn?t like the tension wrapping about her like a wire.
Truthfully, she was supposed to be relieved, not upset. Her phone, like everyone else, could relax a bit more. Isn?t that what everyone always wanted?
He?s too restless for the entire car ride to stay silent. His voice drummed against the back and forth sound of air coming through the open car window as he spoke, ?Where??