Noli equi dentes inspicere donati.

[baedalites]

Who: EVERYONE.
What: Swap meet.
Where: The Apache and surrounding environs.
When: Sukkardi the 14th of Haneden
Notes:

• Swap Meet Spreadsheet: Pre-chosen swaps are green. Assigned are blue. There were a few characters that were selected more than once, so objects were assigned on a first-come first-serve basis. If you have any issues or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the mod team.
• For objects that might not be immediately apparent as belonging to their owners, there may be a picture or name attached, or players are welcome to have their characters ~just know~ it's for them. Drr drr drr, bb.
• Party post nights are a great time to come join the chatroom.
• The topic threads are just suggestions; if you've got somewhere else that your characters simply must be, make your own thread.

Warnings: None yet. Please put warnings up on individual threads.

The Apache is much the same as it always is: dimly lit, with the jukebox playing in the background, and the bartender serving whatever's on tap.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

After arriving with Ivan, Ilde-- does not slink outside for a cigarette, or buy a shot, but acquires a virgin cocktail and fidgets with it, somebody's cd case (discman and cds inside) tucked under her elbow as she veers inevitably away from Ivan's side to see if she can spot anything that looks recognizably hers. The bar feels too full, on an evening like this, and she's forbidden herself from going outside (where there will be people smoking, and where she will want very badly a cigarette instead of another fucking lollipop); she drifts back and forth, a little, venturing further afield and then retreating to Ivan's side when she gets tired of risking sober small-talk with strangers in a bar.

[fuckyouboots]

It's been practically forever since Cindy's last spoken or even seen Ilde. Time has gotten away from her and in between whacking monsters, moving again, and dealing with Rex and his ex, there wasn't much time to check in. She should have, considering that Cindy thinks fondly of Ilde. But there's no time better than the present and on Ilde's way back to that guy Cindy will always shake her head at, she speaks up loudly enough to be heard over the din of the bar.

"Somebody's a sight for sore eyes."

[rhinemaid]

The sound doesn't really register to Ilde; in a bar like this, everything becomes white noise to her and Cindy's call just fades into that same wall of meaningless sound. (It's still a little unnerving sometimes-- like, aptly, hearing everything from deep underwater. She's still not quite used to the fact she can't just call someone on the phone without messing with the volume control and making sure there's no other sound around her to interfere.)

Though she doesn't hear her, she does catch her eye on her way back to Ivan; lifts a hand, amiably, but doesn't quite actually pause initially.

[fuckyouboots]

There's a chill that runs Cindy's down back, not one of fear but one that comes with the inkling that something is off. Granted, it slipped her mind that Ilde has problems hearing and not just in loud bars, but it seems Ilde at least noticed Cindy was talking to her. The wave is odd. There's no smile accompanying it, but then again, this is Ilde.

Cindy can't think of anything to explain the weird behavior so she moves closer to Ilde, not quite cutting off her pathway to Ivan, but making it obvious she wants to talk. At least this time Cindy's remembering to speak slower so Ilde can follow her lips. "Where have you been?"

[rhinemaid]

--oh. Well! Ilde does pause, then, with an odd thread of hesitation (she'd never minded Cindy's abruptness, before, but she'd seen it differently, before), then offers a quick, easy shrug. “Just-- around? Mostly at home and work. Apparently I'm hiring a gardener now.”

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan is content to let her drift away and come back; someone with a fondness for armchair psychology might describe it as a microcosm of their whole relationship, but Ivan just finds it convenient.

He still smells vaguely of cigarettes, the time she returns to him after he's been outside. "Found anything of yours yet?"

[rhinemaid]

“Nothing yet,” she says, digging around the bottom of her clutch-purse for the lollipops she'd dumped in there as potential distractions from the fact Ivan will, as noted, inevitably go and smoke at some point in the evening. “Have you?”

[deservesadaisy]

"Nothing yet, no." He touches her shoulder, idly, in solidarity. He's trying not to make it actively HARDER, but he won't go so far as to quit with her.

"It's a very strange sort of gathering, in the aggregate."

[rhinemaid]

“Our cohort, you mean.” So, yes; an odd group of people to pull together en masse, she's noticed. She gestures at him with her unwrapped sweet-- “You wouldn't see many of us all at once ordinarily. Probably for good reason.”

[deservesadaisy]

"Not all this civil, certainly." He's kept an eye on the cohort, by Network and in person, but it seems strangely like he imagines high school reunions; a great many people who knew each other a bit, liked each other only here and there, but felt bound together by common suffering.

(Ivan's understanding of modern secondary school comes mainly from films.)

[rhinemaid]

“Everyone's behaving themselves,” she offers, the affectionately cattish even you going unspoken yet heavily and helpfully implied as she avails herself (naturally) of Ivan's lap. “Well, they are now. Give them a few more drinks.”

[deservesadaisy]

"Well, people much generally be pleased with what they're receiving; I expect the misbehavior to be less 'mob' more 'bacchanal,' at the rate the bar is doing trade." He smiles as she settles herself. "Do you want to stay that long?"

[incaptivity]

Having failed to hand the item he received off to the one person he'd actually wanted to hand it off to, Hal isn't so much looking for its owner now as he is lurking in the corner trying to talk himself out of running away. (He has to know, is what he tells himself, and some soft voice in the back of his mind asks whether he's really afraid it will belong to the person he thinks it does, or whether he's hoping it will.)

In the midst of strange new nonhuman scents traveling through the room, however, one catches his attention. It takes him a minute, maybe two, circling the edges of the room, to determine who it's coming from. When he does, he doesn't exactly approach her. His gaze just locks on her through the crowd, a sort of carefully restrained intensity about him, not looking away for a moment despite gravitating nearer and into a seat, drink in hand, paying not the slightest bit of attention to any of the people around him except her.

Which is how said drink ends up upended over his knee, in fact.

"Shit," he swears with a sharply-clipped t, under his breath, pawing around for a napkin.

[rhinemaid]

As attuned as Ilde is to being watched, she hadn't failed to notice his approach - or what he is, identifying with fleeting returned scrutiny that the familiarity of him connects to the same breed that gave the world Mitchell and Ivan - which is why she leans slightly over the arm of the chair she's sitting in with a napkin, holding it neatly out to him between thumb and forefinger, her charm bracelet sliding down her arm as she holds her hand up.

“Hello,” she says, terribly blandly.

[incaptivity]

If the fact that he was watching her from across the room wasn't indication enough, the way he pauses slightly to follow her charm bracelet down her wrist with his eyes is probably telling that he has a bit more of a problem—to put it mildly—than Ivan or Mitchell. He inhales and pastes on a polite smile, however, pulling his gaze back toward her face, and reaches over to take the napkin from the far edge with two fingers, very careful to touch it and not her.

"Thank you." Dabbing at his pants with a strangely exacting degree of care, it occurs to him after a second that perhaps he ought to say something, too. "It's lucky that was only soda water; the 'gods' weren't kind enough to provide me with an extra set of trousers."

[rhinemaid]

The care he takes not to touch even her fingers and the fixed intensity with which he'd located her in the room are oddly contradictory; curiosity is her first instinct, although it should almost certainly be moving away from him. Known for her excellent judgement and prudence the girl is not.

(Anyway, Ivan's here-- somewhere.)

“I can, actually-- I won't touch you.” But getting water out of fabric is sort of the easiest thing in the world for her. “I can take care of that.”

[incaptivity]

He turns his head with a slight puzzled look as to how she plans to manage that without touching him, but interestingly doesn't seem concerned about his own well-being in the slightest, just maintaining the distance between them.

"All right." It's hesitant, but. Yes, he will move this napkin out of the way.

[rhinemaid]

Such a small amount isn't what she's used to practising with, but Ilde is optimistically hoping that means it'll be easier and not that she's going to fuck this up and splash herself in the face with Hal's spilled drink; she puts her own down beside her chair, lifting both hands and curving them, slightly, biting down on her lower lip as she concentrates. Her eyes darken, but it seems less like a change and more like that rerouted concentration is letting glimpses of something else through an illusion she isn't as focused on any more - her hands gleam, oddly, in the light.

She's almost absurdly pleased with herself with the soda water arcs into her hands, leaving dry fabric behind.

“Um--”

Did not think this part through. After a slight hesitation, she puts it back in the glass it had spilled out of, and she shrugs, “I wouldn't want you to look as if you'd wet yourself for the rest of the evening.”

So considerate.

[incaptivity]

He watches her, apprehensively at first, his hand moving to the edge of his own chair, but as it becomes clearly what she's doing his expression turns to fascination. It's a softer expression, purely curious, not predatory—although that may very well underscore how predatory his interest had been before now. When she hesitates about where to put the water, his smile is genuine, although brief.

"I appreciate that." For other people, there might be a self-depreciating edge to that statement, for his own clumsiness if nothing else, but Hal sails right on by that opportunity for humility. "Are you-- the word I was told is, 'xenian'?"

[fuckin_thirsty]

He doesn't approach her because of what she's carrying; Ilde is just a handy port of call in the sea of people that Deacon recognises from the network but does not especially care for. His shoulder tends to knock people out of the way if they brush too closely, which happens; pale and toothy and black-clad though he may be, he is not the most physical presence in the room, and tends to cut his own path when one does not present itself.

Deacon isn't interested in patiently introducing alcohol to his system, tonight, and he's already had his cigarette, the smell of smoke and cologne clinging to him as he approaches, hands empty.

"Kind of wish they'd schedule these things during daylight. I'd rather cry discrimination than actually show up, you know?"

[rhinemaid]

Ilde considers him for a moment, faintly amused, and then - shifting on the sofa so he can join her without sitting down on her dress if he so desires - declares, placidly, “Rachel promised to get her tits out if I came.”

--that is a generous interpretation of that conversation, young lady.

[fuckin_thirsty]

"I need to brush up on my negotiation skills."

Clearly.

Deacon does take a seat, after a glance around, hooking an ankle up onto his knee. "Did she make good?" he asks, in absent interest, glancing to her and then the item she's carrying around with her. Recognition doesn't actually immediately hit, or anything, because he wasn't expecting much in the way of getting things.

[rhinemaid]

“I haven't seen her yet,” she admits, curving slightly into the corner of the sofa so she can at least partially sit facing him. (Side-by-side is always a bit of a pain in the ass for conversation, but as long as she can make 'lounging on a sofa' look something like ladylike, she's fine.) “I haven't managed to off-load this, either, so I guess I'm here for a bit longer.”

It is definitely not hers.

[fuckin_thirsty]

He's about to say 'just leave it somewhere' or similar-- truly, the only reason he is here at all for any length of time is that he's curious about who cares to know about the history of vampires-- but pauses. Then-- "Fuck." Deacon curses like it's punctuation, and so there is nothing particularly angry or surprised in the single syllable; it's an expression of realisation, tinged amused.

"May I?" His hands go out to take the disc album from her.

[rhinemaid]

She proffers it forward, intrigued if only because-- really, how could she not find that sort of entertaining, she was essentially designed to find vampires completely hilarious in most contexts. “Go ahead.” After a beat, conversationally, “Ivan's arrival object was a Kate Bush album. The Kick Inside, I think.”

Just saying.