#garrickc

[romythorne]

Romy blinked slowly, like she was absorbing Garrick’s words the way most people tasted wine —savor first, then swallow. Her fingers drummed once against the rim of her glass, before she leaned back just slightly in her chair, tilting her head in that way she did when something caught her off guard and she hadn’t yet decided whether to play coy or call it out.

Her boot, still resting near his under the table, gave another nudge —barely there, just a whisper of movement. Maybe a thank-you. Maybe a warning. Maybe both.

“Knockout, huh?” she echoed, slow drawl and all. “Careful, sailor. You start throwin’ words like doll and knockout at me in the same breath, and I’m gonna start thinkin’ you either want to dance or rob a train. Possibly both.”

Her smile edged crooked, fond in a way she probably didn’t realize was showing. It made her look younger for a second. Less ghost-walker, more girl at the diner counter asking for coffee she didn’t need just to stretch the conversation a little longer.

She dipped a fry in the ketchup like she had all the time in the world and pointed it at him again, more casually this time—like a lit match she didn’t quite mean to toss. “Mediator? I don’t know, Garrick. You strike me as the type who fights first and asks questions after the arrest warrant’s been filed.”

A soft snort followed, half-laugh, half-involuntary noise of disbelief. “Still,” she added, “You pick a fight with a parking meter, and I will be narrating the whole thing in a bad noir accent. There he stood—Garrick, enemy of infrastructure, outlaw of quarters, heartbreaker of overly sensitive street lamps.’”

But the grin didn’t linger long. He’d gotten serious, and underneath all her jabs and spark, Romy knew how to listen. She was built for it, actually—someone who’d learned a long time ago that people will tell you everything if you give them enough space to unspool. Her eyes, a little too knowing and a little too soft, slid toward his when he mentioned trouble. When he warned her, not cruelly, but like someone who knew what trouble actually cost. She didn’t flinch. But something in her expression stilled. A held breath. A thought caught on its way out.

“Provoke’s kind of my default setting,” she murmured, sipping her drink like it was a shield. “Gets people talkin’. Or running. Or both, if I’m doing it right.”

She didn’t say it, but it was there, quiet and full of teeth.. So far, you’re still sitting here.

Then he said you're wearing it, and Romy went quiet in a different way—like a record player still turning, needle lifted but not reset. Her mouth pressed together, not sad exactly, but pulled into that thoughtful line people get when they’re remembering something they wish they weren’t.

Her voice, when it came, was soft. Almost wondering.

“Guess I always figured I was the haunted house in the equation. The one the ghosts came home to.” She let that sit a moment, eyes unfocused like she was watching something in the window behind him that wasn’t there.

“But you might be right,” she said finally. “Maybe it’s not the place. Maybe it’s just me. Walking around like a lighthouse with a busted bulb, hoping the right people still find their way in.”

Another fry vanished into her mouth, more to give her something to do than because she was hungry. She watched him from beneath her lashes, voice dropping again, light but not unserious. “And you, Mr. Brinewater, should be careful where you go tossing compliments like that. A girl might forget she’s meant to keep her armor on.”

A beat passed. Then she looked at his glass, then hers, then leaned in—close enough to blur the line between joke and dare.

You think the fries are whispering to me?” Her mouth tilted into a grin, all mischief and implication. “Please. They’ve been side-eyeing you since the basket hit the table. One of ’em swears you’ve got a notebook full of tragic haikus and emotionally compromised receipts.”

She clinked her glass gently against his, like punctuation. “Honestly? Wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

But something in her laugh thinned out, tapering at the edges. It didn’t vanish —just softened, like a song fading under the weight of its own last note. Her gaze lingered, not sharp, but searching.

“You’re not wrong, though. Ghosts don’t shut up. Not really. But listening?” Her voice dropped half a notch. “That takes a different kind of guts.”

She didn’t say it out loud, but the thought curled against her ribs like a secret begging to be kept. You’ve got those kinds of guts. And I don't know what to do with that.

He hasn't decided if there's mockery laced in her tone, or a tease. Her lingo clashes with his and he's plenty used to the modern century. Doesn't mean he realises the dying dialect of drunks is so widely interpreted by lone woman at gimmick-houses. His head dips when her foot knocks his softly under the table. Footsie? It's been a while, but it has a slowly sobering man laughing. He'll never know the warmth of moments like this, everything in his history is cold, from the poverty-stricken nights of frostbite, to the ocean and its icy depths and to the dead of his flesh. Hope is warm, and so is Romy III. Maybe, eventually, he might know that rumoured sunlight too.

Beneath that tricorne that casts shadow across her face, if he lets his eyes get heavier, she looks like a piece of the past.

Garrick thinks he could keep it up, actually. Because she makes it easy. Doesn't look at him like he's washed up fresh on the shore. Not entirely, anyway. He doesn't expect she knows his track record of things he likes, and how those are notorious for exploding in his face. Abandonment — more criminal than the slew of violent, nasty atrocities he has commited.

The food settles in the space between them, pausing them mid conversation, and Romy makes it her business to keep true to her word. A fry swordswoman, waving it around purposefully. Sobriety weans into him, and he props elbows on the table, leans forward two notches.

"You t'ink the parking meter will understand my language?" He teases, because she's getting along alright with his side of the chatter. Even if he doesn't think much of how out of touch his modernisms can be, sometimes. New York is a ghost he cannot shake, and before that, there are phantoms even older. "Maybe you'll 'ave to be the mediator." It'd be a sight, that's for sure.

You couldn't rattle me if you tried. Now that's a challenge an' a half if he did ever hear one. Garrick's laugh is soft, much like her tone, but there's a real truth behind how wrong she is. It shows in the gruff undertone of his amusement. It's not forced, or displaced. But he's either incredibly well versed at being inconspicuous, or she's invited by the danger.

"Now don't be sayin' things that provoke a challenge. Gets people in trouble."

That's the kindest warning he could issue. Garrick holds her gaze, searching the bright of hers. Bad news hadn't meant to dredge up dead things. But he supposes he invited that in; like how he can imagine getting to her door later tonight, and letting her invite him past her threshold. How fast that door would close, and she'd see that rough hands can be a variety of things.

"Them boring folk never put themselves outta their little boxes," Contained, restricted and every kind of restrained. It ain't something he can ever be. "That mean you got some stories? Nowt boring about you." a beat, where he allows a tongue to wag too long: "You're a knock out, doll." Maybe he's still a little loaded, so he drinks the water, as though it might bridge the gap between her seeing how fast liquor burns through a dead man's system.

"And on my honour, no duels." It's a promise he going to have to remember to keep. But, she peels away some of that fun, and jibe in favour of the rare glimmer of honesty. He can tell. Her face shifts, less pulled at the edges, not too many teeth in a smile that nearly reaches her eyes. A spark in them that's something troubling. Garrick's not a man who says it all the time. But he knows. And he's not subtle at hiding that. No need for those kind of secrets. "Canny believe you're asking me that when I'm drinking brine," he gestures to the water, as though it need transform into rum. It doesn't. But he doesn't shirk he query entirely, "Ever thought it ain't the place and your carrying it wit' you? Whatever it knows, maybe it'd be because you're wearing it. Though, ghosts do 'ave their ways of following us. They're talkers — you know tha', you're the angel convening with 'em." Garrick's lip ticks up in the corner, as he steals one of her fries and tosses it into his mouth.

It's ash, and dust. But he doesn't mind if that's the cost of her company.

[caskalomidze]

slumber p-arrrrrgh-tyy

who: @garrickc, @frnoialles where: Lomidze House

The Lomidze mansion, barring an act of god, is reasonably insulated against whatever mad sort of tempest this is. Hard stone, hard wood, storm-tempered glass locked behind sturdy shutters put up in short order by staff.

Even a vampire needs fear the weather, after all - it's nice to feel safe.

The peels of heavy thunder and lightning and the ceaseless howling of the winds outside shake that security occasionally, but she is distracting herself with blood-tainted sangria hastily thrown together after a last minute Postmates.

—It is so convenient she finds, the ease with which things can be delivered; the poor delivery boy, of course, is resting nearby, pallid but fine, similarly safe from the storm - somebody had to offer blood for the sangria, after all.

She sips, and sighs, and tries not to think too jealously about how Viktoria is busy with her little church mouse, or who-so-ever that person Lana has by her side is. If anything, she's just grateful the house is so big, that so many people can be inside and be so far away from eachother - usually it haunts her, that fact, but today, her mood matching the foulness of the weather once again, it is a boon.

She lounges in a circle of chairs and sofas in Viktoria's coveted library and sips and sighs, and stares at a blacked out window hidden behind a storm shutter while the lights flicker intermittently.

Pretorius guests in the Lomidze house. Catnip for spite, really. "Who wants to play truth or dare?"

[frnoialles]

if something bad happens, who will your muse call first?

"Like bad bad or bad like I'm bored?"

First person who’d pop into her head would be Garrick. But last time she called him, he took sixty years to return the call. So if she was about to get staked, she’d call her sister.

"Cissy, duh. If I'm bored? AJ, and totally ruin his day."

@lcblanc @ajastor @garrickc

[cityofruinrp]

@garrickc

[laurestcphens]

Her eyes give a silent warning that she has no idea whether he will heed or not, but there is the urge to rip out a chunk of his tongue anyways, just to keep him from speaking. It would heal eventually, perhaps even improve the drawling accent that never seems to fade.

Laure lets Garrick take the lit cigarette from her fingers. His observation would have bothered her deeply once upon a time. He's correct. The people reflect upon the leader, yet none of these fools are fit to be led. Any effort spent attempting to restore them to any sort of former glory would be wasted when this was the best that they had to work with.

In truth, none of it has changed more than Laure. What she once considered her own little empire has withered. The power is addictive of course, and she wouldn't give it up just because, but it comes with a price. One she paid tenfold over the years, but was not worth the final cost when the bill came due.

"If you have immortality at your fingertips and financial stability is still beyond you, then you don't deserve to be discussed," she sniffs. Her hand reaches out like lightning to grasp his wrist and she squeezes until she can hear the bones creak against one another. "Why have you washed up here, Garrick, and when are you leaving again?"

Like old times. He and Laure are at the sidelines of a court-adjacent thing. Garrick no longer knows what he's supposed to call these gatherings, because he attends them about as frequently as he sleeps. He needs a bit of rum to help with that, too. But she used to be far more slice and dice, now she's at risk of that immortal scowl becoming a permanent fixture on her face.

"Who says we're talking about little ol' me?" He occasionally has this desire to poke her in the eye, so they might stop rolling to the heavens, but it's Laure. She invented it. If she's a duchess, he's the pauper who'd reminded her that there weren't always gilded walls in her life. There was grime and hunger that didn't touch the one a monster yearns for. Garrick ain't seen it, per se, but a scallywag knows what power does to people. If he were shooting darts, he'd say Laure's got no plans to sink beneath the surface of her world of tragic denial. You're definitely between legs, doll, you got that afterfuck glow. Man knows better than to say it with more than his eyes and his brows, though.

There's also the detail about the Cabaret he's alluding to — and it's not because he can't afford the girls at Satin. (He can't) But because he's acquired a taste for something a little different lately, pining aside, he's practising being a gentleman again, when he's feeling like it. It's not the days that he's revelling in rum and whiskey.

Garrick lights up the cigarette and pats down his pockets. When he draws dead, he lifts his hand up, and makes the lighter gesture, speaking around the bone in his mouth: "Ay, Laure, you 'ave a fire?"

He tries not to spit it out laughing when his mouth lifts into a grin in the corners.

"This mean it's time for a rebellion?" Garrick does love a good stick it to the man hurrah. He'll paint the streets red, in the name of bettering the divide between the people. Counterintuitive, but nothing comes free even if it should. "Sounds like it's a bunch'a nosebleeds. Ain't you runnin' this gig out here? Kind of reflects poor on you, darl." Leaders take responsibility for their people, aren't they her people by default?

Garrick hates it already, when he's actively taken a moment to think about it.

Now he's skirting the lines of mocking, playful and jesting: "Ah, wait— forgot, we don't talk about poor, do we? Been a'while."

Then, he reaches over and brushes the invisible chip off her shoulder.

[romythorne]

Romy’s eyes flicked sideways at him when he called her Romy William Hedgeworth the Third, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth like it was trying not to laugh. “Technically it’s Theodore, but I’ll let it slide. Nobility’s very forgiving,” she said, doing a little mock curtsy with exactly zero grace and way too much flair. “And it’s okay, you don’t have to get me anything. Just water’s fine. Maybe you need some, too — balance out whatever’s still doing laps in your bloodstream.”

She plopped onto the edge of the bench beside him, legs stretched like she owned the place, or at least the square foot of floor under her boots. “Hydration is cool now. Very en vogue. All the pirates are doing it,” she added with a deadpan nod, then glanced pointedly at his empty glass. “And not to alarm you or anything, but I think your kraken might’ve already won that round.”

When he teased back with that amused little finger-wave, she clicked her tongue and gave him the most exaggerated, theatrical nod of solemnity. “Absolutely. Article seven, subsection B; any fries brought within boarding distance are subject to immediate, unauthorized consumption by the crown.” A beat. “Which is me. Obviously.”

Then, a beat passed. A quieter one.

He’d offered the fries and water and Romy tilted her head, the smile still lingering, but softer now. “You don’t have to do all that,” she repeated, voice a touch gentler than before. “I’m not trying to turn this into some nachos and life coaching situation. You looked like you needed someone to come sit in the dark with you for a bit. Lucky for you, that’s kind of my whole brand.”

She let that hang a second before shifting tone again, like flipping the channel back to something lighter. “Or,” she added, leaning in like she was sharing a secret, “Maybe I’m actually the angel of death. You know, bench-haunting, sass-delivering, french fry thieving spirit of the void. Very exclusive gig. Only show up for the real messes.” She grinned, wide and full of trouble. “And between you, that bottle, and your public bench showdown… well. Let’s just say I’m keeping busy tonight.”

She nudged him with her elbow again, gentle but insistent. “So. Water, pirate. Let’s not have you sailing into any more stuff without a co-captain.”

Pirate Queen.

There's a long pause from him, glazed eyes attempt to upscale his vision to something more his speed. She's joking, and it's an ancient, inaccurate picture book of saltwater and iron that tickles his senses. Like a phantom that's breathing down his neck, it makes him uneasy. A poltergeist of a hand tightening on his shoulder, before he shakes it off and sells it like it's merely the whiskey. The Taibhse is long gone, as is its crew. And he's been a dozen other things since. He's still called Ray by decades-old survivors whose letters he's burned to cinders. She means nothing by it, and he's got enough sobriety to know that; she's not someone he knows, just a stranger, with a light inside her.

Garrick's known to blow out everything from candles to oil lamps to blazing torches. He's never been good with the light; he burns beneath the hottest of them all.

He's always snuffed it out, found comfort in darkness.

"Let's hope you don't, ay?" No stumbles. All smiles. The IRS feels like something knocking around in the back of his skull, some firm or ivory tower he'd like to knock down sometime. But, towers are so high nowadays. It takes wit and long game planning to rip a monarch from their throne or a president from their castle.

Garrick plays into it because regret is a fickle thing.

"Well Romy William Hedgeworth the Third, can I get you summin'?" There's no menu, just the bench he'd made his seat for the last several hours, and an empty glass marking where he'd been. "Maybe they got better... nachos?" He glances around at the sprogs and the tiny sailors shouting and screaming with toy swords, colourful sashes around their waists. Nachos? He can't fault them for inaccuracy, because everything about the damn joint is a gimmick.

Attention turns back to her. "I'd lose to a kraken. You know anyone who wouldn't?" He'd sail with that person, just for the thrill. Then, he glances at his glass, like he's slowly realised she might mean — "Ah, you talkin'... the grog, right?" Kraken's a brand he thinks he's seen on a bottle, all colourful and elaborate waves.

Garrick lifts his hands up, in faux surrender when she comes in hot. Parks himself back on the bench (that's easier than standing up, he'll have you know), and waves an amused finger at her. Code, he'd say not — "Pirate law, eh?" He'd like to see her walking the deck of a vessel with this attitude; she's the start of a real, ruthless corsair. She might be all jibes and smiles now, but that'd be made ugly by the unforgiving wretch of the sea and those who dare sail it. Garrick thinks she'd better suit heat at her hip, and a hot rod. A cuginette, with the legs to boot. She could see how fast she might press her foot on the gas, know if she'll still be all guts and fire by the end of it. Or whether that light she is, erupts, and fizzles out in the blaze of a Deuce.

He has to say something, because she's nice, and doesn't need a scoundrel like him envisioning versions of her she'll never be.

"Tell us what you want, I'll get." He's not sure how he'll pull that off, with no dough in his pocket. But he's been doing alright so far, talking up the servers. What's another few rounds?

A tongue quickly snaps on his teeth as he tastes the liquor and knows all about regret if he goes too far: "I'll do the water and fries, jus' for you, ay, kid?"

[romythorne]

Romy gave a soft, amused snort — the kind that came with a sideways smile and just a hint of disbelief. “You ‘gots no idea what that means,’ huh?” she echoed, like she was rolling his words between her teeth to test their texture. “Don’t worry, Garrick, I speak fluent cryptic drunk. Pretty sure it’s a dying dialect, but I’m a sucker for endangered languages.”

Her boot tapped gently against his again under the table — not a kick, more like a nudge, or maybe a reminder; still here, still listening, still watching him with that half-lidded look that said she noticed everything even when she pretended not to.

The compliment? The one about the light looking good on her? That earned him a pause — not long, but long enough. Her lips parted like she had a comeback queued up and then decided to let it hang in the air a second instead. Like maybe she wanted to hear how it sounded sitting between them. “…You know,” she said slowly, voice low but curling at the corners with something sly, “you keep that up and I might just start thinking you like me for more than my impeccable ability to sass ghosts and order fries without crying on them.”

And then—he had to go and say it.

Tears. Fries. Rattling her cage.

Romy blinked once, very deliberately, and looked down at the basket that had just landed in front of them like it might explode. “First of all,” she said, picking up a fry like she was issuing a challenge, “these fries are innocent and I’d never subject them to my emotional baggage. Second, if anyone’s crying tonight, it’s gonna be the parking meter after you insult its honor.”

She leaned forward on her elbows, face propped in her hands like she was halfway to teasing and halfway to reading him like tea leaves at the bottom of a whiskey glass. “And third,” she added, quieter now, “you couldn’t rattle me if you tried.”

A lie, probably. But she said it smooth, easy, like it was true. Like if she just spoke it with enough conviction, her bones might start believing it too.

Because she could feel it — in the way he leaned, in the look that passed through him like a storm still a few miles out. Something was brewing under the surface. Something old and sharp and sea-salted, full of ghosts and salt spray and things said under breath to keep them from becoming real. And Romy, well. She wasn’t a stranger to that kind of silence. So when he brushed it off —spot of bad news, like that didn’t mean he was carrying an entire graveyard in his chest — she didn’t push. Not really. She just tilted her head and smiled like she’d heard that before, from herself, in a mirror.

“Bad news has a way of chasing the interesting ones,” she said lightly, eyes flicking to his and then away, like she didn’t want to hold the truth too long. “You ever notice that? Real boring people never get haunted. It’s always the ones with stories that bleed at the edges.”

“Don’t worry, sailor, I’ll still get in the cab with you. Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t end up challenging the city’s infrastructure to a duel.” Her grin was bright this time — full of sharp little teeth, but not the kind that bite. “Though if you do fight a parking meter, I’m filming it. For posterity. And blackmail.”

She picked up a fry, pointed it at him like a cigarette, and added, “But yeah. We got our own kind of fun. Salt and starch and existential dread. Real gourmet.”

Then she looked at him for a beat longer — really looked, past the jokes and the slouch and the slur that was fading with every breath — and her voice dipped, soft and unrushed. “You ever feel like this place knows too much about you, even when you’ve barely told it anything?” A beat. “Or maybe it’s just the fries talking.”

"I ain't ashamed to say I gots no idea what that means." It's a slurred, deep admittance but he can feel how quickly the rum and whiskey is wearing off. Abilities really do kill a buzz at the best of times. But he's not sure if blending into the bench is a good thing, and if this broad is getting her funs out of him. Garrick wouldn't mind if she is. Somebody has to. "I jus' know you canny be about the shadows, bet the light looks stellar on you, doll." He can't know that, nor will he get to know that without procuring what he's in the city for. He's made less progress on finding that, more efforts in drinking himself in a hole, hearing about lost loves and old friends.

Garrick isn't exactly on a clock, he knows. But, he's both fine to wait, and waited long enough. Nothing wrong with a bit of sightseeing in a new place, even if it's looking at a woman who's saving him from his face hitting the concrete floor. That'd be a real killer. She likes the dark? That's a dangerous thing to say to a man who exists in it.

Not best to tell him a strategy for coping is crying into the fries, either. Not when he's just ordered her some.

"You gonna break tears into these ones? I ain't meanin' to rattle yer cage." he attempts to straighten out his words, so she doesn't misinterpret them. He's worse with a brown-stained tongue, slightly better with sobriety. Always, a gangster with a violence in the heart for those oppressed.

He leans an elbow on the table, and sits sideways when he stares at her endless bouts of energy, and jokes. She's got a pain there, he realises. That beneath all the teasing, some of it is real. Garrick's lived too long, known too many people, bottling a realm that they believe will never see the light of day. He supposes, she's doing quite well with that, but instead she's airing it to unsavoury folk in the night.

So he plays, because that's the easy conversation: "If I ever get caught being responsible, shoot me dead. Ain't worth it no longer." She won't talk to a drunk, not beyond this level. But, her company is pleasant and he makes that obvious in the provocative shift in his tone, just a tad. Both boyish and ancient, too aware that there's a thousand or more ways these things go. "You gettin' in this cab with me, Romy the Third? Ay, I ain't that bad," a beat, to hold up his fingers, "Scouts honor, the parking meter would'a started it."

But when she gets digging at the real questions. Garrick only smiles, glances up at that tricorne on her head again, and lets the watery depths of his soul make rougher waves. His eyes awash with the dark of the underbelly of a stormy night, on the ocean, with nothing but the wind, and the shouts of crew going overboard.

He's close to lighting up the tilt sign, but he doesn't.

"Spot of bad news." Plays it off, despite the honesty. "Ain't nowt to worry about," he wavers it off. She can call him sailor, or cap'n, or whatever tickles her berries. He knows. There's more history in this town chasing him. It's wild for a place he's never made roots in before. He hadn't planned for ghosts to come and gut him raw.

Garrick winks at her, feeling oncoming sobriety, a wave at a time: "Got an angel ain't I? Slinging out water 'nd fries. We gots our own kind of fun."

[romythorne]

Romy adjusted the hat on her head like it belonged there, expression slipping into something mock-regal, chin tilted and one hand planted on her hip. “Ah, so I’ve been promoted,” she said, letting the brim cast a rakish shadow over her eyes. “From good Samaritan to pirate queen in under ten seconds. Not bad for a Thursday.”

She eased back a half-step now that he was upright and, to her mild surprise, still vertical. Romy had seen drunks pretend at composure before — hell, she'd done it a time or two herself — but there was something in the way his gaze swam that said he’d been deep in the bottle for more than just the night. Still, he’d managed to flirt through a slur, which was either an impressive feat or a cry for help depending on how you looked at it.

She tilted her head, studying him beneath the hat like she might be reading tea leaves in his scruff. “You’re welcome, Garrick. Though if that was a scooch, I’m terrified to see what a full stumble looks like.” Her tone was light, teasing — but her eyes didn’t miss the flicker behind his smile. That echo of something older than the bottle, or the bar, or her.

Still. This wasn’t her first ghost wearing flesh.

“Name’s Romy,” she offered, resting an elbow on the bench he’d previously been at war with. “Just Romy, unless you’re the IRS, in which case I’m a Mr. Theodore Hedgeworth the Third and I regret nothing.” A beat. “Except maybe those nachos from earlier. Jury’s still out.”

She tilted the hat back slightly, narrowing her eyes like she was sighting a distant ship on the horizon. “You got anyone here waiting on you, sailor? Or is it just you and the kraken tonight?” Her voice softened a touch around the edges, still playful, but careful now. Like she was angling for something without pressing too hard. “Because if you’re planning to sail headfirst into another table, I’d rather steer you toward fries and water first.”

She glanced at the bar, then back at him. “Come on. You already made me touch a public bench, might as well make it worth the effort.” She grinned. “And don’t think I won’t commandeer your fries in the name of the crown. Pirate law, after all.”

He's not sure what PSA is code for. Pizza, maybe? But Garrick's not all that troubled on what she's calling him, because he's got so many words in his mind being rifled through. He's mentally translating them in several languages. And she's simply poking at a kraken with her silver tongue and whipcrack attitude.

"Not'a captain." It's a correction, slurred out as he tries to laugh it off. Doesn't want to linger on that all too long. Time doesn't kill the part of him that never stays still for too long. He's gotten used to land, but he's never been a grounded man. More a wave that isn't satiated with one ship; a hungry sea that cannot resist devouring whatever sails in his waters; tasted the cracks in wood and enjoys the rot of a crew at the base of his expanse; a stomach placated.

She's not quick about offering a hand. And Garrick, from below, begins to lose focus and allow his eyes to trail the delicious path of her legs — they're right there. It's not gentlemanly, and far more seafaring scoundrel of him. He doesn't mind going swimming, he's an apex diver —

But then she hauls him up, like a support beam.

Garrick leans against the table's bench to get better vantage of the stranger ragging on him. It's not clear where he'd acquired the hat, but there's a light leather tricorn angled backwards on his head. A hand rises up to snatch it off (he's absolutely lost a dual with the rum again), and slaps it onto the hatless woman, arranges it just right.

"Always the villain." It's a wistful, yet bitter confession. But he's on solid feet again, offering a wily grin. Now she's wearing the captain's accessory, there's a flash of an ancient memory that has a smile faltering. Whiskey, rum, all the liquids that slosh in a dead man's stomach do not yearn to hurl. He's got a sailor's stomach.

He wants to know what lesson she has in her to deliver.

"So many names—" he sighs, in that inebriated slur of laughter. Exhibit's new, though. And he's no longer certain if she's familiar or not. The tricorn is unsettling against smooth features, and eyes that sparkle in the edges of the moonlight. He settles on the default, like there's no reason in this Rascal Jack's to entertain a joke: "Garrick," he has to find the gentleman within him; a trained thing, that's less teeth and more endearing. "Thankin' you for catching this scooch." Him. Pain in the damn ass. He knows. "— and who might'in you be, angel?" Lifting him from the depths of a liquor-laced hell, to steady himself on the plains for something more heavenly.

[romythorne]

Romy’s mouth curved, not quite a smirk, not quite a smile — something in between that said she heard that and was deciding how much trouble to make with it. “Too pretty for the dark?” she repeated, the words playful on her tongue but not dismissive. “Now that’s a bold claim for someone who’s actively blending into the bench like it owes him child support.” She stretched her legs out further under the table, boots nudging against his without apology. “Besides, I like the dark,” she added, rolling the plastic straw between her fingers. “Good lighting. Great acoustics for dramatic one-liners. And no one can see you cry into your fries, which I’m told is a very niche but valid coping strategy.”

When the server came and Garrick actually ordered, she blinked. Once. Twice. “Wow. He hydrates. Look at you go. Next thing you know you’ll be making responsible decisions and paying your taxes.”

She leaned back slightly, head tilting just enough to make the gold of her earrings catch the low light. “And yeah, angel of death. Tough gig, but someone’s gotta sass the damned on their way out. Management says I’m doing numbers.” A pause. “Though they did dock points last week for throwing a shoe at a ghost. Bit rude, apparently.”

But then — his question. You sure that’s all you want? The flirt behind it, the edge, the way he wasn’t just talking about fries anymore. Romy’s brows lifted, expression shifting like she’d caught the thread he was tugging at — but wasn’t quite ready to unravel the whole thing. Her shoulder hitched in a shrug, casual as anything, but her gaze stayed steady on him.

“Well,” she said, voice easy, “I figure someone’s gotta be sober enough to get you into a cab later, or at least stop you from challenging a parking meter to a duel.”

A beat, and then the grin came — not sharp, but not soft either. Somewhere in the middle. The place where concern could hide without making things too heavy.

She shifted, folding one leg under the other like she was settling in. “What got you drinking like that, hm?” The question was simple. Unadorned. But her tone left space for the answer — or not. “You don’t strike me as the just for fun type.”

"Water it is." He's not figured out where Theodore fits into the equation, but it doesn't deter the tipsy smile. Not when she curtsies, or jests and comments on whatever is in his bloodstream. Garrick's attempting to follow her lips as they move at pace, "En vogue? Well, I t'ink a Kraken will win every round."

He laughs because he thinks she's a comical whippet. If every crown claimer were like her, there would be a lot less need for people like him to burn their towers down. She's for the people, he can tell. By the way she sits and leans in like they're sharing covert information, she wears honesty on her sleeve. Hides something behind bright eyes, difficult to discern in the glaze of his. But her voice is velvety in places. "Yer too pretty to hide away in the dark," he says. She's sun-kissed and bright. One of those lights he knows he'll snuff out if left alone to their devices for too long. She's got no business comforting an old pirate turned mobster in the shadows.

Garrick adjusts in his seat, a warmth he can't feel at its entirety settles upon his hands, and clamps down on his ribs. "Angel of death, eh?" Ain't that something? "Rough gig, kid. Gotta deal with some real scallywags."

A server comes by, and Garrick grabs their attention. Catches their gaze politely and asks for two waters and some fries. The dressed-up, thematic server obliges, and he shifts his hazy eyes towards Romy Hedgeworth again.

"You sure tha's all you want?" It's not his appetite he's thinking about. "Even angels of death, who thrive in the dark, 'ave gotta get their funs."

[romythorne]

The soft knock of her boots barely registered beneath the din of Rascal Jack’s chaos — Romy moved like someone used to slipping between cracks, not drawing focus. She hadn’t planned to stop; just wanted a daiquiri stiff enough to wipe the day clean and maybe some fries she could pretend she wouldn’t finish. But as she edged past the patio, a man halfway into a conversation with his whiskey and apparently losing the argument caught her attention.

She pivoted on instinct, half-curious, half-concerned — and the moment she caught sight of him trying to outwit gravity with nothing but bravado and a raised finger, her mouth pulled into a crooked smile.

“Well, aren’t you just a PSA waiting to happen,” she said brightly, stepping up beside him and peering down like she’d just stumbled on an injured bird in a pirate hat. “What’s the damage, Captain? You sail too close to the rocks or just lose a duel with the rum again?”

She didn’t offer her hand —not right away— but did glance toward the table of onlookers, then back to him with a stage-whispered grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll preserve your reputation. Won’t tell anyone you asked a stranger for help before you’d even finished slurring your villain monologue.”

And then, with the kind of practiced ease that said she’d done this before — maybe too many times — she braced a hand under his elbow, steady and warm. “Let’s get you vertical, yeah? I’ll even throw in a moral lesson on the house if we make it three steps without toppling.” She paused, then added, dry, “And no promises, but if you hurl on me, I will charge a cleaning fee.”

She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head just slightly. “You got a name, sailor? Or do I just keep calling you Exhibit A?”

For: All.

Garrick's not a creature of one place. That much has always been very clear-cut. Between The Ports, Olympic Serval, Satin Cabaret, and Blacktop Mile. He's not familiar, but he's becoming something of the sort. He needs to push the edges of a city, to know what it's about. Vying to know its guts and its glory and where there are open wounds he might need to heal, or to bleed fatally.

It's a gimmick sitting by the water. Rascal Jack's is a bustling entity, he's found. But he's never been inside when there's too much stuck to its outside, like an evergreen being decorated for whatever religious holiday. Garrick believes he'd tear down its innards if he were allowed in. Instead, he's in the yard of it, docked himself at a table with a rum (because it's all over the menu) and eyes the bow fastened to the front of the restaurant for all its crass craving. Whatever ships and vessels (if any) they'd pulled these novelties from, it's a theme. Not a museum, or a shrine.

And if he hears 'Ay, me hearty,' one more time, he's going to make them say it whilst they're gurgling blood. An education in how much a corsair cared to have a conversation with them, let alone serve them grog and bread.

He's telling himself to see the humour in it. The Caribbean hadn't been the same as Munster, and everyone gets a fair trial in the name of the people.

He knows he's been far more than a man at sea by this point, and he's about to be on his way to the Serval to go break the same bread with those without homes, nestled in the hull of a once great structure, abandoned.

The rum is but a trickle at the bottom of his glass now, and he raises it as a new wave of patrons eagerly come to experience a night of piracy.

They look lost.

"You lookin' for a table? Here, I'm just leaving."

When he goes to stand, he realises that he's on his fourteenth whiskey. And he's tried to leave about eight drinks ago.

They keep serving him, or maybe he's compelling them to. "Could you be a doll, lad and give me a hand?" a lifts a finger in pause before trying for another go at standing up. It's not so clean, any of his movements and a funny little chuckle breaks free as he's got another table looking their way. "You don't wanna rattle about it, not in front of all these ankle biters, do you?"

[laurestcphens]

As the centuries have passed, meetings like this seem to have only gotten longer. There's something a bit comical about adding options for Zoom and dialing-in for supernatural creatures, but the members of their clan are mostly successful in their own right, with obligations that may take them elsewhere in a global world.

Laure still gets someone else to set up all of the computer equipment.

She used to thrive in this environment, delivering cutting remarks with pinpoint precision, just to watch arrogant men wither in her presence. She spent six hundred years floating in and out of royal courts, moving from estate to estate to take advantage of their hospitality and nudging history along where she sees fit, always with something to report when returning to the fold.

These days? She couldn't be more bored with it all. Monotonous voices drone on, acting like incompetent fools who need to be hand-fed instead of acting like members of the one of the foremost clans in the world. "Enough - Take ten minutes to remember how your tongue works and then we will reconvene." She interrupts the simpering man in front of her and leaves the room amidst his spluttering protests.

The vampire swears that she smells his drunken, waterlogged stench before he actually appears, and her lip curls in distaste as Garrick appears like a bad omen. Like a wart that never has the decency to stay away. When he pokes at her, landing directly on what everyone probably knows but no one dares to say. "If you are looking for open legs, I hear the Satin Cabaret runs some deals that might be to your taste," she replies with a roll of her eyes.

"Must I be 'into' listening to men who have lived for hundreds of years explain to me why they were swindled out of thousands of dollars by a Nigerian prince email scam?" She scoffs and pulls the cigarette out of Garrick's fingers to light it and take her own puff. "Even your coral reef of a brain couldn't be so gullible."

For: @laurestcphens

New city reaps new opportunities and just because he's in Port Leiry, doesn't mean a man gets to free pass himself out of clan business. They're damn everywhere. Garrick has tried to call technicality, on account of his fleeting visits in cities worldwise. Turns out, it doesn't work like that (rules and nonsense), and he has people who he can better support with the knowledge that he's got people.

They're just not his people.

Pretorious are a formality that goes against everything he stands for; self-indulgent, self-preservating and lording themselves above all else. Some ivory towers, involve being on the inside. It's how he's looked at it, for centuries now. A slow timebomb that he knows is slowly being flagged for not following the nice-knit rules. He's not around in one place long enough for them to ever come to chide him, but he's making it his problem to swing by and see young miss courtside who's repping them out here.

Laure's a thing older than he is. And by hell and highwater, he wonders how she feels he's making his pit stop out here in the boonies. Garrick can here it now: 'he's three sheeps to the wind, who invited him?' And he'd slap an arm around her, whilst she bristled and swatted him off like the dirty, scurvy-adjacent creature he had been.

Some things don't change, even throughout the ages. A sailor wants to know if anyone else in the room can remember those days; Laure in her courting age, meandering between places as much as he had. And a gangster wants to know where her fire's gone. He might've had a drink or two, before, during and now.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, doll." Brows wagging, Garrick slumps himself against the wall beside her. Juts a thumb towards the room they'd just exited; they're on a break — adjournment, recess, whatever she'd correct a man about. "Yer about as interested in there as I am." Poke. "What, better places to be?" Poke. "Better legs to be between?" Jab. Jab. Jab. Laure's not well put together like she wants those old farts to believe.

He plucks the cigarette from behind his ear, nasty habit, but one to keep busy hands. "Let me guess..." A fake hand to a mouth, to "Filthy man. Filthy mouth, but he noticed your face when they got talking. You ain't all into it, Laure."

That changes the game.

[caskalomidze]

Looking on not-at-all enviously at Garrick and Frankie's hijinks, wondering when it was, the last time she, Svetlana, and Viktoria did something so frivolous and funny together. She can't pry anything like it out of recent memory. In that instant, as she searches about the room, she feels her heart sink below the surface of her soul a bit.

"Mm, no. I've known Lana for two thousand years, she's far too paranoid for a diary." She cants her head around the darkened dim of Viktoria's precious library before she settles into a more comfortable position under the blanket, storm raging uselessly against the fortified manorhouse. "Most you'll find is dry dusty chronicles that mention her in vague allusions and her own boring observations on the political movings of a given era. Trust me, I've looked." She shrugs, disappointed, though her mind wonders at what confessions she might find in such a book. Nothing that'd make her smile, she reasons.

She sighs then. "A truth then, tit for tat."

Rules out the door, she leaves it to either of them to ask it.

— @garrickc @frnoialles

What a silly little trick from such a vengeful pirate. A loud, scandalized gasp ripped out of her as she imagined all the different ways her beautiful, sexy body could’ve snapped like a sad little toothpick if she’d had the misfortune of human bones. Had that been the case, Frankie would be laying on that gorgeous floor, limbs sprawling, the chair thuddling somewhere behind her. But instead came the fit of giggles, the kind that shook her ribs and made her kick out blindly, where her bare heel had landed squarely into Garrick's shin with the boney, sharp part she liked to weaponize.

They acted like siblings, mostly. Siblings who'd lost touch for too long and only recently found each other again. It would make for a beautiful story, she thought —if Sash ever heard it, she'd definitelly cry. Frankie was sure of it. For a moment, she considered being dramatic. Telling Garrick off with all the flair in her arsenal, maybe push him out the door and dare the storm to strike him where he stood, right next to a very conductive tree, for ghosting her since forever.

But she couldn’t.

Not when she was here, on the polished floor of the Lomidze manor, surrounded by high ceilings and designer chairs, her closest people nearby. Sharing eternity together.

Dare.

Frankie was buzzing with excitement, her black eyes sparkling with mischief, as she twirled a perfectly curled lock of hair around her finger. "Oh, my brave, little princess. Okay, okay— let me think." That required a finger to her mouth. Thinking under pressure was hard for Frankie, especially with all the thunderclaps and the tree that just slammed into the window. She paused to glare at it, "Rude." That storm was so rude.

But then bam — mid-lightning round, inspiration struck. Her whole face lit up like a match.

"I dare you…" a slow, delicious sound, "...to find your sister’s secret diary and read a page out loud."

She dropped her chin into her palms, ankles kicking lazily behind her. A smug, radiant queen of the drama. Because, obviously, what ancient vampire didn’t have a diary? It was practically law in the 18th century. You weren’t anyone if you didn’t have dramatic entries about love, death, and being bisexual.

[frnoialles]

Was that tiny, eety bity storm what everyone was talking about? Oh, how very anticlimactic. Like finding out the big bad wolf was actually just a very loud pup in need of a leash.

She remembered watching a mountainside village in the Carpathians vanish under ice, hail, and something she couldn't recall. Details were fuzzy. Might’ve been the opium.

With each crack of lightning, she flung out her hands toward the blacked out window like a conductor at her peak. Giggles followed every thunder, as though Zeus had crowned her his little heiress and the whole charade now answered to her. A storm, orchestrated by her. Boom. Bam.

Bare feet dangled over the backrest of one of the leather chairs, where Frankie had been sprawled upside down for nobody-cared-how-long. Time had no meaning when the storm was making music and that sangria was so delicious. In all her chaotic gestures, one finger jabbed Garrick in the eye, nearly taking it out. "Oops—"

What was a pirate without an eyepatch?

Çaska was just about to become her next victim. One foot poised dangerously close to launching a stabby toe straight for her ear, when a proposition was made. A game. She beamed instantly, features lighting up with childlike curiosity. "Mememememe!" Big, brown eyes traveled at crazy speed between her friends. "Okay, truth or dare, losers?"

What did she not know about those two, actually? There wasn’t a single thrilling, gross secret left uncovered. And yet, being surrounded by her friends — even if one was perpetually drowning in despair, and the other had ghosted her since the ‘60s — made her burst with life.

@garrickc

slumber p-arrrrrgh-tyy

who: @garrickc, @frnoialles where: Lomidze House

The Lomidze mansion, barring an act of god, is reasonably insulated against whatever mad sort of tempest this is. Hard stone, hard wood, storm-tempered glass locked behind sturdy shutters put up in short order by staff.

Even a vampire needs fear the weather, after all - it's nice to feel safe.

The peels of heavy thunder and lightning and the ceaseless howling of the winds outside shake that security occasionally, but she is distracting herself with blood-tainted sangria hastily thrown together after a last minute Postmates.

—It is so convenient she finds, the ease with which things can be delivered; the poor delivery boy, of course, is resting nearby, pallid but fine, similarly safe from the storm - somebody had to offer blood for the sangria, after all.

She sips, and sighs, and tries not to think too jealously about how Viktoria is busy with her little church mouse, or who-so-ever that person Lana has by her side is. If anything, she's just grateful the house is so big, that so many people can be inside and be so far away from eachother - usually it haunts her, that fact, but today, her mood matching the foulness of the weather once again, it is a boon.

She lounges in a circle of chairs and sofas in Viktoria's coveted library and sips and sighs, and stares at a blacked out window hidden behind a storm shutter while the lights flicker intermittently.

Pretorius guests in the Lomidze house. Catnip for spite, really. "Who wants to play truth or dare?"

[caskalomidze]

Çaska deftly ducks Frankie's foot when her friend upturns her seat, and it sends her rolling into a white-mouthed fit of laughter and clapping as she swivels around from her own seat on one of a set of low, old couches, hands coming back to rest on her knees for the moment.

The boy, Garrick, seems at first like he might not be keen on the brand of rivolity, but with his deft little trick he's pulled on Frankie, he's earned at least a bit of trust in his reveling spirit. The storm outside may not yet be at its peak, and the occasional groaning gusts of blustering wind that rattle even the fortified moorings of the Lomidze house couple with peals of thunder that make her think of memories from across a lake of centuries, but there is no good match for chasing away bad spirits than confronting them with good ones, even for a set of monsters.

It's why she'd refused to let Lana sully the whole affair, political and personal grudges be damned. Lana'd said it herslef: Our House. Ours includes her.

While Frankie recovers, she turns to Garrick, who seems to have found the spirit of the whole thing, and she leers at him for a moment, pondering the choice here.

Best to lead daringly - he has that sort of roguish nature about him she reads.

"Dare." She grins, leaving it open for either of them to issue one.

— @garrickc, @frnoialles

Was that tiny, eety bity storm what everyone was talking about? Oh, how very anticlimactic. Like finding out the big bad wolf was actually just a very loud pup in need of a leash.

She remembered watching a mountainside village in the Carpathians vanish under ice, hail, and something she couldn't recall. Details were fuzzy. Might’ve been the opium.

With each crack of lightning, she flung out her hands toward the blacked out window like a conductor at her peak. Giggles followed every thunder, as though Zeus had crowned her his little heiress and the whole charade now answered to her. A storm, orchestrated by her. Boom. Bam.

Bare feet dangled over the backrest of one of the leather chairs, where Frankie had been sprawled upside down for nobody-cared-how-long. Time had no meaning when the storm was making music and that sangria was so delicious. In all her chaotic gestures, one finger jabbed Garrick in the eye, nearly taking it out. "Oops—"

What was a pirate without an eyepatch?

Çaska was just about to become her next victim. One foot poised dangerously close to launching a stabby toe straight for her ear, when a proposition was made. A game. She beamed instantly, features lighting up with childlike curiosity. "Mememememe!" Big, brown eyes traveled at crazy speed between her friends. "Okay, truth or dare, losers?"

What did she not know about those two, actually? There wasn’t a single thrilling, gross secret left uncovered. And yet, being surrounded by her friends — even if one was perpetually drowning in despair, and the other had ghosted her since the ‘60s — made her burst with life.

@garrickc