lucy.

Lucy

Saturday night in a new city, what else is a girl supposed to do with herself but check out the local club scene? Sure, someone said they'd show her around it, but Lucy's been around the country. She knows where to go to find the nightlife, and with it the pulse of the city.

She's found a pretty good place to be tonight. Tracks isn't exactly in the heart of the city, in fact it's pretty far north (relatively speaking) from the central hub of Denver's downtown area. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its own kind of energy. Lucy wants to feel that energy wash over and move her. She wants to drink and have fun, but most of all she wants to fucking dance.

So. She made her way along the entry walkway to pay her cover charge and she passed through the hallway that is pink, floor to ceiling and lit bright, blinding, neon pink, and out to the main dance floor, where the colors spread out across the rainbow. There's a bar off to one side where the bartenders serve up just as fast as the orders come in, but most people are out on the floor, moving to a beat that pounds their ear drums and vibrates through their entire bodies.

That's where Lucy goes, to the giant mass of jumping, gyrating bodies in constant motion. She's dressed in a t-shirt, denim cut-offs over a pair of dark nylons, and knee-high, heeled black leather boots. Her hair pours over her shoulders in a waterfall of red, bumping and bouncing every time she moves. Men and women both try to sidle up close to her, because honestly, who wouldn't? She's pretty, she's pale, she's slender. They don't stay for long, though, none of them. It's hard to stay close to someone who feels like the first frost of winter threading its way up over their skin, threatening to turn their veins to ice. Lucy's...well she's not fine with it, but she's used to it, and besides. They may want a piece of that?

But she's just here to dance.

[what the hey, let's try an awareness to see if we notice another Mage prowling the vicinity]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 1) ( fail )

Lucy

[clearly the dice roller does not appreciate a Muffintop reference D: ]

Lucy

[clearly the dice do not appreciate a Muffintop reference D: ]

Richard Levasseur

There's something liberating about a good club. It's the darkness, it's the strobing colored lights that make everyone look beautiful. It's the anonymous connection of a good beat, a great song, a hundred strangers compelled by the same rhythm.

Richard gets it. He gets it, child of chance that he is. Child of decay, child of death, child of entropy, child of all the many ways a thing can end. There's nothing morbid or sepulchural about him. He's sunshine and summertime: relaxed and laughing and coming back from the bar, a brilliantly colored drink held high above the crowd, the well-hewn planes of his face lit in purples and blues and greens. He is welcomed back to the fold by his group, who are really people he just met tonight.

There's a girl who wants to dance with him. He's happy to oblige. There's a boy who wants to dance with him, and he's all right with that too. Inclusive, he is. Easygoing. Laughing. There's a reason he makes friends everywhere he goes. The tracks run one into the other there, expertly mixed by the house DJ; the beat changes but the bpm stays the same. Four to the floor, feet and shoulders, head, hands, put your back into it. Richard's hair is in his eyes. He pushes it back with his palm, his grin a brilliant flash. He drains his drink and he yells something no one hears, but they understand his meaning when he points at the bar: either he's putting the glass back or he's getting another or both.

He turns from his friends. And Lucy might have the awareness of a brick, but that's all right. Richard stands out. So tall, so sunny.

And also: so crashing into her.

Lucy

Lucy isn't completely unaware. There is a flash, a brief awareness of something that flashes across her mind and then! Pain. Like someone just slipped a spike through her temple clear to the other side, and twisted it to reveal the tiniest of tiny little spines all along its edge. It's pulsating, that pain, makes her wince, makes her cringe.

She lurches to the side, hands up to hold her head in the hopes she can keep it from fracturing apart by sheer will and the pressure between her palms. There are lots of people all around, lots of people dancing, moving to the music. She doesn't know who does it, she's just trying to get some space between herself and the crowd when suddenly someone crashes into her. She makes a surprised gasp absolutely no one can hear and goes stumbling to the side. She tries to catch herself - for some reason she doesn't understand she has a sudden flash of fear, that if she hits the ground she'll drown, swallowed up by a dark expanse of water that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. Opening her eyes, she squeezes them shut again an instant later. Her vision is wrong, shimmering like - well it would make sense to have vision distortion with a sudden migraine but this feels different somehow, and she doesn't know why, can't think about the why. All she can think about is getting herself away from the crowd and the threat of being trampled.

Richard Levasseur

And then she's caught. Strong hands grabbing her upper arms before she can topple over. Her senses are all awry -- her awareness dulled or hyperacute, one or the other, nonfunctional either way. It's like she's submerged. It's like she's underwater, staring up at the sun-fractured surface of the sea,

but she's not, she's just looking at the lights, the strobing blues and greens. Then they're shadowed. There's a face in front of her, looking down at her. Did she fall to the floor? He's shouting something. It takes several iterations to carry through the noise.

" -- okay? Did I elbow you in the head?"

She's not on the floor. She's still standing. He's just nearly a foot taller, holding her by the shoulders and yelling to be heard.

Lucy

He grabs her by the arms, those pale long limbs of hers, and the thing that he'll notice above all other things about this woman is that she's cold. Freezing. Like she has either the worst circulation in the world or she's a reanimated corpse. The skin and muscle beneath his hands are too flexible to make her anything other than living, though. Don't they?

She does not reject the sudden contact with a stranger, it's keeping her from landing on the floor and possibly breaking her tailbone, or getting stepped on by an unwitting dancer. That doesn't mean she's not surprised by it. Someone is shouting, there's so much noise, but it all sounds distant. Faraway. It's as though she's fallen through the Gauntlet but the door hasn't closed completely behind her yet. She can still hear voices, noises, a thumping beat before it all starts to make sense again.

Lucy squints up at the tall man and then looks down at the hands on her shoulders. She can feel the warmth of his palms seeping through the fabric of her t-shirt. Looking up at him that squinting face turns questioning.

"You're touching me," she says, the sound of her voice lost the moment she parts her lips. The sensations start to fade. The sense of water, the way her vision shifts in weird repetitive patterns spinning out forever. Things come into focus. She can breathe again. The pain is still there, though, throbbing in her skull. One hand comes up to her temple as she looks into that silhoutted face. With her other hand she motions to the side, to an opening to one side of the long bar. It leads into another room where - she hopes at least - it might be a little quieter. It will be, but not by much. There's music playing in there, too, but at least there are some chairs.

Richard Levasseur

He gets such a look on his face then. Quizzical, puzzled, laughing-but-trying-not-to-laugh. The corners of his mouth twitch. "Yeah? That's what you do when you're trying to keep someone from falling over," he says. Likely what she hears:

-- what -- do -- one -- falling over --

She motions toward the VIP room. Or the lounge. Or whatever one calls those little rooms breaking off from the main room. Richard glances over and nods. He lets go, one hand and then -- when he's reasonably sure she won't lose her balance -- the other. One can imagine what he thinks of her. Drunk. Stoned. High on something really good. None of the above would be outlandish assumptions. She leads the way and he follows, reaching out with one lanky arm to set his emptied glass on the bar as he passes.

Lucy

This room is not a VIP room, nor is it a lounge. It's really just a smaller dance floor, probably for private parties or the like. Tonight, though, with no one having reserved it and no events going on it's basically overflow from the main dance hall. Lucy crosses the threshold, one hand pressed to her temple, and the music changes. Pitbull abruptly becomes Kaskade, but the tempo's the same. The rhythm pounding in her skull, making it feel like it's going to shatter out, is just about the same that Lucy, at least, doesn't notice the change.

She kind of has her own things to deal with at the moment. Like the splitting migraine that ruined her groove. If only she hadn't checked her bag when she came in she might have an Advil in her system already. Or if only she were a Life Mage, one of those would be helpful just about now, too. The volume is a touch lower in here, maybe only a couple of Decibels, but she notices that, and is grateful for the change.

She does not forget that she has a tall, sunny shadow trailing after her. It doesn't occur to her to be concerned he might try to take advantage of a situation. Girl looks like she could be drunk, or stoned, or on something else. But he caught her and didn't immediately let go after making contact with her frosted skin, and that goes a little ways with her.

There aren't many tables in here, just a couple of tall, round things, just big enough for drinks or a basket of fries. It's a rest stop of a sort, a place for people to try to get something solid in their system so they're not too drunk to function on the way home. Lucy finds a chair and slides - yes, slides, Richard may be freakishly tall but he's not the only tall person in the room - into it. Resting her elbows on the table, she leans her head forward and massages her temples.

Richard Levasseur

She's alone by the time she puts her head in her hands. Well, that's not terribly unexpected. She's at a club, after all, watering hole for the young and beautiful, meat market for the young and drunk, and she hardly looks like a valid prospect at the moment. Could be worse. He could be the sort to take advantage of her incapacitation, though that doesn't occur to her. Probably for the best that he's gone.

Except he's not gone for long. A couple minutes later he's back, and there's a thump on the table, and if she looks up she finds a bottle of water in front of her.

He leans down, nearly yelling in her ear: "Drink up. You're dehydrated. That's why you've got a headache and your skin's ice cold. What did you take?"

Lucy

There is a thunk as something is placed on the table in front of her, and her head comes up. Then it lifts a little higher, and a little higher still to take in the sight of her sort-of rescuer. She offers him a weak smile and takes the bottle, drawing it closer so she can unscrew the cap.

Then he leans down and has to yell into her ear to be heard. She looks over at him and shakes her head.

"Nothing!" she says, leaning in and yelling back, wincing at the effort. Which she would probably do anyway. Her voice does not naturally carry, so she has to give it a little extra oomph, even when she's in close proximity to the person she's trying to talk to. She studies him, and in the throbbing, pulsing light of the club he can't see the smattering of freckles over her nose or tell the color of her eyes beyond 'light.' Her hair falls in a wave that collects in a swirl on the tabletop next to her elbow.

Her expression turns apologetic, and she leans again to yell/say, "It's a condition." Leaning back, she lifts the bottle of water and mouths Thank you.

Richard Levasseur

A condition, she calls it. Richard nods sympathetically and doesn't pry further. Migraines, he thinks. Brain tumor. Who knows. While she drinks, he pulls a chair out and drops down. He has a bottle of water himself, which he cracks open and upends, drinking with an easy, gulping thirst that betrays his athletic past.

"Go get some air when you're feeling steadier," he advises, insofar as anyone can sound advisory while shouting. "Want me to come with you?"

Lucy

It's not exactly untrue what she says. The problem with her skin is something permanent. Something like a condition, which is a term that Sleepers would understand. She can't tell that Richard is Awakened, that there is a resonance that radiates from him just as hers radiates from her. She wouldn't be able to tell if he started working magic unless it happened to be particularly vulgar in nature, something that would draw attention from everyone. She is, in a sense that so few people have, blind. But she's not so old that the lack of Awareness unnerves her. Not yet, anyway.

He tells her to get some air and she nods, holding onto her bottle after that first drink. She doesn't try to take in so much, not knowing what's really wrong with her at the moment she could make herself sick. Or something. And the last thing she needs now is to follow up that spectacular fall by throwing up equally spectacularly.

To the question of whether she wants him to go with her, she pauses, thinking about it. She opens her mouth, and maybe she's about to tell him no, that she'll be fine, or something else. But this is a new and unfamiliar city and she's feeling off. Her mouth closes, and then quirks to the side as she assesses the tall, lanky man all over again. Hunching forward, she says, "Actually would you mind helping me to the bus stop?"

Richard Levasseur

"No problem. Let me say bye to my friends."

Richard gets up. He dwarfs the table; he gets a few doubletakes from bystanders. He goes back to the main room for a bit, and through the doorway -- if she's aligned just right -- Lucy can see him going back to that group of dancing twenty-somethings, shouting in their ears, exchanging hand-grips and shoulder-thumps with the guys, hugs with the girls.

Then he comes back. He has his bottled water in hand. He doesn't offer his hand to help Lucy up, but he does -- once she makes it up by herself -- put a steadying hand on her elbow. They make their way to the door and outside, past the coat check, past the security, past the line outside. The music drops away, receding to the dull thump of sub-bass. His ears feel cotton-stuffed, decibel-blasted all night.

"Richard," he says, offering his hand. It's the first time he hasn't shouted.

Lucy

He's going to go say goodbye to his friends and Lucy nods to that, and she also drinks down a little more of that water. The pain in her head hasn't gone away at all, but she (deludes herself into thinking that she's) getting used to it. It's a throbbing ache all the same, and drinking the water doesn't seem to be helping at all, but it's not making it any worse, either. And besides, she's still getting acclimated to the higher altitude desert. There's a good chance that if she wasn't dehydrated, she might have been on her way to being so.

She's standing before he comes back, and making her way out by the time he reaches her. She doesn't wobble so much as when this...attack...episode, we'll call it an episode...struck, but she doesn't shy away from the hand at her elbow, either. She does look down at it, though, eying the place where his massive hand hovers beside her delicate-by-comparison elbow with a kind of wonder and curiosity.

And so they make their way out. Lucy stops at the coat check to collect her bag - a slouching canvas thing that she will be wearing across her long torso - and a light hoody of a color her player can't remember and is too lazy to look up. She tugs her hair free of coat and bag and makes her way out to the street. When the music drops away she closes her eyes and she sighs, taking in a deep breath of dry evening air. The night is cool but not chilly by any means. Lucy's boots thunk on the pavement despite a light and nimble step.

She pretty much stops as soon as he offers her that hand. She looks down at it a moment and she smiles. What a weird and interesting day. A beat, and then she's accepting it, wrapping her chilly fingers around his warmer ones. "Lucy. Thanks for helping me out, I really appreciate it."

Richard Levasseur

Richard didn't bring a coat. He could have -- the temperature justifies a light jacket -- but it's one more thing to take care of. It's a little chilly now in his jeans and that casual button-down, which is white ever so subtly threaded with silver, but he manages. He keeps his elbows close to his sides, his hands tucked in except for that handshake. Her fingers are ice cold, so cold they leave a chill on his palm in turn. He still thinks she's dehydrated, and maybe just one of those girls with terrible circulation. She looks the part: tallish, thin, pale.

"It's really not a problem," he says again. "Where are you headed?"

Lucy

"That, is a really good question actually," she says, and she digs into her bag until she finds a cell phone. It's a smartphone, but it is the complete opposite of sleek and cool, and also it's dinged to hell. Lucy swipes it open and pulls up the RTD app. A few taps of her phone and she looks up, chin lifting as she takes in Walnut Street in one direction, then the other, then back again. "It looks like it's the same stop I came in on, which is on the other side of the building." She doesn't put her phone away once it's in her hand, preferring to keep it ready. Just in case somehow, some way, they get lost walking around a building.

"I think that way's the shorter route," says Lucy, motioning down along the building. Then she tilts her head in that direction, sort of Shall we?

Richard Levasseur

"No, I mean," as he falls in beside her, his gait slower to match the length of his stride to hers, "what's your destination? Because if it's in the same direction I'm going, we might as well split a cab."

Lucy

"Oh," she says, a little surprised, but she doesn't shoot any shifty, wary looks his way. The surprise is a momentary Oh why didn't I think of that?

Because headache from hell and because this man was just in there enjoying himself and she wanted to leave him free to get back to it again if he wanted.

"Well. I'm just headed to the rail station. My sister and I're in a motel in Greenwood Village."

Richard Levasseur

"Let's call a cab, then," he says. "I'm heading back to DU. It's on the way. It shouldn't cost too much more than taking the train if we split it, and it'll get you back to your place sooner."

Unless she stops him, he steps to the curb, raising his arm to flag down one of the cabs cruising by the club. It's still early, by Saturday night standards -- the streets are full of people and taxis. A friendly cab, stuck behind a red light, sees them and flashes its lights in acknowledgment. Richard drops his hand.

"Are you new in town?" he asks while they wait for their ride to pull over. "Living in a motel," he adds.

Lucy

She doesn't stop him. Her head hurts enough that she'd teleport straight into her bed if she could. Well, if she knew how and if her head weren't hurting enough to render any attempts at using magic right now more dangerous than usual. It would be nice to have that ability, though.

There are plenty of cabs rolling past looking to carry the drunk and the high safely home. Lucy with her headache definitely counts as someone who needs to be safely carried home right now. She stands beside Richard, the top of her head coming to just about his chin with the help of her boots, and they wait for the cab to get to them.

"Sort've, yeah. We've only been in the city for a few days, but I've already met a few people who make me wonder if we'll be able to get back out again. Denver sounds like a kind of Hotel California for people like us."

Richard Levasseur

Richard laughs. He has an easy laugh; it comes easily to him. The cab has made it across the moat of that intersection now, engine humming as it pulls to the curb.

" 'People like us'?" he echoes. "And what kind of people would that be?"

Lucy

She smiles at him, and her smile is an impish sort of smile. It stretches her wide mouth out, brings her nasolabial creases into sharper focus, and narrows eyes that are naturally smaller and narrow.

"Performers," she says, stepping off to open the rear passenger door of the cab. Then she's slipping inside and sliding across the bench seat to lean against the window. She adjusts the fall of her bag so that it rests in her lap and drapes her arms over it.

[it's too much of a lie for her to not have to roll for it, I would hail Kahseeno but if she ever existed on this site I have clearly been abandoned. manip+subt!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Richard Levasseur

[TIME FOR AWARENESS I GUESS D:]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Richard Levasseur

That smile -- uncharacteristic, given ten minutes ago she had her head on a none-too-clean club table looking like she might vomit from the headache alone -- earns her a second, closer look. This time Richard's answering smile veers closer to a smirk.

"Oh really," he says, unconvinced, as he follows her into the cab. It's a small car; he folds into it, knees bent up, long arm reaching out to pull the door closed. "I'm going to DU," he says to the cabbie, "Williams and Wesley on the south side. She's going a bit farther."

He sits back as the cab pulls back into traffic. Cracks the window open a little to let the night in. "For what it's worth," he says to Lucy, "I think I might be a 'person like you'."

Lucy

Maybe it's because they're in closer quarters now, but he can feel it for himself. The way the cold that radiates from her skin sort of...keeps going. It winds and threads its way over the cracked leather of the bench seat, and it seems like it can almost be seen. Little tendrils of frost crawling free of a woman who feels like the cold kiss of a winter morning. Soon, the cab driver is going to want to turn on the heat. The night is not that cold, the air Richard lets in is not that chilly, but the man behind the wheel is going to want to turn on the heat anyway, just to get that strange chill off the back of his neck.

The backseat isn't all that great for Lucy, either. Though it's obviously a much tighter fit for someone of Richard's immense height, Lucy has to sit with her head and shoulders leaned forward. If she wants to sit up at all straight that is, which she doesn't. She slouches down, angling her knees to one side and twisting her torso to keep her attention on her fellow passenger, but she rests her head against the back of the seat.

She looks over at him, vibrant red hair curling against her pale cheek. "Oh really?" she shoots back, the corners of her mouth tugged into a lesser version of that impish smile. Lifting her head, she shifts a little, untwisting herself as much as she can so that she's sort of facing him a little more. "You don't seem like a person like me."

Richard Levasseur

"Well," Richard replies with a hint of a smirk, "it's true that I'm not a performer." He shifts his weight, lifting his hips to dig his phone out of his back pocket. The little screen comes on, casting feeble light on his face. He taps and slides for a while, then turns the phone around to her.

It's Google Maps. A residential address out in Morrison, up in the hills.

"You should check this place out," he says. "You're bound to find someone with common interests there."

Lucy

It's a good thing her phone is still in her hand. Lucy is not up to the physical shifting that would be required of her to get it from a pocket. Curious, she watches him fiddle around with his phone until he's holding it over to her to see. Her brows knit and she looks at him with confusion, and then a dawning realization. She thumbs her own device open and finds a program to make note of the address.

"Thanks," she says, truly grateful. Maybe she can get more run-ins with the city's local Awakened out of the way in larger sweeps. And possibly also figure out what they are before she ends up in a cab with them.

"I really am a performer, though. I sing a little and play guitar." She pauses, and she smiles again. "And dance." She is drifting, settling into a sense of If I just close my eyes for a moment this headache will go away.

Richard Levasseur

"I'm a very bad pianist," he offers, "and I swim." He glances out the windshield to check their progress; looks back to her. "Give me your number."

In the front seat, the driver huffs an unimpressed breath.

Lucy

Resting her eyes doesn't do anything to lessen the headache. It never does, it just teases with that feeling of maybe? until one has to give up on the endeavor. Lucy's eyes were not completely closed. Her head is leaned back and she's looking out the windshield herself, watching the way the cab driver weaves them swiftly through the Saturday evening traffic. Before she can decide if she's going to close her eyes or give up trying, Richard demands her number.

Lucy breathes in a quick, sharp inhale through her nose and sits up a little. She's grinning as she digs through her bag. "Hey, he already gave me his address, it's only fair," she says, to the cab driver obviously. Even though Richard didn't really give her his address, he gave her an address. And an important one at that. If she had to guess - and at this moment in time she won't but later, when she's feeling better she will - it's a gathering place, maybe even the local Chantry.

She roots around in her bag until she says, "Hah," very lightly. She pulls out a white business card. It's a little battered, and there is nothing printed on it. There is just her name, Lucy, written in a looping script in silver ink. In the bottom corner there is a phone number with an out of state area code. About half of her handmade business cards have lipstick kisses pressed into the back. Maybe, as she hands the card over to Richard, he gets one of those.

"Do you happen to know a Kalen, a Lena, a Yun, or a Grace?"

[odds that card has a smooch mark COME ON ODDS IT'S FOR THE LULZ]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

Richard Levasseur

Sadly, the card Richard gets does not have a smooch on it. But then he doesn't know that she has cards with smooches, so he's not terribly devastated. He does turn the card over in his hands, holding it up to the light to read it. No company name, no position. Just Lucy and a number. Not even a last name.

"I can't imagine what you do for a living," he says, rapidly tapping her number into his phone, "with a business card like that."

Her phone dings then. He just texted her. It reads:

I'm a Euthanatos. Are you a Cultist?

It's a forgivable mistake. He found her in a goddamn nightclub, after all.

Lucy

"Whatever I want," she says in reply. Usually, but not one hundred percent of the time, she'll write in Musician on that card somewhere. Sometimes other things. Sometimes, like now, it's left blank.

Her phone buzzes in her hand and she opens up the text, and she smiles. It is a pretty forgivable mistake. He found her in a nightclub having what appeared to be a very bad trip, or a bad reaction to something or other.

She taps back:

Nice try. Dreamspeaker.

By now they are getting into neighborhoods which may seem familiar to Richard. They're getting close to his cross street, at least.

Richard Levasseur

Richard glances at his phone as it dings. He breaks into a grin. "Well," he says aloud, "here's to going against stereotypes."

They're in tree-lined streets. A nice quiet residential area. Many of the houses here are single-family, and most of them quite affluent. Some, though, have been subdivided up into unofficial student housing. It's one of these that he points the cabbie toward: a large two-story house that was actually once a two-family townhouse, which is now a twenty-room boarding house. It looks semirecently renovated, and the lawn, despite a few bare patches, is fairly well-kept.

"This is me," he says as the cab pulls to a stop. "It was good meeting you, Lucy. Hope you feel better. And -- let me know if you make a trip out to that place. I've only been there once, so I should probably go again."

Lucy

"Stereotypes are for chumps, anyway," she says. Then she's looking out the window on her side to the nice, neatly maintained lawns and decently kept houses. The moon is dark tonight, so it's not easy to see much beyond the light of the streetlamps. But what she sees looks nice, and makes her think of other places far away.

Then Richard is pointing them out to his house, or the house where he lives anyway. "It was nice meeting you, too, Richard, and thanks again. I'll let you know when I know."

And that's it. Well, mostly it. They still have to work out the splitting of the fare to this point. When Richard has paid his share and is gone, door closed behind him, Lucy leans toward the driver and gives the cross street she remembers as being close to her motel. It's been an interesting day, but she's looking forward to crashing into a bed finally.