Gathering: Summer Party

[concierge]

Outside of the Nexus Hotel, waiters and hotel staff had begun to set up the umbrellas and the tables in the middle of the day. Soon, it became clear that something was happening in the shadow of the Nexus. White tablecloths were draped on the tables and drinks and food were brought out with the help of several waiters and servers, staffing tables with hot and cold foods beside bartending stations. Summery drinks in bright, neon colors are laid out one by one and soon, the afternoon light casts a radiant look on the scene.

Music plays faintly in the background and a note at the front desk invites all the Nexus guests to head outside and join in on the summer party, which promises to continue going as long as there are people to stay and continue keeping the warm atmosphere rolling.

On the lawn, social games had been set out -- lawn bowling, croquet, and tables were set up with chairs for anyone who didn't quite have the will or the spirit to get into such games. Soon, a small number of people had begun to mill around, but as with all parties, there's always room for more.

Comments

[beretta_70]

The chill of the glasses Sévérine held neatly in each hand set perfect counterpoint to the heat of the afternoon sun overhead, though the former rather than the latter held the greater portion of her attention. The scene painted across the Nexus' grounds was at once like and unlike many she had seen before, but where she was more familiar with assassin's names murmured over cocktails and tidbits taken from trays, of oil and water rights mixed with the ever-present promise of blood-shed, this looked...almost wholesome.

Almost was thrown out of the description upon catching sight of a game of croquet being played on the grass, the players laughing with an abandon she associated with children and few children at that.

"Am I to understand," she began, her words pitched low and almost intimate for all the fact of their surroundings as she came up beside Crowley, looking out at the scene from his same angle. "That your Hell is less abysmal than this?" Her smile was a touch conspiratorial as she offered one of the glasses up to him, the oak-colored liquid within it licking at the sides of the glass. It had taken little difficulty to track down a full bottle of the Glencraig 1975 vintage, rare as it promised to be, and the expense nothing to be sneered at, but as an investment, it was one she believed well worth the sticker price. "I've had the rest of the bottle sent to your room."

[votecrowley]

"My Hell is less abysmal than this drink," Crowley answered, before remembering the woman who had arrived, presenting him with a glass of something that was most certainly what he preferred to be drinking. Severine had been a strange and smoky creature, distinctly dark and beautiful. If she had been in his world, demons would have clambered all over each other to possess a suit like that; and he would have paid anything to get her soul.

But they weren't in his world, they were at some fancy otherworldly garden party, and she was handing him a glass of Glencraig, which automatically put her up in his top five list of favourite individuals, living and dead. Of course, a woman like her would be more than aware of how to play up to others, especially those of power. It wasn't that Crowley thought himself powerful; the fact that she was extending him thoughtfulness and courtesy told him that she thought he might be.

"Ah, Sévérine," he said, taking the glass from her, immediately putting down the swill he had been saddled with minutes ago. "You're certainly adding to the atmosphere. Thank you. To what do I owe the honour? Getting stir crazy in your room?"

[beretta_70]

The haze with which she had walked between the dust and the blood of the island and the sumptuousness of the hotel had done nothing to obscure the conversation she had had with him. No more than it had erased the details with which she built her image of those around her, those small luxuries and favored tastes she filed away automatically for later use. It had amazed her once how pliable or, if not that, then at least more amenable a body became with their favorite dish or drink at hand, eased into a state a touch less razor-edged for what might otherwise be so easily overlooked.

Her offering was not entirely unattached of motives, but she doubted he would be so naive as to believe anything in life (or apparently death) came free. It was not borne of fear, or of concern that he might otherwise strike out at her, for all that she could read the blood on his hands and the coarse note of violence and fury past in the rough and rasp turn of his voice. Instead it was almost friendly, but for the fact that the idea of the niceties of life being offered simply because one could was too foreign for the confines of her skull.

There was much that required her attention if she had any intention of walking back into the world she had come from. Much ugliness that would need to be attended to. Tempting though it was to remain within the hotel and step no further than the doors to other strange places, all that had been left undone behind her was an itch she could not quite shake.

"I thought I might like some company," she told him, the wealth of all that was left unsaid coloring the edges of her words. The marvel of the weight of the door and the locks that could be operated only by her. Of the suggestion that she might for the first have a degree of privacy within at least her room. No guards at her back with hands read for the holsters kept hidden beneath their jackets, or ready to pull back a hand to deliver a message where it would be hidden beneath her clothes from their marks. "Unless you would rather be alone in your observation, and I would take my leave?"