So many kids in so many places...

[tryandmakemedie]

Noah Smith has been laying low ever since the ball. It doesn't look good to anyone to be kicked out on your ass by a First from a party, and so he hasn't been particularly interested in coming back to be... teased, confronted, whatever. As lame as he thinks the local Neq is, he knows it's not wise to confront this guy, or even really be seen after

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[juneswan]

Cookies! Free cookies! As you may be able to tell the promise of cookies with no strings attached attracts Juni like a fly to a very large light... She'd be very pleased at her being referred to as a fly but it is the truth, Juni is really just a human shaped fly.

...Anyway, she'd be hovering near Gladys, watching for cookies because cookies make her world go around.

[cookiesandhugs]

Gladys smiles and places down a tray of cookies? "Do you like chocolate chip best?" she asks. She's seen this face before. It's quite a familiar one, in fact. "Or is it oatmeal raisin? Or maybe M&M?"

Take your pick, Juni. She's not going to stop you. The cookies are there for eating.

[juneswan]

Juni knows Gladys too, considers Gladys insane mind you but it's the nice kind of insane as opposed to the eating kind of insane... Besides, anybody who keeps offering her cookies has to be worth hanging around.

So, she'd be smiling faintly and taking a few steps over, wondering vaguely if grabbing one of everything and gorging would be considered bad manners "chocolate chip is my favourite but I'm fine with anything really."

[cookiesandhugs]

Gladys smiles and waves her arm at the table. "Well have at it then!" she exclaims. "If you hang around long enough, I have a cake in the oven!"

Yes, cake. She's working on a tiered cake.

No, she's not insane.

[angel_of_prey]

Egon is out looking for Trinity. He's still sort of uncomfortable with her being a demon and all, but that note... no one should have to come across something like that unprepared. And, well, he wants to protect her from that. Which confuses the hell out of him, but he's not thinking about that right now. His thoughts pretty much amount to Find her. Make her happy.

He doesn't know how that's going to work, but hush. You'll spoil his beautiful, beautiful flawed plan.

[omnomnomface]

Trin sees him first, and breaks out into a smile--a much dimmer smile than she normally gives him, but that's okay. She's still happy to see him.

She's not going to say anything, not yet. She's just going to stand here quietly and smile and look at him. It feels good to do that. She loves him a lot, poor thing, even though he's an angel, an archangel, and in theory she should hate him. She doesn't.

[angel_of_prey]

And there she is, just standing there looking terribly young and hurting and alone, and this is exactly why he's never let himself get into anything vaguely resembling a relationship before, because now he can't walk away. A part of him wants to run back to the hotel, grab his things, and hightail it out of town. Hit the road and never come back to this city ever again, go find somewhere else to haunt, keep in touch with Eloi through the journals. And he's very, very tempted to do it. Not because he doesn't care about her. But because he does.

He doesn't want to hurt her. But he's afraid that if he stays around, he will anyway. There's no way he can protect her from being what she is, but she can't help that, and what if

[omnomnomface]

Trin has no such internal struggles. She doesn't even know if she's in love with Egon (she's still working on the whole finding out what love thing is. Hush, she's kind of slow,) but she does have feelings for him, she does certainly like him, and that's all that matters right now. So she hugs him back, nuzzling her nose against his neck.

"I love you," she whispers. "I mean... yeah. Thank you. For being there an' stuff. 'Cause..." she trails off. Words have never really been her forte, not ever. "'Cause yeah," she finishes.

[frostedpains]

Tess is on the front part of her apartment complex which happens to be nearly equidistant between the Tower and the Conrad hotel. She walks down the front steps carrying a big ice sculpture of a miniature whale that she created not long ago in her room.

It's easy to be a pro at ice sculpture as an ice elemental. In fact, it's probably some form of cheating, but she gets paid well for it. God knows she needs the money, cause it's not like running the complex is a lucrative career.

She might accidentally bump into Vaughn as she steps on to the sidewalk as she's unable to see over the whale's frozen water spout coming out of its blowhole. Oops!

[stillaboyscout]

Vaughn holds up his hands as she does bump into him, a little bit. "Whoa, careful!" he says. He's more concerned about the beautiful ice sculpture she's carrying than he is about getting bumped in to. He's an appreciater of art, Vaughn is. "Wouldn't want that to break." He smiles a little bit, even though he's not entirely sure if she can see him.

[frostedpains]

"Oh. God." Tess attempts to tilt her head around the whale, but has a lot of difficult. "I'm sorry. I always do this when I carry large, cumbersome objects! I forget that there are other people in the world and just go along without any thought to keep an eye out, typical, self-centered, human sort of behavior really. Sorry. I'll just-"

She attempts to reposition the whale in her arms so that she can see him, but can't really manage it as best as she'd like. "I've just got to get this into the truck on the side of the road? If it's still there. I left it unlocked, not because I still have faith in humanity, but because it's difficult to unlock a chevy when you're carrying a whale. Do you mind playing cross walk guard for me? Make sure I don't bump into anyone else as I try to make it there? You will earn my continuous gratitude and a... hot chocolate or something. I don't know. I'm bribing you and I don't know you. Is that bad? Don't answer that."

[stillaboyscout]

Vaughn smiles at her. "It's okay, it's okay," he reassures her. "I just didn't want you to drop it. It looks beautiful, by the way. You must have put a lot of time into it."

And he just keeps smiling at her as she sort of rambles at him. "It's no problem at all--in fact, it'd be my pleasure!" He falls into step beside her. "I'm Michael Vaughn," he tells her warmly. "So I guess we're not really strangers any more. Or, um... I guess I'm not a stranger to you. So bribery... um..." He laughs at his own inability to form words.

[allmydiredreams]

Babel is also at the Gauche, for once, feeling a little weird still on account of the spell a few days ago -- the nightmares get worse around them (and are occasionally the cause of them). But being in one place also makes her restless.

Hey, someone not in their room! ...someone who looks a bit sheepish and like he doesn't want to be noticed. Too bad. Babel walks over to him, rather purposefully, with a little friendly-mischievous smile on her face, and very clearly says, "Sneaky sneaky," at him. "There are windows for when you don't want to be caught, you know." Not that there actually are any accessible windows on the outside of the Gauche, other than the sunrooms (and those windows would have to be broken), but that is entirely beside the point.

[tryandmakemedie]

Noah just glares at Babel. Great. He's back on Neq territory and is immediately confronted by a tiny annoying thing. Wonderful.

"Who says I was trying to be sneaky?" he snarls. He's very much not in the mood to deal with tiny annoying things.

At least he's restraining himself from killing her? Or giving it his best shot?

[allmydiredreams]

Babel stops, crossing her arms and fixing Noah with an 'I'm not stupid' look. She felt that sneaky coming in. And she feels the fact that he wants to kill things now, but she's a silly girl and that's never stopped her from socializing before, so it's apparently not going to stop her now.

"Felt it," she says. "And if you didn't look like you weren't supposed to be here or didn't want to be noticed, maybe you wouldn't draw so much attention to yourself."

[tryandmakemedie]

Noah squirms. Tiny things that can tell things about him are freaky. And they make him very very uncomfortable.

"Who said I didn't want to be here?" he snaps back. "You can't tell that. I want to be here. Completely. Maybe you're the one that doesn't want to be here, chicky. Maybe you're projecting your feelings onto me. Ever think about that?"

Because your defensive TOTALLY makes it seem like you want to be there, Noah. Totally.

[nowinprint]

Dmtri was just leaving the Conrad after her... encounter with person number three of the Cult of the Chin. She's heading down the street when she catches sight of someone she recognizes, and-

"Vaughn!"

Darts up to him with the tiniest hopskip in her step.

She pulls herself up short to avoid barreling into him, but does grab both arms and hold him at arms length while she looks him over. Checking for, you know, blood seeping through his coat, amputated limbs, that sort of thing. Then she looks up ad grins.

"Well. Little demon isn't going to keep you in hospital for long, is it?"

[stillaboyscout]

Vaughn is vaguely confused for a moment, before it all comes rushing back to him. "Dmitri?" he asks. Thank God he's good at remembering names. (Then again, if he wasn't he wouldn't be a spy or even hired by the CIA and... yeah. He liked his job.)

He grins a little bit, sort of blushing. "It... yeah," he says. Ooo, he's good at words. "Didn't do too much damage. Or... I don't know." He keeps grinning, rubs his neck with one hand and sort of shrugs.