[thd] an unexpected party [jocasta]

"Are you sure we're supposed to be here?" Kendrick whispered in his wife's ear as they stood in the middle of the gathering, his hand around her waist. The large building that had been rented out for the 127th birthday party of one Mr. Gregory Ross was, to be fair, quite crowded. It wasn't that it was a dubious affair; there were maybe hundreds of guests, they were nicely dressed, there was a band he swore he saw at a friend's wedding two years ago, and magical balloons that would pop and re-inflate proclaiming the venerable age of the old man. There was certainly a good deal of drink, and slightly less food, but what food there was was good. Still, Kendrick couldn't help but notice that he didn't recognize a single person, and it was a truly bewildering feeling. True, most of the guests were rather older than them, but Kendrick had plenty of older colleagues at the Ministry.

As far as the two were aware, there were Rosses on Jo's mother's side, but they weren't very close, and even then Kendrick had been under the impression that they were Scottish Rosses, so why were they in Diagon Alley? And even if it was just a convenient location for a wide variety of relations to Apparate to, how could they not know a single person there? Kendrick was beginning to think that the envelope had been misaddressed, or else had been sent to every wizard of age in the British Isles hoping that someone would bite. Maybe he'd just wanted to offer a good time to a variety of strangers. Some older people were eccentric that way. Catching her eye again, he darted his free hand out to grab a mini quiche off a wandering waiter's tray. Mouth full, he shrugged, started to talk, and then thought better of it and swallowed first.

"You feeling it? Food's good, drink's good, we dressed up for this, no one's paying attention to us, just a weird situation... Wanna stay or do we have somewhere better to be?" It wasn't that rare that they had time in the evenings, although Jo's job as Lead Auror cut into it at times, but it was slightly less common that they had time and were motivated enough to leave Craven and go back to London after coming home from work.

@Jocasta Silverman

"No. Not sure at all," She whispered back harshly, squinting her eyes to observe what was going on up at the front. Jo and Ken were stationed back by the punch bowls, and frankly, that was where they were going to stay until they could figure out who these people were. Granted, she hadn't really known when they'd accepted the invitation who Gregory Ross was either, but according to an owl from her mum, it was important that a "representative" from their side of the family attended as her parents were tied up with another function. Jocasta leaned into her husband, sipping out of the plasticky wine glass she held in her hand periodically. Maybe she needed to up the ante and drink larger quantities to even feel moderately comfortable with this situation.

"Mmmm. Maybe we could have another drink and then see how we feel?" She asked him, taking a few larger gulps of the liquid that looked like tulips that it was so red to hand him an empty glass. "Would you mind grabbing me another, darling? That was pretty tasty." Jocasta winked at him. She hardly ever drank, but what the hell? It was a night off and they were at a weird party where they didn't know anyone or their mother, and, frankly, she looked good. She was dressed elegantly and comfortably, quite normal for a day off, but the higher heels and the tiny peep of her torso in the middle of the ensemble added just a little something extra, she thought.

This place was huge, though. It was like a gigantic warehouse, almost, and even though there were many guests, the size of the building made it a little cooler than she'd have liked. She was about to start shivering. Maybe another drink, or two, or three, would warm her back up.

Kendrick winked back with an "Of course, do you have to ask?" as he took her glass, long legs carrying him to the punch bowl so he could ladle some more into her cup and top off his own while he was at it. Reappearing at her side with a generous helping of the punch, he couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity. "Honestly, it's so strange. It's not like we don't know people, right? I know most of our non-school friends are in the Ministry, but it is the largest employer of British wizards...maybe we're not as popular as we thought," he joked. The drink was sweet, although he could taste the alcohol that he always wanted to pass of as the etymology behind its name. Everyone who'd been out with him found it funny that Ken's tolerance was a little bit lacking for such a large man. It slid down his throat with not insignificant heat, and he started to wonder whether he had to keep his jacket on.

The band started to play a lively jig that, by the apparent ages of the people who had enthusiastically begun dancing, might have been particularly popular around 1930 or so. After tapping his feet and drinking for a few more minutes, he quirked an eyebrow at her. "Let's go," he declared. He knew his wife liked to dance; although he was quite sure neither of them knew this particular dance, there were only strangers around to look foolish in front of. "It'll be warmer too," he said, eyeing the way she was drinking. She was showing all the telltale signs of being a little bit too cold. He wished he felt the same, as he was beginning to sweat.

Taking her hand, he pulled her to the dance floor, then set about attempting to imitate the oldsters surrounding them. Some of them laughed and whooped, clearly very entertained by the young couple attempting to match them. Ken's head was buzzing a little bit, and he frowned, then pulled off his jacket and threw it on a jaunty coat rack that had ambled up to him, apparently sensing his intent, the other patrons' things swaying as it walked around. All of a sudden, he was feeling rather more confident for some reason, and started going at the steps with gusto, not minding that he alternated between following them excellently and missing 2/3 of the steps.

"Is it just me or," he paused breathlessly, bringing Jo in closer, "did it get really bright in here? And...loud? And...exciting?" The last didn't particularly make sense, but he said it anyway. Kendrick blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision, which was starting to threaten to double. "What percentage d'you reckon that punch was...?"

Jocasta couldn't help but to laugh a little at the way the elderly people were beginning to dance around them, and said laughing was bubbling into some rather uncharacteristic giggling. Tittering, even. She was covering her mouth with her hand, but it wasn't helping much -- it was too humorous to ignore. The entire situation seemed absurd. And maybe it was, but they were going to make something out of it. She could feel it in her blood. The second glass that Kendrick brought back for her disappeared much more quickly than the first; she was gulping it down enthusiastically and it was insane -- Jo was feeling the effects, almost immediately after she'd swallowed several more swigs. What was in this stuff?

The usually-distinguished, sometimes even a little uptight woman ditched her plastic glass on the punch table when her husband yanked her out toward the dance floor and her hands clasped him, one on his shoulder and the other at the nape of his neck so she was almost hugging him. She was thankful he was a little more solid, but of course, he'd never been that great at handling his alcohol, so Jocasta was prepared to accept the notion that she'd have to take care of herself later on in the night. If this got out of hand, that was, and she had a sneaking feeling it might've been headed down that road. And strangely, for once, she didn't care that much. She may as well have scooped up all of her control-freak tendencies and thrown them out the window.

Eventually, her partner started dancing a little more vigorously than he had before and she sealed her lips tightly, trying not to laugh. "Not just you," She answered him anyway, sort of shouting into his ear over the noise and trying to ignore that her embarrassment due to people noticing their missteps was still a factor despite the creeping inebriation. "I think I'm kind of drunk, though. I don't remember the last time I was feeling it this much," Jocasta confessed, clammy fingers grasping at his neck a little more tightly. "Are you feeling it? I don't even feel this way after shots. Maybe they drugged it?" Jo speculated nervously, trying to let it all go and sink into the rhythm of the jazzy music.

She wished they were playing something else, though. Like... something raunchier, even if she quite hated to admit as much.

"It's kind of hard to dance to this. I kind of feel like to enjoy it in the way I want to right now I should've been born about seventy years earlier. We're downtown, anyway. Do you wanna see what else is going on?"

Taking breaths to try and stabilize his existence in this space and time, he blinked down at his wife's face. "Have I ever told you you're short?" he blurted out and then laughed. "Yeah of course I'm feeling it if you are," his phrases were puncctuated by pauses, "you know me, can't handle anything----- @Jonathan Emerson and @Edith Holthouse think it's the funniest thing------- but Jon can't talk he's just as bad." He sort of felt like he was getting better at the dance, actually. Maybe it was just the alcohol. Alcohol and whatever? He couldn't really distinguish, since even just alcohol hit him hard. "I guess if they did it's not the worst thing ever," he said comfortably, and leaned down to kiss her neck in the middle of a relatively less swingy step.

She didn't seem to be feeling the same way about the music, so he nodded and reoriented himself towards the door. "Right. Downtown. That-a-way."

Stepping out into the cooler air outside helped a little, and he shook his head like a dog shaking off water. "I really am feeling it. Not puking territory though. Hopefully I left that territory behind, what, 9 years ago?" He should be concerned, but it was just kind of funny at this point. He turned right and walked down the alley. "Ice cream...jewelry...animals...ooh, what about that one?" They'd arrived in front of a slightly dingy looking place, lit dimly, with muffled wrock coming out of it. If he was more sober, Kendrick would have realized that this was not exactly the type of place two people who looked and acted like them fit in. In his state, it looked interesting. "An adventure!" he tugged on her hand. "And if anything happens they can deal with our stupendously superior spellwork," he declared. His wife was the Lead Auror, nothing bad was going to happen to them in a place like this. Besides, it wasn't Knockturn Alley or anything.

Poking his head inside The Goblin Hole, he took a long inhale of smoke. "Well this is a different scene. Look at all the liquor," he said, attempting to do the second phrase discreetly but rather sounding like a six year old pointing out a booger hanging from an old man's nose. The music was coming from a jukebox in the corner. He waved at the goblin behind the bar, only vaguely registering his species, and then pointed at the jukebox. "Wanna put something on?" Approaching it, he thumbed through some of the old hits. "What about this one, we played it at the wedding?"

"I'm short, am I?" Jocasta looked upon her husband's face with raised eyebrows, lips spreading into a luminous grin. He could really be quite goofy, but she enjoyed it. It kept her human. Sort of made sure she had one foot in her personal life and one foot in her work, and truth be told, that was harder than it sounded. "Good thing that I'm wearing heels, then, isn't it?" Everything he was saying was like a little tornado, especially in her intoxicated state, and it made it so much harder to process. Her brain felt like it was sloshing around in her head. "Yeah, I'd say it's kind of bad thing if they've drugged us, honey. Not a thing to be excited about, but I suppose if it's happened, then it's happened." Her diction wasn't very good, but she hoped her husband knew her voice and its patterns well enough to understand it anyway.

Of course, it was all balanced out when he kissed her neck. That was a happy thing, drunk or not drunk. Drugged or not drugged, neck-kissing was something to be revered. It was the Upper East Side of kisses. Right? Anyone knew that. She indulged a second and then blinked rapidly, shaking her head gently to clear it. Jo knew she couldn't indulge toooooo much in front of a crowd of buzzards. They'd have a field day and she'd probably get some dirty looks from the women whose starved husbands were watching in a not necessarily appropriate manner.

She was thankful she'd opted for not-stilettos as they stepped into the crisp night air, and she took a huge breath in through her nose, enjoying that it took just a little bit of the buzz off the top of her head. He was saying random words then, and she was gripping his hand tightly, holding it responsible for about half her balance as they meandered along down the road. Maybe the words had to do with the shops they were passing, but she wasn't in a place to process it. The bumping and the flashing coming from the goblin club they'd come to was enough to surge some euphoria through her chest, and she grinned, hopping up and down in her shoes excitedly. She felt like a child!

"Yeah, yeah! Let's go in." Jocasta agreed, stumbling forward through the threshold and looking, with large eyes, at all of the brightly-colored liquors and the clear ones and the amber ones. It was a dream. An endless buffet of liquory goodness. "I'm going to get another drink," She told him as she told the bartender to give her the strongest shot they had, and nodded at Kendrick. The shot, which arrived just a second later, arrived at her lips rather quickly and went down the hatch. She had no qualms punctuating it with a loud "ahhhh" sound, and then nodded deliberately in reference to their wedding song. "Yeah. Put it on. I'll dance to it."

Almost feeling as though she had literally no control over her own body but not really protesting the way her limbs were moving either, she clambered up onto the barstool and slipped around for a second before she hoisted herself up, constricting pencil skirt and all, up onto the bar. "Come on. Get up here, I look like an idiot. Dance with me."

"Doesn't that make you even shorter without them?" he queried. It was the kind of thing he would have pointed out anyway, unable to resist teasing, but he did it in a rather more confused tone than he would otherwise have. "Well..." he paused, thinking in unintentionally exaggerated motions. "Y'know, I don't want to die tonight and you know I'm not a druggie but as long as it's not lethal maybe it'll be...erm...interesting? An interesting experience we would otherwise miss! Yes. That. Besides, all those old people were drinking it. If it didn't kill them it probably won't kill anyone seventy years younger, right?" He brightened at this apparent proof of their safety.

Kendrick blinked at the shot which arrived in front of his wife. "Wait--" he said woozily and halfheartedly. She was verbally coherent enough, but Jo was a graceful woman, and her balance was clearly off. It was a bit too late, though, and he instead slid a couple Galleons over to the very very short bartender whose hand had delivered the shot. He then slid a few Sickles into the jukebox, the familiar song coming on. Kendrick started to groove a bit, and spun on his heel in time to see Jo clambering onto the bar.

Kendrick's mouth dropped open despite him. He wasn't sure whether he was more shocked that she was doing it or taken aback by the sight. His glance slid down to the bartender, but there really weren't many other customers, and at least one of the goblins sitting on a small tool seemed to like what they'd started playing. Throwing away any small inhibitions he might have had--he was known to be impulsive after all--he jumped onto the stool and then onto the bar in what he felt was a heroic leap. None of the other patrons were impressed.

The ceiling looked awfully close all of a sudden. "I'm too tall for this," he announced, even as he spun around with a how-do-you-like-me-now look in his eye, reaching out a hand for her. "You don't look like an idiot, you look beautiful as always," he said, inwardly complimenting himself for his smoothness. He frowned, suddenly remembering something. "Honey, I left my jacket at the party. Did you have any particular affection for that one?"

The woman, despite herself, was enjoying her time with her husband. Out. At a bar. Where, truthfully, they couldn't usually be found. It was unlike them to use a night off to be out traipsing around the club scene in London -- Kendrick was past thirty and Jo was pushing it, and while she wasn't normally a snotty woman, it seemed a bit... juvenile. Drunk Jocasta didn't seem to mind, though, and was having quite the time dancing on top of the goblin bar to one of the songs that had been played at their wedding. It was in a slow waltz, so her hips didn't waste time sinking into the three pattern that was so easy to dance to. That was a thankful fact indeed, for if it had been anything more difficult, well, they might've seen themselves a trip to St. Mungo's later on in the night.

Kendrick leapt onto the bar and her heart did a leap parallel to the rather lumpy, not-smooth movement. She wasn't sure if he was quite as intoxicated as she was or not, but it made her nervous to watch him attempt to jump up onto the slick surface. The goblins weren't shouting at them to get down or be careful, so the witch took that as a sign that what they were doing was perfectly acceptable.

"You are," Jo agreed with him when he finally stood up straight in front of her, and she clasped his shoulders, just a bit more than impressed at her own ability to only wobble slightly when they moved in her tall heels. She could normally wear stilettos thinner than pencils and be quite fine and dignified, but when she was seeing two and a half of everything around her, the plot of being able to walk (let alone dance) normally in heels thickened a little. "Don't bonk your head. My balance isn't great right now, so if you go down, I'm coming right after you." This thought wasn't something she'd laugh at on any sort of regular occasion, but it was making her laugh now. As were his saccharine, but admittedly very sweet, admissions of his opinion of her.

He'd always been a little bit more vocal with the compliments. The warmth had been part of the reason she'd fallen in love with him so easily. Her kisses were not so easily won -- and he'd been the one to melt her just enough that she didn't consistently scream ice sculpture. Did she? Hopefully not. Perhaps that had been why she'd been promoted at such a young age. All work and no play made Jo a dull... woman? Thanks to Kingsley and her strong affiliation to the Order, anyway, she'd been a shoe-in for the position.

She flushed just a tad at the words of praise anyway, and then she frowned. He'd forgotten his coat? "We'll just.... accio it. Right? Could do that from here," She slurred the last part a little and pulled a face, fishing her wand out of her back pocket. "You try too. Maybe if we both do it it'll be like combined strength."

"I think I'm going to get down after this," Kendrick admitted, giving the ceiling some serious side-eye. "I'll cushion us if you fall, don't worry," he said brightly, letting go of his right hand's grasp of hers for a moment to gesture towoard the pocket containing his wand. As she suggested Summoning his coat, he pulled it out and let go of her with his left arm too, just in case something happened. "Okay. Acccccccio. Jacket. Accio Coat!" A thick parka that had probably been hanging on a hook in the bar since last winter zoomed toward him and he shook his head at it. "Not you. Different coat." He tossed it back onto the hook, missing widely. "Lemme go fix this," he said, hopping back down off the bar. After landing successfully, he straightened and raised his arms like an Olympic gymnast before shoving it back onto the hook.

Going to the entrance, in his head thinking it would make for a better range, he bellowed "Aksio Jacket!" into the night, earning him several concerned looks from passerby. Rather than Summoning anything, his mispronunciation of the spell caused his wand to recoil a little bit with a puff of sparks, jumping out of his hand. "Nooo," he said sadly, thrusting out his arm to catch it. He missed, his normally excellent reflexes failing him in this moment of inebriation. However, as it fell, a large BANG! shook the street and the Knight Bus popped out in front of him.

Ken blinked at it a few times. He'd never really taken the Knight Bus--once he was of age he could Apparate just fine, and before then he'd mostly gone with his parents by Floo. But he knew what it was, of course. "Jo!" he yelled back. "Do you wanna go home? We could go get the jacket first if you remember where it was. Or we could go on an adventure. Can I buy a toothbrush? I want an orange one."

One knee fell hard onto the counter an earned a sharp hiss and an "ow!" from Jocasta's mouth. She couldn't lean too heavily on her shoe, it would break underneath her. Even the most well-made shoes were prone to failure and breakage if met with enough force. She slid it forward, slowly but surely, and managed to slip onto her back on the bar, doing a little half-turn on her rear before she came to a complete stop. After that, it was just a lot of wiggling her body down, toes tentatively touching the floor, to get down off the bar and hit the ground with both feet. Jo held her dainty hands out in front of her for a moment to regain her already-slightly-precarious balance and caught a little glimpse of her wedding ring. That made her smile a little. It always did, when she wiggled it underneath the light and watched it glitter and shimmer.

After that, she seemed to remember her original mission. The jacket, of course. Even drunk, Jocasta was probably better than most people were sober at being task and detail oriented. She knew the spell she wanted to cast, obviously, too, so she hoped before she even rose her wand to swish it around that her mouth would cooperate. The blonde cleared her throat and stood confidently, feet shoulder-width apart, to try to summon her husband's lost jacket. "Aaaaaaaccio jacket." Arm flopping down to her side defeatedly after a minute, she came to terms with the idea that the jacket was proooobably not coming. "Pffft," Jocasta snorted while Kendrick attempted a couple of times to, unsuccessfully, perform the spell. Clomping over toward him, she used her palm to touch his chest lightly and push him back the other way. "Let meeee handle this." Jocasta assured him, quirking one brow. "Accio jacket. Accio, you stupid fucker." Jo commanded more insistently, and finally it came soaring in through the door.

Grasping the thick material, she handed it in a wad to Kendrick, smug smile curling at the edges of her mouth. "Great. There's that. Now pick up your wand." She reminded him gently, gesturing to the general area in which he'd dropped it. "...I kind of think taking the Knight Bus would be an adventure in itself. You've got a toothbrush at home, babe, we don't need another. All the stores are going to be closed." She pointed out quietly, her brows furrowed in a slight amount of concern that he was unaware of the time. What the hell time was it, anyway? Late. Late was the answer.

"C'mon, it's gonna leave us here if we don't hurry up."

Kendrick turned around too late to hear a cry of pain from his wife, grimacing in empathetic pain. "Sorry, I should have helped you down," he said as she caught up to him. Ceding the spellcasting to her, he sniggered a little as 'you stupid fucker' came out of her mouth, but was duly impressed when his jacket appeared, shaking it out and tossing it over his shoulder. "You did it!" he said as if she had just scored the game point, wrapping his arms around her and spinning her for a half-turn before she pointed out that he'd dropped his wand and hadn't yet picked it up. "Oh. Wand. Right."

Kendrick bent down to grab it wand, shoving it back behind his belt. "Okay! Bus adventure it is!" Sounding increasingly like a seven-year-old as time went by, he stuck his head in through the door. "No, no, not from a store. From the bus!" He gesticulated inside. "See, four more Sickles gets you a toothbrush. And a hot water bottle. That's what Ash told me." He looked to the conductor for verification. "I'm right, right?" Prompted by his nod, he turned back to Jo with a pleading look. "Pleeeeease? A hot water bottle would be nice, see, there are beds and everything!" Dropping his voice, he added, "It would make cuddling betterrrrrr."

The employees were starting to look at him with annoyance, although Kendrick felt that they weren't the only partygoer casualties. He was sure he'd seen the old fellow wearing the eggplant suit with a rather queasy-looking face at the same party. Served a man right for living until 127 and having old friends. "Can you take us to Craven?" Kendrick paid the base fare, a rather extravagant price since it was so far away from London, and bounced four more Sickles in his hand. "I think you can still change your mind," he whispered as the bus shook, tossing him from one spot on the bed he'd sat on to another and knocking his brain around in his head. "Ugh, is this thing first come first serve?" he asked, staring out at the streets of Edinburgh, which really was terribly far compared to where they'd been before. "There are like twenty other people in here!"

"Well, alright, then. I don't see why not." Jocasta made a consenting sort of face and shrugged. If all it took to make him happy were an orange toothbrush and a hot water bottle, well, then she supposed she should promptly count her blessings. It was, however, a little hairy to think about climbing into a bed that someone else, likely a smelly drunkard, had used ten times before in the same evening. She wondered how often they switched out the sheets or cleaned anything in here at all. Ugh. Adventure, she reminded herself -- it was an adventure, and adventures didn't always include proper cleanliness in their itineraries, now, did they?

Stepping gingerly up the stairs that led into the rickety contraption that the Ministry seemed to enjoy calling a bus, Jo worked to keep her expression neutral and her nose unwrinkled. Reluctantly, she made her way further into it to follow her husband once he'd paid the base fare and had to resist laughing when he tumbled off the bed he'd sat down on initially into another one. "Oh my god, honey, be careful, I think there's someone in that bed." She stage whispered urgently, feeling a little bit of the buzz evaporating from the top of her head as she spoke. The witch leaned forward immediately, her quick reflexes causing a little slosh in her brain from the sudden movement, and grabbed Kendrick's sleeve to pull him back over to her.

"Perhaps we could just get off and apparate home, if one of us feels.... okay enough to do it?" Jo shrugged, her wince indicating that she knew it was a bad idea, but if she was being completely honest, both of them were a little too spoiled to be cut out for such a thing as this. "Whatever you think, but... I was just having a think about when the last time they cleaned these beds was. I don't think it was very recent." She hunkered down to take a dainty sniff at the sheets they were sitting on and if she wasn't mistaken, turned a little green. "Definitely not recent."

"Yes!" Kendrick chortled with glee as he handed over the extra Sickles. He was presented with a jar half-full of toothbrushes; about half of the remaining ones were orange, despite the fact that there had clearly been about seven other colors. "Tch. People have no taste. All the better for me," he remarked cheerfully, plucking one out with his right hand and accepting the hot water bottle with his left. Bouncing it up and down in his hand, a content expression stole across his face. Kendrick wasn't a complicated man in general. It wasn't difficult to make him happy; his wife, his family, his friends, good weather, a funny ad in the paper... Take away a layer of his reasoning faculties--he wasn't brilliant, not like his wife, but he wasn't dumb--and he was just...there. Content in the moment, and not too concerned with the long-term consequences. It was a little like being fourteen again. Kind of fun, even though thirty-year-old Kendrick didn't begrudge his responsibilities. They were nothing he hadn't chosen wholeheartedly.

"Honestly, there are enough things in here I wouldn't notice if someone landed on my face," he said, feeling rather drowsy all of a sudden. "Hmmm? Oh...you're probably right." He looked at the sheets and at Jo's face. "Don't worry, my whole job is cleaning up after people!" Pulling out his wand, Kendrick concentrated, siphoning off all the accumulated dirt, grime, and bodily oils into a little ball hanging just off the tip of his wand. Unlike the summoning charm, he used this one often enough that it was more a reflex than anything. "Ewww," he said, flicking his wand so it was levitating just above the tip so he could get a closer look, but backing off quickly when the concentrated smell hit him. Pulling up a window, he flicked it outside before quickly shutting it again. Probably it would be so broken up at this speed that it wouldn't be noticeable.

"See, clean!" he grinned lazily, slipping the hot water bottle beneath the sheets and following it. "You almost can't tell we're moving in here," he proclaimed, his eyes starting to close, before correcting himself, honest to a fault, to "well, it feels much better than sitting up. Come on," he cajoled gently, bouncing his large feet up and down on the bottle, listening to the liquid sloshing around, complementing the bangs, opening and closing of the doors, and the screeching wheels. He lost track of time while focusing on not letting anything he'd consumed earlier back into the light, still gripping his toothbrush.

Both a short while and too long later, Kendrick tumbled blearily out of the bed. "Oy, this is you," said a grumpy voice from up front. "Thanks," he said woozily, catching himself from falling down the stairs. They'd arrived a few streets away from their home, and the cooler air of the night came as a welcome breath of awareness. "Unhhh..." he said, massaging his pounding head. Looking down at Jo, a small smile crept onto his face despite all that. Kendrick wrapped an arm around her shoulders on the deserted street and kissed the top of her head. "I guess we're not too old to have adventures yet, hmm?"  A few houses passed, and he added, "Thanks for humoring me," in a little whisper holding up the toothbrush with a grin. "I love you."

Kendrick yawned as he removed the locking charm on their door, holding the door open for her gallantly. "Home sweet home. So...you want the shower first?"

//out//

Curiously, the blonde woman watched her husband dispel all of the dirt and oil from the sheets. She was becoming progressively more unsettled by the notion that they'd be staying on this bus until they arrived in Craven even though she was acutely aware it should've made her feel better that he'd cleaned it off for her. Perhaps seeing it all in one concentrated form had been enough to push her over the edge of nausea-inducing disgust. The witch shook her head a little and flipped the covers back, wriggling underneath the sheets to curl up next to her husband. Even if their entire environment and uncomfortable surroundings had plunged her all the way into discomfort, she'd still have him. To lay on. Rely on. Whatever was necessary. "Lovely. Thank you, darling." Jocasta grunted while she adjusted herself. She made a point not to cocoon herself entirely in these blankets -- so many other people in the same vicinity was creeping a lingering feeling of claustrophobia down her spine.

As usual, it didn't take her husband's greyish eyes very long to begin sliding shut. It wasn't uncommon for Jocasta to lie awake at night, staring up at the ceiling either deep in thought or deep in a hope that sleep would come and offer a reprieve from whatever long day she'd just had at work. She preferred, at this point in time, however, not to stare at this particular ceiling -- the chandelier that was clanging and clinking around appeared rather precarious and she assumed she'd achieve more of a peace of mind not wondering when it was going to fall and crush them. It did look ... quite heavy.

Instead, she stared at him for awhile, knowing he wouldn't think this was creepy (thankfully, too,) and even drifted a little herself. After awhile, though, her precarious balance of halfway-sleeping was shaken by another halt. Kendrick rolled out of the bed and Jocasta sat bolt upright, cursing her reflexes for the prompt pulsing that her abrupt movement had caused in her temples. It was most definitely time to go home. And sleep in their own bed. She was still drunk, but she could feel her joints and veins, if that were even a possibility, entering into the detox phase. The hangover that would almost certainly ensue the morning following was not going to be kind or brief in its visit.

Jo swung her legs over the edge of the bed and clomped down the stairs of the bus, clambering out onto the cement of the sidewalk lining the general vicinity in which they lived. Ahh. The air was fresher and clearer out here than it was in London, which was a big part of the reason she enjoyed coming home to it after a long week at work. She leaned into her husband when he wrapped a strong arm around her slight shoulders and sighed. "Mmmhmm. Guess not. I think I'm tired out on them for awhile, though." Words distinctly less slurred than they had been earlier, she offered a chuckle. It probably had just... come out of her nose in a short burst of air, but it had been an expression of exhausted thankfulness, nonetheless. "I adore you."

Stumbling into their house to be greeted by a smallish ball of fluff attacking their ankles with a wet nose was comforting, for whatever reason. "Mmm. We could share it? Both get in bed faster."